Tuesday, November 27, 2007

First creative essay rewrite

* This is the first creative essay rewrite that we did. I rewrote Sam's essay on the mysterious golf cart that showed up on his front porch. The essay Sam wrote was true but I added some things and changed the ending so mine is kind of mixed with truth. I feel that this is the way the story should have gone.*

I awoke for Bible Study early Wednesday morning and headed towards the front door. My housemate Daniel, who had stayed up all night studying, said goodbye to me as I opened the door. But as I gazed through the glass door, I beheld what was perhaps the most unusual thing I had ever seen.
“Daniel, why is there a golf cart on our porch steps?” I asked.
“What are you talking about, Sam?” He got up and walked to the door. Sure enough, there was a golf cart perched on the slope of our porch’s steps, front wheels on the porch and back wheels on the ground. We went down to inspect the vehicle. It was a deluxe six-seat golf cart that boasted an impressive twelve feet in length. “Oh my goodness Sam, we have a golf cart!”
We attempted to hide it in clever places in our front yard, but we had to settle for half-cover behind a tree. My first thought was that one of our friends had left it on our steps as a prank, and Daniel’s list of potential culprits was very similar to my own. The next thought that crossed my mind was the question of who it belonged to. We knew that the University of Memphis is only a block from our house, but we preferred to believe that whoever it belonged to chose to leave it on our front steps as a gift. We decided to pursue this latter line of thinking.
Daniel cleared out half of the garage to store it, and my housemates scoured the vehicle for identification or proof of ownership. None was found, but that my have partly been because it had been spray painted over where some insignia had apparently been. We called all of our friends that could have done it, but no one claimed to have pulled off the prank. We instantly began to conjure up grand visions of what this golf cart would do for us. We decided that we should keep it stored in the garage until the spring semester; we would then be able to drive it around without fear of someone actively looking for what may very well be a stolen golf cart.
We had to come up with a story for how we got it, so Daniel agreed that he would tell others that his grandfather, whom we would say was an avid golfer, had given it to Daniel shortly before he died. This story having been agreed upon, I devised the name “Pappy’s Pride” for the vehicle. We had ideas to paint it bright red, install carpet on its floors and rear-view mirrors, and hang curtains around the rear. We set aside Saturday morning for our day of customizing.
Pappy’s Pride immediately found its way into our hearts and everyone in the house grew very attached to it. After we had “pimped it over” as I like to say, Pappy’s Pride looked incredibly authentic. Bright candy apple red glossed the sides of the cart and plush cream carpet covered the floor. Some might suggest that the crushed black velvet curtains that cloaked the interior and the flashy square foot side mirrors we added made Pappy’s Pride look a little cheesy and ridiculous but I didn’t really care. To me, Pappy’s Pride had come alive. I ceased to view Pappy’s Pride as stolen property most likely, judging from the scraped off and painted over U of M decals, taken from my own university, and began to believe that it really had belonged to Daniel’s grandfather.
I could vividly see ole’ Pappy driving along the golf course paths with his visor jauntily askew and his set of golf clubs in the back seat each with a different colored cover. He was always the talk of the country club and all the old men wanted to take a ride in Pappy’s Pride. I visualized ole’ Pappy washing his golf cart every night and reverently putting him to bed in a dusty cluttered garage that most grandparents seem to have. I forgot the shady history of Pappy’s Pride and knew only of the glorious past that I had created for him.
I began to spread the word to all of our friends that Daniel had been given his grandfather’s golf cart and bragged that we would soon be offering rides to anyone who wanted one. I now whole-heartedly believed that Pappy’s Pride was a providential gift from God. But, just when I had completely forgotten that Pappy had ever been anything other than my wildest dreams come true, threatening things started happening.
At first it had just been casual remarks from a friend here and there that our golf cart was in danger. Then I got a call late one afternoon from my housemate Cam who said that he didn’t want to drop any names, but he knew that some guys were going to break into our garage and steal Pappy’s Pride. I reacted to this news quickly and ran home to sit in Pappy with my girlfriend and her brother to wait for the potential thieves to appear. I must have scared them off or maybe Cam warned them but, either way, Pappy’s Pride was safe for another day. This safety was short lived though for a few days later some of our friends began to ask us to give them Pappy’s Pride. They reasoned that we weren’t driving him around and said that if we gave Pappy to them then they would actually drive him because they live over in Cordova. We declined, there was no way Daniel or I could ever part with our Pappy.
A week or so later, we had a house meeting and realized that we would have to give Pappy up. My housemate Drew mentioned that if Pappy’s Pride really was stolen then we would get in huge trouble for not turning it in to the police. We discussed the issue and came to the conclusion that if someone stole Pappy from our house and then the police found him, our story would not be very believable. We knew that if we weren’t the ones to report Pappy to the police then no one would believe that he had just magically appeared on our front lawn one day. No one in the house wanted to risk being charged with auto theft so we reluctantly agreed to turn Pappy in the next morning.
On my last night with Pappy’s Pride I sat in the front seat and played guitar. I talked to Pappy for a little while and I might have even cried a little knowing that I would probably never have a golf cart like him ever again. Pappy had become real to me and I thought of him only as the golf cart of Daniel’s ole’ Pappy. I fell asleep with my head resting on the fur trimmed steering wheel we had fashioned for Pappy’s Pride. The next morning I woke up to find all three of my housemates asleep on the expansive floor and three benches that Pappy possessed. We all said our good-byes to Pappy and then called the police.
Within minutes the Memphis Police department sent out an officer who informed us that the university had been missing a six seat golf cart that had been stolen the night before Pappy’s Pride had mysteriously appeared on our front lawn. The officer was very confused by the cart’s customized look and asked us if we had found it this way. We responded truthfully that we had actually transformed Pappy into the magnificent vehicle he was looking at. The officer was so impressed with our “Pimp My Ride” skills and our farfetched lawn story that he let us keep Pappy. He did decide, though, to drive the golf cart over to the U of M and show it to the golf cart people so that he would be able to affirm that they said it didn’t look anything like the golf cart they were missing. Everyone was so overjoyed that we decided to camp out in Pappy that night. The next morning we were able to ride Pappy’s Pride to class and his mysterious past was never spoken of again.

No comments: