Matchbox Jeep

It had become a daily ritual, to lay belly down in the freshly cut grass. Staring the emerald obelisks eye to eye, I would push my silver matchbox Jeep through the rigid landscape. The restless roots of the rusty tree had given rise to a toasted wold, my jeep’s destination, Mount Kilimanjaro. Driving forth on hands and knees, thousands of plantlike painters painting green and mahogany Van Gogh swirls on my just-been-washed OshKosh B’Goshes. Honey coloured sunlight drips through the microcosmic jungle ceiling and mirrors zebra stripes that tactlessly trampoline on the hood of the Jeep and silently slip over its doors as golden eggs in a Teflon pan. The crisp vegetation playing tribal beats on the plastic roll-cage, long African cigar fingers thudding on animal skin drums. Eluding the hundred legged beasts and clicking tanks of gray armor, I can feel the sting of barbeque smoke in my nostrils just as I sight the slanting slopes of the russet Kilimanjaro. At the crest of the dusty loft I can see across the muggy swale of mud to the gravelly parking lot. There, under the glowing red stench of his Dairy Queen sign, Mr. Bell plays a sober funeral march on his grumpy crumpled trumpet for the man next door who owns the Stagecoach Ice Cream Co. My ears are yet too small to receive the cries of this inane courtship. I climb back into my imagination, and let my jeep run away with itself to the woodpile, an ancient Ziggurat.This is one about my childhood in Salisbury Mass. Trust me, Mr. Bell was a wacko! could write an epic about him. Enjoy! Written March 26th, 2002 © on Mar 26 2002 01:48 PM PST   0 • 18 • 10