“
Gordie: Alright, alright, Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?
Vern: If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That's easy-Pez. Cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it.
Teddy: Goofy's a dog. He's definitely a dog.
Gordie: I knew the $64,000 question was fixed. There's no way anybody could know that much about opera!
Chris: He can't be a dog. He drives a car and wears a hat.
Gordie: Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you notice they never get anywhere? They just keep wagon training.
Vern: Oh, God. That's weird. What the hell is Goofy?
”
”
Stephen King (The Body)
“
When we pulled in, the customs officer looked in the back. The back of the wagon was filled with cases stenciled PINK FLOYD--LONDON.
'Got Pink Floyd in the back of the car, do you?' he asked.
'Righto, mate. We shrunk 'em and stuck 'em in fookin' boxes, we did,' said Nigel.
Amazingly, the customs officer laughed and waved us through.
”
”
John Elder Robison (Look Me in the Eye)
“
The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”
“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.
”
”
Marjorie Pay Hinckley
“
Some friends complete us, while others complicate us. Maybe you feel as if there were nothing better in the world than driving in a car, listening to music with friends, looking for an all-night donut shop. Nobody says a thing, and it is perfect. Maybe your lifelong fascination with harmony finally began to make sense in those scenes, packed in your family's station wagon, singing along to "God Only Knows," waiting in the parking lot until the song was over.
”
”
Hua Hsu (Stay True)
“
He started to engage the gears, and then suddenly paused with a feeling of uneasiness. He did not regret leaving his own car, but still something worried him. In a moment he remembered. He went back to his old car, and took out the hammer. He carries it over to the station wagon and laid it at his feet. Then he drove out of the garage.
”
”
George R. Stewart (Earth Abides)
“
There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.
At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
Other women – women in the past, tougher women – have dealt with babies in confined spaces, such as ocean ships and covered wagons. But maybe not cars. It’s hard to get smells out of car upholstery, so you’d have to be extra careful about the spitting up and so forth. —
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Heart Goes Last)
“
Wouldn’t hear of it. Long as you don’t need me to drive a getaway car for your bank robbery I’ll happily take you wherever you need to go. Think of it as the town welcome wagon.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
“
Modern states with democratic forms of government dispense with hereditary leviathans, but they have not found a way to dispense with inequalities of wealth and power backed up by an enormously complex system of criminal justice. Yet for 30,000 years after takeoff, life went on without kings, queens, prime ministers, presidents, parliaments, congresses, cabinets, governors, mayors, police officers, sheriffs, marshals, generals, lawyers, bailiffs, judges, district attorneys, court clerks, patrol cars, paddy wagons, jails, and penitentiaries. How did our ancestors manage to leave home without them?
”
”
John Zerzan (Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections)
“
I still don't know why we didn't hire a car
to get around Ireland."
"When I was a kid, I always dreamed about living in Ireland. I used to pretend I was one of
the traveling people, driving my gypsy wagon from village to village. Used to picture a dark
gypsy kidnapping me and having his way with me. Exciting stuff." Katy grinned at her. "Could
still happen, you know."
"Katy, we have a horse that's so laid-back I have to keep checking to see if he's dead.
”
”
Nina Bangs (Night Games)
“
Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that follow, cascading out, each tethered to the anchors set before. Many of the choices you make every day are reruns of past decisions; as if traveling channels dug into a dirt road by a wagon train of selections, you follow the path created by your former self. External anchors, like prices before a sale or ridiculous requests, are obvious and can be avoided. Internal, self-generated anchors, are not so easy to bypass. You visit the same circuit of Web sites every day, eat basically the same few breakfasts. When it comes time to buy new cat food or take your car in for repairs, you have old favorites. Come election time, you pretty much already know who will and will not get your vote. These choices, so predictable—ask yourself what drives them. Are old anchors controlling your current decisions?
”
”
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself)
“
After the opposition had failed to negotiate us into a compromise, it turned to subtler means for blocking the protest; namely, to conquer by dividing. False rumors were spread concerning the leaders of the movement. Negro workers were told by their white employers that their leaders were only concerned with making money out of the movement. Others were told that the Negro leaders rode big cars while they walked. During this period the rumor was spread that I had purchased a brand new Cadillac for myself and a Buick station wagon for my wife. Of course none of this was true.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (King Legacy Book 1))
“
Nowadays he drove the car into town to fetch his grandfather from habit alone, and though he still considered forty five miles an hour merely cruising speed, he no longer took cold and fiendish pleasure in turning curves on two wheels or in detaching mules from wagons by striking the whiffle-trees with his bumper in passing.
”
”
William Faulkner (Flags in the Dust)
“
And there were likely people who thought one could not interpret men's feelings by the cars they drove.
But when they moved onto the street, Ove drove a Saab 96 and Rune a Volvo 244. After the accident Ove bought a Saab 95 so he'd have space for Sonja's wheelchair. That same year Rune bought a Volvo 245 to have space for a stroller. Three years later Sonja got a more modern wheelchair and Ove bought a hatchback, a Saab 900. Rune bought a Volvo 265 because Anita had started talking about another child.
Then Ove bought two more Saab 900s and after that his Saab 9000. Rune bought a Volvo 265 and eventually a Volvo 745 station wagon. But no more children came. One evening Sonja came home and told Ove that Anita had been to the doctor.
And a week later a Volvo 740 stood parked in Rune's garage. The sedan model.
Ove saw it when he washed his Saab. In the evening Rune found a half bottle of whiskey outside his door. They never spoke about it.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove)
“
All at once I was standing at our front window one day, looking down at the driveway, and Natalie was buckling the baby into the car. This was a Volvo wagon her parents had given us when Opal was born. And I watched her shut the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side, and I said to myself, ‘Why, great God in heaven! I seem to have married one of those station wagon mommies!’ So we got divorced.
”
”
Anne Tyler (A Patchwork Planet)
“
One summer in Peter’s home state, Minnesota, he worked as a puppeteer with a mobile puppet stage. He’d hitch the puppet wagon to his car and drive from park to park, entertaining kids. One day the hitch came loose and the wagon tipped over, scattering puppets all across County Road C. The police arrived to survey the scene. “The paperwork on this is going to take a while,” one of them said. Peter, nervous he was going to be late to his next gig, asked why. The cop nodded at the scattered puppet bodies. “We’ve got a lot of casualties here,” he deadpanned.
”
”
Lauren Graham (Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between)
“
It may seem that there are many followers of Jesus, but if they were honestly to define the relationship they have with him I am not sure it would be accurate to describe them as followers. It seems to me that there is a more suitable word to describe them. They are not followers of Jesus. They are fans of Jesus. Here is the most basic definition of fan in the dictionary: “An enthusiastic admirer” It’s the guy who goes to the football game with no shirt and a painted chest. He sits in the stands and cheers for his team. He’s got a signed jersey hanging on his wall at home and multiple bumper stickers on the back of his car. But he’s never in the game. He never breaks a sweat or takes a hard hit in the open field. He knows all about the players and can rattle off their latest stats, but he doesn’t know the players. He yells and cheers, but nothing is really required of him. There is no sacrifice he has to make. And the truth is, as excited as he seems, if the team he’s cheering for starts to let him down and has a few off seasons, his passion will wane pretty quickly. After several losing seasons you can expect him to jump off the fan wagon and begin cheering for some other team. He is an enthusiastic admirer.
”
”
Kyle Idleman (Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus)
“
I saw a group of women standing by a station wagon. There were seven of them, pushing cartons and shopping bags over the open tailgate into the rear of the car. Celery stalks and boxes of Gleem stuck out of the bags. I took the camera from my lap, raised it to my eye, leaned out the window a bit, and trained it on the ladies as if I were shooting. One of them saw me and immediately nudged her companion but without taking her eyes off the camera. They waved. One by one the others reacted. They all smiled and waved. They seemed supremely happy. Maybe they sensed that they were waving at themselves, waving in the hope that someday if evidence is demanded of their passage through time, demanded by their own doubts, a moment might be recalled when they stood in a dazzling plaza in the sun and were registered on the transparent plastic ribbon; and thirty years away, on that day when proof is needed, it could be hoped that their film is being projected on a screen somewhere, and there they stand, verified, in chemical reincarnation, waving at their own old age, smiling their reassurance to the decades, a race of eternal pilgrims in a marketplace in the dusty sunlight, seven arms extended in a fabulous salute to the forgetfulness of being. What better proof (if proof is ever needed) that they have truly been alive? Their happiness, I think, was made of this, the anticipation of incontestable evidence, and had nothing to do with the present moment, which would pass with all the others into whatever is the opposite of eternity. I pretended to keep shooting, gathering their wasted light, letting their smiles enter the lens and wander the camera-body seeking the magic spool, the gelatin which captures the image, the film which threads through the waiting gate. Sullivan came out of the supermarket and I lowered the camera. I could not help feeling that what I was discovering here was power of a sort.
”
”
Don DeLillo (Américana)
“
Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.
”
”
Barbara W. Tuchman (The Guns of August)
“
A massive ball of brown water, uprooted tree trunks, sheared rooftops, bloated horses, stiff dogs and cats, shattered church windows, broken pews, sodden Bibles, Memorial Day flags, busted brick walls, twisted train cars, splintered rail lines, bowed streetlamps, upturned carriages, naked dolls, bent tin soldiers, dented red wagons, books, black stoves, beds, tables, armchairs, mantels, photographs, love letters, wedding dresses, baby booties, and masses of drowned humanity careens straight for us. Neither Eugene Eggar nor I can move.
”
”
Mary Hogan (The Woman in the Photo)
“
Old snow was layered over the ground, the parked cars that hadn’t been disturbed, the tough little shrubs that would bear the snow’s impossible weight until spring. She could feel her own brittleness as the frozen air did battle with her coat. It was no worse than Chicago, it might even have been two degrees warmer, and still it was like walking into a wall of broken glass. She pictured those early settlers in their covered wagons crossing the prairies in search of a better life. Why did they stop here? Were the horses lame? Was it springtime? Were they so hungry that they brought their wagons to a halt and said, This is far enough?
”
”
Ann Patchett (Commonwealth)
“
The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.
Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.
”
”
Chris Hedges (I Don't Believe in Atheists)
“
When it comes to our current fears regarding unsupervised children, we see both versions of folk wisdom at work. In the sixties or seventies, a child could walk to school or wait in a car because people were better, the world less violent, we say. But also, parents were dumber. They simply didn’t know. Sure, parents used to leave kids on their own, but they also let them drink Kool-Aid by the vat and play with toy weapons the NRA might find a touch aggro. They let them build forts in the trunks of station wagons careening down the freeway or swim without sunscreen until their skin blistered. Parents let kids wait in cars because they were idiots. But also, on average, because it was safer, because people were better then, gentler, less monstrous. It sounds so nice and pleasant, this safer, simpler past. It sounds almost too good to be true.
”
”
Kim Brooks (Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear)
“
No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
“
In the Naked Bed, in Plato’s Cave
In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
Hearing the milkman’s chop,
His striving up the stair, the bottle’s chink,
I rose from bed, lit a cigarette,
And walked to the window. The stony street
Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand,
The street-lamp’s vigil and the horse’s patience.
The winter sky’s pure capital
Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes.
Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose
Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves’ waterfalls,
Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer.
A car coughed, starting. Morning, softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of beginning
Again and again,
while History is unforgiven.
”
”
Delmore Schwartz (Screeno: Stories & Poems)
“
Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. Every Friday. He hated the physical imposition that it was—those things weigh about eighty pounds—but he did it. I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He’d ask her about being a movie star’s child. He’d say to her, ‘When you were a little girl, when did it dawn on you that something was up, that this wasn’t the way everyone grew up?’ She told him it was when the tour buses went up and down their street in Beverly Hills. She said she never saw her parents’ movies until she was a teenager. Her parents were trying to keep her normal and so they downplayed those movies around the house. Even the rich kid’s life in Beverly Hills with the other movie stars’ kids seemed normal enough until the tour buses stopped in front of her house and she could hear the tour guide saying, ‘This is Carlton Pennington’s house, where he lives with his wife, Eve Frame.’ “She told him about the production that birthday parties were for the movie stars’ kids—clowns, magicians, ponies, puppet shows, and every child attended by a nanny in a white nurse’s uniform. At the dining table, behind every child would be a nanny. The Penningtons had their own screening room and they ran movies. Kids would come over. Fifteen, twenty kids.
”
”
Philip Roth (I Married a Communist (The American Trilogy, #2))
“
Oh, by the way, security told me earlier that some guy showed up, claiming to be your assistant.”
“Already? What time is it?”
“It’s almost one o’clock,” he says. “Are you telling me you actually hired someone?”
My heart drops.
I shove past Cliff, ignoring him as he calls for me, wanting his question answered. I head straight for security, spotting Jack standing along the side with a guard, looking somewhere between disturbed and amused.
“Strangest shit I’ve ever witnessed in Jersey,” Jack says, looking me over. “And that’s saying something, because I once saw a chimpanzee roller skating, and that was weird as fuck.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment, even though I know it isn’t one,” I say, grabbing his arm and making him follow me. It’s about a two-and-a-half hour drive to Bennett Landing, but I barely have two hours. “Please tell me you drove.”
Before he can respond, I hear Cliff shouting as he follows. “Johnny! Where are you going?”
“Oh, buddy.” Jack glances behind us at Cliff. “Am I your getaway driver?”
“Something like that,” I say. “You ever play Grand Theft Auto?”
“Every fucking day, man.”
“Good,” I say, continuing to walk, despite Cliff attempting to catch up. “If you can get me where I need to be, there will be one hell of a reward in it for you.”
His eyes light up as he pulls out a set of car keys. “Mission accepted.”
There’s a crowd gathered around set. They figured out we’re here. They know we’re wrapping today. I scan the area, looking for a way around them.
“Where’d you park?” I ask, hoping it’s anywhere but right across the street.
“Right across the street,” he says.
Fuck.
I’m going to have to go through the crowd.
“You sure you, uh, don’t want to change?” Jack asks, his eyes flickering to me, conflicted.
“No time for that.”
The crowd spots me, and they start going crazy, making Cliff yell louder to get my attention, but I don’t stop. I slip off of set, past the metal barricades and right into the street, as security tries to keep the crowd back, but it’s a losing game. So we run, and I follow Jack to an old station wagon, the tan paint faded.
“This is what you drive?”
“Not all of us grew up with trust funds,” he says, slapping his hand against the rusted hood. “This was my inheritance.”
“Not judging,” I say, pausing beside it. “It’s just all very ‘70s suburban housewife.”
“That sounds like judgment, asshole.”
I open the passenger door to get in the car when Cliff catches up, slightly out of breath from running. “What are you doing, Johnny? You’re leaving?”
“I told you I had somewhere to be.”
“This is ridiculous,” he says, anger edging his voice. “You need to sort out your priorities.”
“That’s a damn good idea,” I say. “Consider this my notice.”
“Your notice?”
“I’m taking a break,” I say. “From you. From this. From all of it.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“You think so?” I ask, looking him right in the face. “Because I think the mistake I made was trusting you.”
I get in the car, slamming the door, leaving Cliff standing on the sidewalk, fuming.
Jack starts the engine, cutting his eyes at me. “So, where to? The unemployment office?”
“Home,” I say, “and I need to get there as soon as possible, because somebody is waiting for me, and I can't disappoint her.
”
”
J.M. Darhower (Ghosted)
“
So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.
There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.
Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-five, forty-five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.
Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.
The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.”
Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.
But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
“
When Brad Bird was directing The Incredibles, he had a recurring anxiety dream. In this dream, he was driving down a winding and precarious stretch of highway in a rickety old station wagon, with no one else in the car. Apparently, it was up to him to pilot the vehicle. “But I was in the backseat!” he says. “For some reason, I still had a steering wheel, but my visibility was terrible because of where I was sitting. Basically, all I could do is say to myself, ‘Don’t crash! Don’t crash! Don’t crash!’ ” The takeaway, as he puts it: “Sometimes, as a director, you’re driving. And other times, you’re letting the car drive.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
Activities to Develop the Proprioceptive System Lifting and Carrying Heavy Loads—Have the child pick up and carry soft-drink bottles to the picnic; laundry baskets upstairs; or grocery bags, filled with nonbreakables, into the house. He can also lug a box of books, a bucket of blocks, or a pail of water from one spot to another. Pushing and Pulling—Have the child push or drag grocery bags from door to kitchen. Let him push the stroller, vacuum, rake, shove heavy boxes, tow a friend on a sled, or pull a loaded wagon. Hard muscular work jazzes up the muscles. Hanging by the Arms—Mount a chinning bar in a doorway, or take your child to the park to hang from the monkey bars. When she suspends her weight from her hands, her stretching muscles send sensory messages to her brain. When she shifts from hand to hand as she travels underneath the monkey bars, she is developing upper-body strength. Hermit Crab—Place a large bag of rice or beans on the child’s back and let her move around with a heavy “shell” on her back. Joint Squeeze—Put one hand on the child’s forearm and the other on his upper arm; slowly press toward and away from his elbow. Repeat at his knee and shoulder. Press down on his head. Straighten and bend his fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and toes. These extension and flexion techniques provide traction and compression to his joints and are effective when he’s stuck in tight spaces, such as church pews, movie theaters, cars, trains, and especially airplanes where the air pressure changes. Body Squeeze—Sit on the floor behind your child, straddling him with your legs. Put your arms around his knees, draw them toward his chest, and squeeze hard. Holding tight, rock him forward and back.
”
”
Carol Stock Kranowitz (The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder)
“
Occasionally he’d get a letter like the one in 1947 from the silly attorney in Ohio, chastising him for his parsimonious treatment of his Negro valet, Rochester, and threatening to sue on Rochester’s behalf. But as Cleveland Amory pointed out in the Saturday Evening Post, the real Rochester wasn’t complaining: he “has never been anybody’s valet, has a block-large estate and three servants of his own, drives an expensive car and a big station wagon, and, when not working—which he does two days a week for some $700 per air-time minute—spends his leisure hours either yachting or supervising his well-stocked racing stable.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
By 1900, electric delivery wagons, trucks, buses, ambulances, and taxis were roaming city streets across the country.
”
”
Seth Fletcher (Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy)
“
Next Day
Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,
Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I’ve become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.
When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car
See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile
Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind
Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water--
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,
My husband away at work--I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:
I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.
And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me
How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I’m anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.
”
”
Randall Jarrell
“
When I wrote The Betsy, I spent a lot of time in Detroit with the Ford family. The old man running the place had supplied me with Fords, a Mustang, that station wagon we still have…. After he read the book and I was flying home from New York the day after it was published, he made a phone call to the office on Sunset and asked for all the cars to be returned. I guess he didn’t like the book.
”
”
Harold Robbins (The Betsy)
“
Downstairs they exited the building into a small employee parking lot and headed straight for a sports car that looked like it belonged in a James Bond movie. It was sleek, with tinted windows and a matte black paint job. As she walked toward it, Sara wondered if it came fully loaded with secret weapons and an ejector seat. She was just about to run her fingers along the body when Mother called her. “Sorry, but that’s not ours,” he said. She turned to see that he and Sydney had stopped at an oldish Volvo station wagon that looked more mom than Bond.
”
”
James Ponti (City Spies (City Spies, #1))
“
As it was, getting out of the car that night Coolidge said to Jager: “It’s wonderful to ride in a horseless wagon.” Then a pause: “But it won’t amount to much!
”
”
William Allen White (A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge)
“
Miss Taggart, it is not my place to call you, but nobody else will,” said the voice that came on the wire, this time; the voice sounded young and too calm. “In another day or two, a disaster’s going to happen here the like of which they’ve never seen, and they won’t be able to hide it any longer, only it will be too late by then, and maybe it’s too late already.” “What is it? Who are you?” “One of your employees of the Minnesota Division, Miss Taggart. In another day or two, the trains will stop running out of here—and you know what that means, at the height of the harvest. At the height of the biggest harvest we’ve ever had. They’ll stop, because we have no cars. The harvest freight cars have not been sent to us this year.” “What did you say?” She felt as if minutes went by between the words of the unnatural voice that did not sound like her own. “The cars have not been sent. Fifteen thousand should have been here by now. As far as I could learn, about eight thousand cars is all we got. I’ve been calling Division Headquarters for a week. They’ve been telling me not to worry. Last time, they told me to mind my own damn business. Every shed, silo, elevator, warehouse, garage and dance hall along the track is filled with wheat. At the Sherman elevators, there’s a line of farmers’ trucks and wagons two miles long, waiting on the road. At Lakewood Station, the square is packed solid and has been for three nights. They keep telling us it’s only temporary, the cars are coming and we’ll catch up. We won’t. There aren’t any cars coming. I’ve called everyone I could. I know, by the way they answer. They know, and not one of them wants to admit it. They’re scared, scared to move or speak or ask or answer. All they’re thinking of is who will be blamed when that harvest rots here around the stations—and not of who’s going to move it. Maybe nobody can, now. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it, either. But I thought you’re the only person left who’d want to know and that somebody had to tell you.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
In Minnesota, they were seizing cars from every siding, from the Mesabi Range, from the ore mines of Paul Larkin where the cars had stood waiting for a dribble of iron. They were pouring wheat into ore cars, into coal cars, into boarded stock cars that went spilling thin gold trickles along the track as they clattered off. They were pouring wheat into passenger coaches, over seats, racks and fixtures, to send it off, to get it moving, even if it went moving into trackside ditches in the sudden crash of breaking springs, in the explosions set off by burning journal boxes. They fought for movement, for movement with no thought of destination, for movement as such, like a paralytic under a stroke, struggling in wild, stiff, incredulous jerks against the realization that movement was suddenly impossible. There were no other railroads: James Taggart had killed them; there were no boats on the Lakes: Paul Larkin had killed them. There was only the single line of rail and a net of neglected highways. The trucks and wagons of waiting farmers started trickling blindly down the roads, with no maps, no gas, no feed for horses—moving south, south toward the vision of flour mills awaiting them somewhere, with no knowledge of the distances ahead, but with the knowledge of death behind them—moving, to collapse on the roads, in the gullies, in the breaks of rotted bridges. One farmer was found, half a mile south of the wreck of his truck, lying dead in a ditch, face down, still clutching a sack of wheat on his shoulders. Then rain clouds burst over the prairies of Minnesota; the rain went eating the wheat into rot at the waiting railroad stations; it went hammering the piles spilled along the roads, washing gold kernels into the soil.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
Etty spent her last days giving hope and care, “with a kind word for everyone she met on the way.” Her final words were written on a postcard and thrown off Wagon No. 12, the railroad car she rode to what she knew would be her death in Auschwitz. “We left camp singing,” she wrote. The Nazis took control of her possessions, her mobility, her work, her family, her body, and finally her life, yet she believed that they did not truly take anything at all.
”
”
John Ortberg Jr. (When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box)
“
Carrara car mart offers popular and established brands among cars like Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, Holden, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi, Mazda, Isuza and Honda. Buyers can also opt for Family Sedan or Wagon, 7 and 8 seaters, 4WD’s, people movers, sports utility vehicles, hatchbacks, convertibles or coupe’s.
”
”
Carrara car mart
“
Smith worked so tirelessly over one span of eight months that he forgot about his light blue Peugeot station wagon that he’d parked near his apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The fate of the car would later be revealed in the piles of mail that stacked up inside his front door. When he finally opened the mail in that pile, Smith found, in succession, several parking tickets, a notice that the car had been towed, a few warnings from the towing company, and finally a letter informing him that the vehicle had been sold at auction for seven hundred dollars.
”
”
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
“
Cyclists thus found their hobby not as pleasant as it could be, to say the least, and the League of American Wheelmen committed to doing something about it. A year after Fisher opened his store, the league launched a magazine, Good Roads, that became an influential mouthpiece for road improvement. Its articles were widely reprinted, which attracted members who didn’t even own bikes; at the group’s peak, Fisher and more than 102,000 others were on the rolls, and the Good Roads Movement was too big for politicians to ignore. Yes, the demand for roads was pedal-powered, and a national cause even before the first practical American car rolled out of a Chicopee, Massachusetts, shop in 1893. A few months ahead of the Duryea Motor Wagon’s debut, Congress authorized the secretary of agriculture to “make inquiry regarding public roads” and to investigate how they might be improved.
”
”
Earl Swift (The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways)
“
THE OLD CAR WAS SUNK TO THE BUMPERS WHEN I DISCOVERED IT, but my first thought was how good it would be to sleep in there and hear the rain drumming on steel rather than splattering against our tattered old tarp. I was Maggie back then. Maggie, the name my parents gave me. A nice name. But these weren’t nice times. We were tired and hungry, and the GreyDevil bonfires were burning brighter and the solar bear howls were getting closer, and every morning as I strapped my SpitStick across my back and set out to scavenge, I found myself thinking I needed a better name. A stronger name. I mean, the name Maggie was fine, it just seemed kinda underpowered. So when I scrubbed the moss from the side of that old car overlooking Goldmine Gully and saw the chrome letters—Ford Falcon—I climbed up on the hood and stood there with my steel-toed boots planted wide and I wedged my fists on my hips and I announced that Maggie was yesterday, and from this day forward I would answer only to Ford Falcon. Ford, because we had a lot of rivers to cross. Falcon, because, well, if you have a lot of rivers to cross, a pair of wings can’t hurt, and then once you get across the river it’s likely you will need sharp eyes and an even sharper beak. Yes. I know. I named myself after an old dead car. Worse yet, it’s not even a cool car. It’s a station wagon. Station wagons were how parents hauled kids around during the time between covered wagons and minivans. These days you won’t see a minivan unless it’s being pulled by a horse, and even horses are hard to come by. But if you see me you will know me because I wear a vest made from the hide of a beast that tried to kill me and lost. I skinned that beast myself, and also I skinned the lettering from that old dead car and stitched it to the vest across my shoulder blades using copper wire so that in polished chrome the world can read my name and know it: Ford Falcon.
”
”
Michael Perry (The Scavengers)
“
One of the optional subjects that we could study at Eton was motor mechanics, roughly translated as “find an old banger, pimp it up, remove the exhaust, and rag it around the fields until it dies.”
Perfect.
I found an exhausted-looking, old brown Ford Cortina station wagon that I bought for thirty pounds, and, with some friends, we geared it up big-time.
As we were only sixteen we weren’t allowed to take it on the road, but I reckoned with my seventeenth birthday looming that it would be perfect as my first, road-legal car. The only problem was that I needed to have it pass inspection, and to do that I had to get it to a garage. This involved having an adult drive with me.
I persuaded Mr. Quibell that there was no better way that he could possibly spend a Saturday afternoon than drive me to a repair garage (in his beloved Slough). I had managed to take a lucky diving catch for the house cricket team the day before, so was in Mr. Quibell’s good books--and he relented.
As soon as we got to the outskirts of Slough, though, the engine started to smoke--big-time. Soon, Mr. Quibell had to have the windshield wipers on full power, acting as a fan just to clear the smoke that was pouring out of the hood.
By the time we made it to the garage the engine was red-hot and it came as no surprise that my car failed its inspection--on more counts than any car the garage had seen for a long time, they told me.
It was back to the drawing board, but it was a great example of what a good father figure Mr. Quibell was to all those in his charge--especially to those boys who really tried, in whatever field it was. And I have always been, above all, a trier.
I haven’t always succeeded, and I haven’t always had the most talent, but I have always given of myself with great enthusiasm--and that counts for a lot. In fact my dad had always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I knew then I would do well.
I never forgot that. And he was right.
I mean, who doesn’t like to work with enthusiastic folk?
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
Rail longer than train cars ; and the hope than our reasons. (Rail plus long que les wagons ; - Et l'espoir que nos raisons.)
”
”
Charles de Leusse
“
asked insistently whether anybody had seen the certificate for Spiegel, somebody said that a blond woman had taken it, intending to give it to my Father. She was the daughter in law of the people, where we had stayed. She knew that we were on the way to the deportation. Since she could not go any further to look for us, for she would have been swallowed up by that mass of humanity, she gave it to a man, who was going as a deportee and told him: "If you see Mr. Spiegel, he is a man with a beard, give it to him." When I heard that the certificate was taken to the railroad I ran again toward the station, without the paper. I arrived as the trains were ready to leave. My parents were in a cattle car, some people, were still drinking a last gulp of water at a pump. Almost unable to shout any more, I ran from car to car, asking whether anybody had a certificate for Spiegel. A man called from inside a cattle wagon, asked me for the first name and gave me the certificate for Markus Spiegel. I frantically ran and called my parents' name and as the trains were about to leave, I got them out.
”
”
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
“
After arriving in America, John and Adeline continued on their tour of American Universities, leaving their daughter Ursula in the New York City area, after her marriage to the present-day, award-winning author, Captain Hank Bracker. At the beginning of their tour of the United States, John and Adeline purchased a vintage “Ford Woodie Station Wagon,” which they drove across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. When they prepared for their return to South Africa, they had their “Woodie” loaded into the cargo hold of the SS African Moon and proudly took the car, south of the equator, with them. At that time “Classic American Cars” were quite prestigious in South Africa.
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
Formal Simplicity: This principle stands for complex words with simple combination of morphemes (car-smoke, wagon-puller) (Clark & Berman, 1984, 548). Derived words, in which affixation causes no shift in stress, are also acquired early by preschool age children (e. g. Neutral suffixed words).
”
”
Endri Shqerra (Acquisition of Word Formation Devices in First & Second Languages: Morphological Cross-linguistic Influence)
“
It is sad, in a way, that the exploding auto is going the way of the old red streetcar, the horse-drawn milk wagon, the ice truck and other traditional and practical forms of transportation. A shotgun blast from a clump of bushes is nice in its own way, but for drama there is nothing like instant depreciation of a car with a gangster at the wheel.
”
”
Mike Royko (Early Royko: Up Against It in Chicago)
“
In the background, given my commitment to the outer ecology of environmentalism, I replaced all the company cars with diesels, which used less crude oil and lasted longer than gasoline engines. The diesel cars did pay off briefly during the Second Energy Crisis of 1979, but they gave us a lot of trouble in the long run because the diesel-powered Oldsmobile station wagons that General Motors rushed into production had nothing but a beefed-up gasoline engine (internal pressures are much greater in a diesel) and they were in the shop more often than on the road. We aggressively redesigned the stores to conserve energy. To this day, Trader Joe’s stores don’t have very many windows, and all panes of glass are very small, an idea that had an accidental payoff in every subsequent earthquake and riot. As the young lady said back there in the God of Fair Beginnings chapter, I did the right thing for the wrong reasons.
”
”
Joe Coulombe (Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys)
“
You work for 30, 40 years. 40 freaking years getting in the car, driving through traffic, dealing with BS, driving home, and taking the kids to buy sneakers?”
I realized April had come over. How long she had been listening, I didn't know.
“ And you don't want all that?”, She asked me.
“Maybe . Someday,” I said. “I don't even know if I'll go to college, but my mom's looking at an MBA for me, and I go along, mostly. Why? Because I care about business? No, because everyone's on me about my future. Got to get the good grades so you can get a good college so you can get a good business school so you can get on with some big firmware you Shuffle papers and tap on the keyboard That's it, man, that's your life so you get old and wonder what the hell you did with your life. That's not life. Not for a man, anyway.”
April cocked an eyebrow. “The way you described it, it doesn't sound like life for anyone. That won't be my life. You leave it all the good stuff: friends and family. Kids. The things you love to do."
I waved my hand, dismissing it all. “There used to be an adventure. You know? Going west in a wagon train, or going to war, or exploring some place no human being had ever been before. Now what do we have? Look at Sven. Look at that guy. He's my age, look at his life. Then look at mine or Jalil’s or your’s.”
April barked out a laugh. “He can barely talk because someone rammed a sword through his mouth. “
I nodded. “You know the difference between him and me? We're both about 16. But he's a man. I'm a boy.”
April made a face, angry, dismissive, frustrated. “What is it with you guys? Is it the testosterone? You know, David, it's the dawn of the 21st century and you live in the richest, most powerful Nation on Earth where there's almost no one starving and no one's slave and no one invading to murder and pillage and rape. And finally, finally after thousands of years of men slaughtering men, women, and children over nonsense, we have a few places on Earth where there's a little piece, a little decency a few places where most people get to be born and live their lives without total horror being rained down on them, and your reaction is, ‘this has to stop!
”
”
K.A. Applegate
“
I was standing by the car when two police officers showed up in the alley, very interested in me and the BMW in an alley where car traffic was not allowed at all, sitting there with a Belgian plate tag in the middle of the coffeeshop district, with me, the Hungarian guy, leaning to it smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for something to happen. They began to examine my IDs and started searching the car. They were looking for drugs, apparently. I had been dealing with them for a few minutes when Adam showed up at the end of the alley. I was the only one looking that way, seeing Adam walking to turn into the alley; the two officers were too busy to notice what I had witnessed. The moment Adam looked up and noticed the officers around me, the moment he was about to turn right towards us into the alley, he made a 180-degree turn, the way a bad kid would do when playing hide and seek. Catching his steps the way Mr. Bean or Benny Hill would do—I could almost hear the music too—was both very funny and very concerning. He was too stupid to be a criminal; he was such a lame criminal that he didn't even think of walking past the alley's entrance like nothing happened instead of turning around and acting so suspiciously and obviously being in the wrong. I began to wonder how the coffeeshop business would work out with this guy if he was suddenly on cocaine all the time before we even opened the club? How would not he get me in trouble when there would be kilograms of marijuana and tons of cash flying around? How could I ever quit this job even if we could manage to run the place and get rich over the next 2-3 years? How would I ever get rid of this embarrassing, childish, dangerously silly criminal guy?
By some miracle, in the car—which was used by these junkies and was usually full of smoking accessories—the cops didn't find a cigarette paper either, although they were very, very thorough. Belgian BMW wagon with a Hungarian guy, in an alley in the area full of marijuana clubs. They were sure they had me now, that they would be rewarded for such a catch. But there was nothing in the car.
I was able to show them Rachel's Belgian registration and everything, explaining that she was my girlfriend who was in Belgium at that time and we were both working for a company selling smoking accessories; I gave them my business card. I apologized for parking there and even driving into that alley with the car.
They fined me regardless. Before we started dealing with the marijuana behalf my name, we were collecting fines attributed to Adam on my name. Talk about being cheap. Apparently, he had started growing a lot of marijuana without my knowledge in a place he did not want me to find out about.
As I was driving back to Urgell, we were both very silent. I was calm but he was anxious and I could almost hear the gears spinning in his mind. Perhaps at the same moment, we both realized that if I got arrested for any reason and ended up in jail, Adam could keep the 33% profit of the coffeeshop which I had signed up for and which belonged to me.
‘Thinking quickly. Acting quicker.’
Never quick enough. The sneaker.
Adam was usually very slow,
whether he was high or low.
”
”
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
The date of the trial, Tuesday, 21 February 1804, marked the first time a steam locomotive running on rails hauled a loaded train of freight cars—in this case, about twenty-five tons of engine, iron, wagons, and men.
”
”
Richard Rhodes (Energy: A Human History)
“
K ka kangourou (kangaroo) L el miel (honey) M em mouton (sheep) N en nid (nest) O oh olivier (olive tree) P pay pélican (pelican) Q kew queue (tail) R air raton (raccoon) S es santé (health) T tay thé (tea) U ew univers (universe) V vay végétarien (vegetarian) W DO-bluh-vay wagon (train car) X eex xylophone (xylophone) Y e-GRECK yaourt (yogurt) Z zed zéro (zero)
”
”
Dawn Michelle Baude (The Everything Kids' Learning French Book: Fun exercises to help you learn francais (Everything® Kids Series))
“
and knew she had to head away from it. She kept listening for gunshots or shouts, scanning for beams of torchlight or the gleam of some stray moonlight reflecting off the barrel of a gun, but the night and the trees remained undisturbed. She kept moving. When she saw the car she ducked behind the nearest tree before she had quite registered what she was even looking at. There had been no attempt to hide it, but in this kind of thick darkness it was almost unnecessary. She was less than two metres away when she noticed it. Her eyes went immediately to the windscreen, looking for the shapes of people inside, but it seemed empty. And familiar. A horrible swooping feeling in her stomach came with the recognition. Simon’s station wagon, abandoned in the trees. She gave herself a few more minutes until she was convinced there was no-one here, then she made her move, circling round and approaching the rear of the car. In a tiny snatch of starlight that pushed through the leaves and branches above, she saw something thick and glistening on the ground.
”
”
Gabriel Bergmoser (The Hunted)
“
In an age of extreme automation and globalization, how can the 90 percent for whom income is stagnant or falling respond? For the Tea Party, the answer is to circle the wagons around family and church, and to get on bended knee to multinational companies to lure them to you from wherever they are. This is the strategy Southern governors have used to lure textile firms from New England or car manufacturers from New Jersey and California, offering lower wages, anti-union legislation, low corporate taxes, and big financial incentives. For the liberal left, the best approach is to nurture new business through a world-class public infrastructure and excellent schools. An example is what many describe as the epicenter of a new industrial age: Silicon Valley—with Google, Twitter, Apple, and Facebook—and its environs, as well as the electric car and solar industries. The reds might be the Louisiana model, and to some degree, the blues are the California one.
”
”
Arlie Russell Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)
“
Even fifteen years earlier, it would have been impossible, since there were very few cars (eight thousand as opposed to fourteen million horses) and fewer drivable roads. With the exception of train travel, the average American rarely ventured more than twelve miles from home, because that was the distance a horse and wagon could comfortably cover from there and back in a day.
”
”
Jeff Guinn (The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip)
“
Americans of the West surrendered Pahaska to his final slumber. Pahaska, Farewell."
Some twenty-five thousand people toiled up the mountainside to pay their respects. Three thousand automobiles (which included some Sells-Floto circus wagons) also climbed the mountain that day, not without strain, for cars of that time were not the powerful machines we know, and the Lariat Trail they followed, while a splendid achievement for 1913, was daunting. "The roads are excellent in their wealth of view," wrote Fowler. "At first the pitch of the road is gradual. It becomes more abrupt on the ascent. Its trend is ever upward." Mrs. Cody had to stop and rest before reaching the summit.
"It was a remarkable funeral," continued Fowler. "There was a circus atmosphere about the whole thing. A lot of us drank straight rye from bottles while speeches were being made by expert liars. Six of the Colonel's surviving sweethearts-now obese and sagging with memories-sat on camp chairs beside the grave. . . . The glass over the Colonel's amazingly handsome face began to steam on the inside. . . . One of the old Camilles rose from her camp chair. . . . Then, as though
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Robert A. Carter (Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend)
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À la seule idée d'abandonner la chambre qui lui avait dispensé la paix, José Arcadio le second fut terrorisé, il cria qu'il n'existait pas de pouvoir humain capable de l'en faire sortir, car il ne voulait pas voir le convoi de deux cent wagons chargés de mort qui, chaque jour enfin d’après-midi, quittait Macando à destination de la mer. "ce sont tous ceux qui se trouvaient à la gare, hurlait il. il y en a trois mille quatre cent huit" Usrula en vint alors seulement à comprendre qu'il était dans un monde de ténèbres plus impénétrable que le sien, aussi solitaire et fermé que celui de son arrière-grand-père
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Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
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He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then at times with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men from themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she meant when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished him to try if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did not, still he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what she had said and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but when he came to a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and down to see if there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might mingle with and help to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all events had a dream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them in a body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran in all directions.
One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and then he saw at his side a tall, old man, with a long, white beard, who was calling out at the policemen: "Ah, yes! Glup the strikerss—gif it to them! Why don't you co and glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors? Glup the strikerss—they cot no friendts! They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you!"
The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw his left arm up to shield his head. Conrad recognized Lindau, and now he saw the empty sleeve dangle in the air over the stump of his wrist. He heard a shot in that turmoil beside the car, and something seemed to strike him in the breast. He was going to say to the policeman: "Don't strike him! He's an old soldier! You see he has no hand!" but he could not speak, he could not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his face: it was not bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue, fixed, perdurable—a mere image of irresponsible and involuntary authority. Then Conrad fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot fired from the car.
March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at the same moment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the policeman, who left him where he fell and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing the rioters. The fighting round the car in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his horses into a gallop, and the place was left empty.
March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had implored him to keep away from the rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lying there if he would. Something stronger than his will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad, dead beside the old man.
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William Dean Howells (A Hazard of New Fortunes (Modern Library Classics))
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One of the interesting variations, under the ways to fulfil ‘wish for attention’ through car ownership, is what the investigators call ‘conspicuous reserve’. Those people want other people to know their status but at the same time want to express it modestly. Some may engage in deliberate downgrading. This is ‘a frequent technique of people who are secure in their high social position. They show their superiority by displaying indifference to status - by purposely buying less expensive cars than they might be expected. They love beat-up station wagons and old cars.
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Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders)