Nova

The car.

My older brother never writes back not timely. Sometimes I wonder if he even checks his email but this time answering an invitation to view photos of dinosaur ridge Barry shot back in five minutes, "Wow." That turn at the bottom, the end of it, where I started walking only half way up to the footprints is where Barry says he understood the greatness of steel-belted radials. Ha! It's always about cars with that guy. Instead of it being about rock climbing the cliffs at the edge that was always his insistence, the monkey, he insisted on the most dangerous things possible on the way home, climbing the cliffs unaided, but his first memory provoked by the photographs is with his car. Heading home, the end of it all, at fifty miles an hour headed mostly straight down the road takes a 45° banked curve at the bottom right there where we park now, then goes back up like a roller coaster. Barry said, "I had just put steel-belted radials on the Nova and that curve felt like the car was rolling on rails." I was in that car. I remember his thrill but never thought much about it and let all those particular details fall but to Barry that is what that whole ridge is about. His car.

Who talks like that? And now that he had me recall his steel-belted tires-related thrill and relive that roller coaster curve, there's so many, come on, to him that is the one where steel-belted beauty sank in and now I can never forget it. "It felt like riding on rails."

Can you feel that?

Not even scared. You'd be pissing yourself. Those curvy roads going fast freak flatlanders out. Imagine yourself in the passenger seat of a car with a seventeen year-old on a road familiar to him speeding because he's really digging the feel of his car and his tires. Flying past dinosaur footprints not even knowing it  using the ridge for scratching around and exploration and energy release purposes and that's all. He responded so fast because he loves what they've done with the place, he found the photos exciting, even though one his favorite roads is cut off to automobiles.

The car is an emotional thing with him. He would slow down on a highway pull over open the hood and tweak some adjustment for some sound he didn't like when nobody else can hear anything. It was an emotional thing from day one.

His first car. NoGo [it] (Sp), don't tell him I said that or he'll pound me. He and Dad spent all day at Chevrolet dealership. Barry's mind was made up, he was having the car. Dad's mind was made up, he was teaching Barry dealership management. It would take all day. Eventually they're in the owner's son's office. Then his father, the owner walks in, it was Something-Chevrolet and the two were in Mr. Something's office now finalizing the deal that could have been done in minutes in the morning but instead took all day office to office to office to office whittling away and finally signing and cosigning and Dad said, "Come on, be a good sport, knock off another $100.00. It's the lad's first vee-hickle"

"Get out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out."

Closing time. Dad and Barry came home. Barry red shaking and in tears. Dad smug as ever. Dad assured Barry and all of us they will call tomorrow and offer him his car at the reduced price. Barry was certain it had slipped away.

We glared at him.

"So What!"  I had never seen my brother so worked up. He wanted that car so badly he could taste it and Dad was messing up the whole process. It wasn't worth the anguish. The entire family was angry with him for making Barry so wrecked and sad. It was a quiet and forlorn dinner. Dad just calmly ate his dinner, legs up on the chair, king of the roost, smug as can be, he was used to dealing with irrational childish household emotion, he was having fun. He could be such a bastard. They did call the next day as predicted, Dad cheerfully took him out, Barry got his car and back home beaming ear to ear and Dad is hero of all his own child-rearing, dealership-management tales.