| OCR Text |
Show The Back Seat My mother loved the unusual, the exotic, the strange. Her favorite dog was the borzoi. Her favorite fowl was wild duck. Neither of which we could afford. She liked calypso music and roller skating, and kept a journal of her dreams. By running a bright yellow extension cord out the kitchen window, she did the ironing in the back yard. It was the age of cotton. There was plenty of ironing to do. When she puckered and spit onto the flat of the iron, the luscious sunlight ripened her deep red lips. Her method of testing the iron, so reminiscent of a kiss, forced me to flee her sphere of influence. I climbed the maple tree at the far end of our property, a good distance from the patio where she stood. My father had nailed slats to the trunk for me. Otherwise, I could have never reached the branches. Conceal by foliage, I achieved my first perspective. I could see into distant back yards. I felt I had the advantage. She was also fascinated with customized cars, vehicles whose standardized, mass produced look the youthful owners had daringly subverted to reveal the automobile as personal, even idiosyncratic, expression, rather than transportation. Greasers owned these cars. To me, "greaser" was not a pejorative. I wanted to be one. A greaser stripped a car of the manufacturer's decorative flourishes of chrome. Insignias, stripping, and ornament were removed. Spinners, or full and baby moons replaced the standard issue hubcabs. Next, the greaser sanded off the factory paint. At the time, the automobile industry was pushing pastels, colors that were visual phenobarbital. Stripping the paint was a noisy, strenuous, violent activity. Imagine the electric grinder screaming away a mild turquiose blue. The raw metal was coated with primer and sprayed a startling metallic color, usually a hypnotic blue or a jangling red. Finally, the car was either "lowered" or "dagoed". A "lowered" car was a beautiful cruiser; a "dagoed" car, I was unaware of the ethnic slur, had |
