Hurk

Sometimes, when I’m feelin’ blue, or the weight of the world’s pressing down hard on my overtensed shoulders, I think back to my first hurk. In fact, my only hurk, but by God was it a beauty. You couldn’t have asked for a better one. I often think I was blessed in some obscure but special way to have crossed paths with this one. As a matter of fact, as I’m writing these lines, my head’s nodding, and I have a that upside-down U grin like the one you used to see plastered on Bill Clinton’s face when he’d give the thumbs-up sign to a gaggle of fawning reporters.

My hurk was a 1970 Dodge Dart. I bought her in the summer of 1986: my first car, my first taste of the freedom, that great American freedom, that comes with an automobile key, a full tank of gas, and the open road. Well, as long as I kept within walking distance of home, I had freedom. But do not get the impression I’m here to slam the hurk; no, she never – not once, mind you – never, ever broke down on me or stranded me anywhere.

The original owner was a man named Karl Marx. No relation, I think, to the infamous namesake, though he was probably old enough to have read the Communist Manifesto in its first or second printing. Anyway, Mr. Marx no doubt took it out only to drive the mile or so to church once a week, if you forgive the old used car salesman line. I can’t for the life of me remember how much mileage was on the odometer, but more than a hurkish lifetime was etched into the Dart’s thick iron-like skin.

Its color recalled an unholy combination of a mottled brown I imagine hued the dinosaurs a hundred million years ago, wet mud with algae, and a child’s burnt sienna crayon mixed with mustard in a microwave. Its rear quarter panels were made of papier-mâché; I discovered this when the hurk began trailing copious amounts of white flakage. The tires were so bald they made regular summer street driving something like ice skating. I gained about six inches across my back lowering and raising the hand-cranked windows that summer; I was often confused for a Harvard rower. Vinyl seats that heated to about a hundred forty on the partliest of partly sunny days. High-beams that were turned on by stomping on a silver bolt in the floor next to the brake (I went half the summer wondering what that thing was for). No AC, no radio, not even interior carpeting, let alone floor mats.

Yes, my hurk was a chick magnet.

(Seriously, I did take my first girlfriend out on a date with it. I think I may have won her over by purposely letting it slam into a cement divider in an underground parking garage. She laughed; we weren’t going fast enough to hurt ourselves, and for the life of me I couldn’t find out later where it exactly made contact with cement …)

Though it never stranded me, it never gave me peace of mind that I’d get where I wanted to go. Once my girl and I went down a mile-long hill backwards in the snow, thank you rear wheel drive. Another time me, my brother, and two friends drove fifty miles to the Delaware Water Gap in July with the heater blasting, thank you non-functioning radiator. I always wanted passengers on board when I needed to take it on the highway; the momentum of three or four of us rocking furiously forward in our seats helped us merge into traffic. And when it got real cold, like bone-chilling January cold, I gave up trying to start it and let it rest in an adjacent bank parking lot. They left threatening notes on it that they’d have it towed if I didn’t move it. I didn’t, and I think they realized that they’d need some sort of earth-moving bulldozer to get it removed.

My hurk. I think I’ll keep it.




(Not my hurk, but as close to it as I could find on the Internet.)

But you wanna know the best thing about it? I’ll tell you. In May of 1986 I spent $100 to buy it from a used car salesman who was friends with my parents. Exactly one year later I turned it around and sold it to my girlfriend’s younger brother.

For $100.

How’s that for ROI – the hurk was so depreciated that nothing I, the elements, concrete dividers, or acts of God could depreciate it further. If only all my investments were half as strong.

Do I ever miss the hurk? I’m often asked. I’ve had five vehicles since – an 87 Corolla, an 81 Celica, a 90 Toyota pick-up, a 96 Corolla (my first and only new car), and a 99 Rav4. They’ve all had air conditioning, they’ve all had radios, they all were comfortable to varying degrees and got me as far as Washington DC, Toledo, Ohio, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So in that sense, the sense of confidence in your vehicle, the answer is: No, I don’t miss the hurk.

But if you’ve ever owned a hurk, you know the special place it has in your heart. Just like you always remember your first girlfriend, a hurk is yours forever. Though it’s been smelted down to scrap over two decades ago, that Dodge Dart forever lives on in my memories.