A Seven-Part Salute to Big Bertha
This is a series of tales involving my 1991 Ford E-350 Econoline van named Big Bertha, my husband Brian, and provocations including but not limited to luck, karma, oversights and auto mechanics.
Chapter 1: Wrong tool, right job
(May 25, 2016) People ask me how my business is going. Friends ask me about my van. After a hiatus from blogging due in part to the tangled relationship between my business, my van and me, it’s clear I must extricate one for the sake of the others. Blogging is cheaper than therapy. Here we go.
I bought my company car on impulse, which is the antithesis of how I usually do, well, anything.
When I decided to launch my own business, I knew I needed to focus on two things: build relationships and gain exposure for my work. In the fine art world, one means to that end is to take your show on the road. Specifically, juried art festivals across the country.
“Juried” means that artists are invited to participate based on the quality of their work. “Festival” implies that the event is outdoors, and nine times out of ten, that’s true. If you’ve never been to a juried festival, imagine rows of small, white tents lining thoroughfares of downtowns or shopping plazas or parks. Typically, festivals are set up on Friday, open Saturday morning and close the next day by 6:00 p.m. Under each tent, each artist builds a temporary gallery designed to highlight his or her creations. Everything under — and including — the tent is owned and operated by that artist. Up, in, out and down in 72 hours.
Imagine the sheer girth of it all: carefully bubble-wrapped artwork, heavy-duty 10’ x 10’ tent, 8’ display walls, rigging, lighting, tent weights (it’s windy in Texas), rain gear (it’s rainy in Texas), fans (it’s hot in Texas), and other miscellany. It certainly became clear to me that neither our Honda Civic nor CR-V would do the trick. Until NASA perfects the Star Trek transporter, I’d have to find another solution.
Enter Big Bertha.
“Hi. I’m Big Bertha. Hear me squeak.”
Bertha, my company car, is a 1991 Ford Econoline E-350 extended body van. V-8. Her original burgundy finish is now aged to an orange-pink which coordinates better with the rust.
The interior smells of camping. The headliner is tacked in place by rusty safety pins. There’s a broken CB radio near the AM-FM cassette player. The little notepad in her glove compartment is for keeping track of mileage because the gas gauge works for only one of her two tanks. A Beanie Baby Dalmatian rides on the dashboard, abandoned there by the previous owner who placed it there in 1999 (based on the color of the spots on its sun-exposed back vs. those on its stomach).
I bought her from her original owner, also an artist, who claimed Bertha had only been driven to and from in-state festivals. With less than 50,000 miles on the odometer, it seemed plausible. The A/C worked, the brakes worked, tires were in good shape, and there appeared to be no leaks. Most important, there was puh-lenty of interior space. My husband — who is only slightly more comfortable with risk than me — said the Kelley Blue Book and the asking price were in line, a.k.a. she was a bargain.
We attributed her fatigue to 25 years of parking outdoors, wrote the check, and chose her name as I was driving her home.
About two months later, on September 19, 2015, my friend Tracey hosted a terrific party to help me launch my business. We christened Bertha with cheap beer instead of fine champagne. It suited her. She was built for hard work, and I knew we would have great adventures together.
Chapter 2: And there we were…
(June 23, 2016) … sitting side by side, not speaking, barely breathing. The only sound was the heat crashing against the windows. Every lurch filled me with nausea.
It was our first road trip in Big Bertha, and we had 615 miles to go.
But wait. Maybe you haven’t met Big Bertha, my “vintage” Ford Econoline van. On the day my husband Brian and I began this trip from Texas to Missouri, Bertha was still fairly new to us. We had purchased her three months prior from another artist who had driven her to and from local art shows for over 25 years.
When we first saw Bertha, we were told that she was the “perfect art festival van.” Spacious, ugly and reliable. “Spacious” allows for easy unloading and loading of my tent, 8’ display panels, art inventory and all the necessary accouterments. It’s also a euphemism for gas mileage in the single digits. “Ugly” suggests that no matter what’s dropped, spilled or broken inside or against her, it will simply add to her already complex patina. It also means that she is ostensibly invisible to art thieves who typically do judge books by their covers. “Reliable” we would come to question.
Big Bertha detail
Brian was vigilant in preparing Bertha for her first out-of-state road trip. After (miraculously, as it turns out) she passed the state vehicle inspection, Brian rallied mechanic after mechanic around her to ensure her road-worthiness. We – at least, I – fully expected that there would be at least one major repair, and it turned out to be the brakes. To see Bertha up on the lift in the garage was like seeing a hippopotamus standing on a cocktail table. It defied gravity.
This out-of-state road trip we were preparing for was not only Big Bertha’s first but in a way, mine as well. When I decided to take a hard right from communications executive to full-time artist, writer and creative type, the art festival circuit seemed the most logical avenue in which to cut my teeth. At their best, art festivals connect artists with potential collectors and other artists, and relationship-building was exactly how I wanted to kick off my business. I needed to listen, learn and begin to sell. (In my next blog, I tell you why I chose this particular festival as my first.)
When Brian and I left Texas for Missouri, it promised to be another scorching August day, and we were thrilled to be heading north. As the pre-pre-rush hour traffic through Dallas slowed us – and Bertha – down, and we noticed that her air conditioner slowed to a similar pace.
She’ll be fine once we get her back up to cruising speed, we assured each other.
She wasn’t.
They say that every one year a dog lives is comparable to one human year. I don’t know what that ratio is for a 1991 Ford Econoline van, but my best guess is 2:1. That makes Big Bertha 50 in human years. Apparently fifty-year-old vehicles can have hot flashes too.
I’d like to jump ahead to the part where we didn’t die of dehydration or heat exhaustion. We made it to St. Louis, drove all around the city for five days, sold some art, and returned home, all from inside a giant Easy Bake Oven. On the outside it looks harmless enough, but on the inside, that 60-watt bulb can maliciously bake a cake.
Did I mention that Bertha’s electric windows don’t work? Not that it mattered, because we would occasionally hand crank the triangular side mirrors open, only to choke on the freshly heated asphalt fumes as they roared in.
Brian and I are good traveling companions, but this little escapade tested our limits. After passing through the five stages of automotive grief – denial, anger, denial, anger, denial – we baked silently side-by-side for the last five hours straight of the trip.
If you’re looking for a moral to the story, there isn’t one. Don’t buy an old van is too obvious. Besides, that’s not what we did. What we did was fix Bertha’s air conditioner as soon as we got home, and two weeks later, headed to my next art festival a little bit wiser and a whole lot cooler.
Chapter 3: Out of character
(July 16, 2016) Tragically, my previous posts about Big Bertha merely foreshadow events to come. Before I continue my salvo on the life experiences levied by a 25-year old vehicle, let’s take a moment to address why we’re on the road in the first place.
My new business is built, in part, on selling my art photography at festivals, particularly in my home state of Texas. But when I first began applying to festivals in the summer of 2015, getting in to the Art Fair at Queeny Park in Missouri was my number one priority. It was an actual, written goal in my business plan to “be in St. Louis when I sell my art photography for the first time.”
Early in our marriage, Brian and I lived a few miles from Queeny Park. We walked our puppy there every day. Not far from the park, I took art and design classes at St. Louis Community College by night while by day, my career in university communications began to take shape. Friends made during those four short years are friends to this day.
Sentimentality, however, wasn’t the driving force behind the goal.
After we moved to Texas, my communications career really took off and art got squeezed into the corners of my life. For twelve years, people saw me do other things – challenging, valuable and rewarding things – but rarely artistic things. So when I decided to pursue my new creative venture, it was a shock to nearly all of my Texas friends and colleagues.
That was my bad.
But to my St. Louis friends – and my family and friends from childhood – my actions were somewhere between possible and inevitable. Therefore, being in Missouri for my first art festival allowed me to practice the new me which was really the old me in a place where the old me flourished.
A soft opening.
As it happens, the good folks of the Greater St. Louis Art Association invited me to participate in their Queeny Park show. I set up my booth for real for the first time and did it wrong and took too long doing it. I watched people walk by my booth. Lots and lots of people. Others paused while some stopped to really look, and then I learned what it’s like to be admired and criticized and compared. I practiced my elevator speech and used Square for the first time. I listened intently to what the more experienced artists talked about and gossiped about and complained about and figured out how to sort the half-full glasses from the half-empty ones. I laughed about these experiences with my husband and my friends as I honed my spiel on them.
Texas, here I come.
If you ever decide to do something that’s “out of character” for you, think about your soft opening. How will you launch before you launch? Because when you do something out of character, it’s really a hidden part of you that’s finally going public. That’s a story worth telling, but it takes a little practice.
Chapter 4: Where there’s smoke
(August 18, 2016) Sometimes I forget and I push the button anyway. Only then I’m reminded that the down arrow is a cold relic from before our time together, when Big Bertha’s electric windows were animate.
When we first got Bertha, the window of her driver’s side door could be coaxed open about half way through human contortion and muscle. Closing it required four hands — two pressing upwards on the outside of the window and two on the inside — which wasn’t always practical and probably not entirely safe. We therefore abandoned the technique, got the damn air conditioning fixed, and counted our blessings that the window was operative enough to see through.
Months passed, and we added thousands of miles to Bertha’s odometer. It never once occurred to me that the driver’s side window could possibly have any life left in it. Then one day, as several of my family members and I were arriving to set up my booth at the next art festival, we began to smell something. More accurately, we began to smell something NEW, because Bertha had always produced olfactory bedlam.
Sniff, sniff. Something’s burning.
Naturally, we shut her down and popped open the hood because even though we wouldn’t know how to fix her, we sure wanted to look like we would. The plumes of smoke I was bracing for were nowhere to be found.
Someone who was clearly not in the know said, “The driver’s side door is on fire.”
With stagnate windows and manual door locks, if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that the door was definitely not on fire. Then I saw the smoke seeping out from the base of the window. With no supporting evidence, apparently the door’s autonomic nervous system had been firing away all this time.
Quickly, my resourceful brother-in-laws, husband, Siri and YouTube conferred on the location of the wiring within the door panel and before actual flames developed, they disconnected the fuse (or wires or cables or whatever). Had it been any other vehicle on the planet, I would have then immediately rushed it to the automotive E.R. for full repair and inspection. But at this point in my relationship with Bertha, I shrugged and said, “Well, we weren’t using that window anyway.”
The truth is, that wiring could have flamed up at any time. The chance it would happen in the company of people who had experience wiring houses and cars was pretty slim. There was a reason that window didn’t work, and choosing not to operate the window wasn’t actually fixing the problem.
Moral of the story: Smoldering fires can be more dangerous than a full blaze. Small problems can turn into crises given time, fuel and neglect.
Chapter 5: The greatest show on four wheels
(August 18, 2016) It’s that time of year again. New lunchboxes and No. 2 pencils, superhero backpacks and smart phones (kids these days). For me, it’s also that time: time again to run away and join the Fall Festival circus, uh, circuit.
On Labor Day Weekend 2016, I’ll begin my second year of “doing” weekend art festivals. In my first year, I ambitiously participated in over 15 juried festivals, each one with a personality all its own. Still, in spite of their uniqueness, every festival shared an uncanny resemblance to a circus coming to town.
In the center ring, there’s the ringmaster (promoter) who delivers the Show Which Must Go On. All around her, tents rise up seemingly out of nowhere. Her cast of characters (artists) are gifted with wondrous talents and delightful eccentricities. When she does her job to perfection, the crowd assembles, demanding to see something they’ve never seen before. When they do, they’ll quite literally “oooo” and “ahhh” in delight.
And lest we forget: there’s always a clown car.
If you’ve read my blog before, you’ve already met my hilariously unpredictable four-wheeled sidekick, Big Bertha. Since I first joined the circuit/circus almost exactly a year ago, Bertha has hauled my livelihood and me well over 7000 miles and across 10 states.
Not without incident. Not by a long shot.
As I look ahead to the fall and the miles to go before I sleep (apologies to Robert Frost for dragging him into this), it seems only fitting to pay homage to Big Bertha. She doles out the experiences generously; it’s merely up to me to turn lesions into lessons.
Chapter 6: Forward motion
(September 22, 2016) Two people faced with the same problem will, almost without exception, find different ways of solving it. A recent road trip in faithfully unfaithful Big Bertha not only reinforced this truism but delivered not one but two important lessons in business, leadership and life.
Art festivals are not for the wimpy or the weak, and since I am both, my husband Brian is by my side at nearly every show. Setting up and breaking down a 10′ x 10′ tent involves copious lifting, carrying, hoisting and hauling in unpredictable weather conditions over terrain that can be full of surprises. Getting there and back in Big Bertha can be, too.
Fortunately for me, Brian volunteers to drive, including the day we headed south on I-35 to charming Wimberley, Texas for their annual art festival. The weather was warm and clear, the traffic was light, and as we passed through Austin we sounded just like our dads when we said, “Gosh, honey, we’re sure making good time.”
Then: Kuh-LUNK LUNK LUNK.
First, let me give you the hypothetical play-by-play if I had been driving:
Me: “What the… ?”
I look in the rear view mirror to see the dead buffalo in the road.
I tap the gas to put distance between us and the buffalo in case he’s still alive and angry.
There’s no acceleration.
Again, I step on the gas. It makes all the right sounds but we’re not picking up speed.
After trying this a couple more times, it dawns on me. The thingy is broken. And we’re only moving forward because we’re coasting at 65 MPH.
After scanning the horizon, I notice that there’s an overpass up ahead. That’s out of the sun, I reason, so it’s a good place to stop and wait for a tow truck (later I’m told how dangerous it can be to park in the shoulder under a bridge).
I tap the brakes — I know they work because we replaced them just six months prior — and decelerate Bertha to her final resting place.
This is what really happened:
Brian: “What the… ?”
He taps the gas.
Brian: “We just lost the transmission.”
After scanning the horizon, Brian notices that just beyond an upcoming overpass, there’s an exit ramp to our right that slopes down onto a three lane access road.
He glides Bertha to the ramp where she picks up speed on the decline. Light traffic on the access road allows Brian to guide Bertha into an Enterprise Rent-a-Car dealership, landing her neatly at the back of their parking lot.
Same problem. Completely different solutions.
In these scenarios and in every case, solutions are driven by the perception of the problem. To me, we were in a speeding bullet that must be stopped before it hurt someone. To Brian, who is a trained pilot, our plane had merely become a glider.
That’s the first moral of the story: before attempting to solve any problem, seek multiple perspectives. If you can’t see them clearly by yourself, ask your co-pilots.
Moral of the Story #2: No matter what, keep going. When problems inevitably occur, coast a little if you have to, take a detour, get some roadside assistance. But when you know you’re heading in the right direction, be sure you’ve exhausted all other options before executing a full stop.
In case you’re wondering, yes, we made it in time to set up and participate in the festival that weekend. We rented a box truck, towed Bertha to a transmission repair shop, the mechanics fell in love with her, and she’s back on the road again.
Chapter 7: Credit where credit is due (aka, bye-bye Big Bertha)
(January 14, 2017) As I watched her departure yesterday, I couldn’t help but think,
“Did I leave my laptop on?”
It wasn’t a particularly sentimental farewell to Big Bertha, my intermittently faithful steed. You know the story: how I started my own business and how Bertha came to be my first company car. Bertha hauled my art, my pop up gallery and me from Dallas to El Paso, St. Louis to Key West and points between, serving up tantalizing lessons in fortitude with every mile.
Still, as she was being lifted onto the tow truck, one memory of our time together did come to mind.
Last spring, Bertha and I hauled ourselves from Texas to Florida for six consecutive weekend art festivals. On Week Two, we were in Miami. Set-up began Saturday at 5:30 a.m. and had to be completed by 9:30 a.m. Say what? Heroically, Brian was able to fly stand-by to Miami and rescue me.
As is typical, this festival organizer provided each artist a narrow window of time to load-in — that is, pull a vehicle close to an assigned location and dump out its contents at top speed — then drive the vehicle far, far away. Bertha ended up about four blocks from my booth, which is unusually handy. Thanks to that bit of luck, Brian made a couple of Bertha Runs on foot in those early morning hours, proactively clearing away storage bins from our 10′ x 10′ space.
The festival opened, the sun smiled, the crowds descended, and before we knew it, the time had come to shut down for the day. Since the festival was located in a shopping district, we decided to walk to a restaurant for dinner after dropping off supplies at the van. As Bertha came into view, I still remember that we were laughing about something as I asked Brian if he had the keys handy (since we both had armfuls) or did we need to pause to retrieve them.
Then everything downshifted to slow motion.
Slowly, slowly, Brian lifted his available left hand to check his left pocket. Silly, you don’t put keys in your left pocket. Then as if under water, Brian reached across his body and patted his right pocket. Pat. Pat. Pat? He tilted up his head and made eventual eye contact, not with me but with Bertha. As if she would know.
“There they are.”
There they were. Hanging out of the keyhole in the driver’s side door where they had been for the past 11 hours. Parallel parked on a street in downtown Miami.
When we bought Big Bertha, the guy told us that she was the perfect art van. He said that when you haul around tens of thousands of dollars worth of one-of-a-kind pieces of art, you don’t want anybody to know it.
On that day in Miami, Bertha had my back.
When I started my business, I knew I would make at least one costly mistake. I even budgeted for it. I knew that I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
In spite of it all — new air conditioner, new brakes, new tires and a rebuilt transmission — Big Bertha was not the mistake. She cost more than she should have, but she got me started on my journey. There’s no mistaking that.
I’ll continue heading in the right direction in my spiffy “new” 2009 Ford E-250 Econoline van, named Lil B in homage. While lacking the patina of Bertha, you can make out the faint outline of a “heating and air conditioning” logo in Lil B’s paint job. Another girl with a past.
Still, when parked in Bertha’s old spot at the house, Lil B vastly improves our curb appeal. My guess is that our neighbors don’t miss that nice, quiet hippie family who used to live in our driveway. But don’t despair, Big Bertha fans! We donated her to our local public radio station, and as the tow truck driver was hauling Bertha away, he was already making plans to bid on her.
The gift that keeps on giving.
Postscript
(January 1, 2018) Without my muse Big Bertha, my vehicular writings rolled to a stop. Lil B served Brian and me without a hitch or hiccup until I gave up the art festival circuit in Summer 2017. But that’s another story.