MAGAZINE

YOU WHAT?!!!!!

Well, once in a while you start poppin' fuses. A regular job (You DO have a job, don't ya?) keeps you from doing exactly what you want to do all the time, and although the job has to fulfill you in several ways, you'd really rather be hangin' with those other slack-jawed cretins at shop night. You may still need a sabbatical now an' then.

The sabbatical can be: swearin' off the magazines for a few days, stayin' out of the garage for a few, lettin' your car heal up for a couple weeks (Here, you see, we have an opportunity: Those couple weeks are the ones where you wait for that Model A rear crossmember to get here from Odebolt, Iowa, and it looks like you've done walked away from your hot rod. All the time you're accomplishing something in a passive manner and civilians will think you're not hooked; can take it or leave it.)

You can go visit your friends, walk in and, like 'Wood says, "I'm Pete. I'm a car guy."

You can stay away from it until your fingernails get all the way clean. You can make yourself not call the Voyeur from the North when you think you need a fix of rod and custom buildin' by phone. You can leave the stuff in the barn, tools still sittin' on the cowling where they were last laid, little greasy smudges still on them, hood propped up, new part still half unwrapped on the bench. You can refrain from picking up that half-reread biography of Ted Horn. You can do a lot of overt things to get away. You can chant. Or read the Koran. But it's not gonna work.

You're still screwed.

You will never get away. You'll never kick it. You will never experience any more fond thoughts than envisioning yourself (you have to have vision) doing that as-yet undone task, or driving that unseen stretch of road, or hearing that new motor start and run. You can look, search, inquire, read and plead, but you will find or be given no antidote. You're hooked. You're a HOP UP GUY.

Worse shit could happen.