Highway Men
On a road to nowhere. Image by Nick M. W.
The “Shaggin’ Wagon” is a tough old bitch. She’s seen some miles, around 150 thousand to be imprecise. Those are hard-earned, weather-weary miles tacked onto that Ford engine. They don’t make them like they used to, and, in fact, they don’t make that piece of automotive mastery anymore. Shame. She was never pretty, and she left “reliability” in the garage, but she could flip a five-hour road trip into a jaunt across the galaxy.
Someone once claimed that the Wagon looked like a big blue dick rolling down the road. Its two nuts weren’t dragging along the pavement, and they weren’t pulled up to avoid road rash. They were tucked inside big blue.
“Son, did I ever tell you the story about the first time your mom and I made love?”
“Yeah, actually you did, Pops.”
“You want to hear it again?”
“I’d rather not.”
A brief pause because the old man likes to let the beat build.
“That makes me a true motherfucker.”
Another pause because the youngblood never quite gets used to hearing that shit.
“C’mon, Dad.”
Callisto, 3D Model by NASA
I’m 14. We’re tearing up the Interstate just an hour shy of Blythe, but roughly 469.13 million miles from Jupiter. You claim that among that planet’s 79 moons, the pink hippos prefer to do their dance around Callisto, something to do with the path of the moon’s orbit around Jupiter.
“It’s tidally locked, which helps keep the hippos’ skin vibrant.”
That makes sense.
“Do space hippos need to worry about skin care?”
It’s all rhetorical, from Phoenix to Corona to Diamond Bar and back to the Coachella Valley. Most of what we say has no meaning, but it’s the genesis of laughter and the anchor of a good memory.
Rolling through the Mojave Desert, it’s just us and the 2 trillion stars that fill our universe. We didn’t spend many holidays together, but we clocked enough miles on the road to impress intergalactic pachyderms and all the amphibious mammals of the cosmos.
Forever grateful.
The Shaggin’ Wagon, ready to overheat when you are. Photo by the owner.
