As one who pilots a 1994 YJ Wrangler, complete with its nontraditional square headlights and a rusty green ammo case for a center console, I have little room to encourage yet more divisions within the Jeep community– even nowadays with the introduction of the Unlimited and most recently, the 4 door Unlimited Wrangler.
Why would I look down on these models in the first place? Probably for the same reason we look down on anything, or anyone else in life. They’re different. Not different in the best sense of the word, like when something is set apart because it dims the rest of the world in the shadow of its own artistry. I mean the kind of different that presents the opportunity we all like to pounce on. It is the different we thrust on the vulnerable, to make us feel… undifferent. Accepted. Communally special.
This is what I’ve stooped to when speaking about the Unlimited, allured by the opening to say, “Hey, I may have square headlights, but at least I’m not the weiner dog of Wranglers.” Very few times will a fellow Jeeper pass me by without a wave, or the immensely popular two finger flick, where the driver releases the index and middle finger from its 12 o’clock grasp of the wheel to flash something of a sideways peace sign to his/her Wrangler breathren, but it still weakens me to hear how the YJ is the “bastard child” of Jeeps.
Well, if YJ’s are the bastard child, then Unlimited’s must be their mutated offspring. And don’t even get me started on 4 door Wranglers.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Really, I am speaking out of turn because my former opinion of the two was swayed dramatically by one person’s simple act of ineffable kindness.
It was during my week on Ocracoke Island. We were an audience to the ocean in our sunken beach chairs and sprouted umbrellas, during the threat of a collapsing sun. I parked fairly close to the deepest, most tread grooves in the sand due to the invading high tide, which meant frequenting cars and trucks passed the Jeep by mere inches on their route further down the beach. It made me feel uncomfortable.
I cranked up the Jeep to move it away from the grooves, and in my reckless maneuvering I lodged my front and back tires in the grooves so that I sat perpendicular to the worn treads. I tried to accelerate forward and then slam into reverse, to rock the Jeep out of the small trenches but I only continued the one thing I so often do, even with utmost, respectable creativity. I dug myself into a deeper hole, where the sand shot from the spinning tires and the undercarriage depressed closer to the ground.
I hardly had time to panic, though at the time I was feeling more unwillingly humbled than anything else.
I looked to my left, and in the distance I saw a couple sitting on the beach next to a silver, 4 door Wrangler. I saw the man leave his seat and climb into his Jeep. It rolled in my direction with defined purpose, maybe to help, maybe to circle me like a hunter with its prey. I tried to not look in his direction when his face came into view through his windshield.
My cheeks bloomed red with embarrassment. I forced a glance when he called out to me. He was stocky and masked in dark sunglasses, and he already positioned his Jeep with the back bumper in front of my grill. I accepted his offer to tow me out, and he immediately responded with a “no questions asked” manner, as if working under an invisible code that required him to aid me, only he seemed perfectly content in doing so.
I felt like dead weight when he pulled me from the grooves, like I was the wounded soldier being carried from the explosions of bullet-ripped fray. Me, the JY Wrangler, advantaged with a stout wheel base and classic hard metal tub, was in tow to a 4 door phony. Not only could he plow through the very same trenches that conquered me, but he could do it while giving me a piggy back. I ran a silent applause in my mind, and then quickly killed it when I remembered I was supposed to be humiliated.
When he finished and untied my rope from our bumpers, he shook my hand and assured me it could have happened to anyone since the sand was especially powdery due to the day’s absent rains. I shrugged my shoulders, thanked him and watched him drive back down to his significant other on the far side of the beach. He’d pulled everyone of his 4 doors off before coming to the beach, and it gave his Jeep a raw, big brotherly quality. It was nearly twice my car, proved both physically and aesthetically.
I saw him take his seat beside her again as I skidded, free and cautious, through the wavy dunes. I’d made a new friend, a human friend and friend in a species of Wranglers. The one who’d truly authenticated the kinship of Jeep owners was the one I’d cast off as the black sheep. I’ll think of him as the good Samaritan.
After I’d settled my Jeep into a safer spot, I returned back to my frisbee game with Wiley. Out of some ill-formed habit, he’d taken my favorite white frisbee into the tide. He enjoys watching it bob in the frothy bubbles, to be carried back and forth down the beach until it is swept away into the sea. I’d wanted to say, “Fine, Wiley. Frisbee is pretty much the only thing you have going for you. So it’s your loss…not mine.”
But it was so, so much my loss, too. Don’t tell him. He’ll laugh.
