The Ballad of Highway Boy

September 19, 2017 5:24 PM

All this awful flood action has inspired me to dig up the sad old tail of Highway Boy, raised by his trucker brother, because his father was a hurricane and his mother was a cellar door.

I was home-schooled on the highway. We had kid's books on tape. My CB handle was 'OG Pre-K.' Those kids in their car seats ain't got shit on me, because I've seen two coasts and at least thirty states by the time I was eight.

There's monsters on the off-ramps but they don't bother me. I'm with my brother and my brother don't sleep, no hardly none at all.

We dug for gold in that ghost town's debris, where white-picket snow drifts cling to the trees and shopping-cart castles shudder in the breeze on that still-flooded street where they say I was conceived, or so the story goes:

My father was a hurricane. My mother was a cellar door. Delivered by an EMT in 1984. Yeah, that's how I was born. My brother told me so.

Now, don't you dare call him a liar.

Something keeps us moving on through poverty and nervousness. We ran from God and Hell and Death, and also social services. Then my bro picked up a shitty bag somewhere in Reno. I guess he finally got some sleep. I woke up: the cab was skipping of the guard-rail just like a stone. I took the wheel.

Now, don't you dare call me a liar.

posted by es_de_bah (2 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

This is fuckin awesome gaddammit. And I believe every word of it, I do.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:27 AM on September 24, 2017


Used this in this month's podcast!
posted by cortex at 12:10 PM on October 2, 2017


« Older Uninvited Guest   |   Your Phone Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments