With one hand on the steering wheel and the other wrapped around the ball of the gear shifter, she cruised through the winding roads of the back hollows. She sped by at twice the posted speed limit and three times as fast as was truly safe. Even around the sharp curves she never moved her right hand off the stick and put it on the wheel. With one hand she steered her car up mountain and down and whipped it back and forth around the harsh switchbacks in the road. Driving in West Virginia is an art… and she had mastered it.

She loved the feel of her car. The vibration from the steering wheel seeped through her fingertips and spread throughout her body. It was like a drug and she could freely admit she was addicted.

Most Americans were addicted—yet, few would seem to want to mention it. But she was not ashamed. Flying through these country roads she was as independent as Daisy Duke, as free as Jack Kerouac. She could go anywhere, do anything, and who would stop her?

In the real world she was just another blue-collar laborer—another nobody hillbilly Appalachian with no name, punching in and out of a clock, answering to a number. But in her car, she was whoever she wanted to be. She was someone everyone else wanted to be. She was envied and she was alive.