Cars, 'Coons and Cotton

Last week I pulled a copy of Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby off my bookshelf and sank into my Smoky-Blue Cotton-Shredded Oversize Couchy-Wouchy Smoochy-Pie for a little read.

As usual, I was sucked into Wolfe's electric descriptions of life in the 60's (I have read this book, oh, just a few times) and sank into his essay "The Last American Hero" about Junior Johnson and stock car racing, whiskey and 'coons. Real Dukes of Hazzard stuff - bootlegging moonshine, shaking off the police, and gunnin' it at dirt tracks in North Carolina before hittin' it big in NASCAR. Yee-haw!

So today I am in Oklahoma, (hey all y'all) which I know is a few states over from North Carolina and the legendary whiskey runs of Junior. BUT, wouldn't you know it, I am on a bus today heading out of Fort Sills and into Albus (huh?) and come smack dab into the middle of rural southern America with its stock car loving culture. A black Ford F150 promoting a tattoo ink shop pulls out from behind the bus and passes us in the left lane while pulling a Coke sponsored banged-up mean machine. A few more miles along three race cars rest in a yard next to a chain-link fence and a cotton field. A few minutes later we pass a Speedway promoting their crash-up next weekend. We pass lots of 'coon roadkill.

I love it when little elements in my life connect in unexpected ways. Like an omen. Like fate. Like I need to hit the racetrack. Vrroooommmm!

Then again, maybe being behind the wheel of my mini-van is just finally getting to me.