Pour, pack, or puff, or whatever you do in your spare time while surfing the alleys of the internet.
Cars Part 3
One thing about the type of person who taps on your car window with a tire iron: they probably don't go to the police station all that much unless they are dragged there in handcuffs. My little steaming rice burner was about to seize up into a solid block of aluminum and steel, and then I'd be looking for my teef on the floor boards shortly thereafter, if I was lucky, that was. But now I was sputtering through the streets of Clovis in a car about to die, and this was a place whose streets I knew quite well, having toured everywhere on my ten speed, which I wished I'd had in the back seat for a clandestine get away that night (front wheel had those nifty quick release nutjobs for easy stowage).
Instead, I had a nutjob after me.
Clovis once was all farming land, but as the city of Fuckno California began to grow exponentially larger in the 80’s, it moved northward like a slug, leaving a trail of slime and crack houses in its once-lovely southern district, where everything had been built in the forties and fifties during a post-war utopian era of prosperity and dreams and hope, couple with an obsession for Art Deco styled homes.
Fuckno ate Clovis.
The huge farms of Clovis had once been situated above the north-east of Fuckno, but not for long when I lived in Fuckno. The owners of these stately farms, whose work had contributed to the greening of this high desert into the world’s largest fruit-growing valley suddenly were being asked by real-estate developers to sell their hundreds of acres for millions of dollars.
Developers razed these farms, then built neighborhoods in gaudy eighties-style ranches and McMansions, complete with black with pink floor carpeting, and strips of chrome on the walls inside, and cheaply constructed but pretty stucco on the outside. At the same time, the civil engineers came upon an unique idea, and it was this:
Do away with roads that are straight and gridded, unless they were the major avenues. This would cut down on traffic through residential zones. Put cul-de-sacs everywhere, to stop speeders. Paint everything various shades of pastel, so that in the orange mercury-arc streetlights at night, every home looked the same. You had to know where you were going, or you were fucked.
These side streets were where I took Tire Iron for a spin. He couldn’t catch up to me due to the twisty roads and the deep drainage ditches that crossed each intersection on every side. I blew through stop signs when I came upon them, and so did he. Although it was a desert, when it rained in the winter months, if fucking poured. Millions of gallons of water always need someway to escape. There were no under ground drainage systems, you see. This high desert valley had a floor of hard-pan, which is like cement. Too expensive to drill very deep into. The whole valley farming soil had been trucked in a dumper at a time, to about a foot deep.
So, this guy was blatting through quiet residential streets on his motorcycle, getting god-damned lost. I kind of figured that he'd never toured around in these picturesque and expensive residential areas on his dirty hog.
My ace in the hole would be the Clovis Police Department. I was just hoping that he either hadn’t been hauled there too many times to remember how to get home from it, or else, if he had gone there, been so fucked up that he'd never remember anyway.
Had to give him credit for his perseverance, but not for his focus. He should have been thinking about his cheating bitch instead of me. You know, he could speed quite the hell up, maybe even getting close enough to read my license plate, if he could read, that is. But one must always slow down when riding a heavy two-wheeler just as quickly if one didn't want to become airborn from a deep, cement drain-way on a curved road lined with cheaply built and expensively sold stuccoed ranch style monstrosities and McMansions.
Think of these cement waterways as three-foot wide speed bumps that went down into the hard-pan a good ten inches instead of up into the air. You would go up into the air if you weren't careful. Many car's oil pan was shredded on these short-sightedly built things. Luckily, the oil from such an impact wouldn't seep into the har-pan beneath the asphalt all that quickly.
If only it had, indeed, been the rainy season. He'd be slipping all around in that case, and my engine would get some cooling. But it wasn't.
My heart was pumping faster than the three-cylinder car I was now driving. Steam blew out from under the hood, which was good in this case because once the steam stopped, so would the engine.
I stayed away from the major streets for one obvious reason, and also the cul-de-sacs, for another obvious reason.
Just when steam began to sputter out in deadening wafts, I turned a corner and found myself on a side street by the Clovis Police Station. I jumped out to run to it, but I think he must have given up and tried to go back the way he’d come. I don't know if he dumped his bike, or crashed into a house, but I couldn't hear his pipes anymore. If only he'd followed me, he would have found that this police station was situated, up at the other end, on a major thoroughfare.
Some people say that they can still hear the ghost of the lone, lost scuzzbag with the tire iron, blatting through the side streets of Clovis, CA, looking for his way back to his cheating, big-tittied bitch.
Well, she never went back to work at that high-end burger joint, but I did. The ground their own beef for their 1/2 lb burgers in their own butcher shop. The first thing you saw on the way in the big place was a big, double glass window of the butcher workshop, so you could see that, yes, your hamburger was freshly cut off a carcass and then ground up.
They had their own bakery, on the right side of the entry, past the cash registers, so that they could bake their own special-sized buns, and also desserts for the ice cream shoppe directly ahead. Next was a 20 foot long salad-and-condiments bar for toppings. But these were meant solely for the burger. You put these ingredients on your burger yourself. They even had a cauldron of melted cheese sauce for your next heart attack and fries. Now I'm all hungry.
Soon, I had enough money to go in halves on one of the best rides I'd ever owned. Me and my bud bought a 1972 Ford LTD Brahman with a V-8 that had checkered racing flags on both sides of the number “429” on the engine block. This big bitch had doors almost four feet long (she was a coupe, you see) and bench seats big enough to hold eight large people. Forest green paint with a black rag covered hardtop (not a convertible), and my favorite part: whitewalls. All I needed were some white penny loafers and a matching white belt, just like uncle Gus from Augusta, godamma chummy.
When you stomped on the accelerator while in Park, the engine torqued to your left, and the whole car rolled to your right. Yes, I crashed her. Too much engine, not enough brakes or brains.
To be continued next week, ayuh.
Imagine this bitch in forest green with a black top, and you get the idea.
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out.
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