Rachel Kushner at Harper’s Magazine:
Now it was June, and we were at the National Hot Rod Association’s Nostalgia Nationals at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The weather was brutal, and it was forecast to remain so: sunny, low to mid-nineties, wiltingly humid. In the distance, an antique roller coaster creaked along wooden tracks, and I wondered who would choose to ride it when there were so many cars to ogle and races to watch and people to meet.
It was day two of the three-day NHRA event. We had just left Paul’s pit area with cold bottles of water that he’d given us, and this is what we looked like: a sixteen-year-old boy and a middle-aged woman, each some variety of redhead and likely related, sporting baseball hats and sunglasses and carrying protective earmuffs, coated in sweat but undefeated by the climate. The boy almost a man: thin, broad-shouldered, and at six feet, taller than the woman by several inches, the two of them moving along with purpose like they were some kind of team, conferring and comparing notes in matching purple-mesh media vests that said nhra in big white letters.
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.