That’s how I think of my sequined caboose, since the words convey its hymnable wobble to altogether wooziality-making perfection. When I twitched Old Smokey into Los Angeles, there was no visible wear on it, even though I’d hauled it all the way from Alabam’-don’t-give-a-damn. I came from a long line of slatternly women, but none of them had ever had anything to show for it. That’s why Momma understood when I told her I was headed for California. She had tears in her eyes the day I left my childhood home of Jolene, AL (d-g-a-d). Twarn’t just because this was the very first time she’d seen a daughter of hers wearing shoes, either, though that helped. I was in the beautimous April of my years. Some blood relatives of ours were putting up a ruined shack in the distance. Only the lonely sun stood changeless and immortal in the placid sky above Jolene. Poppa, bless him whoever he was, was dead. My one souvenir of him was a rusty old church-key can-and-bottle opener that Momma claimed he’d left behind on his last visit, which she had just placed on a ribbon around my neck.
