EL CAMINO: THE MARK OF NO DISTINCTION

This morning my newspaper was delivered two hours late by what once was an El Camino Super Sport, but is now just a transport for lawn service tools of the trade. A cracked windshield, an Earnhart memorial decal, primer painted over rust the kind of car that screams to the world, “I will never be anyone’s boss.”

Behind the steering wheel sat a man who has waged a hopeless fourteen-year crusade to keep the Magnum Mustache from going out of style. The kind of man who won’t put a trigger lock on his firearm so his five year-old will quote, “learn a lesson.” The quintessential El Camino owner he was, wearing the same wife beater he wore to Easter Mass, his breakfast can of Busch between his thighs, his mullet flowing in the wind carefree as the feathered roach clip dangling from his rearview mirror. Beside this connoisseur of low-class culture sat a teenage girl bleach blonde with black roots in flip-flops and a tube top, freshly made up in backhand blood red lipstick and abusive boyfriend brand eye shadow. A girl who once proudly graced the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine as a third-round groupie draft pick for Ted Nugent. The kind of girl whose idea of prenatal care was switching to Marlboro Lights.

These future Springer show guests have been inseparable since the night they met at Rock n’ Bowl, when he bought her a chili dog and told her she had, “pretty titties.” This couple who still use “pulling out” as their only method of protection… Two retards, a cripple and one water head later. Four barefoot and malnourished little crackers whose assholes look like Coney Island for ringworms. Four future day laborers who will one day boast, substance addictions, D-U-I convictions, manufactured homes, pit bulls, bastard children, and El Caminos of their own.