A Trip Upstate

Al asked me to help him bring a load of impossibly random objects upstate. I didn’t have much time. But what could possibly go wrong?

I spent the morning assisting in Al-cheology — digging through the building for heavy and ancient things he had hunted at Sotheby’s auctions or gathered from the world’s heaving seas of happenstance. Al was very much the boss, telling me exactly where to push or lift or twist to wrestle and shift midcentury furniture, rusting iron beams, mysterious old crates, clawfoot bathtubs filled with old phone books from the 80s. If you have done this with him, you know. Where to place your foot. How to get a grip on a slippery corner. Soon I was filthier than I’ve ever been.

All of these misplaced treasures got hoisted into a bent and glowering box truck., one of Al’s army of orphaned machines. They all had backstories. He won a horse in a bet but didn’t want the horse. A friend of a friend ghosted after a misunderstanding but left the truck behind. I don’t remember any of the stories but the important part is that so many of them sounded like Al lived in song.

We hadn’t even made it out of town when the back left wheel started smoking. Al waved it off with the twinkling eye he used when he wanted to convince you that some scheme was completely reasonable. He said it’s just the brakes. The brakes have locked up in back. That’s okay; the front brakes work fine. You only need one set. At a long light, I jumped out, peered behind the smoking wheel, and saw metal faintly glowing with dull, red heat. But we were on a mission. The way out is through. As Virgil said to Dante.

The police pulled us over a few blocks later. The license plate was missing. Or expired. Or homemade. I don’t recall. But the truck was in a highly illegal state. Al told them he was just trying to get the truck off the street and leave it on his own property. The police separated us to get our stories. My side was easy. I knew nothing about the truck and its history. I told the officer instead about Al. About how he was this wondrous social node who knows every epically storied big personality from old school Brooklyn. I told the officer about Al’s generosity and vision and how it creates a community of scientists, artists, architects, designers, engineers, and people bringing big ideas to life. Special, valuable, and unique in all of New York. I joked with him about Al’s compulsion to acquire every underappreciated thing. And how it took me years to understand that he also collected us.

The two officers conferred animatedly, with smiles, before waving us into the truck. Driving away, Al told me that the officer had let him go because of his name. “My dad’s name was Alfred. He was a good guy. You seem like a good guy. You can go”.

It wasn’t just that Al lived partly in a song. It’s that the song extended beyond him. Friends, objects, even police officers got wrapped up in the edges of it.

This photo is from later that day. And this is exactly how Al looked while convincing the officer that the best course of action is to let him drive two hours north in a smoking vehicle with illegal plates.