2
" It had started snowing, a thick wet layer of slush that won't stick. There are no cars on the road, nothing but big white flakes falling onto our faces, erasing the buildings around us, and the low swish of our feet on the road as we try to keep our footing, a soft wheeze humming from the bottom of my lungs from too much smoking.In the middle of Nation Road, Mazzie turns to me without any warning. She grabs my arm and we both fall down, and then we're sitting there in the middle of the bare road, and for a few seconds we just sit there, quite, listening to the eerie silent noise of snow falling against land.Snow covers Mazzie's eyelashes, making her look like a tiny ice princess– the closest she will ever come to wearing makeup." You look pretty," I say." Shut up. "
3
" Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn’t a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can’t, I won’t, because to save her once isn’t to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn’t silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can’t hear you. "
― Peter Orner , Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge
4
" After driving 30-minutes East of Seattle, I expect to see a great bowling alley. But, as we pull into the parking lot, all I see are pot holes, a horse and Amish buggy, and no cars to speak of- broken down or otherwise. Even the building is in shambles, needs painted and looks a bit haunted. The old road sign reading- Flicker Lanes- is half-burnt out. Seeing the building's interior lights on, I'm reassured that the place is open- but then again, maybe they've been left on by mistake. " There's LOTS of NICE bowling alleys in SEATTLE," I said. " Why did we come ALL THIS WAY to go BOWLING?" " I take it that you've never BEEN here before." " I don't think ANYONE HAS. I don't even KNOW what PLANET we're on." " I don't know what PLANET you're on either... but the rest of us are on your ANUS." I half-smile, marveling at his wittiness. "
5
" Then there were long, lazy summer afternoons when there was nothing to do but read. And dream. And watch the town go by to supper. I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung from small towns, or villages. They have had time to dream in their adolescence. No cars to catch, no matinees, no city streets, none of the teeming, empty, energy-consuming occupations of the city child. Little that is competitive, much that is unconsciously absorbed at the most impressionable period, long evenings for reading, long afternoons in the fields or woods. "
― Edna Ferber , Fanny Herself
