the last book I ever read (Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? excerpt four)

from Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? by George Clinton with Ben Greenman:

And so, one day, the Parliaments packed into a 1956 Bonneville and went to Detroit. The car was a juiced-up specimen that belonged to a friend of ours, William “Stubbs” Pitt. That care was like a rocket. The cops would try to catch Stubbs racing around Plainfield, but they’d fail because all he had to do was drop the accelerator pedal. He was gone. The next day the cops would come to the barbershop and ask after him. “Where’s Stubbs?” they’d say. “We couldn’t catch him.” Sometimes, though, illegal drag races took place at night where the cops would look the other way. Sometimes they would even place bets on the racers. They all bet on Stubbs. On the drive to Detroit, I stayed in the front as a passenger, mostly because I was good at staying awake. Stubbs drove the whole way. Something happened to the transmission right outside of Toledo, Ohio, and he jumped out and went up under the car and fixed it. He put his jumpsuit on over the top of his suit. We were all wearing suits. That’s how you had to dress when you were going to make an impression at Motown. They were supercool, and we thought we were supercooler.