Right now there are two things you need to know going into this tale. 1. I drive a 1982 Jeep CJ7. It makes me feel tough. 2. I drive my CJ rarely enough that we only filled it up 8 times in 2011, which is quite a feat for a vehicle that gets 11 miles to the gallon.
Additionally, Josh and I disagree about the function of this part of the Jeep:
Yes, it is large enough to be used as a temporary shelf. Yes, it leaves the garage only occasionally, so it seems like a convenient place to leave things. However, call me crazy, but I don't expect items to be stored on the front of my car. So I don't often look there before driving away.
Many things have made it all the way down highway 26, through Portland, and to the Red Cross on the front of ol' Wheezy (it's short for Louise): a burlap sack, Josh's steel tipped hiking staff named John, a styrofoam cooler. But this is the tale of the one thing that didn't make it.
After a day of working in the garden, Josh took off his cozy flannel and corduroy jacket, placed it on the above disputed area, and came inside to rest his weary bones. Who knows how many days the jacket stayed there before I needed to drive the Jeep instead of taking TriMet. But I do know that it wasn't until I came out of work one evening and approached Louise from across the parking lot that I saw the jacket on my bumper. "Phew," I thought, "I didn't lose it!" And I moved it safely inside the Jeep for the trip back. But when I got home and returned it to Josh, we discovered the tragedy: The items inside the pocket of his jacket somehow came out and flew away without the loss of the coat itself. How does that happen?!
And of course, I didn't lose the cheap cooler or the free burlap sack. I lost the only thing to make this dangerous journey (other than John, which is priceless) that was worth anything. And now I have to buy Josh a new pipe.
