Pimp My Ride

The other day I took the kids to see "Race to Witch Mountain," which I believe is a remake of a movie whose title, as a kid, I used to confuse for "Race to Which Mountain," conjuring visions of race cars speeding around in search of a finish line. Okay, now I understand that's not the case. I bring this up because in the movie Dwayne Johnson's character says to himself at one point: "Don't go inside the pimped out refridgerator," which caused my son Nicholas to ask what "pimped out," meant. Oh, Nicholas if only it were that simple. I could say, "Festooned as if one were a pimp," but that would still require me to explain to my 10-year-old son what a pimp is. And do pimps even get dressed up like Antonio Fargas's character in the movie "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," anymore? Somewhere a long the line, pimped out has come to mean, souped up, with all sorts of extra gadgets, bells and whistles, forgetting the implicit misogony. And it was that I sought to impart to my son, reminding him of the time we watched MTV's "Pimp My Ride," while staying at a five star hotel in Gdansk.

Alas, I digress. The car above is a Plymouth Valiant. It is also my response to Jack's Miata shot down below. (Note to Jack: Keep the Miata it looks good on you.) Chrysler, the imminetly disappearing American auto manufacturer, used to make them and they are truly the symbol of another era, another America _ a time when pimped out, really meant dressing like a pimp and cars didn't need pimping. I wanted to take the picture from the other side because there was an American flag on the back window but I couldn't get far enough back on the sidewalk to make the whole car fit in the shot. Boo hoo. Which reminds of the red 1966 Cadillac my dad bought back in 1970. When we first rode in it, we felt like we were in an Airplane, everything about it was lux: electric windows, climate control, you name it. It even had an American flag decal, which as kid I remember excited me. That was until the day after we bought the car and I saw my dad scraping the flag off with a razor. It kind of upset me and I asked him why he was doing it and he told me, "when the U.S. ends the war in Vietnam we can have an American flag on our car." I remember thinking I hoped the war ended soon but for entirely selfish reasons.