The garage where I get my van fixed is named after the two guys who have owned and operated it for going on 40 years. For the purposes of this tale, I feel compelled to give them aliases. So I will call them Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

Nietzsche is older, grayer. He walks more upright than Kierkegaard. He appears to be the alpha. He’s the tense one. Kierkegaard is more soft-spoken and sleepy-eyed. He’s more the sidekick type. Both come from the meat-and-potatoes, white, working-class culture of Chicago’s southwest side.

It used to be when I arrived that Nietzsche would come out to greet me. He’d conduct the diagnosing while Kierkegaard looked on over his shoulder. But lately, Kierkegaard deals with me while Nietzsche stays holed up in the cramped office. When I call and Nietzsche answers, he immediately hands the phone to Kierkegaard.

What’s with Nietzsche’s cold shoulder? I’m pretty sure it’s my bumper stickers. I’ve long suspected him of being a guy who listens to right wing radio. Even when he was young he was curmudgeonly. The two things he complains about the most are the Chicago Bears and how the government strangles little guys like him with all the damn taxes and fees so now he’ll probably never get to retire.

And my bumper stickers reveal me to be the kind of hippie, pot-smoking, commie, fetuscidal, atheist maniac that people who listen to right wing radio think are ruining America. Rahnee, my wife, stuck the first sticker on a few years back. It says, WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN. That one seems innocuous to the naked eye. But wait! Isn’t that a lyric from a Grateful Dead song? Hmmmm. And then I added the sticker that says WAR IS TERRORISM WITH A BIGGER BUDGET. Hmmmmmm again.

And then Rahnee stuck KEEP ABORTION LEGAL on the bumper. That one came from a donation solicitation letter from the National Organization for Women. And then she stuck on BORN ALL RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

I wonder if the fact that I’m crippled redoubles the insult of my bumper stickers for Nietzsche. Nobody expects a cripple to be some kind of hippie, pot-smoking, commie, fetuscidal, atheist maniac. I wonder if my bumper stickers have shattered his pristine image of cripples and brought him to the stark conclusion that absolutely nothing is like it used to be back in the good old days. If that’s the case, I’m glad I could be of service.

One of the guys who drives me around listens to right wing radio, too. Let’s refer to him as Schopenhauer. When Schopenhauer and I are out driving around, we never listen to talk radio. We listen to jazz. Driving me around is Schopenhauer’s side job. By night he plays saxophone, loves Coltrane and Cannonball like me. But he still listens to right wing radio, which I don’t get at all. I don’t see how two such warring factions can exist within the same brain. It’s a contradiction. Art is free and adventuresome. Conservatism is wary and defensive. You can get a liberal arts degree but can you get a conservative arts degree?

Schopenhauer is a good guy all in all. But it amuses me to envision another right wing radio listener on the street seeing the bumper stickers on my van as Schopenhauer is driving it and thinking he must be one of those hippie, pot-smoking, commie, fetuscidal, atheist maniacs that’s ruining America.

So maybe that’s why Nietzsche doesn’t want to be seen anywhere near me or my anarchy mobile. Sometimes I get the feeling that he’d just as soon not have my business at all. But then Kierkegaard probably says to him, ”Yeah, I know he’s one of those hippie, pot-smoking, commie, fetuscidal, atheist maniacs that’s ruining America. But his money is green.”

So I’ll keep amusing myself by adding more and more bumper stickers. A real beauty arrived recently in a donation solicitation letter from the American Humanist Association. It says GOOD WITHOUT A GOD. I’ll stick that one on the bumper the next time Schopenhauer drives me to the Nietzsche and Kierkegaard garage. The sticker is small so it will fit nicely on the last bit of unoccupied space on my bumper. But I’ve still got plenty of unused stickers left. My favorite is, WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?

I guess I’ll have to start using my front fender. Either that or buy a new van and start over.