Free Fathermucker by Greg Olear Page B

Steve Miller is preferable to the same time allotment of a loudly displeased Roland.
    The first track begins with the familiar guitar riff, and when I’m told to Turn it up , I do. Thornwood is a fifteen-minute ride from our house, give or take; we usually arrive during the dueling guitar outro of “Hotel California.” If we’re running late—caught behind a school bus, say—I skip past the Charlie Daniels (a song I used to play all the time at parties in college, but which I never want to hear again as long as I live) and the Hank Williams, Jr. (ditto). Unlike most of these tracks, C of F’s “Pigsknuckle, Arkansas” grows on me the more I hear it, and Roland finds it incredibly “silly”—a word he employs when his feelings about something exceed his precocious lexicon—that the gruff, scowling baritone raving about hard love is his friend Zara’s daddy.
    A COP IS PERCHED ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, NEAR THE AUXILIARY firehouse on Henry Dubois Drive, camouflaged by political signs: a Dodge Charger’d leopard poised to pounce. Thirty-five in a thirty, failure to yield. SUNY campus police, looks like; you can tell by the orange detailing on the car. State troopers, technically. My hearts skips a beat—although I’m a law-abiding citizen and have never gotten a ticket in my life, police officers tend to dislike me, and the feeling is mutual—but I’m well under the speed limit. Lots of cops in New Paltz, surfeit of boys in blue: campus police, town police, state police, DEC, Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, and I’ve even seen state park rangers in their white SUVs, now that the Walkway Over the Hudson’s opened in Highland. With respect to ratio of number of patrol cars to population density, the Village of New Paltz might be the most overpoliced municipality this side of Singapore. There are days when driving through town feels like passing through a checkpoint on the Gaza Strip. Although when some tardy student is tailgating you on a slush-strewn street, behind the wheel of a fiberglass deathbox not equipped with all-wheel drive, yammering on her cell, that’s when the pigs are taking a powder. Or a powdered donut, as it were.
    As I pass him, taking care to put both hands on the steering wheel, a wave of lightheadedness comes over me, along with the dull timpani roll that is the crescendoing overture to a Mahler symphony of a headache, and I realize that, in my haste to rally the troops, shower, mainline caffeine, and manage my e-mail, I’ve neglected to eat so much as a Clif Bar.
    So once again, for the shit fourth morning this week, I pull into the McDonald’s. Although mea culpa I enjoy their fare, I’d rather go somewhere else, believe me. Oh, to sit and savor the breakfast special at Main Street Bistro, to banter with Carly, the hip waitress who calls everyone hon , and sip cup after cup of burnt coffee! But the genius of McDonald’s—and any Fortune 500 company whose workforce comprises mostly minimum wagers is, undoubtedly, genius—is that they equip the place with a drive-thru window. Before I had kids, I thought drive-thru windows were for gluttons too lazy to drag their fat asses out of their fat-ass SUVs. Now I understand that they are intended for parents, who can quickly procure McNuggets, ketchupless cheeseburgers, Apple Dippers, juice boxes, kid-sized cups of ice cream, even toys , without having to de-carseat their young charges and navigate them through the perilous parking lot. One day, as God is my witness, when my kids are older and can make their own culinary decisions, I will make the healthy choice and eschew Big Macs and Quarter Pounders with Cheese for the “afforda-bowl” at Karma Road, the vegetarian place where the ice cream parlor used to be. Never again, for the remainder of my (compromised because of so much McDonald’s food; there’s a reason they call the goop they