Johnny Taxman is foreclosing on the family farm in Buttrump, Oklahoma. You've got 10 days to either pay the mortgage in full or your wife, 7 kids, grandma, grandpa and your brother Bucky need to be off the property. You've only got $3000 in the family savings account left, and that's it. You manage to sell the Daytona to Big Earl at the gas station 15 miles away.

Your family is starving here in the dustbowl, and the economy is tanking. You needa get out, and head for Califor-ni-ay.

Scouring the classifieds, you search for a vehicle that you can pack 12 people into AND live in. The VW Rabbit limo was tempting, but you'd be hard pressed to stick 8 people into it, much less 12. And what about your whisky still? Where would that go?

No, you skip over the VW Rabbit limo, crossing it out in the classifieds, and there it is. Glorious, and perfect. The Cadillac Limo. A vehicle befitting your family and your family's style of living. With old-fashioned American legroom and space, a 57' Caddy would seat four-across up front if you really packed it in, and you could fit the 8 other members of your family into the camper section, and you and the missus could sleep comfortably together in the cabover.

There has never been a more perfect vehicle for you. You gather Josiah, Ezra, Ezekiel (he liked to be called Zeke), Bucky, Earl, Mary, Elise and baby Geoff together with your wife (your high-school sweetheart that you married after you knocked her up at Prom), and announce that the family's moving. The kids look sad, but you tell them things'll be better in California. The west, where things grow a plenty and it's all sunshine and rainbows all the time.

You win the eBay auction, and gleefully pack up your 14.4 modem you got on clearance at the Goodwill, along with your barely-internet capable Pentium 133 running Windows 95. Among your friends, you're the techie, on the cutting edge of technology.

You show up to buy the caddy with a 3-gallon gas can, a battery and some oil. You pay the seller the hefty sum of $2400 (your winning bid, OkieNoodler1245). Surprisingly enough, you gas up the caddy, drop in the battery, dump a quart of oil into the motor, and after a minute or two of cranking, the caddy fires up, its aged V8 throbbing with life, its high-compression engine blasts the ground with every pulse from the exhaust pipe. You clamber into the Caddy RV, and take off down the dirt road to fetch your family.

You and your family pile into the Caddy, your father helps you strap on the family's three mattresses to the roof of the thing, and you manage to secure your whisky still onto the roof of the caddy ahead of the cabover. There seems to be no end to the space available on this massive contraption.

Turning your back on the farm for the last time, little Zeke tells you, "Pa, are we ever gon' get tha farm back?"

"I don't think so, son. I don't think so." You tell him ruefully, as you roar out onto the road and make tracks for the interstate.

The Cadillac, true to form, rode smoothly, despite the age of the suspension and the tremendous load placed upon it. The automatic transmission shifted like silk, each shift gentle and smooth. Everything was going fine, but you heard over the FM radio that there were high winds blowing across the Mother Road, Route 66-- or rather, what sorry remains are left of it, and your Cadillac was neither aerodynamic nor terribly stable.

Your children eye you fearfully as the Caddy is rocked back and forth by the high winds on the vast stretches of emptiness on Route 66, and you struggle to maintain control. As you come to a slight bend in the highway, the camper proves to be too much for the Caddy's chassis to cope with, and your Cadillac rolls onto its side, your children pitched against the wall as it becomes the floor, and grinds along, still going 25-30mph on its side, the side paneling of the camper disintegrating as Grandma and grandpa disappear, along with several of your children. The caddy comes to a halt, the caddy front end having sustained little damage from the flip, but the flimsy camper took the roll badly-- all of your worldly posessions were now shattered and strewn across the highway. Worse yet, you'd lost your whisky still.

Your wife was alive and at your side, as was little Zeke and baby Geoff. The same could not be said of many of your children.

You collapse in a sobbing, hysterical heap at the roadside. Like so many grapes, you have suffered the wrath of the vintner's foot.

But you've got your wife. And your youngest son. And a few hundred dollars left. You're on US-66, a forgotten piece of American history, just as much a forgotten piece of Americana as your family farm was. It's US-66. Noone uses the road anymore. Noone will be along to help. You're dirt poor. You're technologically ignorant. You have no 'cell-phone' to call for help. You've got no choice but to bury the dead and focus on the living.

You stand, and push on the caddy, and it rolls back onto its wheels, the camper body falling away-- you now have the front end of a cadillac with a only a frame and the remains of the camper as the rear, giving the Caddy an odd El-Camino kind of look, but in a sad, twisted manner. You make crosses of pieces of debris, and make shallow graves for the dead. You wipe a few more tears from your eyes. Your wife has stopped sobbing hysterically-- she just sits, looking dejectedly at her two remaining children, lost in despair and shock.

This is despair.

This is hell.

Like so many others, they are casualties of chasing the American dream of a better life elsewhere.

This is Project Car Hell.

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Cadillac.

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Here's a Rabbit limo. That up there is an authentic Jetta limo. Can't find the Cadillac, but Novaload remembers it, so I'm not crazy. This sure ain't it.

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What's going on in the Keystone State that these two freaks should be there?

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