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February 11, 2004 #
 Talkin' about your ride is often loaded with sexual innuendo. Four on the floor, need I say more. And while some regale stories of their "Worst.Sex.Ever." others tell tales of the "Worst.Car.Ever." Chris Gage, talking more Daytona than Darien here, presents his own lexicon of American Redneck and Hues below. (Oh yeah, only 5 more days until the Great American Race. Warm-up the shitter.) The first thing I did with my spanking new, right-of-the-box Chrysler LeBaron GTS was drop the tranny into a low one and two-wheel it around the tight corner by the horse farm. She cornered like she was DIRT racing at Fulton or Can-am, with her ass swerving out and around like J.Lo at a hula contest, and finally I run her up on the four-foot-wide center island, taking out the low-growing bushes the Daughters of the Revolution were always beautifying the town with. Grounding to a whip-lash halt, sparks flying up and into the open windows, it was as if I had mounted flame exhausts along the rails. 40 to 0 in a shriek of torn metal. Like a see-saw I teetered there, four wheels off the ground, spinning freely and frictionless like the cogs in Nicole Richie's brain. Not a nothing to bump into nowhere in sight. I coulda got more grip on a lubed pig in the Hazard County hog hold. We dreamt big after that. Only a few months later, the hood developed a bad case of dandruff, and the paint started flaking off, first in tiny bits which gradually grew into sheets of poorly applied plastic that could be pulled down wholesale like a Yankee's pants at recess. So we took a belt sander (aka "The Bitch," on account of how hard it was to hold in place when it got to shaking at full RPMs) to the hood and ground it down to a sheet-metal grey and bondo'd up where we nicked too deep. I can hardly shave my girlfriend any more without thinking of that day fondly. Out came the spray paint. We had dreams of adopting an actual Mopar color scheme, the names taunted us with their monikers -- Plum Crazy Purple, Sublime (which I think was green but may have been the County kid's nickname for the sweet leaf, now that I think about it), Limelight, Go-Mango, Moulon Rouge, Panther Pink, Sassy Grass Green. But the rental place up by the highway overpass wanted $150 a half-day for the real spray rig and, anyway, that wizard holding a crystal ball we sketched out in magic marker was likely not to come out as magical as he was in our heads. So we settled for black and red racing stripes and for the bears in the air hovering over the Interstate: a yellow and black fuck-you bull's eye. If you're gonna go to that much trouble for $100 bucks, I'll at least help you aim that bird dog at my piece-of-shit '84 roller skate. Archives "The Other Page" powered by Removable Hype. RSS. Copyright © 2003 La Otra Página, Inc. All nights observed. Feel free to email "info(at)krucoff.com" for questions, comments, stock tips, and family gossip. |
