Excerpt
The dilapidated old Rambler groaned and creaked its way up the last few feet of yet another long, winding hill in southern Vermont. It was the heart of New England's dazzling autumn, the trees and foliage rich with bright reds, oranges, and browns, but the driver of the struggling auto was not impressed by the grandeur of the early October afternoon.
"This car is a roach," he proclaimed angrily to the cows, horses, and maple trees on the roadsides about three miles east of Bennington. "An A-1 lemon. I shoulda never listened to that old haybag from Jefferson Street. Do you remember the bill of goods she sold me, Hypatia?"
His companion, an attractive young woman in her early twenties, had been daydreaming, but the mention of her name brought her back to the present.
"She said she hardly used the car, except to take her mother to novenas."
"Yeh, that's where she pulled a fast one. I didn't know what a novena was. I thought it was something like Bingo where the old haybags meet every Friday night.When you told me it meant going nine days in a row to church, I could see how she turned this car into a shitbox."