Living in a large Eastern city for so many years, I take many things for granted that aren’t so ordinary to others. Take “Baby”. Porsche Boxsters are not unusual around Philadelphia, but I have only seen four – not counting the ones in the dealer’s lot in Albuquerque – in the 6,691 miles covered since May 13th: three in LA, and one in Portland. Several times, Baby has been a conversation starter, but while puppies and babies attract women, sports-cars attract motor-heads, all of them male in my experience.

Tonight, I had barely pulled into the parking lot of an IGA Supermarket in Hardin, Montana, when a grinning, wide-eyed youth wearing a long apron came running to the driver’s side of the car. He was all motion, arms flapping in excitement, hardly able to wait for me to get out. (He was so excitable that, had it not been for the apron, which quickly pegged him as an employee of the market, I would have palmed the pepper-spray can before emerging.)

-“Wow, dude! Wow!! Is that a Boxer?”, he said in breaking voice, keeping his eyes fixated on Baby.
“Yes, it’s a Boxs-TER.” I corrected him. He came closer as I got out, almost blocking my exit and ability to close the door. He was a few inches taller than me -- yes, almost any teenage boy is -- and a little beefy, but looked less threatening with the untied apron’s sides flapping like a skirt in the evening breeze. He continued talking, almost squealing, his eyes never leaving Baby:
“Dude, that’s an AWESOME car! It is sooo cool!!”

I could see he wanted more than just talk, and since he looked both harmless and I had the time – Hardin’s life-blood are tourists on the way to the site of Custer’s Last Stand and the casinos for those tourists, but the casinos, which seem to be part of every business I saw (as in “Dairy Queen-Casino”, “Laundromat-Casino”, “Exxon-Casino”) don’t have card games so I had nothing to do – I said:
“ Do you want to..” and he was already seated inside, touching everything.
“Oh, it’s an automatic..”, his voice lowering with disappointment.
“It’s both an Automatic AND a Manual, but clutchless”, I replied. It confused him, as his foot sought a third pedal. I explained how it worked with the up-down shift-“clickers” on the steering wheel. “AWEsome, dude! AWEsome!”, he squeaked, and kept peering around the instrument panel.

I figured I would never get him out without turning on the engine, especially since, when he finally looked up at me, it was with a classic puppy-dog begging stare. So, with a little trepidation and a mental flash-video of him getting his left foot in (he hadn’t adjusted the seat back to get fully inside), putting the car in gear, and peeling out of the parking lot with me hanging onto the open door for dear life, I put the key in the ignition and turned it.

Porsche engines have a distinctive sound, at once soothing and powerful, hinting of forces straining to be unleashed. I thought the boy would cry or have an orgasm when he heard it roar to life. (I rarely get either feeling now -- from the car! -- but it brought back memories…) I said: “Don’t do anything stupid now!”, as he, oblivious to everything except the hum and ever-so-light vibration through the steering-wheel, put his right foot on the accelerator…..and almost floored it!

The needle on the tachometer shot up to somewhere around 6500 rpms (just south of the red-line) before he took his foot off. “AWEsome, dude! Really, AWEsome!!!”, he almost screamed. And gave me another begging-puppy look.

I knew what he was hoping for, and while others have driven Baby (most recently, Bonnie’s husband, Charlie, in Eugene), there was no way that I could allow it. My look answered the unspoken question, and he had come down to earth enough to accept it.

Getting out and recognizing that he had already experienced something he probably hadn’t imagined he would that day, he recovered his up-mood: “ Wow, dude! Great car!! Do you race it? Are you going to be around a while? How many horses?” I answered his questions – “no”,“no”, and "206" – as I locked the car and semi-escorted him toward the store as he talked. I considered asking him his age and about his Ride, but didn’t want to take a chance on making him feel awkward given his enthusiasm for mine. We parted as I entered the store and he went to his post as a grocery-bagger.

Later, as I was paying the cashier for my Fuji apples and yogurt, the healthy balance to the delicious bacon and eggs breakfast that John’s friends, Sally and Dan, made for me in Lolo, Montana this morning, he came up to me from the other check-out line and said: “Dude, can you drive by the Dry-Clean so my friends can see the car?”

“Sorry, I can’t.”, I said, and his whole body made a sagging motion to go with the verbal “Ohh…” of disappointment. And he moved back to his line.

The cashier, a friendly, plain-looking woman in her thirties said to me, smiling: “All that boy thinks about are cars and girls! He should be thinking more about school”, paused for a moment, and in a louder voice directed more toward him: “And work!” I laughed, as she did, and I said: “Yes, but his are the better thoughts at any age.” She laughed. I picked up my bags, said good night, and left.

What I found most interesting was how his focused interest made him oblivious to some social conventions (like saying “thank you”) and that he almost took for granted that I would let him sit in the car, etc. He wouldn’t have forced himself, but neither was he shy about what he wanted and expected to get. And, in a way, our enthusiasm for the car made me a willing accomplice and facilitator. It thought about a parallel with how celebrities are viewed by fans. Fans’ adulation and familiarity with gossip articles make for a sense of "ownership” that becomes on entitlement when they finally meet a celebrity in person. They expect to get an autograph, to be treated as familiar when they are really strangers. And, the celebrities comply, up to a point. As I did on behalf of Baby.
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I actually had other things to write about from the past few days, including the conversation in the checkout with the same cashier and three Mexican men, as well as my visit yesterday by jet-boat to the site of the Chinese massacre I’ve previously mentioned, but it will have to be another day. I am way behind on important correspondence as well.

This “blogging” continues to be alien to how I write (as noted in earlier posting):it's a struggle to curb, not always successfully, an urge to edit and polish. A friend, with whom I talked about this tonight, said that I shouldn’t go for perfection, but, at least when it comes to writing, it’s in my nature.

It’s late and tomorrow is a long day since there is a 300 mile drive to Deadwood, SD after the visit to the Custer battlefield. I’ll also upload more photos when I get somewhere again with a high speed connection.