Mort's Shorts

Merry Christmas.

Are you gonna put a wreath on your radiator shell? I joked last month that I would but..it seems so hokey, it’s so, ‘Hey look at my cute hot rod and me an’ my happy spirit.’

Right.

Buuuuut….it wouldn’t hurt to find some simple joy somewhere, though, would it? Huh? Those archaic wonderments we cherish have always been the ‘vehicle’ for escape, haven’t they? An’ it’s hard to be stoic about the apparent economic - and other - crap around us… even if it hasn’t really penetrated the Hop Up Towers (River City is still the booming metropolis it’s always been…).so why not use the hot iron ya got an’  doll it up (if ya wanta) and celebrate with it. One way or another; your call.

When we get full up to here with talking heads creating (they do) hysteria..doomsday…full-on ‘‘Sky is falling” rhetoric…. and…. if it’s not practical to drive a car around the hood just for the helluvit….we can just go out to the garage. Yeah. The Fortress. It’s winter in most places anyway. Let’s just go on out there.

Doncha go out there for peace? It’s where you count blessings and actually read your own history. Anything ya got out there tells a chapter of your own tale. If a guy isn’t nostalgic about the build, the show, the use…the journey of the car itself and where he fit in…then he wasn’t involved enough. If he isn’t genuinely sentimental about it..almost gushing romantic about it…..then he doesn’t have it. To that guy the cars are just stuff…possesions….personal property.

To him they aren’t a combination of family and fine art like they are to….at least 19 guys I know. See, there’s more to the rigs than cruise night, coffee shops and fairgrounds to the guys we know. Among these people, there’s an un-spoken understanding that it’s OK, in fact preferred to be wound up in this mess…I mean tipped-over, obsessed, preoccupied and almost indentured to it; there’s fulfillment in it, self actualization…and even denial. I mean, if I am denied a certain car or the experience one might avail me…I savor it…knowing that caring about the beauty, fuctionality of the thing, its’ practicality, uniqueness, its’ quality ......means that I can care, I can appreciate that it exists and hell, I can even be happy for the dirty bastards who can afford it!!!!!!!  Really.

The cars are an outlet. Let’s see: there’s physical exercise. Artistic expression. Psychco-therapy (daytime dreamin’). Motivation to ‘get ahead’ so you can have what the dreamin’  prescribed for ya.

You can live this chingo solo…with a Pal or a Gal… with a small group or..more ....if you’re so-reclined.

Are ya thinking about these angles? The benefits? The perquisites? What a full spectrum of opportunity and purpose this stuff provides us?Me, too.

So?

So…........now that I’ve majored in rhetoric, done a little masturbatorializing, preached to the choir….hit on all the redundant themes…did ya see that….. for a little while….a snippet of time…as usual…we didn’t even notice that the sky was falling at CBS? Same-same NBC? Hmmmm. No loss. Saved us having to turn the flatscreen bullshit off, anyway! Permanently, I’m thinkin’.

Hot Rods will get you there - in more ways than one