3.20.02

So lemme tell ya about my weekend.

Remember I didn’t have my MO plates? Well, last Thursday I got my car inspected as mandated by the state. Everything checked out fine, but the mechanic did notice that there was oil leaking out of the engine. Now I had been having such a problem since before the New Year, but it hadn’t been an issuereally since, so I figured it was just one of those weird car things. He says right off the bat, “that’s the head gasket. These Grand Prix do that at around 50,000 miles.” My car currently sits at about 61,000 miles, so I was due. “So how much is that going to cost?” “At least $350.” “Shit. Well, I’ll have to get back to you because I sure can’t afford that right now.” I pay the man the $12 and get my stupid little sticker in my windshield.

So the next morning I feel like hell - major headache. I have a feeling the pain was just a stress headache from trying to figure out where I was going to come up with “at least $350”, but needless to say I called off work anyway. If only I’d known that the “at least $350” was going to be the least stressful part of my day.

I figure since I’ve called in sick I better make the most of it and run to get the rest of my license plate situation taken care of. Emissions test takes 10 minutes and my poor old girl passes without a hitch. $24 later I’m out the door.

I get to St. Charles where the “St. Charles County Department of Screw You Over” building is located. I walk inside and say to the perfectly nice lady at the counter, “I just moved here and the lady at the license office in O’Fallon said I need to get my tax form or something.” Like how I try to sound like I have no idea what I’m doing here? Ahh, a seasoned white lie professional at work, boys and girls. Watch and learn. “You mean a tax waiver?” “Oh, is that it? Ok.” “Well, I need your title or your registration?” I get a dumbfounded look on my face and reply, “Oh. The lady in O’Fallon didn’t mention any of that.”

Now right here – I’m not lying. The lady in O’Fallon didn’t mention that I would need either of these documents to back up my claim. Worst of all, recently another Illinois transplant friend of mine went to get his plates and they simply handed him the form – didn’t check his ID, didn’t ask for his title, didn’t ask for registration, didn’t ask for his first born, nothing. Granted that was a different county, but still, it’s a state law (I would assume). So when this lady asks me for my title or registration, I’m a little flabbergasted.

“Well, I’ve been talking to a lady from the O’Fallon office that’s supposed to be taking care of the title situation. I don’t own the car yet – my bank still does – so I’m getting a Missouri title soon.” “Well, I need a copy of the title before I can do anything.” “Do you have a fax number?” She writes it down for me and I go call the wonderful folks at the Fisher National Bank.

I explain the situation and they say they’ll fax it to me immediately. Aren’t they wonderful? So I wait for 45 minutes and no fax comes. Well, I take that back, one fax did come in, but it was a list of jokes that someone sends the ladies in the office on Fridays; apparently they haven’t heard of email yet. The kind woman (who really was good about the whole thing) takes pity on me and calls up the O’Fallon license office to see what the deal is. Long story short – she gave me the wrong zip code for her fax machine so it’s no wonder Fisher National Bank never got the fax through, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because if it’s an Illinois title still, she has to have the original, not a copy. Yeah, I wanted to slit my wrists too.

So if I don’t have a copy of a Missouri title or the original Illinois title, I will have to have my Illinois registration. Did I mention that I no longer had my old Illinois registration? Sometime between September 2000 and September 2001 I had thrown away or lost or possibly eaten my Illinois registration.

I get back to my car and figure the only thing to do now is to go to Illinois and register my car. Only problem there is – I have a Missouri license with my current MO address on it – so I can’t exactly register my car in Illinois since I don’t live there, now can I?

As I hit Interstate 270, the main vein to IL, I call up my buddy Ben “Jammin” Clark at work and ask him to tell me where the nearest Illinois License Bureau office is located. Ahhhhh, beautiful, illustrious, metropolitan Granite City, IL is now my destination.

So I’m sitting on Illinois Route 3 – why yes, I did take the wrong exit off the interstate. Why do you ask? – and there is, inexplicably, a stoplight on the road. I sit behind a minivan with only one other car behind me, but quite a few to the right of me on this four-lane highway. I just happened to glance into my rearview and see a pick-up truck go careening across both lanes, bouncing and juggling across the median and into the soon-to-be oncoming traffic on the other side. Well, another pick-up truck driver had the unfortunate luck of turning right onto Route 3 and gets sort-of T-boned by the haywire truck, right in the driver’s side door. I say “sort-of T-boned” because the run-away truck came at it at an angle and both trucks ended up in the ditch.

Now remember, I’m sitting at a stoplight during all this; I see the whole damn thing. Of course the first thing I think was “Was that a high-speed chase?” And they say my generation’s outlook on life has been jaded by television. Bah! Well, as the light turned green I could see that all the occupants of both trucks had piled out of their vehicles and of the fifteen or so cars that were sitting at either end of the intersection, about five were pulling over to take care of the situation, I figured I wasn’t really needed there and sped on through. I did stop at the next gas station and had them call the police, but by then someone had already called. I also asked how to get to Edison Street, the home of the license office, and was on my way.

My what a beautiful town Granite City, Illinois is. Please note my obvious sarcasm. As I’m driving down street after street of rundown, boarded-up buildings, steel mills and factories, the infamous words of a young Jedi named Skywalker come to mind: “If there’s a bright spot to the center of the universe you’re on the planet farthest from.” Although he might have been talking about the desert planet Tattooine, he could have just as easily been referring to Granite City.

I finally find the license office and hesitantly walk inside. I’m expecting an hour-long wait only to have the woman across the counter tell me that I need an IL driver’s license, some proof of address, and quite possibly a stool sample, though I don’t know why. Instead, there’s no line and the girl behind the counter simply looks up my plate on the computer. $78 and five minutes later I’m out the door with a temporary sticker – the new permanent one will be arriving at my Dad’s house soon. Suddenly I appreciate the great state of Illinois a lot more. As I’m driving home I realize, “Well, screw Missouri; I’ll just keep the Illinois plates for another year.” Ahhh, I love it when a plan comes together.

Fast forward to 5:30AM Saturday morning. I’m still asleep on the couch of Ben Jammin and JK’s, probably drooling all over a pillow or armrest. JK wakes me and next thing I know I’m in the backseat of Ben’s car driving around looking for this bar that’s supposed to be open at 6:00AM for St. Patty’s Day.

We finally find Pat’s Bar and Grill, which is located across from a park where huge statues of snapping turtles are erected. I’m barely awake as it is and now you want me accept the fact that there are giant snapping turtles in the park? Naw, I must still be dreaming. If I was still asleep, this dream took a turn for the shitty when we walked up to the doors of Pat’s and found they were still locked. Bastards!

We ended up driving around for about another two hours looking for a second bar that we had read would be open at 6:00AM. However, this wasn’t our first choice, so we only knew vaguely how to get there, thus the two hours of touring the greater St. Louis metro area. So around 8:00, we simply gave up and drove downtown to the infamous Union Station Mall.

Long story short, no bars were open at Union Station either. As we’re standing in the hallway wondering what to do next, this total stranger in a Carhart brown coat walks up to us and says, “Hey, you guys know anywhere that’s serving?” Ahhh, a kindred spirit.

Now let me tell you something about when my friends and I go out – we always seem to befriend someone we affectionately call “Random Guy”. No matter where we go or what we do, if it’s a “big night” and we hit the town, we are guaranteed to meet up with some random guy who ends up hanging out with us the whole night. We never see the guy ever again; he’s just our friend for that evening. It’s the weirdest thing ever, but dammit if I don’t love it.

So we met our “Random Guy” for the day and actually ended up learning a little about him. His name was John Levi. He was in his forties, was an Air Force Veteran, wasn’t married, worked at a cemetery, and had been given citations for public intoxication and public urination, but never before 11:00AM. The four of us walked around downtown for a little while, stopping by every vending tent (most of which were still busy setting up) until finally one of them was selling beer.

By 8:30AM, we were drinking our first Bud Lights, talking to a pretty young woman named Julie who was selling us the beer, and standing on the corner of 17th and Market with a guy we had just met fifteen minutes ago. Life. Was. Good.

Throughout the rest of the morning we froze our nuts off as it suddenly got very cold outside, helped Julie get the grill going for the way-too-good-than-they-had-any-right-to-be hot dogs and brats, and watched as hundreds of mental health cases ran a marathon right by our “Corner of Sloth”. Best of all, I think John enjoyed having the drinking company and purchased quite a few beers for us. If my drunken recollection is correct (which I’m sure it’s not), I believe over the entire three hours we were downtown I paid for two of the ten or so rounds. Can’t complain.

Along the way, a fellow partier joined us from the organization with the acronym S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. What do you mean you’ve never heard of them? They’re the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. No, I’m not kidding. http://www.spebsqsa.org Now his name was John, too, which helped because I don’t know if we could have handled another name to remember by that time, and he had something that no other person could offer us to that point – shelter. But not some ordinary shelter – John had the Official SPEBSQSA shuttle bus!

The bus was a glorious old school bus painted a pristine white with the only touch of color being “SPEBSQSA” painted in green on the back. When he offered us the opportunity to get inside his wonderful womb on wheels, we gladly accepted.

At some point during our lounging on the bus, John “Random Guy” Levi got up without a word and left. We assumed he was going to hit the Johnny On the Spot portable bathrooms that had become our home away from home that morning, but instead Ben saw him walk across the street into the downtown Post Office. And like Keyser Soze…he was gone. He disappeared and was never seen from again by us. If you’re out there John “Random Guy” Levi – thanks for the beers.

By 11:30 we were all feeling pretty damned happy, but Ben had to go up to Illinois that day, so he had to be hitting the road soon. We stopped by JK’s office, got something to eat at a nearby restaurant, drunken JK spilled his entire glass of water down my right leg, and we went back to their apartment where I promptly took out my contacts and passed out on the couch, once again surely drooling on pillows and/or armrests until about 5:30 that night.

Sadly, because of my car situation, I figured I’d better not go out again for the weekend, but it sounds like I missed out on a good time with JK that night. He got free passes to PT’s, a notorious strip club on STL’s “East Side”, and while that would have been a good way to blow off some much needed stress about my car, I stayed home instead and watched movies. Dammit and that would have been a good end cap on the day, huh? Oh well. Sometimes you gotta be a grown up and take care of your responsibilities no matter how unfun they might be.

So there you have it! That was my weekend! And in only 2, 395 words to boot! Thanks for sticking around! I know this coming weekend won’t be nearly as exciting, but I have a good feeling that the next one (Easter Weekend) should be even better (if that’s possible).

Space Monkey X