Peter Behrens's Blog, page 163

William Eggleston, Untitled. (1962 Pontiac Bonneville)

William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1973-1978. © Eggleston Artistic Trust. 
 

1987 GMC High Sierra 1500

 
Reid Cunningham caught the truck in Claremont NH..."This must have been someone's fun truck, with the short bed and High Sierra trim."  AL has posted a 1975 plainer-jane Sierra.

Big Sky Country

     Somewhere between Cut Bank and Chester Montana.                            Sam Harper photo. 
 

Coachbuild Your Next Rolls-Royce

With the unveiling of one of three built-to-order Boat Tails, Rolls-Royce introduces a Coachbuild program that invites the customer into its design studio....Rolls-Royce, Designed by You: Inside the Carmaker’s New Custom Coachbuild Program. You can read the piece on WSJ.comYou understand that AL's dream car is a truck, probably something like the 1950 Chevrolet 3800 we posted a few days ago, so we've not put our name down for Coachbuild yet.

1930 Ford Model A truck

 

Supersize me? How did everything in this country get so...large? Caught the trio above at a filling station/repair shop Cambridge MA. Here's a Model A we met up in Nova Scotia a while back. And a Model A Town Sedan in Maine. History of the Model A trucks at Curbside Classics.

1950 Bristol 401 Two Litre

"The heart of the car’s success was its pre-war BMW-derived hemi-head straight-six, a superb unit, intelligently developed by Bristol, that was sought-after for sports and racing cars at the time.
But Bristol made the most of it in the 401. The first 2-litre production saloon to hit 100mph, its all-aluminium body was exceptionally aerodynamic, helped by push-button door opening and internal bonnet/boot releases..." Classic & Sports Cars

AL caught the car at Motorland in Arundel, Maine.

1954 Chevrolet 210 Deluxe

From Alex Emond:  "I took a little tour of the residential side of Redcliff, Alberta and saw this pampered two-tone car. Somebody's pride and joy."  AL posted a 1954 Bel Air for sale in Goshen, NY some time ago. And this meticulous '54 Bel Air in Sedgwick, Maine.  

1954 Mercedes Benz 220 Cabriolet

Saw the car at Motorland in Arundel, Maine. And we caught this 1962 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL in Blue Hill, Maine a while back.







 

Emergency Haying

Emergency HayingComing home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,

my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 500 bales we’ve put up

this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn

by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way

my body hangs from twisted shoulders, suspended
on two points of pain in the rising
monoxide, recall that greater suffering.

Well, I change grip and the image
fades. It’s been an unlucky summer. Heavy rains
brought on the grass tremendously, a monster crop,

but wet, always wet. Haying was long delayed.
Now is our last chance to bring in
the winter’s feed, and Marshall needs help.

We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales
to the barn, these late, half-green,
improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds

or more, yet must be lugged by the twine
across the field, tossed on the load, and then
at the barn unloaded on the conveyor

and distributed in the loft. I help—
I, the desk-servant, word-worker—
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,

the close of day, how I fall down then. My hands
are sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,

less able and less well prepared than I.
Rose Marie in the rye fields of Saxony,
her father in the camps of Moldavia

and the Crimea, all clerks and housekeepers
herded to the gaunt fields of torture. Hands
too bloodied cannot bear

even the touch of air, even
the touch of love. I have a friend
whose grandmother cut cane with a machete

and cut and cut, until one day
she snicked her hand off and took it
and threw it grandly at the sky. Now

in September our New England mountains
under a clear sky for which we’re thankful at last
begin to glow, maples, beeches, birches

in their first color. I look
beyond our famous hayfields to our famous hills,
to the notch where the sunset is beginning,

then in the other direction, eastward,
where a full new-risen moon like a pale
medallion hangs in a lavender cloud

beyond the barn. My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who

if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say

woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.

                                                                        -- Hayden Carruth

Bruce Willard poem: February 13th

 FEBRUARY 13TH

Ribboned to a stoplight post
on Highway 50 in bay-less Bayfield, Colorado, a bouquet of red roses

wrapped in small green leaves,
so arresting, so close
I half-imagined they were for me. Me,

solo, traveling through open country, that one becoming three –
lover, loved and one

for whom touch is witness –
gathered at the only light
between and Durango and Chimney Rock.

Someone must have known the color would have me stop
60 seconds, that moment

of forever, green turning momentarily to red
then back to green again.

                                                   ---Bruce Willard

See his Couple. Also Great Plains.