Farewell, My Subaru_One Man's Search for Happiness Living Green Off the Grid

by Doug Fine

  3 garlic cloves, crushed and diced

  1 tablespoon ginger, julienned

  1 carrot, sliced

  1 bunch of spring onion, only the white part, sliced

  1 bell pepper, sliced

  Marinate the chicken in the rice wine, salt, pepper, and 1 teaspoon corn flour, and leave to chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

  Mix vinegar, sugar, 1 teaspoon corn flour, honey, and soy sauce (this is your sauce).

  Heat up some oil in the wok. Toss the cashew nuts in and fry until light brown. Then remove quickly and leave to dry. Set this oil aside.

  Heat up 1 tablespoon fresh oil in the wok. Add the chilies but remove after one minute. Set chilies aside.

  Add the chicken to the chili oil and stir fry for about 3 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and toss around in the wok before adding the carrot, onion, and bell pepper. Stir in the sauce and fry for about 5 more minutes.

  Add about a teaspoon of the cashew nut oil.

  Add the cashew nuts and the chilies.

  NOODLES

  1 package lo mein or udon noodles

  4 garlic cloves

  1 bunch of spring onion, only the green parts, sliced

  Handful sesame seeds, toasted

  Cook the noodles according to package directions. Once the noodles are soft, strain and quickly rinse in cold water.

  Sauté garlic and onion lightly.

  In a bowl, toss the noodles with the sesame seeds, and garlic and onion.

  Chill. (Might be wise to prepare noodles before chicken.)

  Serve the chicken with the sesame noodles. Save waste oil for use in Vegetable Oil–powered vehicle.

  * * *

  It took a good half hour to convince Sadie that it was safe to come within fifteen acres of the ROAT. During that time I figured correctly that the worst was over, so I rambled off to town. Although like a young superhero who doesn’t yet understand how to control his new powers, I emitted probably a dozen Kung Pao smokescreens on that trip, several of them after new-clutch stalls in fairly busy intersections, transforming them into nightmarish though pleasant-smelling indications of Armageddon. Strangely, no one seemed to mind. It’s interesting to witness people both angry and astonishingly hungry. They yell at you in the intersection, but then seem to forget about it mid-thought, and pull off into the nearby Golden Dragon Restaurant.

  “Yo! You can’t stop here!” a cop called to me as he passed during my third stall, waving away my exhaust with his hand before adding, “Hey, it smells like french fries around here.”

  “Kung Pao chicken,” I corrected. This was getting a little vexing.

  Things came to a head on the drive home from town that afternoon. Right in the middle of desert nowhere, I stalled again. It was my fault, in a sense. Ninety-six years after the Model T, the engineers at Ford couldn’t figure out how to put first gear more than a millimeter from reverse. Because the engine was still hot when I restarted the ROAT, the Kung Pao smokescreen didn’t erupt. But I panicked when I noticed that the VO Controller didn’t seem to have me running on veggie oil. Its display read, “Diesel Manual.” I sighed.

  After staring stupidly at the VO Controller for a little while, I stepped on the parking brake and called my vegetable oil mechanic for some distance mechanical advice. I didn’t want to be driving on fossil fuels. I wanted to be back safely at home watching Curb Your Enthusiasm.

  “Press ‘Override to VO,’” Kevin suggested. I thought I heard choppers in the background.

  “Done,” I said. “Now it says, ‘VO Manual.’”

  “Now breathe in,” Kevin advised. “Does it smell like Chinese food?”

  The problem was, just that afternoon, a new wave of some kind of noxious desert pollen had exploded in southwest New Mexico, causing my sinuses to expand to the size of small balloons.

  “I’m not sure,” I disclosed. “I can’t really smell. I’m not hungry for Chinese.”

  “OK, then sniff the exhaust.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Hop on out and stick your nose in front of the tailpipe,” Kevin instructed. “If it’s diesel it’ll burn your throat.”

  This was odd. No one had ever told me to huff truck exhaust before. Still, who doesn’t listen to a mechanic engaged in war games? I put down the phone and did it.

  “It doesn’t burn my throat,” I reported. “And now I have a mild urge for won ton soup.”

  “You’re on veggie oil,” Kevin diagnosed. “Gotta fly.” He rang off.

  When I hung up the phone I had a realization: the VO Controller wasn’t the controller. I was. I learned to watch for oil temperature, and to switch manually from one fuel source to the other after short trips or whenever I stalled and threw the autopurge function into turmoil. I was beginning to understand what was happening inside the ROAT.

  This truck, like my goats, required supervision. In fact, after my phone call with Kevin, I couldn’t help reflecting on the following stats:

  Length of time during which the LOVEsubee never failed to start: twelve years (and counting).

  Length of time during which the ROAT never failed to start: one week.

  More important, though, I was at peace with how a fellow can get used to whatever life throws at him. George Steinbrenner. Hiking with wet goat hay. Taking off shoes in the airport. Driving on finicky waste oil. After spending my first couple of weeks afraid to even breathe on the VO Controller, I soon found myself tapping in to change its purge settings (sometimes while driving) like I was a court stenographer. And I had gained control of my Kung Pao smokescreens: sometimes, I confess, I still intentionally emitted one if I felt someone was driving too close or was sporting a preachy bumper sticker. But I looked at this as a carbon-neutral public service.

  NINE

  DIABETES FOR THE EARTH

  The morning after my cathartic call to Kevin, I sauntered into the Mimbres Café. I leaned on the counter, tipped back my cowboy hat, and said to Leslie the manager, “I’d like to do you a favor. I’m willing to take your waste oil off your hands. For free. I reckon it’s because I like you guys, and your chocolate cream pie is so good.”

  Leslie picked up a coffeepot, started for a booth, and said over her shoulder, “Get in line, son. Some guy drives up here once a week and hauls away all our used oil.”

  Foiled! Was my up-valley neighbor Gershon one step ahead of me? He was the only other person I knew of in southwest New Mexico driving on straight veggie oil.

  When I called him, Gershon confirmed that he had dibs on the Mimbres Café. “Maybe you can try some of the restaurants in town.”

  As nice as it was that two veggie-oil drivers in Mimbres probably indicated that the UN-fearing clique in our valley was being diluted by the Karl Rove–fearing bloc, I didn’t exactly like where this was heading. I wanted my waste oil to come right from the valley, if possible. You know, to live locally. So I tried to appeal to Gershon’s hippie nature. (He ran an organic vegetarian deli in town, and was experimenting with growing algae to provide his veggie oil.)

  “Dude, let’s set the tone for how to handle independence from Exxon/Mobil,” I lobbied. “We can do better than ‘I got here first.’” Not that my reaction would have differed from his if I’d gotten there first.

  Gershon was on the same page. We agreed to stay in contact and share likely oily hot spots, while basically carving up the entire county into grease fiefdoms. When more people came on line, we’d figure out what to do then. It was a very good ol’ boy way of handling the situation.

  Still, our conversation wasn’t going to fill my tank. I left a halfhearted message at the other valley eatery, Sisters Restaurant, which was less than a mile and a half from the Funky Butte Ranch. But its two curmudgeonly namesake sisters opened only on weekends and their menu struck me as a bit too healthy to provide much fryer grease.

  The next place I tried was the new Chinese take-out joint in Silver City. The owner there was happy to have me haul away the waste oil that he was paying to have
removed by guys with names like Rocco and Scarface. But when he led me to that most disgusting of all restaurant areas, the “back loading zone,” he was shocked to see how diluted his monster grease trap was. “I think my people are dumping waste water in here.” I think is what he said in Mandarin.

  Kevin had warned me about this phenomenon as well. When it comes to running on vegetable oil, neatness counts. The barrel-sized filter I had bought made it easy for me to be my own gas station: all I had to do was dump the vegetable oil in, heat it, and let it settle. Then I could fill my tank. But restaurants needed to keep their waste oil in separate waste-oil vats. Preferably with no partially hydrogenated crap. No lard. And definitely no water.

  Suddenly it seemed like grease supply might be an issue. I never imagined waste oil would be such a scarce commodity—not when you consider that the default ingredient in this Diabetes Capital of the World is essentially grease. Traditional New Mexican food is so delicious specifically because it is thirty-nine variations on fried corn. This is a cuisine so greasy that the primary protein source for generations has been refried beans. They’re not just fried once.

  From the moment I left the Chinese takeout, I steeled my belly and considered it my obligation to survey and test every Diabetes factory in southwest New Mexico, and regularly. On every town trip, I piled plates full of chile rellenos, deep-fried enchiladas (in green chile sauce), and sopapillas. I started to hear “Plate’s hot, sweetie” in my sleep. I wanted to be both a knowledgeable and a loyal customer before I started asking the owner to take me out back for a tour of the waste-oil tank. My suddenly less-than-clear complexion could be seen all over Silver City.

  * * *

  Two cheese and beef enchiladas contain 646 calories and 18 grams of “bad” fat (saturated and trans fat). That’s without the refried beans. An average adult should eat a total of 2,000 calories per day with no more than 20 grams of bad fat (saturated and trans fat) and as little trans fat as possible.

  * * *

  And my skin was going to get worse before it got better. The way New Mexico small-town culture works, I’d have to eat at Mi Casita and El Paisano for several years, and possibly get engaged to one or two of the owner’s nieces, before I could discuss the bizarre issue of poaching the Dumpster yard. On the bright side, with each town trip I was satisfying my USDA requirements in most of the major fat categories for an entire month.

  Before I owned the ROAT for a month, I started to worry that I would be a slave to Albuquerque Alternative Energies’ $2 per gallon grease. I was no longer rubbing my palms together at all my fuel-cost savings and snickering at how understated I’d be when explaining to my accountant about the $212 in fuel taxes we owed.

  But just when I was starting to notice genuine health effects from this fruitless grease search (I had gained eight pounds since the conversion), I finally got the call from Sisters Restaurant. Right in my valley. I could practically smell their food from the Funky Butte Ranch. I knew Sadie could. Best Reuben sandwiches west of the Mississippi.

  “We’ve got six gallons of prime grease for you,” sister Rita said. Other calls soon followed. KFC corporate headquarters announced it was moving to nonhydrogenated oil the same week as Rita’s summons came, and their Silver City manager said I could come haul as much of their fryer waste as I wanted.

  It had been decades since I had visited KFC—I had no idea they offered apple turnovers these days. I pulled up in front of the Colonel’s portrait and security camera, found the Dumpster and grease trap area, and before I had finished setting up the special pump Kevin had sold me, an employee wearing a dorag approached, carrying an armload of garbage bags. I was wearing latex gloves and had driven a huge truck up to a staff-only area. I looked more like an esoteric pervert than a thief. I felt I had to take the initiative.

  Before he could say anything, I blurted guiltily, “Christie said I could take your waste oil off your hands.”

  He looked at me as if I’d just said, “I have an imaginary friend named Snuffleupagus.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m gonna drive on it.”

  He watched my pump suck the sickly ooze into a five-gallon container.

  “Do you just pour it right in your tank?”

  “I have sort of a laboratory back home, in my barn. It’s pretty easy, though.”

  “And then all your gas is free? That fuckin’ rules. Where do I get one?”

  And so another green citizen was converted. But that was only the start. While I was filling up, no less than eight KFC employees gathered around, alone or in clusters, marveling at someone driving on vegetable oil. It was like a tent revival out there. I found myself giving a sermon about things like carbon neutrality and oil company profits. I couldn’t help it—the audience was rapt. Two guys in aprons asked me to take their picture near the grease trap. And to think that a year earlier I hadn’t even heard of a vegetable oil–powered car. Just fifteen years before that, I actually ate at KFC. If my recent exhaust fumes were any indication, I’d soon be drawn against my will to eat there again. Sure hope that universal health care coverage legislation moves forward.

  Fuel wasn’t going to be a problem. Not in the short-term. Patience. That’s all it took. There was plenty of grease for everyone. I was starting to see why, in perhaps the mellowest culture in the North American Free Trade Agreement, diabetes might be an issue, but hypertension decidedly isn’t. Now I just needed to avoid luring too much wildlife to the Kung Pao factory formerly known as my barn.

  And I also hoped that the county sheriff didn’t show up for a courtesy visit without calling first. I now had weird, smelly substances cooking in my barn to go along with the two dozen goat syringes in my kitchen, all covered in a constant layer of green, leafy alfalfa. Taken together, it would be a lot to explain.

  As smoothly as things were going, there were a few side effects to my greasy life. Namely, I was almost always covered in grease. As was my steering wheel, laptop, shower handle, and checkbook. I slipped on the ground like Dick Van Dyke when I tried to turn doorknobs. Only the steamiest of showers helped, and even those only temporarily. But as my first winter at the Funky Butte Ranch wound down, I hadn’t popped into a commercial gas station in months, and counting. I couldn’t even remember which side the old fuel tank was on. That was all that mattered. Without thinking twice I was able to put the LOVEsubee up for sale on Craigslist, only slightly sabotaging the listing by pointing out that the “cherry” vehicle had more than 200,000 miles on it. I didn’t get any serious inquiries.

  PART FOUR

  SOLARIZED

  The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.

  —RALPH NADER

  $9.28 billion

  —Exxon/Mobil profits for first quarter of 2007

  TEN

  WINDMILL SURFING

  My cell phone rang in my pocket on the late winter day I started to turn the ranch’s power over to the sun, but I couldn’t answer it, for the simple reason that if I unclenched my right arm from my windmill frame, I would fall and not get up. I was ensconced on a bowed plywood plank precariously erected on the steel windmill tower thirty feet above the Funky Butte Ranch’s well. The plank was thin and it creaked.

  From this tenuous “floor” I was trying to mount the ranch’s first three solar panels in a windstorm so fierce it would have a name if it had formed over Florida. The panels were to power my new, fabulously expensive solar-powered well pump. The pump came from Denmark, where they don’t employ slave labor, and where they don’t retail at Wal-Mart. Poor people in Chad don’t own this pump. The boutique device was already buried a hundred forty feet below the ground, in the Mimbres water table.

  If everything worked, the sun would make my water flow up those hundred forty feet, and then down to the ranch house. I had to admit, this excited me. Once I had water in the house, I was going to turn on the hot water solar as well, and then the ranch’s electricity. I felt my days on
the coal- and gas-powered grid were numbered.

  To enjoy my green water, though, I had to survive the morning, which at the moment seemed like a long shot. I was, in fact, losing my one-armed grip about midway up my windmill. With my other hand I was trying to bolt the panel frames into the windmill. Only the tips of my toes touched the plywood that was supposed to support me and my contractor. Oh, man, did I want to avoid expiring at an age that would only be considered old to the Mimbrenos.

  As though from a great distance, I heard my cell phone go to voice mail. I hoped that the call was from Michelle, a valley teacher I was falling for faster than my likely pratfall would carry me to the ground. Aside from that pleasant thought, though, my overall situation at the moment was starting to make me miss the time when I could just turn on a water faucet or a light switch without guilt—before I realized that I wanted to eliminate utilities from my life. I was nostalgic for my innocent carbon ignorance. Those 1990s had been such a simple age. Slower paced.

  No, no—I directed my mind away from this line of thought. Wow, look at this view! Boy, I could see a long way from here. My clothes weren’t just blowing off the clothesline far below, I noticed. The clothespins themselves were snapping in half. I could see all three of the Funky Butte Ranch’s buildings, squat like gingerbread houses, beyond the teetering clothesline. A loose metal roof sheet winked frantically atop the barn. Even the ROAT looked small. I shot a nervous “Mmbah!” to the goats underneath me (whoa, they and, in particular, their horns were getting big) before remembering the one piece of advice I’d always heard about scaling things like windmills and skyscrapers: don’t look down.