8 Cylinders

“Oh, there’s also this one,” he said.  The librarian, having given John a fistful of books about pistons and convertibles, seemed to want a second of our time to be heard. “Some of our books are so old, they need to be recycled.”

He pulled out a thin hardback, his hand protected by one of those textile casts for people with carpal tunnel syndrome.  He pressed his lips together, and smirked, as if to say, “see, I told you this is not anything.”

“The Cobra” it said.  “The Cool Classics Series.”

It was an old book.  There was a blue car on the cover.  The car was old, too.  So old, even its paint had begun to fade.  It was a car from the 1960s.  Yet, it had a jaunty look and a definite muscularity.  And, I had a feeling that it might be something special.

John grabbed it.  When you already have 18 books to take home, what is another one to lug around.  But, that title, well it caught my eye.

—

It’s bedtime.  I am reading our new book to John.  It turns out that Cobra is actually about Carroll Shelby.  That would be Carroll Shelby, inventor of not just the Cobra, but also the Mustang!  Carroll Shelby, who along with Junior Johnson and perhaps Mark Donahue, was elevated to highest mythic status in my house.

We ate Carroll Shelby’s chili.  We had pictures of cars Carroll Shelby drove, framed

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The Night of the Dinner in Morrisville

Kathy went for out for dinner to a friend’s house in Morrisville.  They are some friends she made when we were at the beach three years ago.  It was a sunny day, back then, and they agreed to take the annual Post family photo.

It turned out that this couple used to live in Catskill, New York.  An exchange of letters followed, and now
upon her return to Durham, Kathy is visiting them again.  These days, they live in Morrisville.

They live at the end of a cul-de-sac in a subdivision named Dover
Glen.  Its almost 9:30, and the neighborhood is very quiet.  There is
no place to park, because the span of each driveway pretty much takes
up the entire circumference of the cul-de-sac.  I guess that is fine if
you don’t plan on having any visitors.  I wonder, though, if upon
parking someone will come out of one of these faux Tudors to claim that
I have encroached upon their space.

Push ‘Em Back. Push ’em Back.

Waaay Back!

It was a parking lot.  Even though I figured it was about the second half already.  It was still a parking lot, so John was going to have to hold my hand.

“I love football,” says John.  He is excited.  Except that John was jumping up and down, twisting, and generally so excited that he was not moving in any kind of linear fashion.  I was steering, but he was turning, kind of like wiper blades on  car.

The Salisbury High team plays in a cramped field immediately adjacent to the rear of the school.  There are a few parking lots, but mostly, people put their cars in the nearby neighborhoods.  I could smell bent grass and mildewed laundry.  Its a smell I will always know.  Along with its attendant sounds (Rico Gaston 4 yards on the carry, second down), and the specular light casting shadows across the dark night, I would recognize this anywhere as Friday Night Football.

Susie and I share a love for this kind of spectacle.  It is kind of like going to the State Fair, except you get to

So Much Fun

The past two weekends, I have had the luck to spend time with our kids at some of the theme parks of our state.  Last week, we went to Emerald Point, a large water park in Greensboro.  This weekend, we went to Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh.

These are nice places.  Fun for breaking a sweat, or pretending to be a fire fighter.

Yet I can’t help but compare these experiences, though they are now experienced through my own rational adult frame, with the memories I have of my child hood theme park visits.

Those days are a long-ago memory, but I can recite some details: I would have been wearing a pair of jean shorts and a white tank top with red piping.  It was an era when elementary children supported patriotic themes.  1976, the bicentennial.  Oh, and Evel Knievel.  Even my year book that year had a picture of a color guard from the Revolutionary War.  I would have been wearing that because I perceived those to be my most comfortable, and thus fastest, items of clothing.  Also, I would have had my sneakers with the gripless surface soles.

For speed.  Because we were going to Worlds of Fun.  For that, I needed to be fast.  Fast to get in line, fast to