The Brickhouse of My Dreams

My Heart Belongs to Joanie

She is my girl, my steady date, my love affair. She is Joanie, and she turns 60 this year, and she’s built like what the Commodores called a brickhouse.

Ain’t she a babe?

She came into my possession in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crash. I was stationed in Maryland at the time, working hard for Uncle Sam at the Defense Information School, which is basically the Department of Defense's liberal arts college.

A bar owner on the eastern shore was going out of business and was selling things off. I had always wanted a jukebox of my own, filled with my records with the tags in my own handwriting, so I LEAPT at the opportunity. I get to the bar, and the beleaguered owner was just… well, he was justifiably upset. His whole life was upended. He was asking $500 for Joanie, though she wasn’t Joanie at the time. Here’s the thing, and I’m gonna be the hero of my own story for a moment, the man had GREAT taste in music. He wasn’t just letting go of the juke, oh no. He was letting go of the records inside, too. Johnny Cash tunes, Chuck Berry, Neil Diamond, I could not, WOULD NOT, let this man’s sacrifice go unnoticed, unacknowledged. He was offering this brickhouse beauty AND the records? Sir!

“You want five?”
”Yeah.”
”Well, here’s the deal, with the records, I can’t give you less than six. Sorry. seven.”
”Nah, man. Just five.”
”Seven fifty.”

I was directly informed by an anthropomorphic rabbit from Brooklyn. I bargained him up. Dude just lost his bar, man. I wasn’t gonna let his struggle go unacknowledged. We settled on $800, mostly because I insisted.

The hard part was strapping her into the homie’s truck and getting over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He drove. I stayed crouched in the bed of his pickup minding the ratchet straps as we drove over that windy ass bridge that went on for goddamned decades. Ten minutes turned into a decade. Einstein was right, y’all.

Nate and I got her to the house on the western shore, 20 minutes south of Baltimore, and we hefted her through the basement access. I plugged her in and she was ready to go. We had a celebratory drink and listened to her go. He asked me if I was going to give her a name, and I decided on Joanie after the in-all-ways magnificent Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway in Mad Men.

Christina Hendricks, y’all. Better recognize.

I found a website that sells the tags one writes the names of the songs on and bought far more than I needed. Since I was a wee lad I wanted a juke with the tags in my own handwriting, with every song personally selected.

I think I did okay.

She’s moved in and around the D.C. Beltway and across the country twice, and she’s never let me down. She’s a 300-pound iPod Nano with 200 songs and a monster bass cabinet, but gentlemen don’t discuss a lady’s weight.

Joanie’s also gonna be my casket. She goes with me. Cremate me, put my ashes in the cabinet, and send me to rest. Maybe run an extension cord so we can get one last jam.