An illegal lane change is the most minor moving violation on the books in Maryland. The fine is $85. It also can be a strategic maneuver when trying to avoid passing illegally thru an EZ Pass Toll lane without the pass… in a rental car. The Toll violation can earn you a $2,500 fine, making for a very worthy exchange of infractions.

I find myself driving across the South in a rental car with out-of-state plates. It’s an easy way to meet your friendly local state trooper. Due to this fact I cannot transport certain items: a baseball bat, mace, pepper spray, open containers of alcohol, firearms, brass knuckles, black powder, Vegemite™ or the book The Audacity of Hope. For safety reasons all liberal political literature should be safely hidden under the spare tire in the trunk, and self-defense weapons limited to a hammer and a can of Raid™.

Lynchburg, VA was pretty dull except for my impulsive purchase of half a peck of York apples from a roadside stand outside of town in Altavista. I ate them and threw the cores out the window at any one that looked like an extra from the movie Deliverance. Yorks are both a dense and firm apple. The weight makes for a good throw, but the oblate shape gives it an unexpected curve at the end of the pitch. I crossed the state line and brought the apples into the hotel room to avoid random discovery. It was pouring rain at this point and I was running out of targets anyway.

I was beginning to think this trip was a wash. In Greensboro I found Remember When Records. It was a fluke. It’s the kind of music shop you dream still exists, but assume died out in the early eighties. It’s wedged in between a thrift store and two pawn shops. I found it by accident.

There was furniture fair in town. My apartment is decorated with milk crates, a futon and other peoples hand-me-downs rescued from the dumpster. I don’t give two shits about furniture. I spend my money on music, but many far less cool people buy this stuff called furniture. So many that in fact I was stuck in the only hotel with a vacancy in all of greater Greensboro. The Red Roof Inn was behind a Biscuitville™. For those of you that have never been to a Biscuitville™ allow me to explain this Southern response to Denny’s™. They are open only six hours a day from 7:00AM to 1:00PM, yet manage to make an entire neighborhood reek of cheap sausage 24/7. I tried to run the heater, but the smell of burnt biscuits and gravy filled the hotel room making me hungry but also somewhat queasy. Everything on the menu is made from three basic ingredients: biscuits, sausage and lard.

Not hankering for biscuits, sausage or lard I took a walk up the street. I walked right into Remember When Records a.k.a. Vinyl Heaven. I stopped and stared at the 78’s the 45’s the 7”s, the 10”s the LPs, cassette, 8-tracks and the picture discs on the walls -- it was a living miracle. The owner John Hiatt was standing behind the counter on the raw concrete floor smiling like a wizened old elf. It smells like dust and old card stock, like any good thick stack of old records will. He deals only in VG or like new quality. No scratched, worn or marked up records here. I did what I always do. I bought records. I bought too many records, and even a 45 box to carry them.

I thought I’d top off the day with a show, but the local indie rag “Relish” informed me I should go back to the hotel room and wait for the heater to run out of gravy scented wonderment. I got hungry and walked to a sandwich shop up the street. The girl in line ahead of me was wearing pants so tight her ass squeaked when she walked. I bought a cubano to entertain my stomach and asked where to get a coffee. The two sisters behind the counter went into giggle fits and recommended the gas station on the corner. I asked if there was anything to do in this town. The younger one said “no.”

“The why don’t you leave?”

“I am leaving honey! I’m goin’ to Hollywood!”

“Good luck with that.” My comments bled lost sarcasm. She’d be on her way back to the bad coffee and sandwiches in 6 months. If one in a million people succeed, then nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine people either become crack whores or go home very sad.

The Sunoco indeed sold coffee and the parking lot was full of bored looking teenagers. Two were huffing glue out of plastic bags in the trees beside the dumpster. All seemed upset at my appearance. But the older ones knew how to make it work for them.

“Dude will you buy me smokes?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’ll pay you!”

“I don’t feel motivated. Why do you want them?”

“I’m addicted.”
“Think faster, I’m getting disinterested in paying attention to you.”

“Um… they’re for my Mom.”

“Lying is boring. Try harder.”

“Uh.. Um.. this is hard dude.”

“They make you feel cool and you are too stupid to know that coolness is being marketed to you through advertising and coy product placement. You are unable to perceive this because you sniff glue.”

“I don’t sniff glue.”

“Right. You just like the smell.”

“Ha! You’re o.k. man. It does kind of smell good.”

I bought the kid smokes, Lucky Strikes. Maybe I’d get lucky and they’ll make him puke; turn him off the tobacky. His cracked-out girlfriend asked me if I’d buy them beer and I said no. I did offer to pay to have them sterilized which made them laugh a lot.

The next day it also rained. George Bush was in town to shower more rednecks with the propaganda of New Fascism veiled in fake cowboy bravado. It seemed unimportant at the time, but unlike all previous days, I had to work outside in the rain. It is dull and I’ll spare you the parts that require a poncho. But let me tell you. When the police find you on the roof of a building wet and wrinkly like you’ve been in the tub too long, with a bag of tools, they have a lot of questions. And that Maglite is brightest when it shines on you.

So I didn’t get arrested. But I still had two days left. The desk clerk asked me if I was a carpenter and if I would come build some shelves at her apartment. She was very worn looking, and had track marks. I checked out. George Bush unexpectedly followed me to Richmond, and that also seemed unimportant, but it was quickly coming to a point. I put on my work shirt and smelled something funny. I realized it was stale biscuits and gravy. Biscuitville was following me too.

While working in Richmond I remembered that last year I had mailed a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 to Mr. Bush for his birthday. The note read “I know you don’t read much, but give it a try. It’ll be good for us all.” It probably earned me a manila folder somewhere in the beltway with my name on it. It vaguely occurred to me that might come back to haunt me if I ever got too close to the man.

So then I got too close to the man, about ninety feet away. I never saw him though. I saw traffic -- vile, gridlocked un-navigable traffic. I remember a page-a-day calendar in grade school filled with fake words, called Sniglets. I forgot them all except the word “cartipillar.” It was a noun describing long lines of slowly snaking cars. That was Richmond at 5:15 that Friday. The reason was not rush-hour. Rush hour in New York or Boston, but Richmond, no. The reason was that Route 64 West had been closed; as was every single exit ramp. They were closed for the security of George W. Bush Jr’s motorcade and its overpaid passengers. Traffic sat and about 30 motorcycle cops roared by with their lights running. Then came the limos —a string of maybe six black limos with tinted windows and flags on the front corners of the hood.

I rolled down the driver side window and extended the great communicator. I wasn’t sure which limo was his, so they all got the finger and they all probably deserved it by criminal association.

I saw as I rubber-necked to watch them pass, that I had inspired other drivers to do the same and that it became a great wave moving along the crowd in a stadium except that instead of cheering it was a massive traveling “fuck you” that was following him like a great stinking shadow of shame all the way home.