Category: cars

Remembering A Dad Moment

1971

Besides being a rock fan and fifteen years old, I was an auto racing fan. My father was in the U.S.A.F. He’d just returned from being stationed in Germany and was now stationed at DESC near Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio when I moved in with him. He surprised me with tickets to the premiere of LeMans with Steve McQueen.

Whenever I hear the movie’s opening minutes, I’m back in that packed movie theater, one of the few children in the place, remembering the movie’s beginning, and Dad. The start is just the sounds and images of racing cars of the era screaming around the French race track. To non-fans, it’s probably noise. But to racing fans, the sounds of Porsches and Ferraris of different-sized engines, Alfas, Corvettes, and Matras can all be heard as individual howls.

Dad had no interest in seeing the movie, but he knew I wanted to. So, thanks, Dad.

6

The Chaotic Dream

What an exhausting dream it was.

Being nowhere in particular, but planning to go somewhere, I was trying to pack and prepare myself to leave. People surrounded me. None of them paid attention to me, but kept walking around, having conversations and calling out to each other, or laughing. None of them addressed me.

Phones kept ringing. Weirdly, I recognized the phones from my life. Mom’s cherry colored wall phone, with its long cord, rang. Later, a beige Trimline with pushbuttons, of the sort my wife and I had in our house at one point, rang.  Another time, it was a green Trimline phone with a dial that rang. Cell phones and Blackberries would ring, along with black phones and red phones without dials used as hotlines in the Air Force.

I answered the phones but never heard anyone on the other end, something that angered me more and more as the dream progressed. “Why is the phone ringing?” I would ask aloud. “Who’s calling? There’s never anyone there.” I was trying to pack and would think that I had forgotten something, and then remember what it was, and go to get it, only to get diverted by a ringing phone. Nobody else would answer the phones.

While all of this was happening, I kept checking the weather, because I worried about it changing. Meanwhile, I kept saying, “Oh, I need to go write, but I don’t have time. I need to make time to write.” While I was packing, saying this to myself, checking the weather, and answering phones with people walking around and past me, I kept giving car keys to people. Different people, they needed the keys for different reasons. The keys didn’t look familiar, but I knew they were to my shiny red car, and they were my keys. I kept handing the keys to someone, and then someone else would approach me a little bit later and ask me for my keys. Every time I picked them up, the keys would jangle, and I’d check them to confirm they were the right keys.

All of this culminated in me waking up thinking that a phone was ringing. There wasn’t one ringing. The house was quiet except for rain falling on the roof.

Thinking about this dream now, I chuckle at what I see as its meaning, that I resent intrusions to my writing, because to go somewhere, I need to write, and I feel like it’s been a life interrupted. Yes, all the decisions made to bring me to this point were my decisions, but those decisions were all driven by other events and people.

Funny how my mind speaks to me when I go to sleep at night.

0

The Drive

I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called “The Fastest Car”. I like speed. It’s my one weakness. This show plays on the challenge, are sleeper vehicles faster than exotic machines like Lamborghinis, Ferraris, McLarens, Ford GTs and Vipers?

The sleeper vehicles are home-built machines. They frequently look like junk but are fast vehicles. You can’t call them cars. Cars are included, but so are trucks (including a diesel) and vans. There’s been a huge variety of machines. While presenting the challengers, the people talk about cars and their relationships with speed, racing, and the vehicle they’ll be using. Family is often a large thumb on the scales about what they’re doing and why.

With four cars racing, all can’t win. The defeated are usually philosophical about it, although some get hissy, challenging the fairness of something that happened. What is really interesting, however, is their absolute belief that they can and will win in the lead up to the race. They express doubts, but typically circle back and say, “I think I’ll win.” It’s that attitude that draws me to the show. As everything is considered and the cars are prepared, the men and women say, “I think I can win. I’m ready. We’re going to win.”

I like that attitude. That’s the sort of fire that writers struggling to make it need to exhibit. “I think I can win, and I’m going to do everything to prove it. It’s not for me as much as it is for xxx.” Xxx is the blank to fill it. They don’t want to win for themselves, but for those who believe and back them.

Isn’t that like a writer. We want to be published, and we’re driven to write. People often lurk in our lives, and we’re seeking to validate their belief in our talent, creativity, determination, and dreams. It’s a fuel that keeps us putting our ass in a chair with paper and pen or pencil, or at a computer keyboard or typewriter.

It isn’t just about me, we tell ourselves. It’s for everyone else. Remove them, though, and I think most writers will still be writing. I suspect those drivers trying to win would also still be going, even without trying to prove themselves to friends and family.

 

 

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Streaming back via the Wayback Machine to 1971, I was reminded of a lot of music that I enjoyed. The Who, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, The Doors, Jethro Tull, Yes, John Lennon, Elton John…a solid foundation of future classics were out that year. Against all those albums was a simple sound delivered by Bad Finger. Right off of Straight Up, here’s “Baby Blue”.

I admit, the album disappointed me a bit. It seemed too simple and a little derivative. Once again, my exposure, through an eight-track cassette on a continual loop, came via a friend. He played this album whenever he drove his father’s Ford 500. This was about two years after the album came out. I honestly think he only had three or four eight-tracks. He played this one so often, it developed all sorts of warble.

I still laugh thinking about it.

 

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I always have enjoyed convertibles. Named spyders and spiders, roadsters, rag tops, I include the targas and tee tops in this group. The top down lets the world in when you’re motoring along.

I was trying my best to emulate that yesterday. A gentle spring sun warmed the day into aspirations of summer. Our little town was an idyllic verdant green. Sunroof and windows open, I was cruising home like it was yesteryear. To help me on that journey, the radio station played C.C.R.’s eight plus minute version of “Suzy Q”. Turning it up, I felt like a teenager for the six minutes that I listened as I drove home.

Not too much to the lyrics. Very straightforward, but I enjoy the guitar work and the variations on the drums and cymbals that arise.

 

0

Don’t You Hate It?

Don’t you hate it when you’re stopped behind two other cars, because they’ve legally stopped for a person in the crosswalk, and the car coming up behind you whips into the other land and accelerates to about ten M.P.H. over the speed limit and just misses the pedestrian in the crosswalk?

Yeah, I don’t think the man in the crosswalk was happy, either. Mindful of people being like icebergs, with so much of them hidden out of sight, I wonder what kind of idiot is driving that car.

0

Yeah, Another Dream

I’ve been doing a lot of writing in my head. When I sit down to write, I’m already spun up and ready to write. I’ve noticed that when I write in my head to such an extent, I also seem to dream more. It’s like some portal in me has been opened during that period, and imagination flows into my writing become diverted into dream flows when I sleep.

I didn’t star in this dream. I was there, and featured, but the stars were a young female tennis player and a wealthy country man.

It started out with country boy. I call him a boy, but that was the nature of descriptions in this place. Boy didn’t denote an age, but a style. Gregarious, beloved, and admired by his farm-based community, he asked me, out of the blue, if I’d like to ride in his helicopter. I was teenager. I immediately understood this was an honor and treat, and accepted. People were envious, but in a joking way, because they’d not been in his helicopter.

He and I did some errands in his truck. When done, we drove down to his helicopter. It was a little two-seater with a bubble cockpit. He was the pilot, and took us aloft on a aerial tour of the region. He regaled me with stories about his life as he did. When we landed, he offered me a ride in his burnt-orange Lamborghini roadster. We did that, riding through town and around the countryside. It felt like a special day for me, and I was flattered to be treated like this.

A young woman arrived. Actually, she was fourteen, so appropriately, she was a girl, but people in the dream referred to her as the young woman. She was small and slender, with dark eyes and hair. No one thought much of her. She was supposed to be some tennis star, but everyone was skeptical of her because of her stature and quiet demeanor.

A demonstration game was arranged, her against local pros. Suddenly, she was revealed as a different person. Her relentless speed, quickness, accuracy, and intelligence went on full display as she beat player after player. Everyone was talking about her long after the games ended, marveling that such a small person could have a powerful overhead shot and tremendous serve, and be so fast. She was going to be given the helicopter and Lamborghini rides, too. I unabashedly endorsed that, telling the wealthy patron she deserved such an honor more than me.

Late day found us eating a huge communal dinner. It was held outdoors. Everyone was sitting on pillows and blankets. The food was strange and exotic. I can’t begin to describe the eels, snakes, and shellfish I saw being served.

Then came a special event where the patron beat his white SUV. It was a new car. I didn’t understand the reasons for beating it, but he hit it one time so hard that the car was folded into two. We all thought it was an astonishing display of strength, but also a statement on his indifference to his wealth.

And there was where the dream ended.

 

0

Thursday’s Theme Music

I dreamed last night that I was driving a convertible with the top down on an oceanside road. I was alone, and the weather was gorgeous. The road could been the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway between Big Sur and Carmel. I saw myself and the scene from different angles, like I was in a movie montage, but I don’t know what kind of car it was. No one else was seen in the dream, just me, happily driving. (Almost seems like a pretty metaphor for my writing process.) This song, “One of Us,” performed by Joan Osborn was playing on the car radio during this dream montage.

Cheers

0

Oops.

You ever approach your car in a parking lot and think, boy, I did a terrible job parking, and look at your car and think, man, it’s a lot dirtier than I realized, and then try to get into your car and discover —

Yeah. It’s not your car.

Happened to me yesterday. Meanwhile, friends told a Palo Alto tale involving two Priuses and a parking garage. One of the cars was their vehicle. They got in it, started it up, and began backing out.

The wife said, “Something’s wrong.” She looked around. “I don’t think this is our car.”

More looking around was conducted. They noticed a tissue box on the back seat.

Definitely not their car.

They pulled back into their spot, parked and exited. But, what the hell? Where was their car? They’d parked right here.

Actually, they’d parked two spots over. A large truck blocked their car from their sight during their approach. Some color and year, just a little different.

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