Velcro Voices offers literary comfort. Contributors should be decorous. Nonthreatening. Familiar. Reassuring. Properly attired. Melodious. Lulling. Try the passive voice for a change. Beg pardon. Submit simultaneously. Continually. Send your second-best work. Hush.
Tricia said sure, she’d spend the rest of her life with me, or try to. We were alone in the Idaho Sawtooths, on a turquoise morning. I figured being alone was important. I’d never cared for theatrical proposals – skywriting and other such grandstanding. Bullying a potential mate into saying “yes” in front of witnesses always seemed a bad start. Even if you’re sure of yourself, it’s only fair to give a maiden the opportunity to decline the honor of your hairy presence every day of her life without fear of public shaming
After my parents split, my father and I got together on alternate weekends. At first, this was great. We fished, played cards, and built things like mad. But after a couple of years it became clear that while I was on the fast track to coolness, the old man was lost in time. His hair grew wispier as mine grew wild. He smoked a pipe. He had a white, 1961 Chrysler Imperial with a pink rag top and fins bigger than our collie.
Everyone knows that God drives a powder blue Caddy, smokes Marlboros, and keeps things whirling along reasonably well, except on Wednesdays. This is comforting. But back between the second world war and the Great Driveby, things weren’t so certain.
I paid $247.50 for Courageous, planning, with little actual enthusiasm, to fix her up eventually. It was typical of me in those days to bestow a grand title on marginal transportation. I was feeling expansive, having just moved from spectacular Idaho to spectacular Oregon and a good, semi-outdoor job in Salem. So I named the 1958 GMC pickup after a racehorse famous for its heart.