Chinaski jams a wicker chair in his car and smashes it

Chinaski jams a wicker chair in his car and smashes it during a move involving Tammie’s belongings, an episode in which an ordinary piece of furniture overwhelms both his vehicle and his plans. At four in the morning, with one last trip possible and the Volkswagen unable to carry the chair and a stand-up hair dryer together, he chooses the chair. It will not fit; forcing it into the car breaks the windshield, leaves a door open, and ends with Chinaski abandoning the wrecked arrangement in a pizza-parlor parking lot. At dawn, he returns, tears the chair into pieces, and gets the car home. The scene’s comedy grows out of a real reversal: his effort to transport the chair makes the car unusable, and solving the problem requires destroying what he meant to move.

The Last Load

The chair becomes the deciding problem after Chinaski makes several trips to move Tammie’s things. When he returns from the third run, the earlier load has disappeared; back at his place, he surveys what remains and finds the heavy rattan chair and a stand-up hair dryer. There is room for only one more run, because the Volkswagen cannot take both. He chooses the chair, turning the final trip into a test of whether his small car can accommodate an awkward, bulky possession.

The hour and Chinaski’s condition make the choice more precarious. It is four in the morning, he is double-parked with the warning lights on, and he has finished a vodka and water. He feels himself getting drunker and weaker as he carries the chair down the walk. The task begins as a practical decision under pressure, but alcohol, fatigue, and the lack of space combine to make a straightforward move into a struggle with the furniture.

The Car Gives Way

Chinaski opens the passenger-side door and jams the chair into the Volkswagen. It sticks out too far for the door to close, yet becomes lodged so firmly that he cannot pull it free. He pushes it farther in, but a leg pierces the windshield and points upward. The door still will not shut, and the chair will neither move inward nor come out. Each attempt to correct the fit deepens the damage rather than resolving it.

The failed loading changes the stakes. Chinaski fears that the police may arrive and get him into trouble, so he gives up trying to free the chair and climbs in from the driver’s side. With no street parking available, he drives to a pizza-parlor lot, the open door swinging and the ceiling light remaining on. He leaves the car there with the smashed windshield and chair leg protruding into the night. The intended cargo has become an obstruction fixed through the car’s body; an everyday object is no longer useful furniture or manageable cargo, but a material problem that dictates where the car can go and how it must be left.

A Call Without a Solution

Back at his place, Chinaski pours another vodka and water and phones Tammie for help. He tells her that the chair is stuck through the windshield, that he cannot get it either in or out, that the door will not close, and that the windshield is broken. Tammie replies, “You'll think of something, Hank.” She then hangs up.

The exchange offers no practical intervention. Chinaski has asked for help with a predicament created while moving her chair, but the response leaves him to face it alone. He falls asleep worried that the car will be towed and that he will be booked. At 6:20 a.m. he wakes, gets dressed, and walks back to the pizza parlor. The car is still there as the sun comes up, preserving the wreckage of the previous night and giving him another chance to solve the problem.

Breaking the Chair

In the morning, Chinaski tries again to pull the chair free. It remains immovable. His anger rises with the apparent impossibility of the task until a piece of wood breaks off in his hands. That break changes the problem: instead of continuing to force the whole chair through the windshield, he can destroy it piece by piece. He tears it apart in the parking lot and stacks the fragments neatly on someone’s front lawn.

Chinaski connects this sudden exertion to the physical strength he acquired working in factories, unloading boxcars, lifting cases of frozen fish, and carrying cattle. He describes himself as strong but equally lazy; here, the deadlock draws out the strength that his ordinary habits leave unused. The chair is finally removed, but only after he abandons the original purpose of the move. The Volkswagen still needs a new windshield, which he plans to buy at a junkyard on Santa Fe Avenue, but that repair can wait. He parks near his court, drinks two glasses of ice water, and goes to bed.

Significance

The episode makes a mundane moving chore into a compact sequence of escalation and reversal. Chinaski’s decision to take the chair is followed by a chain of failed corrections: pushing it farther in breaks the windshield, abandoning it leaves the car conspicuously damaged, and the phone call to Tammie supplies no remedy. Morning changes the available action. He cannot transport the chair intact, so he frees the car by destroying it.

That reversal gives the chair a force beyond its use as furniture. Once jammed through the windshield, it dictates the condition of the car and interrupts Chinaski’s attempt to finish the move; the object he meant to carry becomes something he must dismantle. The resolution is effective but incomplete: Chinaski gets the chair out and the Volkswagen parked, while the broken windshield remains unrepaired. What ends is the immediate impasse, not all of its consequences.