The Purple Monster

I'm not a materialistic guy. Okay, so, I collect uncut gemstones, but I mean other than that. My office is in the attic of my house, the walls slice into the room at forty-five degree angles (my Paris Hilton poster keeps falling down), and the furniture is worth its weight in firewood.

Truly. My wife keeps asking when I want to buy new furniture. I tell her I can't type any faster on redwood than I can on pressed wood.

I dress like Michael Moore.

My bikes are always hand-me-downs. The last one I had was called The Purple Monster. I name all my vehicles; I've had cars named Woodstock, Lucille, and Hector. The Purple Monster was a girl's bike. To the credit of society at large, no one ever made fun of me for riding a bike that accommodated a latent tendency to cross dress.

The Purple Monster earned its name by dropping gear chains on the pavement whenever I said, "Giddy up!" Also by being purple.

I inherited The Purple Monster from my wife. She now rides one of those fancy-pants bikes you can lift with your little finger. It's made of a space-age alloy, which I suppose is one of the myriad technological fall-outs of the Apollo program. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Lance Armstrong. The Purple Monster got so cantankerous in its old age that only a knee-jerk liberal like me could make it go.

Some of the political brawls discussions on this blog have pitted those of us who are sensitive to the plight of the "have nots" against Republican imperialists distinguished opponents who argue from the point of view of fascism their own enlightened perspectives. The Purple Monster briefly became what Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. called a wampeter, an object around which the lives of otherwise unrelated people revolve. Some of those people were "haves," some were "have nots." Listen:

Once a year my town allows its residents to place their bulk garbage on the sidewalk for pickup. This is the time to get rid of old appliances, furniture worth its weight in firewood, and . . . cantankerous bicycles.

My wife had tried repeatedly to sell The Purple Monster, but being the honest person she is, and The Purple Monster being the death trap it had become, she was unable to find a new home for it. Finally she gave up and said, "Put it on the sidewalk."

Yippee! It had been sitting in our basement for months, blocking access to the eight-track tapes and spare croquet mallets. On the morning of the bulk garbage pickup I wheeled The Purple Monster onto the sidewalk. All was right with the world.

My wife was sad. The Purple Monster had served her, it had served me, it had served well. Or had tried, anyway. I reassured her: as soon as The Purple Monster was reduced to its constituent atoms and returned to the environment it would serve Mankind once again. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Chrome to chrome.

It was a glorious sunny morning. I waited on the sidewalk for the garbage truck, imagining the workbench I would build in the basement now that The Purple Monster was out of the way. Imagining the jaws of the garbage truck clamping down on that impenitent clump of rust. Crushing it, grinding it, reducing it to its constituent atoms. I looked up the road. No garbage truck yet in sight.

But something else.

A Turkish woman and her daughter, approaching on the sidewalk, holding hands. Not an uncommon sight; Germany has a large Turkish immigrant population. They stick pretty much to themselves and follow old country customs. This woman was covered head-to-toe with only her face and hands exposed. Her dress was drab, almost rags. The girl was about nine, wearing western clothes. Thrift shop clothes. She was grinning, talking animatedly to her mother, skipping along beside her.

I watched from behind my fence. When the two saw The Purple Monster on the sidewalk they stopped and stared.

It's an unwritten rule that you can take what you find on Bulk Garbage (Sperrmüll) Day if you beat the garbage truck to it. Lower income families go "junking" to furnish their apartments; given the overall affluence of German society the junk furniture is usually quite serviceable. On Bulk Garbage Day you'll see pickups and trailers roaming the streets, hunting for treasure.

I didn't think anyone would want The Purple Monster. Its tires were flat, its paint was flaking off, and its handlebars were irreparably bent. You had to steer to the left to go straight, like tacking into the wind. Also, it didn't have a seat. The seat had been claimed by another bike (Big Red). Who wants a bike without a seat?

The little girl looked at The Purple Monster, then at her mother, then at me. I waved. They didn't wave back. A traditional Turkish woman is not going to wave at a strange man, no matter the circumstances. It's never happened, it never will. But I don't care; I'm a flake; I wave at everybody.

The girl touched a handlebar and looked at me again. I said, "If you want it, it's yours." She glanced back at her mother who nodded almost imperceptibly. With the slow, deliberate movements of someone who fears the gift giver will suddenly rescind the gift, she raised the kick-stand, grasped the hollow pipe where the seat had been, and wheeled the bike away, all the while darting glances at me. I waved and smiled. The mother resumed her journey down the sidewalk and the girl hurried to keep up, pushing a bike with two flat tires.

Before long the girl was grinning and skipping again, but she kept looking back at me. I kept waving and smiling. When she spoke to her mother I could imagine the words:

I'll scrape the rust off. I'll paint it too, if I can find some paint. Do I have to wait for my birthday to get a new seat?

The little girl glanced back at me once more, but her expression was calm; she had entered international waters and the bike was hers to keep.

Do you think papa can fix the tires? Stella and Janna are going riding this Saturday. Can we get it ready in time?

They were half a block away when the garbage truck arrived. A pair of men hopped off and began loading the rest of my junk. The jaws of the truck clamped down on an old chair, some leftover carpet from three houses ago, a fan that made sounds like a wounded bear.

How much does paint cost, mama?

Just as I was ready to go back inside, the Turkish woman stopped and turned around. She was far enough away now that I couldn't tell if she was looking at me or watching the garbage truck. Her arms hung straight at her sides. She bent her right wrist up so that the palm was facing the ground. She held it like that for two seconds, then let it drop, turned away again, and continued home.