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My Roosevelt Coupé
- Syracuse University Press
- Chapter
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12 My Roosevelt Coupé Coax it, clutch it, kick it in the gas was every dawn’s scenario. Then off it bucked, backfiring down the block to show it minded. Each fender gleamed a different hue of blue. Each hubcap chose its hill to spin freewheeling into traffic. I fretted like a spouse through chills and overboiling, jacked my weekly flats and stuffed the spavined seats with rags. Leaking, the radiator healed with swigs of Rinso, brake fluid and rainwater. Simonized, the hood stuck out like a tramp in a tux. All trips were dares. Journeys were sagas. From Norfolk to New York and back, I burned eleven quarts of oil, seven fuses and the horn. One headlight dimmed with cataracts. The other funneled me one-eyed 13 through darker darks than darkness . . . O my Roosevelt coupé, my first, my Chevrolet of many scars and heart attacks, where are you now? Manhandled, you’d refuse to budge. Stick-shifted into low, you’d enigmatically reverse. Sold finally for scrap, you waited on your treads while I pocketed thirty pieces of unsilver and slunk away—Wild Buck Hazo abandoning his first and favorite mount, unwilling to malinger long enough to hear the bullet he could never fire. ...