And This To Be Remembered ByI have a friend with a car; the car has no hat.
This is a silly vernacular for a car with a roof that can be bade go away, tucked into recess behind the head rests. The sky goes wide, then, at speed: tall an blue or wide and grey, and in each case strangely still as the road unravels underneath and the trees clutch and shake as they blur by. Other cars without hats, driven by people perhaps in scarves (or hats of their own) pass in the other lane, and they wave as they go. You can do that sort of thing in such a car; on pretty days with flinty air and big smiles it is nearly expected. Overpasses sound like applause, tunnels reverberate with an arena cheer. I have a car with a window in the roof to give good illusion, and I like it, too, but it is nothing compared to a car without a hat.
I should remember this year to ask if I can borrow time in it. We are coming up on the season of apples, and there are places I'll need to go. There are farms around here that grow them, sell them, apples the likes are rare to find in other ways. Varieties that do not make it to the markets can be sought out there in the mist raked hills, piled up in bins made by hand to be sold by the bag, the half-bushel, the bushel, brought home in plain brown paper and set to sit on the sill until the pie crust is done or the applesauce is bubbling. They are tart, sweet, and shimmer with season. When the teeth take them, they burst crisp.
I can think of no better way to get to them than blue roads, back roads, paths known only to locals, the lost and the brave as they climb and fall over the wooded hills, so close and easily ignored. The roads fold into valleys under canapies that will soon enough turn flame and gold, and offer vistas from the ridgetops that will betray the rivers and streams only by what is no longer there, worn away. I will take up my recordings of Barry Phillips and Edgar Meyer, and seek the season, hopefully with the favor of my friend.
Because I can think of no better way to do it than in a car with no hat.
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