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From the Book:
Turner Bascombe was wrong about a lot. But
when he told me the goons out there wanted nothing more than for me to
stand down, remain a basement dweller, a deep-fryer jockey with an
occasionally wielded gift for steeling himself against the oncoming
traffic, he had it right.
I am a stupid man!—a citizen
of a great imperial land slowly on its retreat back to barbarism from
the great progressive nature that allowed it to flourish, after all. I
like to stand in traffic!
There is sound, wind. People throw things at me, though they once had
more felicitous motives when I’d haul around the front of the
yellow-and-black Team Bascombe Lumber Ford to get a new tire up on the
front right, squat, ass hanging out into pit road as the remainder of
the field flew fast within a foot of my back. Peerfoy might hit me
square center of one of my goggles with a rind of peeled-off rubber from
tire tests, or Tacklebox, the jackman, whack me on my helmet head with
his wedge adjuster if he wasn’t using it. Tacklebox, man of the bullhorn
septum piercing and Hollywood headbanger attitude, now former jackman
turned competitive driver himself, was also known to shoot spitballs
from the red straw he was constantly chewing on to combat the lingering
lure of long-shunned nicotine. But all that’s birthday cake compared to
the bottles, hats, crucifixes, and plethora of profane insults I
received for my efforts farther back in the crucible of time—now, too,
of course, when standing in traffic nets me nothing more than the
stupidity I crave.
My condition says yes: to reading as much as possible, even the drivel; to
overworking, occasionally; to drinking too much, most of the time; to
abstaining from alcohol when necessary, too; to loafing, day by day just
getting by; to being rich, pregnant with industry and purpose. |
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