Peter Behrens's Blog, page 103

The Law of Dreams/ La Legge Dei Sogni

 

Have you read my first novel, The Law of Dreams? Cover I like best: the Italian edition, published by Einaudi. 

Mitsubishi 2.7 litre Jeep

These from my Banff compadre, Toby Clark. He introduced me to a lot of back country Banff and we paddled a bunch of Rocky Mtn rivers...the Bow, Kootenay, Athabaska. Also West Texas and the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. For the past 25 years Toby has been spending most of the winter at a fishing camp/resort he and his family founded and own at Port Barton, on Palawan I., in the Philippines.  He has alway owned extraordinary vehicles,,,the Chevy sedan Suite 50....the '52 truck we drove from Banff to Texas one winter, hauling 6 canoes over Raton Pass.

This is the jeep Toby keeps on Palawan. His notes:

"1993 Mitsubishi military jeep 2.7 litre turbo charged diesel engine, high low range 4x4. Roof rack was built here in Puerto Princesa. It has allowed me to partake in some amazing adventures...considered by many to be one of the best 4x4's ever built. Not fast, but in all the yrs I have only ever been stuck once--and with the help of about 40 villagers– men women children– a few rocks and some huge hardwood planks, I was on my way again.  My youngest daughter and I once drove it onto a homemade bamboo raft and floated it across a major jungle river that had flooded then washed out the highway bridge. The raft was hauled back and forth by a huge diesel donkey winch similar to those used to haul out  logs in the early days of logging in British Columbia. The jeep was built from the 80's until 1998 for the Chinese agricultural market, so the steering wheel was on the left hand side same as USA. A Chinese farmer could plow his fields haul livestock to market then clean it up and bring the family to town all with the one vehicle

 

Ford F-150 Lightning: hits and misses

 

...from George Pearkes' piece in Business Insider on the pleasures (and displeasures) of the Ford F-150 Lightning ownership experience. We posted on the Lightning earlier this year. 

And Bloomberg has a piece on Ford offering "flexible financing" to persuade municipalities to buy the Lightning as a police cruiser.  The last police car we posted was a '59–of course-Pontiac.

     Kinda ugly. More than. A monster. In a bad way. 

Is AL alone in finding Ford--no, all- trucks kinda ugly these days? The bigger, the uglier. They need to lighten up on the beefcake. Or maybe keep it as an option. So that, if you want, you can order the Faux-Masculinity Package. We prefer European trucks; they look like trucks.  American trucks--a lot of American culture-- seem to reflect a WWE aesthetic or set of values, if you can call them that. Monstrous... misogynist... money..are a fair summary, I reckon. 

Too big. Too get-outta-my-way. Too expensive.

              

Kate Daniels, "Crowns"

Crowns  

  for Philip Levine
Around the time I first read the poetry of Philip Levine,my teeth were fixed. Two or three hundred bucks(I’ve forgotten now) purchased a brand new me,two porcelain crowns. In the dentist’s chair, my midgetcanines were filed down to sharp, bright pointshardly larger than the bronzed end of a Bicpen, then crammed in the black-backed capsof two hardened, china fakes. No morecovering my mouth to obscure the evidenceof faulty genes. No more tears at imagesembezzled from graduation picnicswhen Darrell Dodson picked me up and slung mein the pool, and someone took a pictureof my lips slacking back to reveal my gumsin what appeared to be a scream. No more breezeswinding through the gappy pickets of my ill-grownteeth and down my throat. No more worryingsome boy would snag his tongue in the zigzagged bulkheadof my upper row, and bring us both to blood.
I’ll love Levine forever for confessing his own struggleswith orthodontia, his rot-plagued “Depression mouth,”a dentist called it, his cavities and root canals, his occipital pain,for his photograph in Antaeus, the summer of ’78,the stained and crooked slabs parked compellinglybehind his grin. Our teeth connected us before the poetry,he, from the immigrant onion-eaters and temperate tipplersof Manischiewtz. I, from a long line of tannin-stainedIrish Catholics who smoked themselves to fragilestates of calcium depletion, and a recent run of Carolinagritballs, too poor to brush, too ignorant to care their teethretired in early middle age. I can see them now, perplexedbefore an apple’s crispy rind, frustrated by a succulent, stringy rackof pork ribs barbequed in the side lot of Earlene Worsham’sgas station south of town. Levine would have understood my uncles,enthroned on plastic-covered kitchen chairs patched with tape,their work boots kicking up mucky clouds of chiggery dirt,their pick ups parked nearby, shotguns in the rack,sucking on cheap beers and harsh cigarettes,their nails starved by nicotine to yellow curls, the car greaseembedded permanently in the creases of their hands.
When I met him, he was such a mensch, massivein my mind, but in the flesh, something touchingabout his shoulders in the worn tweed jacket, somethingvulnerable in his feet in an ordinary pair of soiled, white sneakers.He opened his mouth to laugh, one side rising uplike it does, in that derisive gesture that seems, at first, a sneer,and I remembered my mother flexing back her lips to removedelicately, with two stained fingers, just so, a fleck of tobaccolodged between her teeth, and saw again my father flossing at the tablewith the torn off cover of a paper book of matches,then stubbing out his butt in the yellowed, oily pod of broken yolkthat was hemorrhaging across his breakfast plate.
I can face those images now without the shameI carried in the days before the poetry of Phil Levineliberated me. I can look at anything now, because I keephis picture in my mind and his poems in my pocket.I can stand my life because I wear the crown he constructedfor people like me — grocery checkers, lube jobbers, truck drivers,waitresses — all of us crowned with the junkyard diademsof shattered windshields and rusty chains, old potswith spit tobacco congealing inside, torn screen doorsand gravestones in the front yard, just five short steps from life to death…
So there is my family with their broken beer bottlesand patched shoes, their mutts chained in a back yardcarved from a stingy pine woods, on cheap landout near the county dump where the air swells with the perfumeof trash, a circle of them playing poker in a trailer somewherein the woods, or razoring the state decal from the windowshieldof a ransacked wreck to transfer to my brother’s car.Or cleaning fish on the back porch and throwing the gutsto the tick-clogged dogs, or frying venison in a cast-iron panand stinking up the house with that heavy smell, showingthe buck’s big balls in a plastic cannister that once held salt.Or burning tires in a field some autumn, scummingthe sky with a smoky, cursive black they can’t even readbut inhale poisonously again and again.
And there I am, walking along tolerantly now, with Phil Levine,his poems in my pocket, his good rage gathered in my heartand I can love them again, the way I did in the years beforeI saw what they were and how the world would use themand accepted the fact they were incapable of change.We’re in a field I used to love, a redbone coonhound running aheadher ears dragging the edges of the goldenrod till they are tippedin pollen, like twin paintbrushes dipped in gilt. And the worldis hunting dogs and country music and unschooled voicesbending vowels and modest kitchen gardens where late tomatoesare tied up with brownish streamers of old nylon hose.The vast way your chest expands when the sun gradually setsin mid-fall in central Virginia. The tobacco barns glimmeringin last light, the chinks darkening now, the slats solidifying at the close of dayand your mind opening up like the pine forest swishing fragrantly overheadway up in the dark that is coming, but remains, for the moment, beautifully at bay.                
                                                                                                 -Kate Daniels
Thanks to Eva H.D. for introducing me to Kate Daniels' poetry. "Crowns" is in her collection A Walk in Victoria's Secret. Here's a link to Daniels' conversation with the poet Philip Levine. and another to Daniels talking with Tony Hoagland. (We've posted several Hoagland poems on AL, including one of my favorites, America.) Will be posting some Philip Levine soon.  

1970 Chevrolet C-50

 

Yeah, I know. But I want this truck. It's up at Hemmings. Always had a thing for old western farm trucks. Drove a 1968 International Loadstar 1700 for a couple of seasons on the wheat harvest in Alberta, offloading combines on the run and hustling the grain to the Alberta Pool elevator in town or to granaries on the farm. More on that episode posted here. They started threshing when the dew was off the crop and went at it until 1 or 2am. We were always watching the weather--like sailors. This blue truck was outfitted for hauling beets (side dump) but I sure like that blue. More grainers, and grain elevators, are posted here. 

Chevrolet Suburban K-1500

 

Saw the truck in Marfa, Texas on a cold high desert day. Brrr.

1957 Dodge Custom Royal

 

David Branch caught the car in Alpine, Texas. We've posted a '59 Dodge Regent in Saskatchewan and a '58 Coronet in San Francisco.

1938 Mystery Sedan. Medford, Mass.

Ragged glory. AL is stumped. We're betting 1938's the model year, but we cannot figure out the make. Ideas?

1977 Chevrolet C-10. Marfa

David Branch hauled home this 1977 Chevrolet C-10 ranch truck this week. An original Marfa truck, sold at Casner Motors. He'd done a cleanup: "Ranch stuff mostly off. Second pass at a wash & oxidation removal. Runs & drives."

Toyota Land Cruiser Fj40, New Mexico.

  From Bill Burleson, in New Mexico: "Almost stepped on tarantula while admiring vehicle. I saw one of these Toyotas in Banff in 1970, was told by the owner it had really bad gas mileage, but I still wanted one. Proportions seem a bit odd now."
AL: We have posted several FJ Land Cruisers, like this 1978 Fj40 in New Hampshire; a pickup version in Somerville, Mass., and a flatbed in Ecuador.

Fj40s have a big fan base: and The FJ Co. in FL can sell you the re-tuned Land Cruiser of your dreams. See down below for a couple of their offerings....



1979 Fj40 from The Fj40 Company...

and a 1982.