"Details"

I tell Scottie Chase that I want the Cad and ask him if a check in the mail today will seal the deal.

"No problem," he tells me. "I thought you'd be calling. I've just been sitting here with the paperwork in front of me waiting for the word." It seems as though Paulson has virtually handed me over on a silver platter.

I tell Scottie I will not take delivery for some ten days or so, due to logistical concerns in planning for the lengthy expedition northward. In the meantime, all the irritating political protocol is discharged. License plates and other sundry validations are secured. With some 300 miles between the principals, this is all marvelously accomplished by virtue of facsimiled documents and telephoned considerations alone.

Pitiful, really. I won't get my grubby little mitts on the new sled for more than a week, but the chiselling fucking governor and his corps of sleazy bureaucrats have already extracted their pound(s?) of flesh.

In addition to toeing the aforementioned authoritarian line, even more supplemental funding is required to satisfy the voracious machinery of the government/insurance industry collusion and rip-off scheme, fairly recently ensconced as the "law" around these here parts. This incredibly fat, huge cash cow is known as "mandatory minimum liability," amongst some other names, slightly less genteel. Test the limits of your own credulity with a side trip to this link.

On the bright side, though (I'm trying to make lemonade here, folks!), it will be a full year before the bitter pill of this particular socialist agenda, with its ubiquitous and arrogant armies of Traffic Nazis and their attendant minions, is once again forcibly crammed down my unwilling throat. Distasteful concerns aside, more pleasant considerations occupy my imagination in the days leading up to the big excursion.

From my internet research, I am aware that the 1983 Cadillac's saw the introduction of the Bose stereo system as an available premium option. Paulson tells me he noticed no conspicuous Bose emblems or badging, but there is definitely a cassette player in the Fleetwood. He poked his finger in the little tape loading door in the radio's faceplate. Though not holding my breath, I cling hopefully to the slight possibility that it might the Bose.

My minds eye is pleasantly congested with big car cruising visions from those glorious days of yore, my high school and college years, and finally with memories of moving away from Mom and Dad's. Naturally, these recollections are warmly replete with the finest of the "women, wine, and songs" I sampled in that era. This might be more accurately translated as wild young chicks, whiskey and beer, and good, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll.

In preparation for the five hours or so that driving the Caddy home will entail, I dust off my old cassette carrying case which hasn't seen duty since its Toronado stint in the early '90's. Old road tune staples I haven't heard in years beckon moodily from their slots in the case like long-lost drinking buddies, asking, "Where in the hell have you been?"

Admittedly, since making the sea change from cassettes to CD's, some of the old standby's never made the conversion, and have since been long neglected. Amongst the dusty jewels are such classics as the Stones' "Tattoo You," Dire Straits' hypnotic "Making Movies," the elusive Gerry Rafferty albums, some Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's treasures, and Journey's peerless "Infinity." Mixed in, too, with the indispensable Pat Benatar selections, are .38 Special, The Pretenders, ELO, and that little ol' band from Texas, ZZ Top. Whoa! Gimme some gas and clean off my sunglasses!

Lurking also in the little tape case attache is the Leppardmen's sonic and harmonious, "Hysteria," and their earlier, but timeless, "Pyromania." I defy any self-respecting hipster on wheels, ....aging or not, ....to crank "Photograph" or "Armageddon It" up to the max and keep the speedo needle under 90! C'mon. Let's see it!

Speaking of tunes and cruising, perhaps my most indelible memory from the vaults is set in my very first car. I guess I was just lucky, but that first car was a mean and lean, charcoal colored beauty, a sweet '69 Buick Electra 225. What a boat!

The old man gave me that car when he bought himself a new Electra in '74. I was just a mere strippling of 17 and the old Electra had one of the big 400's under the hood, ....a 455, I think. If the old man had ever known of some of the crazy stunts that I pulled off in her, he'd have given that car to the fucking milkman.

Stunts?

How about seven highly hormonal, briskly besotten know-it-all teenagers, ....higher than a kite on what some long-ago marketing genius had dubbed, "organic mescaline," ....all tucked into the old Deuce and a Quarter, with the needle pegged to the wall on a little stretch of road the locals called, "Deadman's Gulch?" Speedo's, by the way, registered 120 mph in those days.

Anyway, I remember that summer, long ago in '74, flying like the wind down a dusty, country road in old "Bu( )ck." That's how the trim lettering on the hood read, the I missing in action somewhere on a bumpy back road.

"Buck" and I were riding the wind when something like dancing thunder erupted from the old AM radio. It was my first taste of some hard-edged riffing from those north-of-the border guitar slingers, Bachman Turner Overdrive, and I pumped it up as loud as it would go. "Taking Care of Business" was the name of the song, and it turned out to be a cracking cure for some stereophonic procrastination I had harbored up to that point.

Hence, by that very weekend, one of the new-fangled 8-Track Stereo tape players was hanging from an oddly floating bracket mounted under "Buck's" imposing dashboard. On the rear window shelf now sat two cabinet style speakers, practically obscuring the entire expanse of the back glass. Looking in through the back window, the car appeared nearer akin to a recording studio than an automobile. Ahh, ....sweet excess! Thank the merciful Lord I never had to stop so quickly that those speakers came crashing forward through my pubescent little brain pan.

Dusting off the old 8-Track case will never happen again, ....not in my house, anyway. Some sleaze bag lightfingers purloined that tape case one night as "Buck" sat quietly parked outside a high school basketball game. Well, turnabout's fair play, I guess. Probably half of the tapes in that case I had stolen myself (....though some folks never outgrow their adolescent criminality, happily I did manage to do so some years later).

Representative of some of those 8-Track titles would be CSN&Y, Hendrix, the Beatles, BTO, Lynryd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Golden Earring, The Allman Brothers, Foghat, Foreigner, and, of course, Led Zeppelin. I suppose it ain't all that far removed from Cheryl Crow, Lenny Kravitz, and Weezer, huh?

Click here for a quick peek at this forty something's opinionated and incomplete "Musical Artists' Hall of Fame."

The Sable is curiously submissive lately, like she senses something's in the air. "Soon, you'll be shitting on someone else's parade," I muse to myself morbidly as I climb in, turning the key like tossing the dice. She starts up instantly, of course, as if to restore herself to my good graces.

The big day leisurely nears, and finally, I work my last shift before departing the following morning. I'm all packed and ready to go on the eve of the designated day, ....plenty of cash, plates and tags, tape case, sunglasses, cigarettes, and extra underwear.

Falling to sleep has not been easy lately.