Clyde is Risen

Southern Yarns and Fly Hooks

Clyde is a nearly 50 year old Mercury Marquis that has seen better days. It takes a village of caring friends to resurrect this beast to his past glory days. It’s hard to believe, but this mother smokes more than I do, so there was likely a touch of divine intervention for tonight’s trip to the KJN gas station, and the two mile victory lap we made for Clyde who seemed to be conquering death on Easter weekend. I thought about doing this story as a Kafka roach actor might approach it, and maybe subvert the role of the roach for a field mouse that had taken up residence under the back seat in a little mouse crevice, but I figure treating an automobile as a savior on Easter weekend is weird enough. It’s important to understand one’s limits.

I first noticed Clyde about fifteen years ago in my favorite fly fishing publication— The Drake Magazine. The editor and a fly fishing filmmaker bought Clyde near Denver, Colorado to make a very special film called, “When Guiding Goes Gangster.”

Clyde has sat in the barn in West Etowah County for the last four months with a flat front right tire, and a gash in his gas tank so gaping that Joseph of Arimathea might blush. In fact, this figure from the gospels gave me a feeling of personal affinity when I studied his role on Easter weekend. He was the one credited with the burial rites of J.C. In some ways I thought Clyde was my burden to bear after the article I wrote about him coming to Bama as an expensive piece of taxidermy. He was the ultimate trophy. He was the holy grail for fly fisherman when he ran. A purring Clyde motor was not in my memory, because we had been forced to put him on a trailer that popped his front right tire it was such a tight fit. The gas tank was too leaky to drive Clyde. The trailer was like a cross to bear, or a crown of thorns for the ole 1974 Merc. Clyde wanted to rumble his Detroit muscles, and it hadn’t done this for quite some time under my watch.

I was in the liquor store parking lot earlier in the day when I got a text from a former student from the evangelical school. He was asking me about a quote I used to have in my room. The student was somewhat innocent as it was a quote from a sweet evangelical teacher from before my time. It was her old classroom and I had just left in place all her evangelical admonishments. I just kept all her quotes up on the walls to masquerade as “Godly.” In truth I couldn’t remember the quote either. It was something like: “Pursuing God without Jesus is like pursuing kingdom principles without a king.” My student struggled with a personal connection, perhaps more aptly a relationship with J.C. I guess I understood this too. It’s why on Easter weekend I spent all day with my friend Adam, and my father, trying to wake up old Clyde by replacing his gas tank.

It was the cranking of Clyde that gave us the most trouble. Several months without a drive had made his cranking an event as miraculous as what Dr. Frankenstein had done with the monster, or if I am being even more grandiose, what Prometheus did for humanity’s civilization.

Because I am such a myopic fisherman I never developed an ounce of mechanical skills, but Adam has worked on jeeps since his youth, tinkering on automobiles with his grandfather in their garage in Decatur, Alabama. He now lives in Otto Agricola’s Greek Revival mansion in downtown Gadsden where he continues to mess with Jeeps as a passion. He put on a new gas tank in a little more than an hour, and by two hours we began scratching our heads about how to best enjoy a sunset cruise on the land yacht. It was a mannish miracle. Clyde was purring again, and my passion for fly fishing culture could be realized at the Fly Fishing Film Festival at Cahaba Brewing next weekend. What Clyde will do to save me from the alienation of modern life pales by comparison to what J.C. did for my wretched soul when he died on the cross. His resurrection was a Godly miracle the likes of which the world has yet to see again. I don’t mean to discuss Clyde in terms of resurrection. He is simply a hunk of metal. All that beastly muscle, and the hilarious stickers mean only a little something to a small portion of the fly fishing world. J.C. conquered death by rising from it. Clyde is a car that will truly die someday, and there will be no reviving him. Ashes to ashes Clyde. He will be missed, but his stories will never be transcendent the way the gospels are. Maybe as a micro universe Clyde is most impactful to the little field mouse roaming about, making nests out of rolls of toilet paper— a deep ecology of biota in Clyde’s filth.

I will go visit Clyde tomorrow and contemplate the true miracles of the Lord on Easter in church. I hope that does not make me a flagellant angler, but I am dying to use that thirty dollars of premium gas I put in his brand new gas tank. I wish I could drive Clyde to Church in the morning, but you better believe I’ll be driving him around West Etowah in the afternoon.

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