(no subject)
Regretfully I did not swing the wheel for that parking exclaimed FIREWORKS, for it really was a last chance establishment. Something kept me going.
The only time I had been into a shop dedicated to gunpowder I was maybe a twelve year old. There were isles of bins and shelves of pyrotechnics. It was a farmers market of fireworks, an amusement park of magnesium, a museum of psychedelic goddamn arson. This nearly superseded the comfort of my aunt's tiny sedan, my older cousin endlessly flipping a tape deck of Eddie Murphy's Delirious. You didn't have a childhood until you've lip synched Boogie in Your Butt to your parents from another speeding car. "You put a bee in a butt, you put a tree in a butt." Nevertheless, the fireworks store has been a reclusive pilgrimage of mine for a long time.
At a service station, I was able to find an old map of the Eastern United States floating about my cab. An orange highlighter works its way up I-75 as a crack of lightning that splits the four winds in twenty year old fluorescence. This map might have navigated us on that long ago trip to the fireworks megaplex. I might have held this very map up to the speeding window, pointed at it and told my brother to put it in his butt. If that was the case this map could never guide me wrong. It didn't.
I snuck in through a little town north of Chattanooga just after sunset. The route angled through a maze of brick storefronts with their cataract windows and sent its way east into the darkness. The stop signs gave way to train tracks and junkyards and lonely little houses with their occasional lonely halogen beacons and their house centipedes. Eventually, the gloaming sucked down into the hills and the last set of headlights in my mirror turned away into the black. There was nobody behind me and nobody in front of me. I drove with my window open, allowing the rain to tickle at my arm, the smell of the cool night air, the imposing metronome of strange insects to fill my car. Mist crawled out of the ditches and rubbed at my wheels. Weird shapes dribbled down my windshield and shards of light bounced from the slick road at odd angles, projecting onto the trees, jumping limb to limb. Every once in a while an opening to my left or my right allowed me to glimpse the surface of a cool inky lake and the smudgy silhouette of mountains. You don't get these kind of perks on the interstate.
I've never pulled into a hotel tired before. Usually I'm antsy or ahead of schedule but I felt I just drove through a dream. I checked in and knocked out on the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in.
The only time I had been into a shop dedicated to gunpowder I was maybe a twelve year old. There were isles of bins and shelves of pyrotechnics. It was a farmers market of fireworks, an amusement park of magnesium, a museum of psychedelic goddamn arson. This nearly superseded the comfort of my aunt's tiny sedan, my older cousin endlessly flipping a tape deck of Eddie Murphy's Delirious. You didn't have a childhood until you've lip synched Boogie in Your Butt to your parents from another speeding car. "You put a bee in a butt, you put a tree in a butt." Nevertheless, the fireworks store has been a reclusive pilgrimage of mine for a long time.
At a service station, I was able to find an old map of the Eastern United States floating about my cab. An orange highlighter works its way up I-75 as a crack of lightning that splits the four winds in twenty year old fluorescence. This map might have navigated us on that long ago trip to the fireworks megaplex. I might have held this very map up to the speeding window, pointed at it and told my brother to put it in his butt. If that was the case this map could never guide me wrong. It didn't.
I snuck in through a little town north of Chattanooga just after sunset. The route angled through a maze of brick storefronts with their cataract windows and sent its way east into the darkness. The stop signs gave way to train tracks and junkyards and lonely little houses with their occasional lonely halogen beacons and their house centipedes. Eventually, the gloaming sucked down into the hills and the last set of headlights in my mirror turned away into the black. There was nobody behind me and nobody in front of me. I drove with my window open, allowing the rain to tickle at my arm, the smell of the cool night air, the imposing metronome of strange insects to fill my car. Mist crawled out of the ditches and rubbed at my wheels. Weird shapes dribbled down my windshield and shards of light bounced from the slick road at odd angles, projecting onto the trees, jumping limb to limb. Every once in a while an opening to my left or my right allowed me to glimpse the surface of a cool inky lake and the smudgy silhouette of mountains. You don't get these kind of perks on the interstate.
I've never pulled into a hotel tired before. Usually I'm antsy or ahead of schedule but I felt I just drove through a dream. I checked in and knocked out on the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in.