It was the talk of the town
Mikey finally had his chariot
For months he had been running his mouth
To anyone who would listen
Scrimp and save and hustle and sweat and damn it, he’d done it:
A 1968 Plymouth Road Runner
In gleaming, midnight blue

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen
Raw muscle
Graceful
Yet whimsical
(us kids kept asking him to tap that horn for another ‘beep beep’)
For the next three hours Mikey kept ferrying us back and forth
Non-stop laughter and thrills across the Congaree

Before that day, our streets were quiet
At night you could hear the river and, off in the distance
The faintest hum and bustle from Columbia
But once that Plymouth arrived
It was like we had our very own Saturn V-
‘To the moon!’, Mikey would yell above that engine’s roar
‘We’re going to the moon, I tells ya!’

Ezy Reading is out every month.