Dick O'Kane Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Old Jags & Allards: The Whimsy and Fun of Dick O’Kane

21 November 2020 Comments 2 Comments

continuing the caption above…

Shrieking with hilarity and wheelspin, they left—Fast. B.O. sprinted puffing to his cruiser, leapt in and hit the starter, siren and red light all at once. With a wild squeal of rubber, the cruiser shot off after the Allard. That’s when I noticed the chain coiled up under the police car. One end was wrapped securely around a fire plug. The other end seemed to be attached to something underneath the cruiser. There was, oh, maybe 100 feet of it. We watched fascinated as the cruiser picked up speed and the coil grew smaller…and smaller… —Dick O’Kane

The O’Kane ouevre

Reader Mark Jones writes of my tribute to Don Vorderman and Automobile Quarterly: “You mention a story by Dick O’Kane and an Allard J2X named ‘Grendel.’…

Don Vorderman 1930-2018: The Best Editor I Ever Had

19 November 2019 Comments 3 Comments

My remembrance of Don Vorderman was published in shorter form in The Automobile, December 2019.

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“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”

—Winston S. Churchill, 12 November 1940

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Writers rarely talk about writing among each other. It’s a very personal thing, and it’s almost always hard to do well, none of which is too conducive to cheery cocktail chitchat. Most of us would rather visit a dentist than face up to the task of beginning the next piece, though it’s not quite so awful once the commitment is made and the thing is under way.…