(Thanks, Ollie) PETE DEXTER blew into town from Florida some 30 years ago with a cowboy limp and a car that smelled like wet dog.
His hips were messed up from an old football injury, aggravated by years of Dexter insisting he could bang with kids half his age in playground basketball games.
He was always bleeding from his ears, gums, recent scabs.
Dexter’s car appeared to be upholstered in mouse-colored shag carpet. It was dog hair, layer upon layer, undisturbed, like age rings in a tree. The dog’s name was Harry. He was 14, maybe 15 years old.
The Daily News issued Dexter a new company car. Within days, it smelled of wet dog and appeared to be upholstered in mouse-colored shag carpet.
Dexter urinated on its tires, transported a sheep in its back seat, crashed it into a brick wall and founded the Velvet Touch Driving School. The Daily News issued him another new company car.
During the Dexter/Daily News marriage from the mid-’70s to the mid- ’80s, he was free to trash cars and blur the line between realism and magic realism as long as he wrote about life’s kidney punches from inside the kidney.
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