When Driving Fast Was Cool

I’m old enough to remember when driving fast was cool.

I came after the American Graffiti era, of course; but when I saw the American Graffiti movie in the theater, none of it was strange to me. We’d tinker with our elderly American cars, and occasionally we’d race. We lived in podunk. We raced right on the spur of the superhighway that was just finished that started noplace and ended nowhere. At night you could do any damn thing on that road. The police didn’t even bother to go there.

I still remember the sort of sinking feeling we got the first time we opened up a car hood and saw this sort of metal octopus atop the engine block. No more tweaking the points and condenser, tinkering with the carburetor, nothing. It was all idiot stickers and towel bar air dams on ricers after that.

Racing, real racing, made a kind of sense then too. It’s like its contemporary, country music. Neither one is worth a crap now, because they are just a shiny plastic imitation of the chrome and dirt thing they replaced. They are both so popular that no one goes there any more. No one like me, anyway.

With racing, it ended, like so many things, when too much was achieved. At first, there was an interesting race to innovate the technical aspects of the car and marry it to a maniac driver that had been running moonshine ten minutes before. Now third generation metrosexuals in footie pajamas covered with mercenary scout patches drive cars that are engineered to make sure they don’t go too fast. Too fast? There’s no such thing. Not one of them could beat me home on Friday night after work. Country music died when it forgot what the hell country the “Country” was referring to. And no, I’m not “Ready For Some Football,” you penthouse hayseed.

A car is just a box to ride around in now. It has the vibe of a European tram, if it has a vibe at all. I don’t even understand the need for “cars” anymore. A two door car is a joke to me now. A vehicle is a utilitarian device. People talk with disdain about “SUVs” as if they’re wasteful or something. They’re just station wagons. At least they function as what they are, a big cart to haul people and things in. What’s a Pontiac Sunfire, exactly? And everyday cars are all different brands of ugly, more or less. Face facts. A F-150 Lightning pick-up truck will blow the doors off a sports car. The speed limit is 65. What’s it all for?

You could make a whole bowl of cereal if you went through the backseat cushions of our little wagon, and you could fit that wagon inside my truck. Our vehicles are there to do things. Not be things. Do things. How can they hope to capture your imagination? Every third song on the radio then was about a car. Every third song on the radio now is … more than I’d care to listen to. We traded Wolfman Jack for Rush Limbaugh.

Cars? I remember fondly when we wondered only what was possible. And what we could get away with. It’s over. Face it.

Spanking The Plank

I’m required to play music today.

I’m not sure I remember how. I’ll have to root around to find the instrument and accoutrement required. I’ll arrive five minutes before it’s time to play. When I get there, it’s unlikely I’ll know everyone I’m playing with. I’ll have to ask the dumbest questions of my compatriots.

What key is this in?
-A
Who sings this one?
-You do.
What’s the first few words?

It’s only rock n’ roll. I’m overqualified.

Naomh Padraig Timeline

St. Patrick’s Day at 5 pm:

St. Patrick’s Day at midnight:

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

Her Uncles had found her alone, a little girl sitting quietly in her family home in the county of Mayo. For the Irish, the famine was just the last straw; they had a litany of Cromwell’s leftover reasons to leave anyway. And so they left in their thousands. Sinead O’Leary was no different; first to Liverpool, then to Canada, on to Boston. When she finally moved to New York City, now a grown woman and married, she rechristened it New Cork, and no-one she knew dared disagree. She made it so.

She simply refused to remember anything unpleasant, and seemed to forget nothing else. She regaled her children and grandchildren with stories of Cuchulain, and Medb, and faeries and wee people, Naomh Padraig and his clovers and snakes; a living encyclopedia of fun and fantasy.

She saved what little money came her way, and she bought and sold things. Her long lost relatives would send her this and that from the Auld Sod, and she’d sell them to Yankees who collected such as her family had, as if the Irish were as exotic as Babylonians, not right across the Irish Sea from their own forefathers.

One fine spring morning, she opened a bible box her uncle had sent her. Inside, sheepskin glowed with monastic filigree. She knew the Lord’s word was on those Latin pages. Oh yes, she knew. She was wise enough to know also: There was a devil of a ransom in it from a collector too. And when a trim woman appeared at her door, sent by her employer, the Colossus of Finance, to buy it for that mausoleum of manuscripts he was constantly stoking on Fifth Avenue, Sinead was ready. He wanted it like the damned wanted icewater. Sinead knew how long to hold out before acquiescing.

Into real estate the money went. Then her son invested it for her in the stock market. Soon the simple woman, who still retied her own lace when it frayed, was rich. She always was, if you asked her, even though her Uncles could have told you they had found her alone in that stone cottage, all those years ago, because her parents were dead and gone right outside the door, their mouths green from trying to eat grass when the potatoes failed.

She was very old when that awful day christened “Black Friday” took her fortune, just like the famine had taken her family. Her son sat with her on the simple wooden settee she still favored. “It has St Patrick’s clover in it, and to put a cushion on it would be extravagance itself!”

He gently told her that he had lost her money, over a million dollars, in one afternoon.

“What a blessing!” she said.

Her son, now grown grey himself, and ruined along with his mother, couldn’t comprehend.

“How kind of the Lord to wait until I could afford to lose a million dollars. Imagine what a blow it would have been to lose such a sum when I was poor!”

Her son burst out laughing. And he knew then, that his beloved mother was placed on this earth for a reason. And they would rise again. Surely.

“Besides,” she said, “I have three more Bible Boxes”

Friday Swingin’

Would you like to take a turn?
No thanks.
Would you like some punch?
Have some.
My name’s Gil
Mine’s not.
Mind if I sit down?
No more than you standing there.
They have cake.
I baked it.
I like your dress.
It’s my mom’s. I’ll tell her.
I like your permanent wave.
It won’t last.
Your eyes are a pretty color.
Both of them?
I think I know your friends.
Perhaps you could introduce us.
I’ve got a job in the mill now.
Your fingernails told me that.
I was on the football team in high school.
Good thing we didn’t dance.
I… I…
Ahoy, mate.
Can I walk you home?
I’m not leaving.

Will you marry me?
Yes.