Living a Car Cruise

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

LIVING A CAR CRUISE

Bob Sanzi

     I don’t know when it happened—it was just a long time ago. I think I know why it happened, though. 

     My dad’s first car, a brand new 1952 “dusk gray” four-door Chevrolet, my impressionable eight-year-old age, and my being his first-born child could explain how my infatuation with all things automotive evolved.

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     My father’s childhood was tough—after his father died his mother became too ill to care for their children. Dad was very young at the time he and two of his sisters moved into their paternal uncle’s house. It was an instant family for the uncle and his wife, barely out of her teens. A few years later they had twin boys. 

     As the oldest, my father accepted responsibilities well beyond his years: changing diapers, doing laundry, and grocery shopping stole his childhood. My aunt told stories about her dependence on his help with the “kids,” about how she counted on him. 

     I think my financially challenged father determined I should have

A Beanery Writers Group Homage to Bob Sanzi

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

A BEANERY WRITERS GROUP HOMAGE TO BOB SANZI

Beanery Writers Group

I looked for your car when I arrived at the June 24, 2010, Beanery Writers Meeting.

            I hadn’t heard…You were gone.

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     Bob, you left too soon. Some of us needed to learn more from you. It’s hard to believe that you only joined us on June 12, 2010. At your last meeting, June 10, 2011, you were so excited about the new car Nancy bought and allowed you to drive to the meeting.

      We all heard your gruff, commanding, voice, and experienced your unique bombastic manner, at the first Beanery Writers Group meetings you attended. Some of us questioned whether we could tolerate you. You were opinionated, certain you were right, and felt you had to talk and talk and talk to push your point, even after everyone had “gotten it.” You were so certain you were right.

     Your identity was enmeshed in cars—you were quite animated and willing to share a multitude of car stories. After all, you were a car guy who even amused us by turning a prompt on the Kentucky Derby into a car piece. You didn’t seem to understand that

Goodbye, Bob Sanzi

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

GOODBYE, BOB

Nancy Beaufort

Today, June 23, 2010, I said goodbye to my best friend.

     Bob and I were together for over seven years, longer than many marriages last. It started with an invitation to dinner and blossomed slowly into a deep bond.

     He and I shared many adventures. He took me to sprint car races, drag races and flat-track dirt bike races. We visited Watkins Glen and climbed up through the Glen, then retraced the old road race course. We packed his bike and rode it to Arlington, Texas, to meet up with the folks he rode with while he lived and worked there. We put another thousand miles on the bike before we made the return trip to Latrobe. We explored a bog near Wilmington, North Carolina in search of carnivorous plants. We rode the train to

The Kentucky Derby & Flat Track Motorcycle Racing: Horses and Motorcycles

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

THE KENTUCKY DERBY & FLAT TRACK MOTORCYCLE RACES:

HORSES AND MOTORCYCLES

Bob Sanzi

To make sense of this little short piece an explanation might be helpful. The Beanery Writers Group meeting our facilitator and co-founder sends us a weekly prompt to assist us with writing something for the meeting. For the first May meeting she offered the recent Kentucky Derby as the subject. She asks us to think about the subject, formulate a piece and write the results in just seven minutes. This is the result.     

     The second hand will be up to the twelve in five seconds. There it is—so now seven minutes to write. The Kentucky derby is the subject, but I have no interest in it. Nancy (my partner) is into the whole thing though. She watched it off and on through the day.

     I thought the track was perfect for a

Times: They are A-Changing

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

TIMES: They are A-Changing

Bob Sanzi

     Were you born before 1960? 

     If so, you would be one of those kids whose parents told their children what to do and when to do it. There was direction in your life then. It was a much easier world to understand. Things just seemed simpler. 

     Isn’t everything more complicated now? Nothing we do is simple anymore. Do you think the world is all out of whack?  How many times in a day do you find yourself thinking “Huh?”. 

     For example: Did you buy a box of frozen green beans only to find that when you opened it the beans were lumped in a plastic bag with a chunk of something yellow?  When you dug the empty box out of the kitchen trash did you discover specific instructions on what to do with the bagged beans? Did it involve a microwave? 

     See what I mean?

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     When I was in high school I learned how to type. Leaning how to drive a typewriter was supposed to help you when you went to College. So I was instructed to learn to type because I would be going to college.

     When is the last time you saw a typewriter? Here’s an interesting exercise: try to explain a typewriter to

On Dying and Returning to Life

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

ON DYING AND RETURNING TO LIFE:

A Near-Death Experience

Bob Sanzi

This piece was written to be read with keyboard accompaniment. The plan was to have the music quietly remain in the background during the reading.  At each break it was planned to have it rise in volume and tempo.  This proved to complex for the keyboard, but the breaks were still respected. Rather than reading continuously, varying breaks were accomplished as the keyboardist continued to play.  The music was impromptu and did fit the mood of the reading. This is a long passed process often practiced in the sixties coffee shops.   Bob

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MUSIC

October eighth last year I died.

MUSIC

I know that seems silly because I’m here now.  But clinically I was defined as having no life signs and that means I was dead, died, gone, and passed on.  Not here anymore.

MUSIC

It was a Thursday, student night at the Laurel Highlands Model Airplane Club’s airfield at Mammoth Park (PA).  It was beginning to get dark and most of us had started packing up our radio-controlled airplanes.

MUSIC

Ziggy wanted to get in one more flight but his plane wouldn’t start.  His instructor called for a new glow plug.  I walked out to my truck and brought the group gathered around his plane a new one.

MUSIC

I knelt down gave them one and stood back up and fell over backward.

MUSIC

They thought I had tripped over the filed box and hit my head when I fell.  But when I started to turn blue and my lips were