Tag Archives: ford torino

BACK AND FORTH by Peter Nolan Smith – CHAPTER 3 – LOOKALIKE

December 11, 2017 – 2:39 pm

The Torino crossed the flooded Mississippi and passed heavily loaded semi-trailers laboring up a steep bluff. Davenport, Iowa wasn’t a big city, but river town had been even smaller, when a trucker had dropped Jack Kerouac in 1947. The sun had set without the beat writer catching a ride and Keroacc had backtracked to Davenport […]

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Bonneville Salt Flats from BACK AND FORTH a hitchhiking novel from Peter Nolan Smith

September 20, 2014 – 11:19 am

The dawn sun burned misty shadows off the distant mountains and its stark brightness seared through my eyelids. I rose from my sleeping bag to drink in the austere surroundings. A white flatness stretched around me forever and a hissing wind pelleted my face with ancient brine. This was the Bonneville Salt Flats. A quick […]

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FLATLANDS by Peter Nolan Smith

September 18, 2012 – 8:13 pm

I-90 weaved over the gentle Berkshires in the shadow of Mount Greylock and dropped into the tree-drunk Hudson Valley. The smooth lanes shadowed the ancient Mohawk Trail past the cities of northern New York and the escort of low hills faltered after the Finger Lakes, as the interstate straightened out on fertile farmland between Phelps […]

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LOOKALIKE by Peter Nolan Smith

July 19, 2012 – 10:52 am

A four-lane bridge spanned the flooded Mississippi and the Torino sped past heavily loaded semi-trailers creeping up a steep bluff. Davenport, Iowa wasn’t a big city, but it had been even smaller in 1947, when Jack Kerouac had been dropped in the middle of the prairie by a trucker. The sun had set without his […]

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THE FIRST TEN MILES by Peter Nolan Smith 

April 12, 2012 – 12:06 pm

Early on a warm May morning my friend AK, a blonde BU co-ed, and I traveled by the trolley to Jamaica Plains, where we were picking up a 1973 Ford Torino station wagon to transport cross-country. Upon our arrival at the address, the middle-aged owner descended the tenement’s steps to the sidewalk. He tapped at […]

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