Rogue Matress
My days as a house painter are spent on the road giving estimates and monitoring job progress. My meals are eaten in the car while driving and listening to 1980’s heavy metal cranked to full volume. The passenger side of my Ford Expedition doubles as a trash can; empty sushi trays, drained smoothie bottles, crumpled Milky Way wrappers, blackened banana peels, and empty plastic Arrowhead water bottles live there and greet new arrivals every day.
A favorite road snack is banana and peanuts. I take a bite of banana and throw in a mouthful of peanuts. The peanuts are transferred to my mouth via the opening in the 16 ounce Planters Peanut jar. I chew the banana and peanuts together in my mouth, a tasty mash.
It was a warm Thursday around noon in Los Angeles as I headed back from an estimate in Pasadena to a job in Beverly Hills. Traffic was light. I was driving west on the 134 freeway near the Figueroa exit, eating bananas and peanuts, and listening to Rainbow’s 1979 “All night long” on the radio. The jar was almost empty with just a few peanuts, kernels and brown peanut skins on the bottom of the jar. I hefted the jar up to my mouth in a way that would move the peanuts off the bottom of the jar but not hit the roof of my car. I’ve eaten hundreds of pounds of peanuts this way over the years and I consider it a safe activity. This time, though, a peanut kernel flew into my right eye. I rubbed my eye with my unsalted middle finger and after I regained focus, I notice I’m approaching a queen size box spring mattress at 60 miles an hour.
I had two choices, either drive over it or veer out of my lane without looking and possible hit another car or worse… I decided to drive over it. I lost complete control of the car. I fishtailed all over the two or three lanes of the freeway. So much for my theory of not wanting to hit another car. I was completely out of control. Somehow I saw the eyes of a driver close to me and he had terror in his eyes. I let off the gas to slow down and the car steadied itself. Looking in the rear view mirror, I see splintered wood in my rear view mirror. Wow! I survived that. No crash, no roll over, no problem. What I didn’t see was the box spring itself, maybe that cursed box spring had somehow vaporized and the whole experience was over. A helpful driver next to me hand motioned that I was dragging a mangled box spring mattress behind my car. How embarrassing!
Humiliated, (this stuff happens to others, not me) I pulled to the shoulder of the freeway to dislodge it. Masculine thoughts of crawling under the car and removing the mattress were the first thoughts through my head. It was just hot enough and dirty enough down there that a small lazy voice whispered to me “call AAA.” That voice didn’t have to whisper twice; I took out my phone and called the 800 number on the back of the card. I gave the dispatcher all my information and was told to wait.
I still thought about pulling out the mattress myself, but those thoughts weren’t powerful enough to make me do anything other than wait for tow truck driver to show up and remove the box spring from under my car. I thought I’d be a little embarrassed when the tow truck driver showed up and easily removed the box spring, but I’d give one of those weak smiles acknowledging my failure to live up to the standards of a man and move on with my life.
A half hour later, the tow truck driver arrived and parked in front of my car. He walked over, surveyed the situation, and looked at me like “how did you manage to do this?” He got down on his back and slithered under the car to pull out the shattered box spring. I’m squatting and watching him and see that one of the spring wires has become completely entangled around my drive shaft. My tow truck friend, Armando, tries to separate my car and the box spring for about 10 minutes before he slithers back out and says he can’t remove it. I should be getting angry and worried now about my car, but I’m thinking that the difficulty in removing that spring from my drive shaft has justified my laziness. I’m vindicated! I feel like a man again.
Armando tells me we have to call for a large flat bed to tow my car. About 45 minutes later, the flat bed driver shows up. He also surveys the