Reporter Patrick Kernan poses with his car, which was recently saved by a mechanic.
                                 Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

Reporter Patrick Kernan poses with his car, which was recently saved by a mechanic.

Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

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You’d think that after the events of the last year I’d be used to being stuck at home.

But, based on the way that I phrased that opener, you can probably — and correctly — assume the follow-up paragraph: I’m not at all used to it.

As of Tuesday Jan., 12, when I began writing this, I’d been working from home for a week. And it wasn’t for the reasons you might think.

A bit more than a week before, my car began to make a noise that can only be described as “expensive-sounding.” For a few days, I ignored it with the naive hope that it would somehow work itself out.

It did not. The sound — grinding, angry, hateful — only grew worse, making my car seem to me like an old, dying horse, miserable that I’ve taken it out on another trip down the road instead of allowing it to quietly fade away.

(I don’t know anything about cars and I studied English in college, if both things weren’t apparent from that tortured simile in that sentence. It’ll probably become more apparent as we go, so just strap in. I await your comments about “kids these days.”)

Anyway, by Tuesday, Jan. 5 it became obvious that, not only would the problem not go away, it was rapidly approaching a point where my car would be unsafe to drive.

So I started working from home on Wednesday, Jan. 6, because my editors graciously decided to not risk me dying on my way to work.

The problem, though, was that my mechanic was unable to see my car until Friday. Then, once he got it, he realized it needed parts that he did not have, and would likely not be shipped to him until Tuesday, Jan. 12, the day I’m writing this.

So far, he has not called me. I am beginning to lose hope that I will get my car back. I am beginning to question whether I owned a car to begin with.

Grounded and hating it

As what I was hoping to only be a day or two at home has slowly stretched into a week, it occurs to me that the way I’m feeling now is thematically linked to, but also the exact opposite of, the way I felt in the early shut-down orders last March for the still ongoing pandemic. (It’s still happening! So wear a mask.)

Last year, when I started this on-and-off column series, I was saddened by the fact that, suddenly, all of the places I loved visiting were shuttered. Now, as I’m writing this, the places I need to visit are in various states of openness, but I just can’t get to them.

It’s a strange thing to suddenly be without a vehicle. Unless you live in a major metro area like New York City with a robust 24/7 public transportation system, having access to a car is critically important.

Having a car is wrapped up in the concept of what it means to be an American. I’d argue that there’s no means of transportation in our modern world that’s more intrinsically American than a car, other than maybe a big ol’ motorcycle.

Think about it: a car is basically the physical embodiment of American rugged individualism, for better or worse. When I’m behind the wheel of my vehicle, I can decide where I go, when I go there and what route I take to get there. There’s a poetic beauty to this. It’s easy to feel like a Kerouacian hero while out on the road; as 2,000 pounds of metal hurtle down the road at speeds that would’ve been impossible 100 years ago, going exactly where you point that full metallic weight, you can’t feel like anything but the main character of the Great American Novel.

Of course, cars also embody the negative side of American rugged individualism. The cost of the independence a vehicle provides is that, when something goes wrong with your car, it’s your problem to fix, and a week later you’re going stir crazy in your house because your car is still in the shop. This simply wouldn’t happen to me if I could take the train to work; when the train isn’t working, it’s the train people’s problem to figure that out. And let’s not ignore the massive carbon footprint that every American motoring around on their own private adventures has, and how much smaller it would be if they also took the train to work.

(For related and exact opposite reasons, the most European means of transportation is a bus, specifically one of those big ones with two floors and a set of stairs inside, but that’s neither here nor there.)

‘Just you and your horse’

While stuck at home, I’ve been playing Rockstar Games’ 2018 masterpiece, “Red Dead Redemption 2,” a massive, expansive game set in the Wild West in which the player controls Arthur Morgan, a member of an outlaw gang that travels around the American West, variously getting into fights with a rival gang, with whom they have a Hatfield-and-McCoy style rivalry, and attempting to escape the long arm of the law.

But in between the missions that show the grizzly nature of the American West — not just in terms of lawlessness; I managed to get Arthur killed by a bear while I was playing last night — “Red Dead Redemption 2” largely becomes about the sheer size of the United States. While traveling in between places in the game that advance the story, it often takes 30 minutes of traveling on your horse — obviously not a huge amount of time in real-world travel, but quite long in terms of gaming standards.

While you’re out there traveling, it’s just you and your horse. It’s meditative and peaceful, but also tense and engaging, because you never know when you’ll be waylaid by the rival gang or attacked by wild animals. It becomes a metaphor for the American experience of travel: because of how massive our country is, it takes forever to get anywhere, and you never know what will happen on your way. But when you get there, the adventure you had is uniquely yours.

The interesting thing about “Red Dead Redemption 2,” which takes place in 1899, is that it serves as a prequel for Rockstar Games’ 2010 game “Red Dead Redemption,” which takes place in 1911. In that game, the so-called “Wild West” is quickly becoming a thing of the past; in the game’s “big city” of Blackwater, horses seem to have been entirely replaced by cars, something that eventually happened throughout the country, especially on the coasts. It’s clear in the original game’s tragic ending that the series is about the death of the American cowboy, a symbol of who we are. And the second game is about how obvious it can be that something will end, even while it is happening and a decade before it ends.

What links the car and the horse, of course, is that they both symbolize an integral part of what it means to be an American, albeit at different times in our history. When your country spans an entire continent, how people get around that space is a huge part of what it means to be an individual in that country.

Last night, while playing the game, I somehow angered my horse. It kicked Arthur in the head, nearly killing him, and it bolted off.

It was promptly killed by a bear.

And suddenly — in a game that I’ve been playing to forget the fact that I can’t go anywhere because of my car, and even if I could, it wouldn’t be safe because of the virus — I was stranded, miles away from everything and with no choice but to run from the bear.

I quickly grew a lot more grateful that all my car needs is new struts.

Editor’s note: Since writing this, Patrick was finally able to get his car back, and he is very thankful to his mechanic, for he’ll be able to ride off into another sunset.

Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan