Denver Boot

Chad got out of his Philosophy meeting on Tuesday morning to notice that they’d stuck a Denver Boot on the front right wheel of his car. Actually he didn’t know if it was a Denver Boot or not; it was bright yellow, and it obviously would keep his car from going anywhere, but the difference between a Denver Boot and any other kind was, at that point, still unclear to him; in fact, it still is. He was rattled and edgy all day, but he decided to ask his friends what to do before doing anything.

The problem was that, of course, he had a hundred, maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of tickets to pay, and, of course, he couldn’t pay them, as he was a Philosophy graduate student, in the middle of taking his comps, too busy to work an outside job, too busy to do pretty much anything except read thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and remember all these arcane details about philosophical theory. That was why he had parked illegally in the first place. Late for a meeting, too much going on in his head, he’d pulled into the Life Sciences parking lot at the last minute and had made it to the meeting, barely a few minutes left.

The first friend he talked to was Riley, who advised him to get Cleo to help. Cleo was a good old boy with an enormous pickup, and no doubt had welding tools back in Dallas, and Cleo would be glad to run back to Dallas, pick up his welder’s equipment, and melt the thing off if he had to. Riley was right; Cleo would jump at the chance to challenge the authorities. And, if they melted down some boot right in the parking lot of Life Sciences, Cleo would be able to handle that challenge too. The problem was, anything having to do with Cleo would also involve at least a week of drinking. And this would be solid drinking. For example, they’d get back to Dallas, start drinking with Cleo’s friends, and those friends had other friends who wouldn’t forgive them if they just blew through town, picked up welding equipment, and left without having a drink or two. Chad couldn’t afford it. It was a serious time in his life, taking comps, trying to get out of this alive, getting an advanced degree. There was too much at stake. Chad avoided Cleo.

There was always borrowing money, from his dad, or perhaps his brother, who had lent him the car in the first place, and who was at least working in a brewery, though he was drinking three for every one he made. Chad rejected this idea too. He had borrowed too much already.

One of his friends, MacKenzie, told him to simply wait it out. The university, she said, would eventually come and get the boot, because they’d need to use it on some other car. The university would also have the car towed, no doubt, because it was parked illegally, and had been for a while, and blah blah blah, couple hundred dollars of back tickets, whatever. The thing was, as MacKenzie pointed out, the people who would tow it would be different from the people who actually removed the boot. Yes, both events would happen on the same day, probably, but if you were there at the right time, you could theoretically drive away before the tow truck got to it, and you were scot-free, so to speak.

The final solution, short of robbing the bank, would be to just to let the car go. Take the license plates, let them figure out who owned the old wreck, and just never turn back. In this regard Chad was a little paranoid, because he was sure they had records that would show who owned a car with such-and-such VIN number, Montana license plate, probably a stack of notices on his brother’s kitchen table, and they would get him eventually. He could always say that he’d sold the car, and it wasn’t his problem anymore, but in fact he needed the car; it was only worth about a thousand dollars, but it was a running car. He was relying on it to move to Michigan in May, when he finally would graduate, and get a job, hopefully near his girlfriend, selling power tools or something. He didn’t know if he would need the car for all this; all he knew was he’d need a car soon enough. One always needed a car. That’s how he’d convinced his brother to lend it, kind of on permanent loan. You can’t live without one.

It was testament to the kind of friends Chad had, and the kind of era we live in, that when he mentioned it at a crowded table in the student union, one friend laid into him about the name “Denver,” as it had just been known as the boot, as far as that friend knew, and had never been associated with Denver at all, and another friend instantly looked it up in Wikipedia. The first friend was a Broncos fan, and was offended that anything so odious as a boot could be associated with Denver, but Chad said that that’s what they called it in Iowa, when he was there, and, sure enough, when they looked it up, it was true that one kind was invented in Denver, and used first in Denver, but there wasn’t enough information to determine for sure whether the big yellow kind stuck on Chad’s car as they looked it up was actually the same kind as the kind known as the Denver Boot. One of those mysteries, he decided, that would have to go unresolved for the time being. Denver boot or ordinary boot, his car was stuck in the Life Sciences parking lot until he got himself out of this mess.

His last friend, a woman, pointed out how ironic it was that, when you were going places you weren’t supposed to, they’d stick a boot on your car so that, in essence, you couldn’t leave. She thought the Denver Boot was an existential symbol of irony, and she wanted to point out how he’d fallen into a kind of must move/can’t move trap. This friend was totally right, but Chad had no time for the philosophical implications of the Denver Boot, and in fact, it was all he could do to get home that night (he got a ride), get an old bicycle out of the garage, and get back on campus in the morning. The bicycle had a flat tire and a broken chain, and he had very few tools, so once again he was late for some dumb meeting and felt self-conscious about his greasy hands and sweaty t-shirt. He lived about two miles from campus, so this bicycle routine would take some getting used to; the biggest problem was safety, as he had some busy intersections to get through and had no helmet. Also, it rained that day; this was rare for Texas, but it still happened occasionally, and, wouldn’t you know it, the day he’s trying to wobble home on an old bicycle, and it’s throwing puddle water up into his eyes.

But he settled on MacKenzie’s option, waiting them out, and actually moved his studying place to a couch in the corner of the first floor of the Life Sciences building, where he could keep his eye on the parking lot and his little car with the bright yellow boot on the front right wheel. He made sure that he could see that wheel from where he was sitting, with the plan that if someone would remove the boot, any morning or afternoon, he would be there and see it, and would run out the door and remove the car, quick before it was towed. With resolution he took his seat in the Life Science building lobby every morning that he could; and then, after lunch, he would return. He used that couch as his own personal library for about a week, and he just acted like there was no better place for a Philosophy student to study for comps than that couch in the Life Sciences Building.

In fact, the week dragged on, and the lobby of the Life Sciences building was not the ideal studying environment. He didn’t feel completely comfortable leaving his books there at night, or even over lunch, and he ended up carrying around a large pile of them, from place to place, and though he considered using the car as a storage bin, since it certainly wasn’t any other use to him, he didn’t, because he was afraid of being seen using it at a crucial time such as when they were towing it. But a worse problem was that he just couldn’t concentrate well there; it was a lobby, and people were coming and going, and some of them were actually pretty good-looking. One woman, who introduced herself as Saturn, came by regularly and tried to remove his old coffee cups, as if she were in charge of keeping the garbage picked up; she would actually stop and talk to him for a while, or watch his books while he went to get more coffee. Oh yes, they got used to him pretty well, but that doesn’t mean they really liked him; it was more likely that they felt like they had to keep a pretty good eye on a guy who parked himself on a lobby couch all day long for almost a week. He never told anyone about the boot or about how he had to keep his eye on that car himself; he didn’t even tell Saturn, who saw him looking at it occasionally, but didn’t really know what he was doing.

One day the Life Sciences had some kind of party in the lobby, and Saturn was busy setting up tables, bringing drinks and crackers, decorating, and in general making noise. It was absolutely impossible to study Philosophy, and Chad was a little aggravated. He reviewed his options again; he considered borrowing money, or finding some other source of money; perhaps there was one he hadn’t thought of. He was beginning to lose faith that they would ever come and remove the boot, though he also knew it couldn’t last forever. He paced around the lobby and ate crackers, and noticed that the Life Science people were absolutely not like the people he was more used to, though they were quite friendly. For a while, he felt bad about taking their parking space so often, so much, and even this week, so continuously, but there was nothing he could do about that now. If he’d had it to do over again, he’d park in the neighborhoods every time, no matter what, and take the price, whether it be being late for the meeting, or whatever. This waiting game was driving him crazy.

But one morning, just as he was finally easing into his Philosophy reading, they removed the boot. Some campus policeman was leaning over, using a key, removing it, and taking it away. Chad couldn’t hide his disbelief, but he gathered up his books, and his notebook, and threw away what was left of his coffee. The minute the policeman drove away he rushed out into the parking lot and started the car. He could actually see a tow truck, just down the campus street, but it was blocked behind an ambulance that was stopped in the middle of the road. The ambulance was saving his life! His choice was whether to go the same direction the policeman had gone just now, west, or go to the east, and drive right in front of the oncoming tow truck. He went east; the policeman was far likelier to recognize the car.

As he drove by the ambulance he was shocked to see that it was his major professor that they were loading into the ambulance; they had lots of equipment out, and the poor guy was trying to explain something to them as they fussed with the equipment. Chad’s jaw dropped but he tried to keep to the campus speed limit of 20, despite his hurry. Behind the ambulance was the tow truck driver, who stared hard at him, knowing full well that Montana license plates are quite rare, so this was probably the car he was after. The minute he could, Chad veered right and off campus, and when he got home, he hid the car, and put some bags of leaves up against it to hide the license plate. He was superstitious; he figured the city, the university, and even the state patrol had him on their list now, and would be looking for him for weeks. Deep down, though, he was proud that he’d beat the system, and even had the car, and had gotten away with something. His heart was racing.

In fact his comps were grueling, and it didn’t matter that the major professor was ailing. He had not quite studied well enough, and it showed, but after considerable run-around, they let him pass anyway, and he was able to leave for Michigan about three months later to follow his original plan. He was superstitious about the car and left at night, but going through back roads in east Texas ran off the road trying to avoid hitting an armadillo. He’d like to say the armadillo almost killed him, or ruined the car, but in fact he lived to tell the tale, and I heard him tell this very story at a bar in Michigan, where, believe it or not, some old guy claimed to know the inventor of the Denver Boot, who was a violinist, and who actually lived in Denver. One never knows about these stories, because people will say almost anything when they’re in a bar, but there were two things that struck me as true about both stories: one is that a clamping device like that is not going to come off easily, it would have given even Cleo a run for his money. And the other is, you’re lucky to get out of Texas with anything, whether it’s a car, or a degree, or a good story. Chad lifted a glass to the old guy and said that, whatever else had happened, it sure wasn’t that violinist’s fault that he’d gotten in such a mess at that university.

(3-16)