Standing over a table of cheap beer at a downtown casino, Doug, the pitcher on our softball team, said his buddy Bob Fletcher had a Dodge Charger sitting in his garage.

"It was his high school car," Doug said. "He keeps saying he's gonna restore it, but it just sits there. He's not doing anything with it."

Does he want to sell it?

"I don't know," Doug said. "But just down the street from me, the guy owns a '72 Plymouth Sebring."

But what about the Dodge? What's going to happen with the Dodge?

"I don't know about the Dodge," Doug says. "But down the street from the guy with the Plymouth Sebring, the guy past him owns a '67 Mustang. Al Rose has Mustangs, too."

The conversation goes in circles, spinning like an alternator belt on a worn-out engine. Earlier that week, the car parade snaked down Last Chance Gulch. Muscle cars with big engines. Enough chrome to blind a man. Flames rolling from black fenders.

John Smith polished the grill on his 1972 Mercedes 450 SL. "This was the first year for this body style," he told me before the parade. "This car came from Palm Springs in a basket. We had to rebuild it."

There's something patriotic about muscle cars (never mind Smith's car is German). It's the whole apple pie and Chevrolet sort of thing. But cars, no matter how big and how fast, aren't for everyone. So you go and watch alone.

"Not my thing," they tell you.

"I'd sooner go to the dentist…"

"I can't think of anything worse…"

Every year it's the same. Mustangs and Chargers and Camaros. Chopped-up hot rods with ridiculously big engines. Cars so altered they're unrecognizable.

It's a culture found in cities across the country. Big cities and little cities. Cities on the plains and cities in the mountains. You've seen one car parade and chances are, you've seen them all.

So it's nice to go to a place you've never been in your own town, to see something you've never seen. On Broadway with its low light and jazz. The din of subtle conversation. It's a snapshot in time. The war goes on. Memorial Day comes and goes and soldiers are remembered. The next day it's wine and conversation, music and martinis and "The New Yorker Book of Wine and Cartoons."

It's real lofty stuff, this book, and you can tell it's supposed to be funny, though you don't understand it because you drink beer, mostly, and wine when there's time to savor it.

"Sorry, but you're going to have to remind me who gets the red wine and who gets the white wine."

This is the caption to a cartoon involving a waiter at a table occupied by a cow and a fish.

I know enough to know that some wines go better with certain foods. But I'll be darned if I know which goes with beef and which goes with fish.

This is what happens when you mix cars, jazz, cartoons, and the consequences of war all in one week. You get frivolous curiosities and rambling musings.