The brilliant white light and piercing pain in his head arrived with no warning. He let go of the steering wheel and radio, and held his head on either side, pressing hard as if to stop his brain from exploding. He realised just in time that he still had his foot on the gas pedal as the car was about to leave the road. The ageing salesman hit the brakes and grabbed at the wheel, steering the car over to the right, bumping heavily onto the dusty side of the highway. As the Mercury came to rest in a patch of wild grass it was as much as he could do to switch off the ignition before collapsing against the soft padding of the steering wheel. All Ed could hear now was his laboured breathing and the pulsating beating in his head. With thoughts of aneurisms, haemorrhaging and death, he closed his eyes and pushed his hands hard against his head again. The burning and bright light behind his eyes increased, he cried out, and then sank into welcome blissful unconsciousness, ceasing the torture in his skull.
“Be-Bop a Lula.”
Ed came to with a moan. He was hunched over, cradling the steering wheel and leaning heavily against the door. How long had he been out for, he wondered? He slowly sat upright and tentatively touched his forehead. The pain had gone completely. He blinked and looked out of the windshield. The sun seemed a lot lower in the sky, almost as if it was just coming up, not setting, but nothing else had changed; well maybe the crops looked a little fresher but the dusty two-lane blacktop leading ahead looked the same, and he could just make out the large grain towers on the outskirts of the town on the horizon, but something wasn’t quite right. The strains of the old Gene Vincent tune finally seeped into his consciousness. He looked over at the radio fitted down in the center of the dash and saw the bluey-green illumination of an old chrome-covered selecto-matic radio.
“What the hell?” he blurted. Stunned, he looked around the rest of the cockpit of the car. His battered old Mercury had gone and he now found himself sitting behind the large white steering wheel of a chrome-encrusted 1950’s cruiser.
The two front bucket seats of his Merc had been replaced with a long soft fabric bench-seat that felt as comfortable as a trusted old armchair beneath him. His hands lightly brushed over the dash as he looked at the glistening chrome knobs and dials and the push-button gearshift to the left of the wheel. His fingers found the 1, 2, D, and R buttons. The steering wheel itself was white with a faint grey marbled pattern, within it sat a huge chrome horn ring that held an electric clock that said 7.45. Through the huge curved windshield, he saw the long shiny black hood stretching ahead of him; the unopposed sun sparkled off of the big chrome “bombsights” that adorned each fender. His fingers felt the texture of the sparkling brocade that ran through the bench seat. Ed realised he knew what the car was, it was a late “Fifties” DeSoto, a ‘58 or ‘59 maybe? His father had taught him to drive in a car just like this in the Sixties. He glanced to his right and the name FireSweep in gold brush script metal mounted to the glove box confirmed his suspicions. He assumed somebody must have found him in his car and dragged him out and sat him in this old cruiser, he looked around but couldn’t see anyone. He lifted the chrome door handle and slid out of the DeSoto. Clean fresh air hit his senses; he took a deep lungful, relishing the coolness and purity of the air around him, the pain in his head already dimming into a faint memory. As he stood, he looked around; his car wasn’t there, nobody in sight at all, just him and the old car. The door closed with a solid clunk as he walked towards the rear of the big black automobile, his hand almost stroking the fin as it ran from the door to its apex just after the trunk. He surveyed the whole area but couldn’t see a single soul, turning back to the car he did notice the triple-tower tail lights set in to the rear of the car’s fins and the huge wrap-around bumper. With its big aluminium sweep-spear down the whole length of the car, Ed knew that this was a 1959 DeSoto in shiny deep black paintwork, arguably one of the nicest looking automobiles to ever drive out of Detroit. With nowhere else to go he got back in the car and sat behind the wheel. ‘Goddamn, what a crazy dream’ he thought, ‘it even smells new!’
“That was Gene Vincent with his Bluecaps and Be-Bop a Lula, stay tuned to hear a classic from eight years ago, yes we’re going back to the summer of 1954 to hear the fantastic Chords, but first, a word from our sponsors. How would you like to drive away in a brand new 1962 Ford? Well, you can, and for less than you think. Yes Siree! Just drive down to our friends on Curzon Avenue and tell ‘em that Moondog Marvin sent you down from W.E.R.E. You can see the all-new Ford…………”
Ed looked at the radio, eyes wide, listening to the D.J. in wonderment. “A ‘62 Ford? Oh man, am I dead or just goin’ crazy?” he asked himself. He could never remember having a dream that felt so real, so vivid. With a shrug of his shoulders he decided to ‘go with the flow’ as his generation would have put it, turned the key in the ignition and stepped on the gas pedal. The big V8 engine under the hood roared into life then calmed and softly purred, waiting for its next instruction. All cars built by Chrysler Corporation used push-button transmissions in the Fifties and early Sixties and the DeSoto was no exception. As if on autopilot, Ed pushed the “D” button on the dash just left of the steering column, feeling the ‘drive’ kick in as the car champed at the bit to move. He bent down to his left and grabbed the big chrome “T” shaped handbrake, twisting to the left to let it out. Gripping the big steering wheel in his hands, he started to press gently on the gas. After a quick glance over his left shoulder he added more gas and with a mild rumble from the 361cubic inch motor, the big DeSoto moved effortlessly from the gravel and wild grass on to the concrete highway.
In this very lifelike dream, the mellow tunes of a doo-wop group came crisply from the radio’s speakers as the singers pleaded with a girl to make their dreams come true. Ed tapped his palms on the big wheel in time to the music, enjoying the smooth ride and scenery as it glided past his window. Motoring past luscious green fields of crops he soon came upon the two enormous concrete grain elevators that he had seen as he entered the town limits. They were as tall as townhouses, one on either side of the road, looking like castle towers and giving the place the look of an ancient Germanic town entrance, but these round structures looked fairly new, with their shining steel ladders and unblemished concrete bases. Single story industrial units surrounded the towers but as he drove on these gave way to houses then shops. As he came into the middle of town Ludlow seemed to be a small but prosperous looking place with a centre that stretched for about ten blocks before it went back to more residential and agricultural use. He marvelled at how the human mind worked. He had never had cause to come through here on his travels as the interstate completely by-passed the place, and he couldn’t remember ever even seeing a photo of Ludlow in the fifties, and he had certainly never come here from his native New York when he was younger. But hell, here he was, in his dream, cruising past Joe’s Diner, a large neon sign with an arrow pointing to the aluminium door. Across the street was an old green pick-up truck from the ‘40s, parked outside the 5 and dime store. A bunch of teenagers were standing outside a malt shop on the corner. The boys, dressed in jeans and white T-shirts, lounged against a couple of hot-rods, ribbing the tall, gangly young coloured guy opening up the store and chatting to some girls in tight pencil skirts and ponytails. The coloured guy was big but seemed to stoop low under the weight of the teenagers mocking remarks. Ed spoke out loud, “This is incredible!”