Postcards from the Crocodile: A Two-Ton Antidote to the Digital Void
We live behind glass now.
Smooth, sterile, unyielding glass. We swipe, we tap, we double-click, looking for some phantom heartbeat through a fiber-optic cable. We pretend we are connected while sitting entirely alone in silent rooms.
So it is.
If you want to know what real, raw, human connection feels like, you do not look at a glowing rectangle. You look at a 1974 Chrysler Newport sedan.
My eight-year-old son called it the Crocodile. It was nineteen feet of faded, flat Sherwood Green paint—a low-slung, heavy-iron reptile. The exterior lacked any badge to brag about what lay under the hood, because Chrysler in 1974 was too dignified, or perhaps too tired, to boast. But beneath that massive sheet of American steel sat a 440-cubic-inch Big Block V8 with a four-barrel carburetor.
A total rolling contradiction, the beast possessed a low profile but incredibly high torque.
If you took it down the dirt roads of the Eastern Seaboard, it crawled along, slow and deliberate as a tortoise, letting you drink in the world. But if you stomped the pedal on the open highway at sixty, the secondary flaps on that carburetor slammed open with a gut-deep roar, the front end reared up like a startled mustang, and it took off into hyperdrive like the Millennium Falcon. It felt violent, beautiful, and completely alive.
When it really got moving, it could shed a hubcap with a loud, metallic clatter—looking for all the world like a beautiful lady kicking off her shoes as she runs toward the surf on a blistering July afternoon.
The steering was precarious and amusing. It was a vague, over-assisted, one-pinky-finger affair that offered absolutely zero mechanical feedback. Navigating a backroad was not driving; it was giving loose navigation suggestions to a heavy cabin cruiser. Picture an oil tanker in a canal. It was hair-raising.
Once, after a few too many, I piloted that great croc down Vermont’s winding dirt tracks at a steady, meditative one mile per hour. The car gently tracked the ruts while the cool night air poured through the windows. It took care of me. It was like driving my living room through the woods.
Modern cars are built like smartphones—disposable, fragile, and desperate for your attention. They are designed to break so you can buy another. The Crocodile, by contrast, was a pure anvil. During the years I owned it, two separate cars slammed into me. They were each totaled. I stepped out, looked at the Newport’s chrome bumpers, and could barely find a scratch—just two small scars to log the fights the other guys lost horribly.
But the machine wasn’t just a tank; it functioned as a visceral, mobile classified corkboard. It was a rolling conversation starter. You could not park that thing without someone walking up to ask about the year, the paint, or the treasure under the hood. It broke the ice before you even opened your mouth. It pulled people out of their internal ruts and forced them into the present moment. It started friendships. It initiated legendary, late-night conversations. I even got married in that car, its massive vinyl-pleather sofa seats serving as the ultimate venue for the beginning of a beautifully broken life temporarily together.
Eventually, the road caught up, and I gave it to my mechanic. He was a good man who had spent years tuning its soul and rarely charging me full whack. Giving it away felt like the only proper currency for a car like that.
I built chickenlist because we know the digital world is a ghost town if you don’t use it to find the real thing. We need to step away from the glowing rectangles. We need pastime companions, real friends, and personal connections that do not come with a corporate algorithm. We need ice breakers and rolling corkboards—this is it. My gift to the world for all it's given to me.
We need to get off our screens and get back into the dirt. You do not need a 1974 Chrysler Newport to do it (though it couldn't hurt). You do need to find your own ice breaker—something that makes others approach, makes you lean forward, so you both take a breath, and look one another in the eye.
Listen. As a better writer once said, we are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.
But it's much better with others, haphazard and all.