Southern Nights

I dropped off my sugar baby this morning at the shop -- my pearl-white Ford Explorer, sweet as honey and prettier and sportier than any ole' Corvette or Lamberghini (those things are built so low to the ground, I bump my head trying to get in, not to mention that my knees don't bend that far anymore). I should not care for a vehicle as much as I do that one...it's just a thing, easily wrecked or disposed of. It's my third Ford Explorer, with all of them ferrying me and my people and my junk far and wide. They've all three been the most faithful of vehicles, with hundreds of thousands of miles on them and still beautiful when I've sold them. I'm asking God to make this particular one go 350,000 miles, 'cause it's just the juiciest. We've done it before, with two Ford vans (one of them 390K and we still sold it for a decent price!). My car salesman uncle used to highly disrespect Fords. He was a Chevy man to the core and loved to say: "Ford -- Found On The Road Dead!" But that has not been our vast and varied experience. At any of our family events here on Magnolia Street, you will see the driveway filled with trucks, SUVs and mayhem, mostly of the Ford variety. A tiny little Ford Focus might have been what saved us from financial ruin, many years ago, as it hauled Ken and I from here to Outer Atlanta Mongolia for years (me with my ladders, paint and supplies impossibly squeezed in on the passenger side). 

Thinking of all these things this morning, and especially our many uncles, as I smelled the intoxicating scent of spent motor oil and diesel fuel at the shop... my mind drifted to my childhood (oh, once again). I remember hot, muggy summer nights where the men in my family were gathered mysteriously around a vehicle, usually in some basement or barn out back. The womenfolk would be in the house talking, smoke wafting from my aunts' heads. The laughter was tinged with that husky, throaty cigarette-affected sound that actors crave (but have to decide whether the shortened life span is worth the risk). Us kids would be barefoot, playing and running in the yard, darkness swallowing us like a blanket. By night's end, we would be sweaty and filthy. Sometimes my Mama wouldn't even let us come in the house once we'd passed the point of no return. I had about 30-something cousins on the Slate side, and we all reveled in the simple childhood play of dirt, sweat, hide-and-seek and my favorite: "Run Away From the Orphanage" -- made-up dramas with Shakespearian-worthy narratives. Mama, even though she is the cleanest human I know, didn't keep us penned up or cosseted when it came to all the soil in our lives. She let us live and play to our hearts' content (there was always work, but all in good time). We were expected to gingerly sit in the car until we got home and then were whisked to our spotless tub where we were summarily scrubbed back to pinkness. 

A Southern Gothic childhood is sincerely the best childhood.