Had I been more responsible I might have made something of myself as a junk bond trader, long-haul trucker or perhaps a plumbing contractor.

As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event.

There was a day when you could identify a NASCAR Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge and they actually looked like "stock cars." Now they are pod machines, slick on the outside but still powered by the same Neanderthal carbureted pushrod V-8s that have been under their hoods for half a century. If this is real auto racing, then the WWF ought to be part of the Olympics.

The whole movie thing has never been a source of great pride for me, in that Burt Reynolds, who starred in the picture, butchered the original script I had written for the late Steve McQueen, and the result, while a massive moneymaker, was lashed by the critics. But like the old joke about Pierre the Bridge Builder, The Cannonball Run is indelibly inscribed on my so-called career portfolio, and few conversations with strangers pass without the subject of the picture arising.

A written regulation in NASCAR is about as reliable as an Egyptian immigration law.

If any vestige of the American automobile industry is to survive, it must involve state-of-the-art vehicles that are not equal to but surpass the best imports in every way.

The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.