Last night I watched a special with Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. That cracker can play the banjo, and that girl can sing.

No spring chicken she, but at 49 she still fills a dress nicely and the boots look good on her. And she puts me to mind of my cousin.

My cousin was a year or two older than me, and having grown up in a houseful of boys she knew her way around a socket set, and she was the first girl I knew who could drive a stick. She had a split bumper camaro and I remember helping her take the passenger side front quarter panel off it to change either a fan or a condenser, I don’t remember which. She looked damned good in a pair of jeans and had a face very like Edie Brickell’s. I was always a little pissed that the kind of girls I was attracted to all seemed to be first cousins. Not too many tomboys in my hometown.

She married a cop, had a son, sort of turned into a hausfrau, but still basically had the same looks. I haven’t seen her for nearly fifteen years but I wonder if she would still grin that crooked grin and jump in a car with me and head off like hooligans down the gravel and dust of southern illinois farm roads.