Literary Oppos: Help

"Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection" (itsalwayssteve) 10/08/2017 at 21:29 • Filed to: None

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So, I’m working on a project for my curriculum design class and I need to find a short story about an abandoned car - realistic fiction - appropriate for 6th grade language arts. It’ll be paired with the poem Fallow Field by Scott Edward Anderson:

The old car is there,
where she left it,
out by the old shed,
breeding rust—obscured
from the roadway by the rye grass
that grows up all around.
Long triangular tentacles
blowing and bending
in the hot breeze, as
sunlight filters
through gathering clouds.
By now the grass has worked
up into the engine block.
The car
is planted now,
in this fallow field,
awaiting bulldozers.
They call this grass
“poverty grain, ” and there’s
no small comfort in the fact
that it’s as tolerant
of poor soils
as she was of her marriage.
On the day she left,
she packed her whole life
into an old grip: clothing,
framed photographs
of the children, her parents,
the salt cellar she’d bought
on her honeymoon in Rome.
While packing, she’d given
pause that her whole life
had become so
portable, where once there’d
been permanence. And now,
she blows and bends—
rye grass on a midsummer afternoon.

Obviously the poem isn’t about the car itself, but it’s a prominent metaphor of what the protagonist in the poem is leaving behind. Does anyone here know of a short story - one that could be read within about 15-20 minutes by 6th graders - about a similar theme?

Thanks y’all

Nibby > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection 10/08/2017 at 21:34

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https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-solar-anus

Boxer_4 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection 10/08/2017 at 22:18

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It’s probably not of any help as the book is not quite the same theme and too long for the scope of what you’re looking for, but I immediately thought of “Year of the Jeep” by Keith Robertson.

It’s an old book - it was ~35 years old when I read it in the summer between 4th and 5th grade -but it’s still an interesting read, regardless.

The basic synopsis is that a teenage boy finds an abandoned Willys era Jeep at an abandoned farm, and decides to get odd jobs around town to afford to get it running. Beyond that, I don’t remember a whole lot of it.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection 10/08/2017 at 23:00

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Short story? Why not a short story in short film form? 360 degree short film form!