Hit a Bump, Mama!

Sometimes life just gets too hot to handle. Sometimes you just need to Hit a Bump. You see, long before I could drive I took up residence in the back seat of my mother's chocolate brown Oldsmobile Delta Eighty-Eight. This vehicle of ours was affectionately referred to as "The Heap." There was nothing in my life more mortifying than being driven up to the middle school in The Heap. Picture, if you will, a rattle-trap of coughs and sputters and oftentimes black smoke. If you listen closely you'll even hear the high-pitched squeak and eventual POP of the door being opened and closed. I was never more religious than when praying that the Brown Turd would not die right there in front of the peers of my adolescent youth. The cream colored rooftop had the look of a ragged carpet as its peels flapped in the wind. The silver duct tape with the blackened and curled edges held the backseat's vinyl in place. My poor mother...she always wanted to drop me off front and center. Didn't she know the reason I vehemently argued to be dropped off a couple of blocks before the school?
I guess I never really went all out and explained to her that I was embarrassed as all get out. I suppose I did not want to hurt her feelings...I think I knew, on some level, that she was doing her best to keep her own head held high.
She always kept her composure--even when she would turn off the ignition only to have the car shake and wobble and rumble for an entire minute and a half. In some aspects it was fun for my sister and I to experience such an amusement park ride in the comfort of our own car---the duct tape holding us safely in place. But in other ways it was yet another moment filled with the terror of being seen by another human being.
Having lived in an old green-shingled farm house without such amenities as central air and heat for over 20 years I can attest to the fact that the summers in the Texas Hill Country can get quite sticky. To this day I can still recall sitting in the backseat of the Heap with the windows down as Mom drove us to town to go the local store aptly named Poor Boy, Inc...or PBI as the townsfolk called it. The back road we traveled had all kinds of twists and turns and many hills and dips. There was always one section of the road that-if hit just right-would trigger the air conditioning in the car to come on. Whenever this happened it was glorious! We'd all whoop and holler and crank up the windows as quickly as we could so as to trap the cool air inside. From that moment on, every time we got in the car, my sister and I would always call out, "Hit a Bump, Mama!"
I have found that there are many bumps along the road we all must travel and sometimes we have to hit bottom before we can start to feel any relief.