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Local handyman Hudge,
above, sips coffee at his favorite haunt,
which also doubles as his office, the Steaming Bean./Photo
by
Dustin Bradford |
Hudge can get away with
wearing a bright pink collared shirt and a thin, pendulous
string of metal in his chin, which people frequently mistake
for a stray strand of cheese. This is part of being Hudge;
living outside the box with no apologies and nothing to
hide. Hudge came to Durango in the early 1980s, hoping
to get in on the last wave of the hippie communes. He
was just in time.
We meet at The Steaming Bean, which
“has been home for the past seven years.”
While we sit and chat, Hudge receives hugs from young
college cuties sprinkled with glitter and butterfly hair
clips; waves from grizzled expatriates just one step away
from the madhouse; and acknowledgements from a few upstanding
citizens, including one police officer. “This is
my life,” Hudge gestures to the inner chambers of
the coffee shop with swollen fingers bearing permanent
oil stains and fissured scars, which he wears like a warrior’s
badge.
Some say Hudge is a town fixture,
though he winces at the word, claiming it conjures up
images of things you flush. He does have a first and last
name but – like Madonna or Prince – to most
people he is simply Hudge.
Hudge is the hardest working man in
Durango who doesn’t have a job. His duties comprise
a strange yet synergistic mixture of Ann Landers and the
Maytag Man; the yin and yang of blue-collar life; the
best of your mom and dad rolled into one.
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Hudge in happier days
with his now-deceased but
still infamous “Mostly Mazda.”/Courtesy
photo. |
Mornings are routinely spent at The
Steaming Bean, where Hudge holds office hours. Firmly
planted at the counter, he works on the daily crossword
while waiting for the day to pick up. It’s not long
before someone strolls in, deeply perplexed and desperately
seeking Hudge. People just want to talk to Hudge. Maybe
it’s something about him being so reliably easy
to find, or possibly the way he can top your worst drama
with something more scandalous and tragic pulled from
the archives of his five decades, or perhaps it’s
just the way he massages his red sideburns as he simply
listens without judgment.
“On a typical day I’ll
get a couple broken hearts, parental issues with the younger
crowd, always the money problems and then some good old
existential angst, the ‘What am I doing with my
life?’ thing.” Hudge sums it up while watching
three young bottoms bob by.
When traffic is slow and people are
basically doing OK, he chats with the young, beautiful
counter girls (“When I was 20 I loved the young
girls, and now that I’m 53, I still love the young
girls.”) This harmless flirting is no doubt good
for his health which is a shaky, unpredictable force in
his life, rendering him unable to hold any regular, consistent
job.
After a few hours of dispensing coffee-counter
therapy, Hudge – like Superman in that phone booth
– puts his grubbies on, gathers up his tool box
and goes in search of some greasy metal parts to tweak.
He doesn’t have to look far. In fact, as office
hours are rolling along, Hudge is simultaneously receiving
calls on his pager from folks in need. Besides cute counter
girls, getting coffee’d up at The Bean in the morning
provides several benefits: the caffeine jolt needed for
remembering which gasket goes where as he’s putting
a carburetor back together, as well as unlimited use of
the coffee shop’s telephone to return calls that
come in on his pager.
Not much for calendars or short-term
memory, Hudge relies on his pager to keep his life straight.
Most of his work is on an emergency basis: someone’s
car isn’t turning over and they’re late for
work; a heater’s suddenly gone out in winter; clothes
for a job interview are stuck in a broken-down washing
machine. Mostly it’s auto repair, though occasionally
Hudge gets to do some welding or neuter a cat. If he had
a business card, it would offer services for the broken
up and broken down.
Hudge’s people estimate that
he’s collectively saved this town tens of thousands
of dollars and tons of hassles. One friend says she should
just pay Hudge a monthly stipend for being on call, though
what Hudge really hankers for is a home-cooked meal (meat
and potatoes preferably).
When Hudge has a day off, he works
on his own vehicles, a patchwork of evolving parts reflecting
slices of his unorthodox life. His landlady explains that
there are typically 3BD Toyota Tercels in the driveway
(small, portable parts are kept in the spare bedroom),
the exact configurations changing on a regular basis.
This is Hudge’s art. When someone comes to him with
their recently wrecked, no longer driveable GMC van, Hudge’s
eyes flash with visions of parts, salvageable parts, that
might come in handy if he were ever to be given a GMC
van with a body intact, which is bound to happen eventually.
However there is no taboo against
mixing usable parts from different automotive brands,
as took place in his trademark “Mostly Mazda.”
When I ask if it was sad to take the Mostly Mazda to the
dump after 12 years of love and labor, Hudge shrugs and
mutters, “I could’ve had one hot Camaro for
all the time and money I put into that piece of shit.”
Seeing my surprise in his unsentimental reaction, he shakes
his head and says, “It’s just metal.”
He smiles, and his laughter seeps like thick, clean engine
oil from some deep internal reservoir.
However his eyes and voice are all
sappy nostalgia when he begins to recount the car’s
evolution: “The front half was a four-door ’84
Mazda GLC, which had survived a wreck its back end hadn’t.
Back half was a two-door ’83 Mazda GLC from Farmington
that someone had let run out of oil. The rear half of
the roof was John Whitney’s ’82 Mazda GLC
station wagon; wheels and suspension were off an ’84
Mazda 626 that Mary Ellen wrecked; and the four-barrel
carburetor with manual choke was from a ’72 RX-7.
The rear bumper was off Angie’s Volvo – you
know her?” Hudge gets frustrated that I can’t
remember Angie, with her long legs and curly hair, sighs
heavily and continues. “The tops of the rear fenders
were also from her, and after I put in a new engine (daughter’s
’88 Mazda 323) it could tow or carry on its roof
2200 pounds.”
Hudge watches as I write to make sure
I get it all straight. “Did you get the part about
the wheels?” he presses. “The wheels were
15-inch alloy; make sure you get that down. This is important
too: It had a wheelbase shorter than a Honda CRX.”
Furthermore, the car had the handy
feature of not needing a key (keys are such an inconvenience).
Rather, it started by way of two flip-on switches and
one push button.
When asked for some final words of
advice, Hudge leaves us with this: “Take your car
to a reliable mechanic for oil changes, not the quick
places, and insist on no oil that comes from a yellow
bottle.”
And for the women: “Choose
boring, nice guys. It’s like this: You know where
he is - he’s home watching TV with a beer. If you
want spirituality, go take a yoga class, leave your man
alone. Spirituality isn’t something you do until
after your mid-life crisis.” Hudge smiles, revealing
an endearing, crooked set of top teeth. “Very few
women have taken my advice on this.”
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