CptStern
suckmonkey
- Joined
- May 5, 2004
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TLDR: Top Gear crew traveling through hillybilly america paint offensive slogans on each others cars, get run out of town by banjo playing rednecks (ok I made up the part about banjos, although there was probably a banjo somewhere) who want to string them up because they think they're a gay couple
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/features/article6858884.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
On the side of Jeremy’s ageing, beaten-up Trans Am I painted the legend, “Country music is rubbish”. Jeremy had adorned the flanks of James’s 1970s Cadillac with “Hillary for president” and “Nascar sucks”.
...Along the side of my truck James had painted just four short words: “Man love rules OK”.
We covered three miles before being placed in genuine fear for our lives.
After just a mile or two, we spotted a road sign telling us we were in Alabama, and we pulled over to film it. The sign was riddled with bullet holes. And not the pathetic little air-rifle pellet holes you might occasionally see in the UK; this thing was peppered with shotgun blasts and a few larger, gaping wounds inflicted, I could only imagine, by slugs from high-powered hunting rifles. We were definitely not in Cornwall
A mile or so later, we pulled into what Jeremy seemed keen to call a “gas station"
A woman — presumably a local — was walking towards us.
“Y’all queers trying to see how long you can last in a hick town?”
There was more movement around us on the forecourt now. Trucks were arriving and in the back of them I saw the broad backs and cowboy hats of what I could only imagine were more locals. Where they had sprung from, I had no idea. But I saw they were all carrying guns, propped up against their feet.
“No, look, we’re both married. Got kids. Just travelling through.”
An enormous man had come out of the station building now, to stand in the middle of the forecourt. He wore the regulation blue denim overalls, plaid shirt and work boots of a cartoon character and looked like you couldn’t stop him with a train. In an unexpectedly high voice, he started to count.
“Ten. Nine . . . ”
“Five . . . ”
I leapt out of the truck, pulling the bonnet release on the way, and grabbed the jump leads as James thrust them towards me.
“Three . . . ”
The hail of rocks onto the crew vehicles was intensifying as the drivers came to their senses, started up and retreated. “Get in, James. Turn it over.”
The old Caddy gave a heave and the engine made a couple of wheezing turns before it caught and fired up.
“Two . . . ”
I saw the trucks from the garage pulling away.
In the back of each, sitting square against the sides of the pick-up bed in sombre lines, the rednecks toted their shotguns, thin black barrels bristling straight up at the sky. Amid the tense squabble of English voices from our team, crackling across the CB, I also heard the slow drawl of a local.
“They’re comin’ up past here. We’re at the crossroads.” And: “I can see them here, too.” They were using their CB radios to track us. And I was suddenly very aware that television cameras and business cards would not protect us from guns.
I didn’t want to wake up tied to a tree, being invited to squeal like a little piggy for the entertainment of a 20-year-old psychopath in giant dungarees, with three teeth in his head and a bitter hatred of anyone who wasn’t also a 30-stone homophobic racist who shot at things he didn’t understand.
The fear slowly subsided as we drove out of Alabama. But we kept going. And months later, the new question is still asked of me: “Did that really happen in America at the petrol station, or did you make it up for the telly?”
Well, yes, it really happened. You didn’t even see the half of it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/features/article6858884.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1