Shined or Shunned

Left: "Lady In Pink", Fabric Art by Kate Bridger

Any moment now, hundreds of pimped and polished vintage wheels will be pulling into Nelson BC for the seventh annual Queen City Cruise. They will arrive, accompanied by their proud owners, from Idaho and Washington State, British Columbia and southern Alberta.

By Saturday morning they will line three blocks of Baker Street parked with the precision and discipline of a military airbase, each vehicle posing at exactly the same angle as its neighbour. The resulting rows of perfectly polished grills grinning towards the centre of the street will be reminiscent of the fixed sparkly smiles worn by a chorus line of beauty pageant contestants.

I love this spectacle. It turns an ordinary downtown thoroughfare into a sculpture garden. I’m not particularly interested in what’s under the hood. I’m far more impressed by the pleasing curve of a Rubenesque fender, or multi-coloured reflections swirling around a gleaming hubcap as if captured in a child’s kaleidoscope.

Owners hover around their protégés like over-protective parents with chamois cloths and polish at the ready to banish errant fingerprints and blemishes. Spectators are found in all sorts of contorted positions, lying on their bellies on the tarmac, or kneeling down on one knee hoping to capture the perfect image with their digital cameras. On a sunny day, this celebration of polished chrome practically lights up the town.

For old timers, the car show is a walk down memory lane—speakers up and down the street pump out vintage ‘50s rock and roll to accompany the experience. Youngsters listen to parents and grandparents brag about first cars, first dates and first kisses back in the days when ‘high speed’ was still measured in miles per hour, not megabytes per second.

Cars, trucks and lorries have fascinated me since I was a child. I had a pretty good collection of Matchbox toys growing up. They’re all lost now. Perhaps that is why I’m also attracted to abandoned vehicles—the ones that appear to grow up out of the forest floor, or peer through long grass in a field by the side of the road. They are as sculptural and intriguing as their pampered counterparts, but in a very different way.

Left to rot in a field they’re quickly picked over as if circling vultures had swooped down to pluck out their eyes and peck at their flesh. Headlights are smashed or gone, stuffing spills out of gaping wounds in the upholstery and eager saplings wrap themselves around the grill like they were climbing a garden trellis.

Sometimes I want to grab hold of the frail and rickety skeletons of these former family wagons and demand an explanation: “who did this to you?” Is this long-term parking space the result of some horrific accident; or did the last owner deliberately drive to this spot, gather up the last of his personal belongings from the glove compartment, remove the key from the ignition, turn his back and walk away? Was it done under cover of darkness? Were his friends waiting by the side of the road to give him a ride home?

It’s a sad and beautiful sight full of textures, transitions and tales best left to our imaginations.