Pin up dolls and classic cars

MOTHER’S DAY

“What’s your favorite color, and what does it smell like?”

“My favorite color is black. It smells like the exhaust from racing fuel,” Holly Hot Rod replied to the Master of Ceremony’s prearranged question. 

She posed with one gloved hand high in air, her toothy grin imposing. Her dress had the intensity of a midnight storm. Camera phones pretended to click. She was more powerful than the other Pin-Up Dolls. The high slit in her evening gown was like a fleshy, flashing lightning bolt upon a disappearing shadow. Audrey (though no one there used her real name) was the fastest machine at the classic car show that day.

Oh, the gearheads liked her! The genuine applause was filled with loud, male handclaps with a few thundering “yeahs!”. She turned wrenches for Boeing and had the gritty confidence mature men want, until they get it. Taught by their dad’s example to use Gojo’s orange oil and pumice filled soap, everyone was cleaned up real good today. The grease under their fingernails had even been brushed out. Although for some mechanics, oils seeped into the layers of their skin from constant contact. It just leached back after the surface was scrubbed bright.

Holly was crowned Queen of the first pageant of the season after the judges tallied and the popular vote was counted. It was Mother’s Day, 2018. The “Brazen Beauties” Pin-Up club helped promote the event. She would stay late to clean up, after most from her chapter bailed. Her fiancé waited at home with her underemployed, car-less son. The unlucky man having to work on a Sunday. They both gave her thoughtful cards. And Holly texted her man the happy news after she had hugged practically everyone.