Heart Like a Wheel

With all the political tumult of the recently completed summer, I'd almost forgotten about a loss in the middle of the season that hit me as hard and unexpectedly as the loss of a relative who hadn't been sick. Tired, maybe, but not sick. Not to my eyes.

I remembered the loss yesterday, driving through town, though I actually remember it every week, sometimes more; the regret comes in spasms that I expect will decrease over time. Although since I'm almost sure nothing will replace what was lost, that expectation might be wishful thinking. I might hurt a while.

I lost a garage. It was a general automotive repair place called Manchester Brake & Auto, an unassuming, almost old-fashioned looking place on Manchester and 3rd avenue on the east side of Inglewood. Every car I ever drove or owned, starting with a '73 Dodge Dart Swinger that I inherited from my grandfather and used through college, spent some time at Manchester Brake. The place opened in 1965. I went there because my parents took their cars there, but I quickly came to appreciate the family who ran the business, a father and two sons who were all mechanics. One brother was short, cheerful and outgoing, the other one was tall and taciturn, and the father kind of split the difference on all counts. But they were all famous for their honesty. If they couldn't fix your car or if it didn't need fixing, they'd tell you right away. They'd send you to somebody who could do the job that they couldn't, and do it well. There was never any tension or haggling at Manchester Brake; a garage isn't a place where customers hang out, but it often felt like they did as they lounged on wooden school chairs set on the driveway outside the hydraulic lifts (Manchester didn't have an office or lobby) waiting for a diagnosis or to pick up a car.

What fascinated me most about the place, as time went on and my social awareness took shape, was its perfect ordinariness and reliability in a neighborhood that had undergone huge transformations since 1965. The Manchester guys were white; '65 was not exactly an auspicious year to open. After the Watts Riots, South Central and nearby places like Inglewood emptied out of white folks almost overnight. White-owned small businesses went with them. Manchester Brake not only stayed, it settled. It was definitively Inglewood in a town that was rapidly losing its touchstones and searching for new ones. Through uneasy times in Inglewood up to and including this year, Manchester was one tiny measure of reassurance that we all were living a life good enough to have within reach a place we could drop off a beloved car at a moment's notice and know it would be taken care of. It countered the occasional but jarring threat of urban chaos with middle-class predictability.

And then, unpredictably, it wasn't there. One day in July, I drove to Manchester in the morning to have the guys (two of them--the father died many years ago) check out my tires, which they had done two weeks earlier. This was just a follow-up. I hadn't called beforehand; I'd never needed to. What I pulled up to was a shuttered garage door and a hand-lettered sign that said Manchester had closed for good due to retirement. The departure looked hasty, or maybe just humble. The sign thanked all the customers for their business the last 44 years.

I sat idling in my Chrysler for many minutes, unbelieving. I had no idea where to take my car next. And for a very brief moment, I didn't know where I lived.

This image was taken by flickr user phxpma. It was used under the Creative Commons license.