Just burn the gas and buy the stuff, O.K.?

Eight lanes plus turn slots, channeling straight through suburbia and on to the shrinking hem of this great state's pastoral middle parts. This road through the glittering paragon of American dreams, the gamut of Joe Six-pack consumer bliss, is utterly clogged -- even on a Sunday afternoon.

It makes sense, though, that the shiny chariots of modern individualism, from those cute Mini imports to the fire-engine-red Hummers than trundle along like every little boy's Tonka-truck fantasy, congest this asphalt artery bejeweled with Targets and Pet Supermarkets and Linins'n'Things.

It makes sense because the fat little people behind the wheels, going somewhere, but nowhere really, are just as plaque-ridden around their heart valves as the intersection between Dale Mabry Highway and U.S. 41. Growing from any given mile, there can be plucked a Big Mac or a Whopper, a 700-calorie cinnamon crunch bagel with onion cream cheese, or a Venti carmel double-shot mocha whole-milk Frap -- to go.

And even as the strip-mall superplexes give way to an actual horizon, albeit marred by tangles of power lines and barbed-wire bovine enclosures, there are still bastions of want it, need it, get it along the way.

Another 7-Eleven for the road, and a Big Lots right behind it just in case those cravings for cut-rate garden sheers or a snow globe from somewhere in Godforsaken communist China begin to pant at those drivers' hungry wants as the roll past, spewing dinosaur dust into the air on their way home.

Via dolorosa

The fire between my fingertips grew cold and died.

I fell to my knees in the darkness, shivering under the trees.

And under the indigo sky, I let myself whither like ashes in the wind.

My body crumpled to the ground, the grass and leaves taking me in.

I let the sticks dig into my uncaring skin, and the soil cover my hair.

I fell to the Earth and let it hold me. I curled like an infant, and I cried.

With every sob in my chest, with every pitiful sound, I parted ways with some of her sorrow.

And then, despite the Autumn chill, I no longer shivered.

The tears had run their course. I lay on my back, my arms spread wide, in quiet surrender to infinity.

I looked to the heavens, and their boundless indifference shone back, comforting me in my smallness.

The black boughs of ancient oaks framed the stars like gnarled dragons in the night, guarding the pinpricks glowing hotter and higher than any man can truly fathom.

And then I thought of her, and the far-away suns began to blur.

I turned again to the Earth, to let her take my tears. But in exchange, she took from me my warmth, dragging it into the ground.

I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep then, to submit, exposed and worn.

But I felt the sand between my toes. The dirt in my hair. The sticks in my side.

The fire in my soul.

I am but a man on this Earth, and have no time to waste.

Reckless youth to the sound of VAHHH-ROOOM!

The old man's conspicuous voice spilled in 'soon as the grimy door to the mechanic's bay swung open.

"Yeeeahhh. Alll-right. I 'ken wait."

He came in sideways, his thick gray boots clomping along with the labor of a body gnarled by time, and perhaps a stroke.

I was in the waiting room. I was getting a check-engine light checked out.

He was gangly, wore an old flannel shirt. His old Chevy pickup was getting serviced on a lift on the other side of the waiting room glass. The man scanned the room quickly, and spied the vacant seat next to me. His walking pace kicked up, and the man made a line for the chair like a kid going for the last cookie.

He sat down. I wanted to tell him the cute college girl who was sitting there had just gotten up to use her cell phone. I let it slide.

The man had a white peppering of sparse whiskers, and tufts of gray stuck from the edges of his mesh trucker hat.

He glanced left, then to his right, to me, expectantly. I nodded, and got back to my reading.

After a moment, a car with a custom exhaust roared to life from the garage. Its deafening bellow echoed through the building, charged with horsepower, tingling of irreverence. At that, the old man grinned widely, his crooked smile genuine as they come. He perked up. He stopped slouching. He laughed.

The shriek of an engine through his half-deadened eardrums took him back through time, driving an aural elixir of youth into his feeble frame.

It was suddenly 1955, and he was a teenager behind the wheel of his solid steel baby. A '38 Ford coupe, the kind with the grumbling rattiness of an outlaw on the run, the kind of rubber-burning machine that sends little Beaver Cleavers running behind mama's apron.

I looked at him as he smiled in that waiting room half a century later.

"How'bout 'dat! Dat is real nice," he said to me. His mouth was contorted, and his tongue swollen, impairing his ability to speak.

I asked the kind of cars he liked.

The fast ones.

Back when the fastest you could legally go in America was 55, this old man was an outlaw. He got into a lot of trouble for ripping down a county road 40-over.

He got his license taken away for it. Worth every trifle.

If only the judge understood!

"He was 80," the man said. In 1955, the ancient magistrate would still have been born long before the automobile was.

And then the man's eyes got far away, and the ripping howls of the revving engine died off.

"Now I'm too old to go that fast," the old man said. But there was still a smile on his face.

The mechanic came in.

"Mr. Tao?" he said.

All I needed was a new engine sensor. My 250-hp two-ton black-coated off-road baby was just fine. I got up and left.

As I slipped behind the wheel of my SUV, my foot felt good on the gas pedal. My hands felt good on the wheel.

This ride home would be faster than safe, but fast enough to keep me sane and satisfied when I'm 70.