Logbook 2: Meet Ernie from next-door

Atop Ernie's round head rides a brown fedora like an Austin dude on a mechanical bronc. He bounces around his shop, neither walks nor runs. Wears a white labcoat stained with grease and looks like a doctor fresh out of O.R. Clients bring their aging Mercedes and rattling Jaguars to Ernie with hopes of regeneration, like some desperate cancer patient. They seek the laying on of Ernie's blackened hands.

To Ernie's Asian eyes, each car is a treasure. The engine of a '62 Cadillac sits naked in the morning rain, its gluttonous combustion chambers exposed and rusting. A twisted bumper from a '71 Audi leans casually against the chain-link fence like a corner mark ogling the hookers. The massive military-grade chassis of a 1966 Mercedes Benz 404 Funkwagen lies in a sea of oily soil like a moth-balled frigate in San Francisco Bay. Ernie's shop is the last hope for mechanical has-beens.

He protects them like gold in Fort Knox. He's installed a 10-foot chain link fence all around his lot and edged it with coiled razor wire so sharp you could slice bread with it. Check the eaves and you'll see the tiny video cams trained strategically on the gate and on the clandestine places where parts are stashed. A hand-lettered sign on the fence warns would-be trespassers: "PROPERTY UNDER 24-HR SURVELLENCE. STAY OUT!"

Ernie speaks a little English and a lot of Mandarin Chinese. Sometimes, when he's estimating the work and cost involved with resurrecting a client's car, he'll mix the two, but the clients don't mind. They take it as some mystical language unique to Ernie, like an intercessor who alone speaks in tongues with Car Gods.

Ernie was born on the Huangpu River where it languishes and finally dies in the East China Sea. He never knew his parents, because they set him adrift in a boat of reeds with a bamboo lantern at its prow. Unable to afford their offspring, they erected a small altar by the river, lit the candles and incense and recited the teachings of the Buddha.

These are the words Ernie's parents said:

• • Poverty gives rise to sorrow.
  • But removal of poverty does not necessarily give rise to
    happiness.
  • Not [a] high standard of living, but a high standard of culture, is what
    gives happiness.
  • This is the Buddhist Way of Life.
  • Hunger is the worst of diseases.
  • Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches; trust is
    the best of relationships, Nibbana the highest happiness.
  • This is the Buddhist Way of Life.

  Then they pushed the small boat into the rancid waters of the Huangpu and walked silently to their shack in the industrial slums of Shanghai.
  
  It's incredible that anyone would know this story, because death for the Chinese infant was far more likely than life. As we know, truth often is stranger than fiction. We'd like to know Ernie better, but our acquaintance happens incrementally over the coffee (with room at the top for cream) that Ernie orders each morning. We have the pieces of conversation and the benefit of observation. We piece together the story, and embellish when necessary.