April 23, 2003

• Living a Johnny Cash Song (King Kong Meet Godzilla)

   

  Pickup trucks are a sign of automotive masculinity.  This 3^rd generation truck was no different – large and boxy, front bumper pimpled and dented, blue paint chipped like sailor tattoos, fat tires offering the freeway a mean Eastwood look.  It hauls logs, it lugs bricks, it gets all the honky-tonk ladies and it tows lesser cars – of which there are many.  Juxtaposition was its charm – painted navy Windsor knotted like sweet country royalty.   At forty miles an hour, a battered truck cruising through Big City streets.  But the car wasn’t built for flying.

   

  The image is castanets – tiny little instruments that dance at the rhythm of sultry fingertips.  Clack-clack against a Mercedes, tires popping, axles snapping.  Clear the stage, it’s the dance of giants.  Leathery black hands create clenched fists and now it’s temporary midnight.  Shake-shake and little inhabitants bounce like beads against fake leather upholstery and plexiglass windows.  Someone’s head hits the steering wheel and now the car is honking intermittently.  Crash, crash, honk, honk, crash.  A strange little rhythm.

   

  Now it’s a game of American football.  Loud grunts and monkey sounds translate to Go Long.  Cock your arm back and use the broken windows for grip.  With rotation fit for any All-American, a blue tin can spins smooth and fluid – one block, two.  Hail Mary is right.  Hail Mary, Mother of God, save me from this monster madness.

   

  So let’s say it’s pinball now.  First off the forty-story bank building, through the soda billboard and then, ricochet into a curvy architectural wonder.  Pei is up in flames.

   

  Now, it’s just gravity.  But screaming blue lizard breath floats you upward, tires melting.  In the silvery mirror sheen of downtown buildings, there’s a passing reverse reflection of a buckled, scorched pickup truck launching skyward, end-over-end.  Somewhere past the 30^th floor, both bumpers break off, look out below.

   

  The big monkey pulls a loud Pacino rant.  The giant lizard flashes a jagged DeNiro smile.

   

  The metro rail swings like an Indiana whip and cracks against simian skull matter.  In turn, Simian hands tear a radio tower off one cracking rooftop and take a swing, hitting some pickup baseball.  More end-over-end and the car is now well on its way toward shiny black lizard eyes.

   

  Two passengers are screaming; the other is asleep.  But why not laugh?

   

  The fat lizard would live to fight another day; today was just a primer.  Still, it was the knockout punch of the month – a crumpled, country bumpkin’s pickup truck smashed heartily into the sightlines of a scaly face.  Icing an ungodly shiner in the Arctic cool, he vaguely recalled the sound of yokels having the funniest, scariest time of their lives.

   

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                                                                     Winslow Homer – Kissing Moon

   

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                            O to grace how great a debtor
                            Daily I’m constrained to be!
                            Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
                            Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
                            Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
                            Prone to leave the God I love;
                            Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
                            Seal it for Thy courts above.

   

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  Run the race!  Matt11:28

   

  • 9:00 am
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