It wasn’t the best of times. There are no good ol’ days. It was just another time, with different rules to be ignored, and worked around. We were never victims or suspects because we were all angels. We were free. And we’d cruise the downtown, from the fairgrounds out by the interstate to the big Catholic Church and synagogues and bars in the center of the little grungy city. Greaser laps in a steamy hot summer loop. That ‘63 Ford Falcon with the tiny V8 260, I was convinced was a race car, and I painted the rusty steel wheels white, and I knew I was cool…

An AM radio playing so loud, so you’d hear us coming a quarter mile away, or maybe some Bob Seger or early Springsteen on an eight-track with the universally required book of matches holding the cassette in place.

Other guys in working class Camaros, endless laps circling the little factory town, under starry skies in a lead gasoline fog… we thought we’d live forever.

The hottest summer nights, with the windows down, elbows out, trolling for girls who smelled like weed and patchouli, because everyone knew about the girls who smelled like patchouli.

Deals were struck agencies formed, with those girls from the bar who smelled like sweat in the darkest corners of the loneliest parking lots. Turf’s bar was home, and we’d drink there when the six packs of PBRs ran out, and the back seat was full of crumpled cans, smelling of moldy beer.

Our only truth was we were refugees from an unnamed war that was coming to claim us, we hid there hoping the world would pass us by, because we all knew this place in time was the only thing that truly mattered—to simply be alive and driving in circles in the sticky summer darkness.

One by one, like a ghoul grabbing us up from the graves of our fathers who went down before us, we were stolen away until the greaser laps were no more and facing a reality of a world without promise or the girls who smelled of patchouli we succumbed and got jobs and turned dials and levers and took orders and we were no longer angels, but employees and worker bees.

And the small block Fords and Chevys gave way and rise to the station wagon with car seats, and it was no longer stolen from us but given away freely and with intent. And we died with short hair and fat bellies long decades before we ever went down and into the dirt.