Friggin' May

I hopped in the ol' friggin' Plum Crazy Purple Gremlin this fine friggin' May Day morning and revved the shit out of the engine. Leave it to friggin' AMC to introduce the first subcompact with a friggin' six-banger engine. One hundred and friggin' twenty-eight American made horsefriggginpower under that Plum Crazy Purple hood.

Kind'a reminds me of why AMC deserved to stick the "A" in their name. The American Friggin' Motors Corporation. When the butterfly-powered Rice Rockets were flyin' in like shrapnel from overseas, tough-ass American men (and some' 'uh the more butch looking women) was crankin' out some of America's finest OTTO-friggin-MO-beels to ever hit American asphalt.


Who can forget the AMC Ambassador, the Nash Metropolitan, the friggin' AMX, the Javelin; the Rebel, the Rambler, the Friggin' Hornet ... (yeah, no shit, they had 2 Hornet models, the standard HORNET with the 360 V8, and the FRIGGIN' HORNET which featured the same 360 V8 but with the word "HEMI" spray painted on the block ... oh, and it also came equipped with the Nitrous package ... not for the engine ... it was for the driver and crew, remember, this was the friggin' 1970s.) ...

... the Eagle, the Jeep, the Matador (What's a friggin' Matador?) and who can forget "Lah-Kremm-duh-lah-friggin-Kremm" the fuckin' Pacer (I save the Atomic F-Bomb for important shit).


A moment of silence, please ...

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

... thank you, I wuz gettin' a little misty.


The Pacer ... everytime I think 'uh the Pacer the Pacer I think about my Old Man and his '73 Prototype Pacer. It was a Tickled Pink 2-door (all the AMC shit was named after Boones Farm wines, remember, this was the friggin' 70s) and it also came equipped with the Nitrous package.

How'd he get his mitts on a Pacer prototype you may ask? He found it buried in a cave up in the UP (that's the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for all you non-snowmobilers). Once in a while, when I was growing up, Pops would take off to the UP for a few weeks, or months sometimes, to get away from, what he called "Friggin' business complications."

Ma would peek out the front curtains while he was gone and keep tabs on the dark sedans that would be parked in front of the house from time to time. When she didn't see 'em around anymore she'd let the carrier pigeons loose. 3 days later, Pops would be back at the breakfast table woofin' down bacon & eggs like he ain't seen food for a while.

One, time he showed up a day after we'd released the pigeons.


He pulled up in this wide, bright pink car that looked like a friggin' bubblegum dispenser. He sat in the car for a few minutes fiddling with some type of oxygen mask. Then Pops pops outta this car and we run toward each other and bang our hardhats together.

I sez "Jeepers Pops, what the heck is this blasted thing?"

He looked down at me real stern and said "Gus, your LANGUAGE???????"

I look down at the ground, kick a pebble, then look him in the eye and say "For Chrissakes you old fart, what the fuck is this shit?"


He tousles my hair (which is tricky when you wear a hard hat) and sez "Now thats the kinda crap I wanna hear coming out of your pie-hole yuh little bastard." He was real concerned about me makin' it in this mean old world and said there ain't nuthin' that forges the way better than a mouthful of obscenities.

Mom looked real proud from the front stoop as she was stirring a Meister Brau Martini for the Old Man.


The Old Man and I sat down on the porch swing (which was just the front seat from our old Ambassador Station Wagon tied to a couple screw-eyes) and proceeded to tell me the story. He'd been up in the UP for a few weeks waiting for a business deal to "cool down" a little and came across this cave while he was out lookin' for motel rooms or whatever.

The entrance to the cave was filled with boulders that looked like they were stacked from the inside; the top boulder had words carved into it.

"Ye who enter this cave will be cursed for eternity."


He figured if someone had sealed themselves in this cave, at least there'd be some meat in there and he started removing the boulders. As he removed the last boulder, a shaft of light shone onto the most beautiful car he had ever laid eyes on. A chorus of angels sang a verse and a chorus of Charlie Rich's "Behind Closed Doors."

Actually it turned out the car radio was on; the car was still running and the cave was filled with dangerous carbon dioxide fumes. Pops said it was no worse than walking into the Moose Lodge the day after "Brats, Beans & Meister Brau Night." He went in to investigate.

As he approached the car, he heard additional voices singing along with Charlie on Behind Closed Doors. The he saw 4 figures in the car through the smoggy haze. He stopped quickly in his tracks, slowly bent over, carefully reaching into his left sock and pulled out a Zagnut Bar. Jeezh, did you think he was going to pull out a weapon? I don't know when the last time you saw a set of Grimstone knuckles but let me tell yuh ... we don't need no stinkin' weapons.


He figured he'd be kickin' some ass in a minute and he needed to energize himself with the unique combination of crunchy peanut butter covered in rich toasted coconut. Plus, once the Zagnut Bar was out of the picture, it would give these cave dwellers one less reason to kill him. The doors of the Pacer flew open and the four Phantoms quickly rolled out in formation, executing perfect backwards somersaults dispersing to separate corners of the cave protected by handy rock formations.

Suddenly, he was attacked with missles from each of the 4 defense locations. He dodged them the best he could, there were a few loud clangs against his hardhat and he was grazed by a few projectiles in the upper arm and shoulder area. "Ouch, that friggin' smarts." He looked down and saw that he was bleeding. Now that really pissed him off. He felt a sharp stinging sensation in his upper thigh.


He looked down, and sticking deep into his leg was a Kohinoor triple-ought tech pen. "What the hell???" There was a loud clang against his hard hat and with his quick reflexes, he grabbed the missle with his bare hands, an Alvin 18-inch acrylic drafting triangle. Then another, this one was a Sun Hemmi Post Versalog 1460 slide rule, the kind used by industrial design engineers.

He looks up and sees one of the Phantoms stand up, he was a wearing a white lab coat; his pocket-protector holster was empty now.

"You don't know what you're doing, this monstrosity cannot show itself to mankind. DON'T LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


My Old Man was standing face to face with the heroic design crew of the AMC Pacer. They were all weeping. "Don't you understand?" the one in the back said "This was not what we intended. It was Monday, we were all hung over. Jimmy here tried to get a laugh out of us and drafted the prototype. It was at that unfortunate moment that CEO of AMC, Roy D. Chapin Sr. bust into our office and said ...

"So whut ch'yuh guys working on?"


"And after that, this design became his obsession. We all had reputations to uphold and after 6 months of intensive development, we all decided to make a suicide pact. Drive up here to the UP with all evidence of this creation and bury it for eternity."

Pops said, "Well yuh really shouldn't 'uh put that sign out there about cursing. If I get an inkling of salty language being used, I'm on it like a fly on shit."

The next sounds were 3 gunshots, a voice saying "I give up.", the sound of keys hitting the cave floor ... then one final gunshot.


Pops drove that baby down to our place in Nordeast, called Motor Trend, and rest is friggin' history.

Happy friggin' May Day.