Note: The following is not a coherent story in the sense that it has a point of any kind, more of a longer flash-style character sketch that popped into my head over the past weeks after I got a haircut and decided to briefly shave my chin beard but leave the mustache. It left me looking like some kind of race car driver from the 1970s, which I decided to call Mason Dixon. I have not touched a lot of fiction in a while, so keep that in mind when giving this item a read here on this holiday afternoon.
Should anyone care to read more from this character’s narrative, leave a comment. Otherwise, I wish you all a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. -KtE
Mason Dixon drove down the interstate and practiced what he planned to tell people when he got to Thanksgiving Dinner at Mama’s House this year. He was going about 82 in a 70 on 75 somewhere between Cartersville and Calhoun when the Georgia State Patrol pulled him over. He was going to be late and wanted to call Mama and apologize, but the Trooper made it to the window before he could get her to answer. He hung up and rolled down the window. The chill in the air only made the fear that turned his entire body into ice only harder to avoid the shakes. He wanted to floor it and run, but instead did as he was told and handed over his license and fished in the glove compartment for the registration and insurance.
He then sat in the car, adrenaline on full blast and waited for the inevitable question. The minutes dragged by and as he had practiced his speech to explain to his Uncle Jerry why he made so much money a year to clean windows on a car. Being in a NASCAR pit crew was certainly more complex than it was made out to be on television, but he had no clue how to explain those felony charges in Talladega.
“I’m gonna need you to step out of the car for a moment and answer some questions,” the trooper said when he returned from his SUV. The blue light strobed in his vision as he got out and walked to the back of his beat up Pontiac Trans Am while tractor trailers sped by next to them, so he had to shout to be heard.
The 19-year-old Mason Dixon – Mad Dawg to his friends – was a Driver in Training on the dirt track circuit and worked on a pit crew where he was responsible for the backup engine maintenance during race weekends. When his team’s driver didn’t crash on the first lap of the race in foolish attempts to get ahead in the back of the pack, Mason Dixon was in charge of pulling the layer of film off the front windshield during refuels and tire changes. His friends joked that he got paid more for doing the same thing the homeless guys made on Ponce de Leon. If they only knew the real work he put into his dream.
He grew up a Rusty Wallace fan. Though Rusty wasn’t exactly a front runner in every race, his long career in the sport was an inspiration for someone whose sole ambition in life was to drive fast and look good doing it. Mason Dixon was obsessed with race cars, and as far back as anyone in his family could remember he only ever wanted to drive one professionally. His life would be complete only to Jen he claimed to know how it feels to take the checkered flag at Daytona or the Indy 500.
His connection to a car was uncanny. Anytime he sat behind the wheel, he felt intimately connected to the machine. He understood intuitively the sound and vibrations of each vehicle as he drove it down the road or around a track. Yet Mason Dixon went wild anytime he floored the accelerator of a new ride and felt it flex and jump forward as it gained speed down the roadway. The Allendale College and Career Academy teachers where he got his certificate in automotive mechanics believed he was some kind of wizard with bare metal, able to find and solve just about any issue under the hood better than the teachers who had 30 years experience in the shops. He couldn’t explain it any better than to say he felt more in tune with an engine than he did with people.
It didn’t excuse eccentric behaviors. For instance, a few guys in school found him on the hood of a project car with his shirt off, engine running in the shop with the garage door closed. They said he was humming or something along with the engine sound. Mason Dixon was having a spiritual experience with the vehicle, was his later explanation when a disciplinary hearing was held in private by the School Board. He wasn’t suspended, but he was told there would be no more incidents or he wouldn’t graduate.
If it were possible to provide context to such explanations, maybe it would be possible to provide a straight answer to this State Trooper as to the reason for his arrest in Talladega, Alabama. Maybe his mother wouldn’t look down in shame when he tried to say he was sorry time and again for what transpired that fateful night on race weekend.
He was partying on Saturday before the race with a group of infield campers who had snuggled in several kegs of Bud Light and everyone who joined the foray with their own bottles of Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo. The more he drank, the more ridiculous he became.
At some point in the evening, Mason Dixon drifted away from the infield and through a tunnel, out into the world where he began to wander around the outside of the giant track in the dark of drunkenness. He was so blackout drunk that the only details he could glean from the incident were from the police report he later paid for to confirm the stories he read online.
Mason during his wanderings came upon a door left propped open at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, probably by a Fox Sports employee who was in the midst of running cabling for a live broadcast setup the next day. That allowed him entry into the museum, and he came upon a car once driven by a legend in his own time, Richard Petty.
The Blue and Orange No. 43 car was broken into when Mason Dixon pulled away the fabric netting and, before he climbed into the driver’s seat he stripped out of his clothing. He passed out at some point during the night, but not before he vomited a large amount of alcohol into the priceless vehicle.
Museum staff found him still drunk within the car, slumped and in his birthday suit. The police report noted his blood alcohol level at the hospital was at a .182 hours after he was found.
Now this entire story of course could be blamed on alcohol. Who knows exactly what went through his mind to defile Richard Petty’s car in the museum, but it is certain that he was sorry for what happened in the days that followed. Especially after he lost his job with the team and wasn’t available to help during Sunday’s race.
None of this of course popped up on the computer screen inside of the cop car behind him. All it read was “***ON BOND FOR FELONY CHARGES IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA***” and listed said charges to make him out to be some kind of sex criminal menace to society. So when the Trooper returned to his vehicle, it was with his hand on his sidearm and with a command for Mason Dixon to get out of the car slowly and carefully.
Later when he sat in jail and was brought a bologna sandwich, he didn’t mind so much that he didn’t make it to Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Maybe it was better to be behind bars instead of being around his family, who only would have only provided a running commentary on how he was a disgusting failure through an arduous evening. He didn’t want to see his mother cry again.
The only regret he had as he chewed the stale bread and cheap sandwich meat was that he was missing his mother’s Pecan Pie. Too bad, he thought. It was the only real reason he was speeding home in the first place.
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