The Sound of Power

I was walking down the street today, the main shopping drag here in my ‘hood, looking in the windows of the little shops, thinking about lunch, when I heard the roar. The source of the sound was obscured by a parked truck, but I didn’t need to see it to know what it was. After the initial burst it settled into a throaty, uneven growl, the sound that only an American V-8 that’s been tuned for maximum power can make. It could hardly idle at all; the thrumming was choppy, rolling down the busy street.

Perhaps it had difficulty idling, but when the driver touched its throttle the glittering silver coke-bottle Corvette purred like a sabre-tooth dreaming of meat. It eased from its illegal parking place and stalked away.

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10 thoughts on “The Sound of Power

  1. I don’t know… call me crazy… But I miss Steve McQueen. They have been running a few of his films. Bullit is by far my favorite. That car he drives in it is fantastic. It would easily beat a Prius..

  2. Where did he drive that thing? the roads in town would be hell on the suspension I would think. Are the country roads better? Now Jerry, just imagine that is what the truck sounds like now.

  3. And then one day, the folks and I were getting off the tram and walking the remainder of the distance to the hotel, and there, heading in the opposite direction, looking rather startlingly like a sumo wrestler: a Ford Expedition. Yes, a full-sized Expedition, dark blue, just like Babe except with French license plates.

    I wouldn’t think anyone from France would want to be caught dead in such a symbol of American gas-guzzling decadence, but there it was, right in the middle of Prague, demonstrating just how narrow those streets really are, especially when they have to be shared with the trams.

    Something I later noticed on the way to the airport — gas prices in Prague are about the same as in Albuquerque. That is, the numbers are the same, even if the units aren’t. For a liter of gas, the price was typically 219 — Pat and I weren’t sure if that meant 21.9 Czech crowns, or 2.19 euros. If the former, gas costs about twice as much there as here; if the latter, about six times as much.

    Either way, that adds to the insanity of trying to drive an Expedition in Prague.

  4. Chevyhead,

    Bullit was filmed in sanFran. That is the baddest chase ever filmed. McQueen was the man. A man’s man. Too soon gone.

  5. Such a fucking sweet link! Thanks Jesse! I loved reading about the Mustang.

    Jer, I have a challenge for you at my website..

  6. Yo, Jer, some of the links to the categories aren’t working (like the politics category, could it be it’s been so long that the link has dried up?).

    Also, perhaps you should have a place to leave comments about the maintenance of the site, so one doesn’t have to de-flow another comment stream in order to report malfunctions.

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