dir/new_school/rant: M i n i v a n 

I'm thinking about buying a minivan.  Whenever I mention this people snicker and giggle and then ask me why.  As I think about this, two sentences into this piece, I realize the whole credibility of KungFu the site could hinge on me chatting mildly about the fact that I want a Family Hauler as my new ride.  To be honest, I originally didn't want a minivan, I was much more intent upon getting another F150 pickemup truck  or maybe a Chevy Suburban.  When I began to think about it though, I realized two things. I want to buy my next vehicle and I refuse to spend more then about fifteen grand on a car or motorcycle.  I also hate cars, so suddenly I’m stuck with the option of getting a smaller truck like a Ranger or maybe A Frontier and though cool, I don't think I could go from a full-sized pickup to a compact pickup and their are other cars I wouldn't mind owning. A S class Mercedes would be nice, maybe a Lexus 400, but the cost is a bit too much for my taste, though once you've ridden in a luxury car, you do understand the difference in price, from say a Camry or Taurus  

 So as I did the math I realized that for fifteen grand I was really talking about spending  twelve grand on a car.  Tax, tag, title and money down will surely eat up a few grand and will actually push the cost of a fifteen grand vehicle I buy up to about seventeen or eighteen grand.   So when I understood that my fifteen thousand dollar car would really be a car costing somewhere between ten and twelve thousand I had to rework the already limited options.  

 Before I even thought about a model vehicle, I knew the features and overview of a vehicle which would apply to anything I was interested in.  First I prefer comfort over style, so I knew that my next vehicle would be more about the cockpit, interior and features.  Never again, do I want to roll up a window.  Maybe if I’d never had a car with electric windows I wouldn't care so much, but I did.  I also realized that cruise control is also a nice feature I like to have.  Leather and a sunroof would also be cool.  I also missed the larger storage space of a SUV, it was nice to get in my old Chevy Blazer-when I had it and have seemingly endless amounts of room behind me and in the rear.  Driving a two seater, non extended cab pickup truck sucks, either your shit gets cramped and thrown behind your seat in a cubbyhole big enough for a briefcase and jacket or in the bed, grocery shopping was a nightmare. 

 I am growing up, I am also restructuring my life, financially and personally.  I am not going to have kids anytime soon, much to the sadness of my mother, but spending big bucks on a Ford Expedition or A Full-size crewcab pickup truck, which run somewhere between the middle twenties and the high thirties is just silly, I like having money for things other then paying my car note.  So as I did my newspaper searches and went to the dealerships and began to research lease return vehicles and recently used vehicles, I realized that though my thin wallet wouldn't put me in a vehicle of my choosing, I could get size and features.  

 I had always liked conversion vans as a kid, though they aren't in vogue anymore, too much for the retirement set and hard core road adventurers.  Conversion vans don't really age that well either, whether it's the pin-striping or all those blinds and wall to wall carpeting.  As a matter of fact Conversion vans are a bit creepy when they start to get long in the tooth.    

I remember watching the movie Twister and being intrigued at how I actually enjoyed the Crichton penned movie.  Disaster flicks are cool and hokey and the special effects were and still are pretty tasty eye candy.  The choice of vehicles in the movie were very interesting, Bill Paxtons character had a bad ass, fully decked out 4x4 extended cab Dodge Ram pickup truck, the rest of his team, not being the star had shitty vehicles which tagged along behind.  The bad Guys though, they all had the new Dodge Grand Caravans which had just come out a year or two earlier, they were jet black, with tinted windows to designate them as the bad guys, if we might have missed this point in the plot.  I think this was the second year the new model Dodge Grand Caravan had been out and though I liked it and have always had a soft spot for minivan, style had somehow reached the Family Hauler.  The minivan renaissance was on.  
 
Chrysler created the first minivan, it was a landmark vehicle when it arrived on the showroom floor.  Station wagons which were the big loser on the emergence of the Minivan were bland and getting old.  The closest comparison vehicle to mark were the early SUV's.  The SUV's were rare and were actually driven by people who needed a 4X4 truck with a enclosed bed.   And unlike the luxury hauling sexy beast of burdens we all vie for now, creature comforts were nonexistent in the original SUV's.  The minivan immediately became a popular solution for families and anyone who needed to drag lot's of crap around.  They were all originally built on truck frames which made for a horrendous stiff ride. With the creation of the Ford Aerostar, the thought of a stylish minivan was born.  If you remember the commercials, the Aerostar was compared to the Space Shuttle.  And to be honest the first decade of the minivan from 84 to the early nineties were fairly drab and boring, the ride was lousy and SUV's-which had evolved slowly- were a cooler alternative to the Minivan.  

 All hope seemed lost for the minivan which had become synonymous with the word practical, it was the choice of the 2.5 family generation.  It also didn't help that the Ford had reinvented the station wagon with the advent of the Ford Taurus Wagon.  The import market was also coming on strong with new compact and sleeker wagons, they called Hatchbacks. Slowly and unevenly though,  the other automakers were beginning to make new offerings which challenged the Dodge Grand Caravan's staid dominance. Things started to get interesting as automakers began to offer new styling for the beleaguered minivan look, but the evolution of the minivan was an awkward gangly teenage time, as the square shape began to change with accents and curves that bulged in all the wrong places, with vehicles like the Pontiac Transport and the VW Eurovan and the strange first generation hybrid four door minivans that Honda and Mitsubishi were making.  Dodge again broke through the monotony and awkward new styling look of the second generation of minivans with the all new Caravan in 1996.  

 The new Caravan came with a style that said it had been carved and sanded out of soft wood, by a designer, not an engineer.  Somehow the impersonal wedge look that all minivans shared became a more warm and surrounding body, the minivan had become curvy, sleek and sexy...
 
As a kid I remember my friends and I always hanging out and while we were always together, we didn't "go out" as much as we hung out together, our occasional outings were either to comic shops or to get junk food, maybe catch the new summer movie.  Our one going out ritual came as we grew a bit older was to frequent the Dragon Palace, a Chinese restaurant, where we held court and socialized like a young brat pack, the memories of those times are good.  

 A early predecessor to our Friday nights at the Dragon Palace was to occasionally get a cheap lunch somewhere and hang out loitering on the weekend.  One day we chose a Pizza Hut, it was a warm Summer afternoon, Paul had driven in his fathers Toyota Minivan.  

The Toyota minivan was very much the terrifying cheapie, euro styled sheet metal van, that you always figured for a tipper. It was lined with three rows of seats and it stopped us from having to caravan around with multiple cars, so often times we rode in the "blue beast" as we jokingly called it.  

 On this summer afternoon, we feasted on Meat lovers pizza and the magnificent buffet salad bar fixings that only PizzaHut knows how to provide- for only $2.49 with any pizza order.  We were a mild tempered lot, not really bothering anyone or making too much of a scene.  The waitress brought our check and after slowly doing the math we all realized that we had miscalculated the sum total of the bill.  Not only did we not have enough money to leave a tip-our first thought, we did not have enough money to pay the bill, even shuffling the cash around and pulling our pockets out was enough to get us out of this one.  We continued to eat in silence, weighing out what to do, which about boiled down to whose penny bank we'd smash or worse yet and a embarrassing horror upon itself, which parent to beg for while we all sat in ransom for the bill. 
 
Instead of all of that, Paul and I looked at each other and if I have to be fair, I think Paul made the sly grin which is his trademark mischievous look and then the bulb over my head went off and I said "I'm gonna go to the bathroom" I coughed and looked around at everyone, my eyes giving a look that said volumes over what I had spoken...Dine and Dash.

 Paul stood up a few seconds later and mumbled something about the jukebox, we all knew the gig, walk silently out, one by one, don't make a scene, nobody get's hurt.  Sadly everyone else at the table was frozen.  I went into the washroom, looking for Tarantino courage in the John and trying hard not to burst into laughter.  When I came out into the dining area Paul was nonchalantly walking out to the car.  The door closed behind him, with a slow sweep, their was no turning back.  I walked by the table and whispered to our other six friends and said "Everyone just get up slowly, one at a time, count your money out like we're paying the whole bill and follow us. No Problem"

 Famous last words, I made my way out the Pizza Hut, walking slowly and giggling under my breath, to be honest it was more fun then shoplifting comic books, it was like we were pulling off the caper of the decade.  Paul was to the car, I was halfway across the parking lot, freedom was steps away, we'd done it.  Unfortunately the straw count to see who would be the last sucker in the pizza hut didn't wash out well, As I reached the blue minivan and opened the side doors for my fellow cohorts to climb through when they came out, slow and cool like.  The mass exodus was anything but slow and cool.  It looked like they were fleeing a burning building, I climbed in as Paul gunned the engine, the blue Toyota minivan squealed and gave an awful sickening twist as Paul did a J turn in the parking lot.  

 I held on for dear life hanging on to the side of the passengers chair with my left foot jammed in some crevice, the only thing really keeping me inside.  It was like the evacuation of Vietnam in 75.  I was the door gunner, motioning for our guys to hurry up.  Paul had a maniacal look on his face, which matched his flyboy driving technique...It was slow motion, my eyes following the action, Paul never stopped, not for that hot LZ, oh no.  As he brought the minivan to rest again on all four wheels.  The Van didn't stop, it just slowed, everyone dove into the open side door, scrambling to stay upright, the van was still moving, I climbed to the passenger seat.  

The last bastard on board was Max, who came running, for his life, his hair flailed about him and three differently sleeved arms-all hanging and disembodied- reached out for him pulling dragging him into the minivan. Paul had brought the minivan to a full circle and the force of the circling motion, slammed the side door closed, save for Max who was still hanging halfway out of the Minivan, crushed in between the sliding door and the side of the car.  

We sped away.

 And if I was more geek and less the tortured poetic muse, i'd say it was like taking off in the Millennium falcon, with Darth Vader and Bobba Fett behind us. 

 Not being that much of a geek, please maintain the washed out drab olive colors of my vietnam analogy, to help it along, I'd like to the say that the manager was short, asian, dressed all in black with, tire sandals and a russian made Ak47, just to maintain the illusion. Though in reality he was your common clone model manager with a short sleeved Sears dress shirt, clip on tie which did not reach the belt line and a balding, shining head, which shone as he chased after us in the parking lot.  

 It was a joyous stupid moment in childhood that we all remember fondly.  We have such fond memories, only because we got away.  Upon closer examination, getting caught was the least of our troubles, not only could we have lost or hurt people in the whole stupid ordeal, but imagine if you're walking out to a parking lot and you notice kids streaming out of a Pizza Hut while some Minivan does donuts in the parking lot, until it tips over.  That would have been funny and more memorable. 
 
I always like to think that the great thing about this site and my writings is that my work is both mystifying to the image of who I am while also revealing honest things about me.  I do want it both ways, if I had my way I'd probably talk about more geeky shit, like minivans and why laptops suck and how to turn a hundred and thirty three megahertz machine into a bad ass, bare-bones workstation and it would all be KungFu.

Besides the truth is this, you can get all caught up in cool if you want and I encourage it.  Their is a difference in being cool and looking cool sucker.  I have brought more closure to myself in this piece then I have in many of my other rants, because what I fought here tonight wasn't anger or rage, but my own insecurity about how i'd look or the fact that people snicker when I mention it, but if the truth is to be told, a bad motherfucker makes anything about himself cool; that's what cool really is. And that is a bit of KungFu, which will soon have my ass chilling in a minivan.  Unless I get a Station Wagon and then I might have to come back here again for another personal pep talk, don't get me wrong, I love station wagons too, but I don't know about all that...