Mickey Mouse Fix
Michele Sharpe
Word Count 1006
My first car, a 1972 Plymouth Duster, was 10 years old when it came to me, painted several shades of white and already a shitbox. It had been recommended by a mechanic cousin who was into demolition derbies. The engine, he said, was a slant six, and it would last forever, which was all that mattered. It was a car for someone who drove aggressively, he said, which meant everyone in the Boston area.
The Duster educated me in Mickey Mouse fixes. When the exhaust pipe came detached from its muffler, I slid a soup can over the end of the pipe, crimping the can as best I could around the pipe and then the muffler, then securing both ends with hanger wire and wrapping the whole can in duct tape, which would melt and smoke a little. When the radiator spouted small leaks, I popped the cap and poured a cup of ground pepper in. When the leaks got bigger, I turned to BB gun ammo, a time-tested Mickey fix that did the trick.
The goal was to avoid putting money into repairs. If you sunk money into an old car, you might as well try to carry water in a bucket full of holes, and that’s why people turned to Mickey Mouse solutions, a phrase I picked up during the late 1970’s while living in the Boston area. Things were always falling apart then, money was tight, and time was short, so slapdash repairs, like those made by the early black-and-white Mickey Mouse in his slapstick workshop evolved. Friends and neighbors taught me the many uses of duct tape, wire hangers, WD-40, empty cans, and a quick coat of paint. Learning frugality and independence in the face of deterioration, I found out that the costly, permanent, and perfect was the enemy of the cheap, temporary, and good enough.
Even though cars back then were still constructed of sturdy metal, the New England snow, ice, and road salt rusted out everything on a vehicle’s underside, and old vehicles always decided to break down in inconvenient spots. The neighborhoods where I lived, constructed in the 19th century or earlier, were plagued by leaky plumbing, hissing gas stoves, and wood-framed, double hung windows with rope mechanisms that could shred at any moment, turning them into guillotines that slammed shut and crushed fingers. All were opportunities for Mickey fixes.
I still prefer to cook things myself, clean things myself, and fix things myself. It’s not just cheapness; there’s an element of pride involved, and I am proud of my brief reign as a Queen of Mickey in the early 1980’s.
No one else appreciated my accomplishment, so I crowned myself after successfully replacing the Duster’s busted alternator with a junkyard model by drawing a diagram of the wires’ connections before pulling the old one out.
The crown sat lightly on my head, and not for long. After a few weeks, the junkyard alternator died, and the car fizzled in angry stop-and-go traffic on the old Southeast Expressway in Boston. I felt forced to abdicate as queen, but the heady sense of competence stayed with me, and the Mickey Mouse ethic of fixing the broken with what’s at hand persisted into the twenty-first century. My stepdaughter was one of the many millennial teens whose cell phones slipped from their back pockets into toilets, but thanks to some MySpace page, she learned how to bury those phones in bowls of uncooked rice that absorbed the toilet moisture, restored her to service, and insured she wouldn’t have to tell any adults about her carelessness.
The Mickey ethic stuck with me, too. It’s been 40 years since my temporary alternator fix for the Duster, but about once a year I put on my slate-colored work pants, an old black hoodie, thick socks, and sneakers, I cover my hair with a bandana, and I scoot under my 2012 Honda minivan. My tools are simple: some zip ties and the needle-nose pliers I use as substitute fingers for everything from peeling labels printed with “sealed for your protection,” to pulling rusted nails, to bending metal flanges. My hands are small and have always been weak, and now they’re arthritic too, but with the right tools, they can still handle a simple Mickey Mouse job.
Five years before, when I’d insisted on backing off a cement parking block, the plastic bumper on the front passenger side had popped off three of its plastic bolts. The minivan was already in its late middle age, so I’d zip-tied that bumper back on, and about every year, I replaced the zip tie. But then, the whole bumper assembly had scraped and caught as I backed off another cement parking block because I am a woman who can never be satisfied with making a mistake only once. This time, the skirting behind and below the bumper came loose and dangled from the undercarriage, dragging on the pavement as I drove home. It made an unpleasant sound, and if there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s an unpleasant sound.
The bumper was in worse condition than ever, but that only caused my deep procrastination on having it fixed at a body shop to resume. Decisions don’t come easily for me, especially when they involve spending money. I went for the zip tie solution, again.
Although some Mickey Mouse methods can be short-term, that doesn’t always mean they’re inferior. They’ve all made me pay attention to what’s at hand, and then imagine how to use it. They’ve made me believe in my ability to improvise, and in second chances. I’ve zip-tied that minivan’s bumper back on many times for a total expenditure of less than a dollar in cash and an hour’s worth of time. Consider what might have been spent – by someone else, of course – ingetting that bumper fixed at a body shop. If I stay lucky, I’ll be driving cars like the Duster and the Odyssey until I die, a Mickey Mouse woman to the end.
Michele is a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Witness, and Poets & Writers. She lives in North Florida.