Vanishing Point

Saturday, May 24

I am on I-75 heading from Ringgold to Dalton.
James McMurtry's "Choctaw Radio" -- one of the truly great highway songs -- is thundering from the judgement day speakers which supply the eardrum-splitting audio accompaniment in my high-powered blood red, 1970 Dodge Challenger. I charge down the empty -- absolutely empty -- FREEway at speeds my big city lawyer warns me never to admit.
My brain and Pres. Eisenhower's nation-linking asphalt transportation marvel become as one as McMurtry's drummer Daren Hess and bassist Ronnie Johnson dig a groove so elementally bad -- I mean BAD -- that I find my heart beating in time. On top of this sonic freight train, piano man Earl Poole Ball pours his own magical icing on the quadrupled layered delight which is "Choctaw Radio."
Lawd! That's a tune.
Just south of the Tunnel Hill exit, I push the Challenger's gas pedal to the floor ... and then some. The sky shimmers briefly and I find myself ensconced in the beercan-laden back seat of a Cosmic Cadillac piloted by none other than the mirthmaker himself, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. We are hurtling through pitch black. I feel the speed. I see nothing. Not until a little light pops on over the dashboard mirror. The Doc grins at me in the rearview, then rips it off and tosses it out the window. With it goes the light.
"No looking back, son. No looking back," he says, cacking wildly.
The highway goes on for ever, that manical laughter seems to promise. And maybe where the Doc is, it does. Let's hope so.
Meanwhile, back on Spaceship McMurtry, James and the boys deliver the bacon -- including my porky butt - safely to the Rocky Face exit. My exit. Time to exit.
The fabric of the universe shimmers again and my blood red, 1970 Dodge Challenger is a green 2001 Ford Explorer. That previously unmentionable escape velocity speed warps magically to 55 mph.
James and the boys are still playing in earnest, but my Voice of Odin speakers have now become semi-crummy factory standards.
The tune winds down, as they all do.
Silence.
I ease carefully onto Hwy. 41 and head back to the office.
Good trip.