Mellow Yellow

We nicknamed his 1989 Datsun sedan Mellow Yellow not because it was cool or refreshing in any way, but because the exterior was completely piss yellow except for the black hood and left front fender replaced by salvaged parts he found in a Florida junkyard. Some meathead from the gym suggested we nickname it Bumblebee, but what free-wheeling delinquent would ride in a car named Bumblebee? Even a transforming robot from outer space would know better than choosing a Datsun for their exoskeleton. Mellow Yellow was a better fit, since it was also the name of some weird off-brand soda that was most people’s third or fourth choice. We could relate.

I grew up in Maryland, he grew up in Florida. We were both serving in the Navy and stationed on the same ship.   Although we grew up strangers, our stories were the same. Confused and fed-up with high school, we each found ourselves in a recruiter's office searching for the same thing - escape. I was trying to escape religion, he was escaping a step-father.  Our recruiters succeeded in getting us out of our hometowns, but it was his car that really allowed us to vanish.

The best memories from my childhood were formed in a red pickup truck with country music crackling the speakers. Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Don Williams, and John Prine were all invisible magicians. When my dad would put one of them into the tape deck, the world out my window would disappear. “You hear that?” my father would say. “The best songwriters are those who’ve lived the most, and the best songs are about something you’ve never done, but make you feel like you have.” For me, happiness has always been the sum of movement and music.

Except for the radio, we would ride Mellow Yellow in silence. For comfort, the windows had to be down. I usually rode shotgun, and he drove, right and left elbows out the windows respectively. In order to hear the music the volume had to be at maximum levels. We couldn’t hear each other talk anyway, so we just smoked and sang along to the music. He had a tape collection of obscure ska and underground punk bands. We inhaled deep into our lungs every two-minute burst of rage-filled liberation backed by trumpets and guitars. When you're 19 years old, freedom doesn’t mean you have nothing left to lose, it means you have nothing to begin with.

When I enlisted in the Navy, I couldn’t legally buy cigarettes. I was 17, and the Navy wasn’t something I really wanted to do. I am not part of some military lineage. I wasn’t following in any of my grandfather’s footprints. September 11, 2001 had recently occurred, and I was no hero. As a high school junior, my parents gave me a list of three ultra-religious colleges and told me to pick one. The Navy became a fat middle finger to my parents and the colleges their church said I should attend. Looking back, my enlistment wasn’t an escape from religion, just my father’s version of it.

I left for boot camp 3 weeks after graduating high school. A few days before my one-way trip to Illinois, I was at my grandfather's farm riding one of his horses while he cut hay. It was June, and it was hot. I saddled up the mare for the last time and rode the edge of the woods to stay in the shade. Watching the blue tractor snake across the field, a whitetail deer sneaks into the periphery of my horse. The horse spooked. Its nostrils were flailing as it turned immediately around and thundered toward the barn. The sudden acceleration ripped the dry-rotted billets out of their place and left me and the saddle on the ground. I got up and realized we are all running from things we feared.  

Mellow Yellow’s top speed was 57 miles per hour, though we once got it to 64 going downhill. The air-conditioning never worked, the tires were utterly bald, and it drank oil like it too was a proper sailor in the Navy. Even though it started every time, the car was practically worthless. “You know what gives this girl its value?” he once asked me. “Those one-of-a-kind deer dents and hail damage.”

Being a high-school student enlisted in the armed forces, I was part of an elite group of teenagers enrolled in what is known as the Delayed Entry Program, or D.E.P. This really meant absolutely nothing except that during my senior year, I would have to meet every Saturday morning to exercise and memorize naval flags from flash cards. In my hometown, the recruiter’s office is directly behind a grocery store. Everyone who went to buy groceries before it got crowded would see a group of 7 or 8 kids running laps around Shop-4-Less reciting chants of canteens and yellow birds. We all thought we were holding our ticket out of that town, but we were just a group of kids running through a grocery store parking lot.

We drove Mellow Yellow to three main places — the beach, the dive bar at the beach that would accept our fake I.D.s, and to the 7-11 that also accepted our I.D.s. One time we drove it to Richmond for a punk show. We each drank a .40 on the way and smoked a twelve-dollar cigar. We were kings.

I remember swearing in. It was at a base in New Jersey called M.E.P.S., or Military Entrance Processing Station. The walls were red, and the floors were white and brown. One guy in an Air Force uniform wore the shiniest dress shoes I had ever seen. Not only were they as bright as mirrors, but he had jammed metal bottle caps into the soles of those shoes so he sounded like a tap dancer walking down the hallway. You could hear him coming from a mile away. I still don't know if he wanted all of us nervous kids to hear each of his individual steps, or if he was only trying to drown out something else in his head. I guess even guys with bottle caps stuck to their shoes are trying to escape something.

When he sold Mellow Yellow for five hundred dollars, we went to 7-11 and each bought a case of beer and cheap cigarettes. I had a black Chevrolet pick-up truck by then with working air conditioning and a CD player.  We drove to the beach and rolled the windows down for old-time’s sake.  I lit a cigarette, and he put in a CD.  Driving down the interstate we didn’t talk, but belted out the words to the song screaming from the speakers. “Pardon me while I burst . . . into flames!”