"By midnight Humphrey and I were stinking drunk, and we fell to talking with a fellow named Jack who was only twenty-two but looked a lot like he robbed gas stations and shot liquor-store owners to get his heart started in the morning. He had one of those sharp Appalachian faces with a row of missing teeth and some scars, and he'd recently shot himself in the stomach over something to do with an estranged wife. He showed us where the bullet had come out. Now he was living in a trailer with another lady and her five kids but they were all off at her mother's canning something, so he invited us to stay with him. We were sure he was a homicidal psychopath and we'd be torture-murdered in the night, but it was that or sleep in the car.The man was a titan of letters.
Actually, Jack turned out to be a perfectly amiable guy. And it was all we could do to keep him from persuading us to take a little vacation and spend a week down there fishing for razorback pigs, or whatever they do on vacation in the piney woods. But we didn't know that until morning, and by then we were much too hung over to apologize properly."
That story and more of his automotive journalism are compiled in Driving Like Crazy, by the way. Definitely worth adding to your collection.
 |
| 1957 Buick Special |
.
