"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
06/19/2015 at 12:37 • Filed to: renault dauphine, tet offensive, danger close, weiand blower, zip ties
5
0|
"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
06/19/2015 at 12:37 • Filed to: renault dauphine, tet offensive, danger close, weiand blower, zip ties | 5
| 0 |
Children scattered as the blower cleared its throat, compressing gallons of farm-fresh prairie air. Truth be told, I’d never really gotten used to how this thing could part crowds, like Moses hitting some South American logging road in a Group B suicide booth. I idled the Dauphine out onto the road, leaving the farmer’s market behind.
In the rear view mirror, I could dimly see the mesh bag of strawberries dangling off the tack-welded cargo hooks on the car’s rollbar. The tire noise of the 31-inch kevlar Wranglers underpinning the tiny Frenchmobile became a constant din and I flipped the safety cover off the subwoofer toggle to compensate. The mountain roads beckoned, and I was excited to meet once again on my way home with people who shared a common passion.
Before long I had identified a new class of driving enthusiast who was interested in my automobile.
The officer raps on my plexiglass window, and it takes me a moment of fettering to remove it from the door-frame and store it behind my seat. He starts his routine spiel, then begins to look inside the car, at my mask and the sawzalled parcel shelf concealing a jagged air intake for the moaning Weiand blower sticking at a jaunty angle from the rear hood.
“Is there a problem, officer?” I ask innocently, trying to dodge any hint of malice that may emerge from my muffled voice.
I let his eyes complete their circuit of my stripped-bare interior, lingering, I knew, on the ominous red button that sat atop the centre console. It was marked only with a Dymo label reading “DANGER CLOSE.” Tension hung in the air, like a gallery opening showing only Norman Rockwell paintings of the Tet Offensive.
Some people call me a radical, a psychotic, someone who shouldn’t be allowed to operate the dangerous junkheaps that I drive. But in that exact moment something electric in the air passed between the officer and I. I guess you could call it mutual respect. He called it an equipment violation.