{"id":4051,"date":"2012-08-17T15:26:46","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?page_id=4051"},"modified":"2012-08-17T15:26:46","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:26:46","slug":"my-friend-felix","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/my-friend-felix\/","title":{"rendered":"My Friend Felix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cBeginning at five o\u2019clock, just before dawn rises<br \/>\nin the rearview mirror, I drive at eighty, alone,<br \/>\nall day through Texas. I am a pencil extending<br \/>\na ruler\u2019s line to the unchangeable horizon<br \/>\nwest as I repeat a thousand quarrels with my wives.<br \/>\nMy grip on the steering wheel slackens; my mind\u2019s voice turns<br \/>\nmild and persuasive, quietly addressing the young<br \/>\ndoctor at the detox center\u2026But I cannot stop<br \/>\nhearing again, word-for-word, last winter\u2019s two o\u2019clock<br \/>\ncall from a motel in Albany\u2014she would not say<br \/>\nwhere she was\u2014as my daughter wept, sighed, begged forgiveness,<br \/>\nand allowed the telephone to drop from her fingers.<br \/>\nWhen I have driven straight through daylight, five-foot neon<br \/>\nletters rise crimson in the pale west: BAR. Thirty years<br \/>\ndrown: I am a young man again driving with Felix<br \/>\nfrom New Haven to San Diego where he will join<br \/>\nhis Crusader and his carrier, and in two months<br \/>\novershoot the runway and slide to the Pacific\u2019s<br \/>\nsilt bottom without jettisoning his canopy,<br \/>\nwhile a helicopter hovers an hour above him.<br \/>\nFor a moment Felix sits alongside me again,<br \/>\na young man forever, with his skin wrinkled and puffed<br \/>\nfrom thirty years of soaking in his watery chair:<br \/>\nAll day we drove west on a ruled highway: At a BAR<br \/>\nwe swallowed two pitchers, and back on the road again<br \/>\nI pulled out to pass a tractor-trailor. Another<br \/>\napproached and neither truck would give away; I labored past<br \/>\nthe semi inch-by-inch and at the last half-second<br \/>\nsideslipped in front. As our pulses slowed we stared ahead,<br \/>\nand from the slipcovered seat beside me Felix spoke:<br \/>\n\u2018The time that we lose, by stopping to drink, we make up<br \/>\nby drunken driving.\u2019 Continuing straight west I dream<br \/>\nof my lucky friend Felix the singlewing halfback.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>-Donald Hall<\/em><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-4051\" data-postid=\"4051\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-4051 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cBeginning at five o\u2019clock, just before dawn rises in the rearview mirror, I drive at eighty, alone, all day through Texas. I am a pencil extending a ruler\u2019s line to the unchangeable horizon west as I repeat a thousand quarrels with my wives. My grip on the steering wheel slackens; my mind\u2019s voice turns mild [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4052,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4051\/revisions\/4052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}