by Ken Green
Even though most of Denver is as urban as any suburb of Chicago, they often try to pretend they’re still a rugged Western frontier town. Occasionally during the summer, you can drive 20 minutes out of town and see an actual rodeo with cowboy-hat-wearing guys ropin’ this and wrangling that and punchin’ doggies in the face or something, all while sipping on a microbrew made with coriander and just a hint of blackberry. Or drive to one of the mountain towns and you can watch as daredevils scale the sheer face of a mountain before scurrying back down to grab a chai soy latte from the Starbucks in the little town below.
But there is one area where Denver people display some genuine Wild West, cowboy macho Marlboro Man attitude that even I find impressive and scary at the same time.
Driving around with cracked windshields.
Cracked windshields are to Denver what parking tickets are to Chicago: they’re all over the place and most people ignore them. Stand on any street corner on any given day and within an hour you’ll probably see 25 cars go by with cracked windshields.
Therese are not just little chips or nicks or some small split in the corner that you can barely notice and won’t affect your ability to see while driving (an important factor I’m told).
No, I’m talking about big wide swaths of cracked glass, huge splits that bisect the windshield in to several areas, like a pie chart showing the popularity of each Beatle. Massive San Andreas Fault-lines. Big-ass trails of imperfection. Lightening bolts of negligence.
I’ve seen cars with windshield cracks that originate in the dead center of the windshield and radiate outward like the rays of the sun. Cracks that run the entire length of the windshield, from top left corner to bottom right corner like a graph showing the Democrats declining popularity ratings. I’ve seen cracks that occur in several separate sections of the same windshield, cracks that look like faces (one looked like a glass Jesus), cracks that have their own cracks.
I’ve driven past cars with windshield cracks that are so elaborate and multifaceted that it must be like driving while looking through a Coke bottle, with each crack offering its own distorted view of the world.
At first I thought I was imagining the sheer numbers of cars that had cracked windshields in this town, just as I first thought I was imagining the number of people who were staring at me for no particular reason. But the prevalence of cracked windshields turned out to be just as real a phenomenon as the rude, pointless staring.
My independent findings were supported by my research assistant, Kim, who I have now gotten hooked on the “Spot The Cracked Windshield” game. It’s like that “spot the (blank) car” game, except instead of VW Beetles or blue cards in general, you punch the other person in the arm when you spot a cracked windshield. Once I punched her in the arm five times just driving to the grocery store.
The cracked windshield fad isn’t restricted to old beaters, as one might think. Yes, there are plenty of 1970’s Monte Carlos or 1985 Ford Escorts tooling around with windshields that are as fractured as the stained glass windows at Westminster Cathedral. But you won’t have to look hard to spot a $40,000 Lexus with a cracked windshield, or a hulking pimped-out SUV with shining chrome and a windshield that looks like a fat man who split his pants. Pants made of glass, I guess, but still… The cracked windshield in Denver does not discriminate.
More amazing that the sheer numbers of cars with cracked windshields cruising around town is the fact that no one seems to give a shit that at any minute that windshield could give way and send shards of jagged glass raining into their weather-beaten faces as they head to the once-every-month beer festivals or while driving through the latest forest fire. They seem completely oblivious to the very real possibility that hitting one of the many potholes on the streets of Denver could result in windshield in front of them finally giving way and falling right into their genital region as they drive, embedding autoglass right into their face, chest and netheregions. It is this scenario that tells me I am not Western tough, as I find it hard to ignore the thought of several pounds of auto glass landing in my crotch region while I drive.
But no one appears to be in a hurry to get their windshields fixed, even with the very real threat of getting the top of your head sliced off like someone hacking into a thick roll of bologna. They drive around singing along with the radio, having loud conversations with their friends who are also in the car or yammering on their cell phones (another issue in itself), all while looking through a piece of cracked glass that distorts the view until it’s like looking through a kaleidoscope.
There are plenty of chances to get those cracks fixed. There are an unusual number of vans and trucks, usually parked near gas stations, with big signs that proclaim “Cracked Windshields Repaired” (further proof that I am not imagining or exaggerating this). I’m not sure how the process is done, but they sit there beside their truck, waiting to rescue someone from the possibility of having their face or genitalia shredded by auto glass. But I’ve never seen them working, never seen them repairing someone’s splintered front glass and possibly saving someone’s private parts from looking like it’s been run through a Cuisinart. Instead, cars just roll by, their owners squinting to see past the rainbow that has formed inside their car because the fractured windshield is now acting like a prism when hit by the sun’s rays.
While I’ve seen a lot of cracked windshields, I’ve yet to see how they actually develop. There are a few that you can tell came from rocks being kicked up by the car in front of them, probably as the were driving up to the mountains to find the perfect spot where they can mountain bike two feet from a bear. But others, the streaking lines that slice the windshields in two, three or five sections, have me mystified. If there was some sort of front-end damage, a bent fender, a smashed headlight, I could go all “CSI” and conclude that “Ah-ha, this car was in an accident and the cracked windshield is a result of that collision. Therefore, the murder must be…”. But most of the time there is no crushed bumper or dented hood to offer telltale evidence. Just a windshield that looks like a map of the surrounding interstate highways.
So far, I’ve managed to escape being a member of this club, but I’ve come close. I was driving to the airport once with the passenger side windows down. A semi passed me on the right side and as it roared by, it kicked up a small rock (OK, a pebble) that flew through the window and hit me in the center of my chest. Yes, for a split second I thought, “bullet”, but a quick check revealed that it hadn’t even broken the skin. But my next thoughts were how close it came to hitting the windshield and how close I came to being one of “those people” looking at a fractured world
