South Carolina girls are the best in the world... Or at least that's what they keep telling me. I don't remember much about the circumstances of my birth or even my mother for that matter. Social services told me that I was found, healthy and bawling for someone to feed me. So I don't celebrate a birthday, I just celebrate the day I was found in a back alley outside the projects... if it's worth a celebration that is. The officer who found me (not the brightest if you asked me) named me for my full head of dark hair, Ebony... My family was never found and shuffled through the system, I never really received a sir name of my own. I was placed in several foster homes as I grew, but never seemed to fit anywhere. I was too complicated, too withdrawn, and somehow... too demanding. School had always been a chore that I was forced to complete, even though my grades were always the best.
I was 16 when I drove my first car, my foster father's beat up pickup truck. The old ford rattled and clanged and was rusting apart, but it let me get away from the house. That same rusted truck, after four years of work and repairs, set me on my way to California. The '63 ford finally shut down in Arizona and I left it by the side of the road, like waving goodbye to some sort of twisted legacy. I must have kicked around in the desert sun for hours, disoriented and more than a little lost. I remember sitting out there when the night closed in, leaning against a rock and watching the world cool off. The desert is certainly more alive at night... I am certainly more alive at night.
I should have frozen to death in the desert that night, with nothing more than a t-shirt and jeans. Funny, the thought of freezing in a desert. In the morning, thinking more clearly, I retraced my steps back to the broken down truck. I first met Rose there on the side of the road. The little redhead in the big firebird actually stopped to see if I needed a hand. I got my bag out of the truck and never looked back. The Firebird was the first stop in a long line of cars.
Rose was good for me, in law school, she'd settled down and started an easy life with a home of her own. But I was just too shifty to sit still. I took road trips on the weekdays she was in class or at work, all for cars. Every kind of car you could imagine, from the sleek bodies of European sports cars to the luxury of top of the line suvs. I fell in love with the classics though... There is nothing compared to the sound of good old American muscle.
Good old American muscle that got me in trouble. Four am in the morning I was driving back from a "road trip" in a gorgeous '67 mustang, true I'd had a few drinks. I never saw the dog run across the road, I only reacted to the instinct not to hit him. And I didn't, but I did hit the guardrail and rolled across the highway. If you looked at the wreckage of the car, you wouldn't have guessed that I walked away unharmed. I'm not sure how I did it myself...I just woke up about 10 feet from the fiery mess with only a few scratches... I suppose I went through the windshield... I suppose I should be dead.
The alcohol left my life that night, but the cars never did. There's a thrill to the speed, the chase... even the explosion of an accident.
A month later Rose, the only stable point in my life, and I had a serious disagreement about my car addiction. She left that night, still angry... And never came back. I only hope she didn't see the drunk driver who hit her, just like I never saw the guardrail.
I lost my anchor...I lost a lot of direction with it. The road is home now, my cars are home. But something somewhere tells me that there is something better...