Photography by Josh Clason for Petrolicious
The car I’m piloting slides through thick burnt umber fields, tires screaming, begging for mercy, as wailing sirens get closer. I punch the accelerator, the car lunging forward at impossible speeds as the parade of police cars begins to recede. Approaching rapidly is an open draw bridge with a lumbering, slow ferry beneath. Suddenly, the soft, distant tinkling of bells shatters my concentration. “Ice cream!“
I spring up to my feet as if fired from a howitzer, clutching my chosen getaway car, a silver De Tomaso Pantera with a massive black spoiler, and scramble to find one of my parents. The orange shag carpet provides the traction to achieve maximum ice-cream-freak-out speed and in a moment I’m in the kitchen sliding into the table, “Ice cream truck! It’s like a million degrees! I need money!”
I don’t remember what happened next. It could have been any sticky, humid summer day in subrurban Washington DC, but the little car in my little hand was a constant. The hours spent pushing Hot Wheels, Matchboxes, and sometimes a rare Corgi or Tomy delivered by parents friends’ who had traveled abroad and knew of my addiction, around on the carpet were innumerable. So too, the time spent with my lips vibrating in constantly increasing frequencies, simulating the frenzied acceleration of my imagined freedom. I don’t where the hell I was going, but I sure wasn’t staying there.
Funny, but my love for these little escape vehicles never withered. Perhaps I’m still a child. Do you still collect toy or model cars? If so which ones?
