New England Review

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NER Classics

Samuel F. Pickering | Taking the Night Plane to Tulsa

Samuel F. Pickering’s story, Taking the Night Plane to Tulsa, was published in NER 15.1 (1992):

When folks feel good in Tulsa, they stomp on the floor and holler “shit.” In Hanover nobody ever feels good. New England will turn any man’s Blue Bird of Happiness into a Turkey Buzzard. I ought to know; I’ve been here nine years. Soon, though, everything’s going to change. Then next time a jet engine whines I’ll be traveling west. An acquaintance argues that my dissatisfaction is not New England’s fault. Corn and crows, he says, can’t grow in the same field. Perhaps, but there is not much corn grown in New England, and I’m not a crow—no, not even a towhee or a chickadee, although if I stay around here much longer surrounded by lads with necklaces, purses, and tight pants I just might become one.

Have you ever heard of a town without a used car lot? Hanover, New Hampshire, is such a town. Used car lots are the signs of dreams. A man sees a rainbow, hurries to the used car lot, buys a chariot of hope and wheels over the hills and far away. In Hanover the rainbow, like the Dodo, is extinct, and there is no market for used cars. The town fathers have banished used car lots.

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“That’s the appeal of writing: you treat the world like a potential text, using it as material, setting yourself apart, stepping out.”

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