Classic Cars

A friend who is also a writer sent me a story to read.  It is a rare and distinct pleasure to read what other unknown writers write.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but his story, as always, captivated me with secrets he wasn’t telling.  He writes well.

My friend studied mythology in college.  His stories draw from the characters of the Classics.  This isn’t a bad place to look for ideas.  I sometimes use the Bible for the same purposes.  The old stories never seem to wear out.

Another friend, this one assures me he is no writer, sends me a story every year.  He writes ghost stories for his nieces and nephews and he includes me because I ask him to.  His stories are uncanny, but they don’t scare.  

Both friends write stories with cars.  I stopped to think about this.  Cars have created their own little microcosm where stories play out.  One of my published stories, “Fashion Wear for Gentlemen” takes place mostly in a car.  A good bit of “Good for the Gander” also transpires in a car.

Cars are cocoons.  Windows up and doors locked, we are in another world when we’re in a car.  It’s something that writers just a century ago didn’t dwell on.  Cars were a novelty then.  Now they have become their own little worlds.

Even with cars, however, the classical themes work.  Zeus never drove a car, but what might the world have looked like had he done so?  Moses never hitchhiked.  The laws of the Bible might’ve been different if he had.

The car, it seems, may almost be a character itself.  In fact, many of my story ideas come to me while I’m driving.  As if my brain is a trickster, knowing that I can’t write at the moment, it shares ideas I can’t scribble down.

I used to drive with a mini-tape recorder in the car.  When it was there, I couldn’t think of any ideas.  If I forgot the recorder at home, the ideas flooded in.  It was a classical story, as it were, playing out in a car.

My writing friends, cars in and of themselves, swap ideas and drive my own writing.  And that’s a classic ideal.