"The grind of the rubber to the roughest asphalt, to the searing heat, to your heart that beats with every curving turn of the road, that plies itself worn and torn along the white-lined fevers of your festering rest stops. She clunkty-clunks her last breath, wheezing for you to resuscitate her old valves n' pipes, your accidental car..."
I remember back when there were these fine little roadside stops, where the panhandle back roads looked north, looking for the "Mother Road" west. You could stop and rest your butt on the soft laurels of the red Naugahyde fake leather seating, and sip a hot coffee, waiting for the ringing of the road to fall out of your head. That was back in the 60's when traveling was a thing to behold, a thing to nurture, like hopes and dreams of going to California, and making it big in the drug addled state of movie dreams, beach surfing babes, and creamy music. This was the fancy, where all you were were melodies jumping around looking for those juicy lyrics that would turn your wonderment into California gold; but first you had to travel the craggy roads through four states. There are many visions that you get when you're out there alone by yourself with your 1963 Chevy Impala without a bite on its cherry apple bomber exhausts, 450- 8 cylinder overcams, 4 on the floor, hyped up hiker's jets ,oversized wheels, and it says to you, "I need some water", right outside of Holbert, New Mexico. I looked deep down the black stripe of hot white black top that bleeds into the background of flat edged mesa, I could hear screams of birds or soft echoes of thunderboomers going off, because, after all, they were always testing planes for speed back then. But the main task at hand was the alarms, orange worn out red tinges of lighted pools, speaking in chumping "BLEEPS" flashing ignorantly across the panel. The little lights flashing and sounds muffled by the engine noise, gently sputtering till everything goes dead.    Then the steam comes rising out of the hood, holding back for your lift with kamikaze surprises. Oh, I carried enough water in jugs across the desert, just like my father. "You must keep that engine cool as you would yourself." He would often say. "The road is the deliberate incarnation of having oneself replicated." That is confusing. What were you saying again? "Like reptile scales, you must see yourself in the road, before the eye squints into itself, that you squeeze every drop of sweat that plays itself against your brow." He was always playing with the poetics, not much for words but for word-play. I was often times in awe of him, just for the words or the wheels. After becoming a Texan, you become a story teller and you gain bragging rights. But my dad did not have to brag that he owned 16 cars that traveled the states and counted up enough wheel time to go to the moon and back for three Apollo missions.
	But then there were times crossing the wide mother roads coming from Oregon, my birth place, to Texas, when the heat even got to him and his road. We had the flat.This was not a normal flat, this was considered the humdinger of all flats, the kind that launches your hubcaps 50 yards out across the desert floor. The kind of flat that rolls rubber over itself like Jabba the Hut's sluggish body, piles itself over and over onto itself, finally squishing its remaining original black ooze just in time to miss a sacred Jack-O-Lope's dance, and to touch down on their original. This flat swerved and sputtered in the asphalt-ground sand in the middle of New Mexico's' black top.
My dad drove into the impending curve, with the finesse of a Baja racer, missing cars and cacti. There we were, we three boys happily playing jump n'jive and roll over in the back of the 50's yellow Plymouth station wagon. You know the kind, with the real drop down tailgate and auto window pull down, no seat belts, and no air conditioning. Then the coward dust stops, and the wind pulls up a last breath to remind you that you are in the middle of nowhere. Just as the drips on the canvas water bags slip into their comfortable wait n' see, trying to keep your engine cool. The heat glazes you over, looking for stagnant air to chum up for the next few hours that we were left stranded in the outback of America. There were no "Triple A rescues" back then, but we did have family, and my mother made it into a tailgate party, "fifties style", while my older brother and dad pulled the spare out of the deep gulch of the station wagon's trunk. We ate sandwiches and looked for hubcaps.
This heat was the kind that reminded me of the heat I had once known on other highways. I had no tailgate thus no party. I was on the road for futile reasons. I was looking for my own America Pie. Also when you're on a schedule with the armed services, you must get the car into the state of that breeds cars, and breathes cars like the aqualung of highways. There is always a demand for time, for cars, energy, and the self-sustaining prophetic statements, "Why we must demand mobility". But California was a place you ought to be, so you loaded up the car and dreamt of Beverly. Timing and being were two different demands, while pulling the hood and ragging on the hard turn gates and hoses. The steam bellows out with water scalding your bare hands like man-of-war jelly fish stings. More guzzle permile.
Next stop, Yuma. Its' amazing, the desert and wheels. Your tires like young feet, believe there is no stopping. Luckily the road never sleeps, it keeps going like energetic bunnies and saguaro cactus, reaching for the gods. There is something spiritual about the desert road, and the time that you spend on it. You never tire of the heat, or the wind in your hair. Or even the places that you stop for the bizarre road sign skulking at you for its' own attention. People of the desert are lucky in that sense. Being able to get up in morning and do the sandy awakening, and a dreamy early morning drive by. Yuma comes out of the desert like night vista bombing raids on Baghdad city.
	Neon lights have their own effect on the rugged crusty scape, as you turn your high beams up and down, doing the midnight run and dancing with oncoming drivers. You know this is the settling place for your heart, and the days burn off.
I woke at sunrise outside the motor lodge to go on a walk, to climb a wind worn sandy loam mound, standing slopes of adobe hills with faces punched out, eyes beckoning you to the birds, who scratched the holes and homes there. The facades pulling side to side and back again, smiling at you and yawning, wishing you a safe journey, or just laughing at you, knowing you've been lucky to get this far. I took a dip in the heated pool, rested my trusty anvil foot, to insure a perfect 85, although the Impala was capable of a stated 120mph. Sleep was not to be trusted while driving alone in this worn torn touring vehicle. These were the days when you were young enough to have the eight hour-crossing landship, that got you to the "Easy Rider" discoveries and destinations.    No pull overs and no temptations for the slots and the hots of the strip at Las Vegas. There was no time and no dinero, for this time across. But just as you got somewhere you wanted to be and you were near the end of a journey, there was the inevitable wheel stopper, the highway patrol. This, as you have just spent 400 hundred dollars putting a set of new tires on an old car. They had your tire taxes, now they want to tax your mind. "Your going 15 over the limit sir." I had realized that all along, just trying to keep the engine cool, and my forehead from burning like the hood. "Okay," here is a warning, the California Highway patrolmen are the fastest, toughest, and kinder to older cars, with new tires and out of the current era plates.    There is a stark realization once you pass through the jugular of highways and waterways, into the vast growing networks of mass plants and canal systems which is California. The desert suddenly stops and the world of nothingness becomes "The Go Crop". The once flat plains of just highways, dotted with cactus and roughness and beaming white-red sand, now comes into itself, a plantation in Eve's jungle. The green and the street meet, they meld like a hot tuna sandwich. You can't tell where the road is going to pass into some beautiful, bountiful strawberry ranch, or avocado plane.Your eyes wandering side to side at an ever faster rate, to catch some luscious picture of a favorite food group, "what will be next?".    Then slowly the dales become the golden hills and the grasslands, where the Golden coast gets its name. It calls to you, as a thousand windmills turn at high pitch, lopping off the words to the sea, grabbing for the last breath of energy, for future unknown generations. You answer quite slowly and then the frame of the movie that you were watching in your personal projection system, starts to smell. "What is it?" The gentle green story that was once alive with plains and plains of growing crops, now becomes brown with the golden brown, and the rushing highway is splitting into fours and sixes and eights.    Confusion overcomes you, as you see the highway grow from small, mile markers, to large green exit signs and "turn in here" lights, flashing their signs, and more cars and rushing and going -going as the green blush is now trapped by pampas grass as high as tunnel grates on a tanker ship. The magnolias blow at high speed, as more and more cars rush to nowhere and get there even faster. A passion for skilled driving comes into play as you pass the "Palm Springs" exit.    You're now in California, the home of the existentialist gestalt Ian driving system. Where pure, unadulterated status of car and wheel becomes your mind and your drive. To avoid becoming shark spittle, or the exhaust of O.J.s long drive time. You better learn to deal with it, cause this is the place where they shoot you for not becoming a better driver by nightfall. Remember, if you live in the valley, you're 2 hours from the studios and beaches, and no one is late for either, so a driver you must become. As the brown smog hits your nose and your eyes are overcome by the tears and fears of the city of L.A., you either are, or you very quickly become one with your wheels, and a visage of dreams. Ever the most, wanting to continue to glide with the best and never to let down, or get out of the car that brought you here and will take you out of here.
Car door slams are never heard in the quite suburbs of this city, because people are kind to their cars here. They build them great garages, they house them, wash them free of their salty smoggy brine, and care for them even after death. No, you are here in the city, the city that motor city Detroit built for you and your wheels. Like the wheels that turn in your mind, they also turn for your pedal, to keep pace and to get into place for a final settlement and reassurance.    You keep on turning and burning up new highways. The swish of the fiery blurs of speeding cars that whoosh by you ever so faster and faster, coming closer and closer, sucking you to the rivers edge of metal crunching time. It serves you notice, that there is only so much wind between the sharp chrome lights and the sunglasses, as another drip of a salty tear hits the pavement where your car has broken down by the side of the road.	if interested in a copy of the 10 minutes VHS tape send $13 ppd to: kirk hunter, po box 163773 austin, tx 78716

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