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Spinning but going nowhere

It’s been a while since I’ve laughed so hard I lost control — couldn’t stop. I suspect you’ve laughed that hard as well. I hope it hasn’t been too long ago.

Good, hard laughing can be exhausting but can invigorate and restore. There’s not much better than a good laugh.

Dave once made me laugh that hard during French class. I had to do “bench time” as a result but it was worth it. My friend Bob could do the same but with Bob it wasn’t what he said, it was what he did.

Bob had a 1951 Ford with a six cylinder engine tied to a manual three speed transmission. He had paid $20 for the car and at that price expected good performance. Bob claimed the Ford had a special racing engine — it didn’t.

One summer evening my friends and I were at Jim & Anne’s Drive-In south of town dedicated, as we often were then, to some form of sophomoric coordination. We were all leveraged into the old Pontiac when Bob pulled alongside. He ordered a coke for 10 cents and either a hamburger for a quarter or a hot dog for 15 cents. I suspect Bob went with the hot dog.

Tony was a waitress there. We would flirt with her but she was smart, mature — fully aware of what our flirting was worth. Still, Tony never made us feel foolish, always allowed us to maintain whatever persona we were promoting at the time.

When it came time for Bob to leave he backed away and began preparations for an exit, a performance calculated to demonstrate both his driving prowess and the old Ford’s superior qualities.

This demonstration involved no pretense. What you saw was what Bob was doing, nothing more. He was an adolescent male attempting to secure an enhanced status among his peers with the assistance of a trusted automobile, a time honored tradition.

While racing its engine Bob began engaging and disengaging the Ford’s clutch causing the car to literally dance before us. After one final double clutched induced pirouette he allowed the clutch to remain fully engaged at which point the drive shaft’s universal joint snapped. This allowed it to spin freely on the lot’s graveled surface, moving dirt and stones — but not Bob.

Despite the preparatory dance, the posturing, all the noise, the old Ford gained no ground, not unlike our flirtation efforts with Tony.

Of course, we all lost control. We laughed so hard we began falling over each other as we rolled out and onto the ground from the old Pontiac’s opened doors and windows. Some of us couldn’t breathe for near critical lengths of time, gasping for air, convulsed with laughter.

Indelibly burned into my memory is the image of Bob sitting in the Ford’s driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, driveshaft spinning. He is looking out the passenger side window glorifying in an expectation of distinction. But his expression is slowly changing, beginning to reflect the dawning that he is going nowhere.

Jim & Anne’s is gone now. I don’t know where Tony is — I hope she’s well. Bob has taken a final leaving.

If you look around you can still see driveshafts spinning in dirt but it’s not likely you’ll witness it on a drive-in’s graveled surface — they’re all paved now. You’ll have to look elsewhere to see spinnings that take you nowhere.

You can find them. You can still witness the preparation, the dancing, the noise, and feel again the expectation. But now, they often come with a pretense, a purpose not so obvious as Bob’s reach for adolescent glory.

Many new performances of going nowhere — those spins produced upon the stages of our times — contain no naivety only a duplicity.

No longer can one assume a restorative benefit.

Doug Pugh’s Vignettes run bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached via email at pughda@gmail.com.

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