Give It Hell
Yesterday I got a ride to the plasma bank from a guy in an old Buick sedan. Settling into the weathered upholstery I drifted away from the present and into the sepia tones of the memories of my youth. The car looked like the metal and chrome grandson of the old blue Buick that my grandpa used to lug the family to church on Sunday and haul bags of fertilizer back from the mill on Monday. Despite its valued domestic duties the old Buick served first and foremost as a farm vehicle. Dried soybeans bounced across the dashboard as it bounded out of the dried mud craters of Jurassic John Deers never envisioned by the egghead engineers of planned obsolescence at GM.
"Give it hell!" He would yell imploring the boat of an automobile out of a ditch in a soybean field as he made his appointed rounds with wide-eyed grandson in tow. I would laugh with delight and parrot his command to "give it hell" while wallowing in the sheer ecstasy of cursing out loud without fear of reprisal. The jovial mountain of a man wearing tattered overalls commanded all eight cylinders of that beast on wild bumpy rides through soybean fields with the gusto of a professional stock car driver all the while keeping a diligent eye out for any dead patches or pesky weeds in the soybean crops. The drives in the old Buick were work for my grandpa, but for the eight-year-old in the passenger seat they were more about the rare ability to curse and tell dirty jokes away from the hawk-like gaze of his eldest daughter.
"Gene, Gene had a machine. Frank, Frank turned the crank. Joe, Joe made it go. Art, Art let a fart and blew the whole damn thing apart!" Grandpa's cautionary tales of flatulence were my personal favorites.
"Goddamn it. What the fuck!" Grandpa? I don't remember that one. I came to as the grizzled thirty-something driver of the blue Buick of reality jerked the wheel out of oncoming traffic as he attempted to find a burning cigarette that had landed in his lap. We had narrowly avoided a collision with a greasy-fingered victim of Captain D's returning to the clogged automotive artery of Wal Mart Boulevard.
Not phased by the brush with catastrophe the driver gave out a hoot of delight as he picked up the remainder of his burning Marlboro cigarette and gave it a healthy drag. I was hoping that my blood pressure would recover to the acceptable levels for plasma donation by the time we reached the end of the stretch of sprawling corporate hell where my favorite plasma bank was located. He offered me a cigarette and I eagerly accepted, hoping to calm my harried nerves before the bloodletting.
My heart jumped as the driver diverted his attention from matters of the road to the search for the cigarette pack located somewhere on the floorboard of the Buick. There were no comforting soybeans jumping across the dashboard of my memory as I yelled a string of profanities that would certainly make my mother cringe. I don't think the driver realized why I yelled "Oh shit!" because he did not look up from his search until we rammed into the poor compact car in front of us destined for a subpar meal and annoying server at Ruby Tuesday's.
In a serious and cautionary tone the driver instructed me to "hold on man" as we made haste through the intersection. I don't think that the driver of the Buick enjoyed the pesky hassles of paperwork involved with automobile accidents. The Buick fled the scene and made a b-line for the plasma bank. Hearing the tires screech as my ride peeled out of the parking lot of the plasma center to evade the authorities I could only think of one thing to say.
Give it hell.
"Give it hell!" He would yell imploring the boat of an automobile out of a ditch in a soybean field as he made his appointed rounds with wide-eyed grandson in tow. I would laugh with delight and parrot his command to "give it hell" while wallowing in the sheer ecstasy of cursing out loud without fear of reprisal. The jovial mountain of a man wearing tattered overalls commanded all eight cylinders of that beast on wild bumpy rides through soybean fields with the gusto of a professional stock car driver all the while keeping a diligent eye out for any dead patches or pesky weeds in the soybean crops. The drives in the old Buick were work for my grandpa, but for the eight-year-old in the passenger seat they were more about the rare ability to curse and tell dirty jokes away from the hawk-like gaze of his eldest daughter.
"Gene, Gene had a machine. Frank, Frank turned the crank. Joe, Joe made it go. Art, Art let a fart and blew the whole damn thing apart!" Grandpa's cautionary tales of flatulence were my personal favorites.
"Goddamn it. What the fuck!" Grandpa? I don't remember that one. I came to as the grizzled thirty-something driver of the blue Buick of reality jerked the wheel out of oncoming traffic as he attempted to find a burning cigarette that had landed in his lap. We had narrowly avoided a collision with a greasy-fingered victim of Captain D's returning to the clogged automotive artery of Wal Mart Boulevard.
Not phased by the brush with catastrophe the driver gave out a hoot of delight as he picked up the remainder of his burning Marlboro cigarette and gave it a healthy drag. I was hoping that my blood pressure would recover to the acceptable levels for plasma donation by the time we reached the end of the stretch of sprawling corporate hell where my favorite plasma bank was located. He offered me a cigarette and I eagerly accepted, hoping to calm my harried nerves before the bloodletting.
My heart jumped as the driver diverted his attention from matters of the road to the search for the cigarette pack located somewhere on the floorboard of the Buick. There were no comforting soybeans jumping across the dashboard of my memory as I yelled a string of profanities that would certainly make my mother cringe. I don't think the driver realized why I yelled "Oh shit!" because he did not look up from his search until we rammed into the poor compact car in front of us destined for a subpar meal and annoying server at Ruby Tuesday's.
In a serious and cautionary tone the driver instructed me to "hold on man" as we made haste through the intersection. I don't think that the driver of the Buick enjoyed the pesky hassles of paperwork involved with automobile accidents. The Buick fled the scene and made a b-line for the plasma bank. Hearing the tires screech as my ride peeled out of the parking lot of the plasma center to evade the authorities I could only think of one thing to say.
Give it hell.
posted by Yonder Vittles at 10:38 PM
4 Comments:
As an informed party here, I would like this opportunity to call you a liar. I wish you weren't such a liar. Please stop. Thanks.
I would like to thank the two Journal of an American Nomad fans for checking in with me today. Two comments in one day may be a new record. I think a NEA grant check may be coming my way shortly. Does anyone else out there in the United States of Irony find it strange that both of these characters share my handle? Flattery will get you everywhere boys. I will get the fellas down in the promotional department to send out a couple of JAN t-shirts right away!
Post Script: Dear nicholas j maier, there exists a genre of literature called creative non-fiction. There is a great "liar" named David Sedaris you should read.
A Little known fact: My father, much like The Simpsons creator, Matt Groening, gave all of the characters on his cartoon family the middle initial "J" as an homage to the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
does anybody, besides j.maiers, actually read this goddamn thing? cam j, i'd like to see this g-rated version of this crap. perhaps it would actually be entertaining (like shrek is for example. oh man that talking donkey is too much!). i don't know who this dadio character is, but you definately don't get "it." unless of course the "it" that you mention is actually representing the "not it" that i am referencing. then you do, or don't, which ever the case may be. okay, final question for this clan of maiers: is there a mama maier out there? she seems to be missing from this fun little circle jerk you kids have going on here. anyway, keep up the good work. all 2 of j.o.a.n.'s nonmaier readers are eating it up.
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