The yard is overgrown and looks a little like 1313 Mockingbird Lane. For those who didn’t watch television in the ’60s, that’s the Munster’s house.<\/div><\/div>

It’s on a slower road, and I was traveling with the windows down for nostalgia. While it was ninety-two degrees, the self-initiated thirty-seven-mile-per-hour speeds over the cracked macadam were enough to move the air through the cab, keeping me from overheating. <\/div><\/div>

Excessive humidity was lacking, so I channeled my twenty-year-old self. That was back when having an air-conditioned car was only a pipe dream. I cranked Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and slowly meandered by the old digs. Not one to gawk; it was simply the drive-by I was seeking\u2014 nothing too nosey. She wasn’t with me, so braking or commenting was unnecessary. <\/div><\/div>

I motored slowly up the hill that stole the last whimpering breath from the automatic transmission in my 1975 Pontiac Ventura. She loaned me the two hundred bucks to replace it\u2014I paid her back on the installment plan and let her use the car often, so she had skin in the game.<\/div><\/div>

Yes, America, there was a time when you could buy and have a transmission installed for two hundred dollars. I got it from a junkyard and had a filthy-fingernailed mechanical genius install it in his home garage\u2014it worked perfectly for three more years. <\/div><\/div>

Those were the days. <\/div><\/div>

I noticed three distinct but separate scenes on that road\u2014each Americana diorama included people chatting outside, seated in lawn chairs.<\/div><\/div>

I guessed their homes were not air conditioned; very few in Maine have central air. Grabbing the tail end of an evening breeze, ever so slight, was enough to force a designated family member out to the overhead storage in the garage to grab the nylon-webbed aluminum chairs, freshly coated with dust from the long winter. <\/div><\/div>

Plaid shirts, untucked, with shorts a little too tight but still cooler than jeans or work clothes, they chatted as I drove by, unfettered by the passing traffic\u2014just talking. <\/div><\/div>

I saw beers, glasses filled with something that looked like iced tea, and a few indiscriminate smoke signals from cigarettes lazily burning back to the filter between the fore and middle fingers of the conversers. <\/div><\/div>

It was nothing and everything all at once\u2014a snapshot of a hot night in America with the dishes left to be scrubbed a little later. <\/div><\/div>

I suppose some of them might have discussed riding to Jimmy’s for an ice cream cone, but not right yet, and maybe not at all\u2014indiscriminate chatter about things that didn’t matter, with snippets of some tidbits that did. <\/div><\/div>

I ended my private tour at a stop sign that I’d rolled through hundreds of times. Back then, it was triangular and only mentioned yielding. <\/div><\/div>

The off-course cruise took me only three minutes, maybe four. It was refreshing, a tour of my youth, some of which I mispent and some of which I invested wisely. <\/div><\/div>

Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” came on next, as if planned all along. Maybe it was.<\/div><\/div>

Goodnight, from the Jagged Edge of America.<\/div><\/div>

TC<\/div><\/div><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*If you’ve considered supporting the writing you’ve read here, on Facebook, or the other places where my words are sometimes found, consider joining my supporters at the BuyMeACoffee App (yellow banner). At least subscribe to the Newslog to receive the writing in your inbox. My writing remains free to read on the Socials, of course. More books beyond the three are forthcoming, and I hope you buy them all. If the world knew the percentages small-time authors gleened from writing books, they’d be surprised, and not in a good way. This is where I try to make my living\u2014Warren Buffett warned against it, but who am I to listen to a billionaire? Joining the Royal Order of Dooryard Visitors allows you to give monthly support for the entertainment, but one time donations to the cause are most appreciated. So many have helped, and I thank all of you for reading, regardless of all this talk of shekels and dinero. TC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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