In the months after Katrina I was renting cars to do my work, having already viewed my own vehicle from a satellite photo sitting submerged in seven feet of water (I had evacuated in another car). This got to be expensive enough to make my first eBay purchase a new (used) car, a Saturn station wagon. Took that car to my GF's house, said 'well here's my new car'. Without a word she went into the house, rooted around and came out with a bright red ribbon which she tied around the post of the rear-view mirror.
"So - what's that?" I asked.
"Maloccio" she says. "Protection from the evil eye".
She's Sicilian and her family has some amazing occult experiences, so I took this very seriously and with gratitude.
Couple of years later I'm in Carolina, coming over a lonely two-lane hilly highway. It's about 8 at night and dark. As I crest the hill off in the distance on the left is an old general store with gas pumps outside, and on the right, a couple of small rural-residential streets on the right. Nothing else. Nobody on the road. The store is closed for the night.
Down yonder an old pickup truck pulls out from one of the roads on the right; he's far enough ahead that I don't have to slow down from my 55, he's got time to accelerate. But as I get closer, now he's slowing up, has no turn signal on but he appears to be preparing to turn right again. Whether he's turning or not I figure I'll just pass around him. As I go out to the left lane to do that, I'm almost even with him when suddenly his left fender veers right in front of me. He's
turning left.
I'm going 55 and I'm looking at an F150 fender.
Where the **** is he turning?? 
No time to ponder, no time to honk. I snap my wheel to the left, off the road completely and into the parking lot of the general store, right through the gas pump lane and around back to the right to get on the road again. I'm pretty sure I'm the only guy who ever went through that store's gas pump lane at 55 miles an hour. I can't believe I was able to do that without so much as a bump. I'm equally sure that maloccio ribbon had something to do with making it happen without a hitch. I have no idea what went through that old man's mind when he saw me go around him, although from the way he was driving there wasn't a lot going on in his mind anyway.
That car and that ribbon went through a few other adventures in the over 200,000 miles I put on it through 28 states and Canada (added to the over 200,000 it already had when I bought it). And the ribbon stayed with me the entire run, only being gingerly and solemnly removed when I finally sold the car.
The maloccio ribbon, now faded pink from eight years of sunlight, is still with me on the present car. The general store is gone now, moved when they widened that road to a four-land divided highway, which would have made that move impossible. But every time I drive by that spot I remember exactly where it was and how I put a new meaning to the term "express lane". And I look up at my ribbon, and I look up to the sky. And I wink and whisper, "Grazie".
how do you like your job? Or is it horrible because of all the regs?
