Steel, Flames, and Sunday

The hot rod got to Burque the same way it got everywhere: leftover engines, cheap steel, somebody who could weld after work. What it found here was space. Desert shoulders. Dry air that’s kind to chrome. A mountain that makes a parked Deuce look like a poster even when you didn’t mean it to.

Sunday still belongs to them same as the lowriders. The mix is the point. A flame-job roadster idling next to a hopping Impala and nobody picking a side. Builders talk compression the way chile growers talk heat. The car is a family project until the second it moves.

If the paint is louder than the pipes, you’re doing New Mexico right.