"Learning" to drive at eight years old - part two

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       I knew this after I climbed out of the driver’s side window that busted out when we landed. When Mikey and I exited the formerly beautiful automobile, the full force of combining two separate space shows came to bear. I entered a vortex I am sure was the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it. To my amazement, neither one of the oncoming cars involved in our successful “Phase One” adventure even slowed down. They just kept on driving to whatever safe place they were headed. I wanted to go with them as I examined the crushed and battered former spaceship Mikey and I had called our own. I took five steps back and to my utter horror my Dad’s car was indeed dead and I had killed it. To begin with, the hood flew up bending it back over the roof of the car which I also noted was dented from the force of the hood smacking it. I also saw that the two doors would not open and they were seriously out of line. The two front fenders were elevated a good ten to twelve inches as evidenced by the two flat wide white wall tires having much more clearance than I remembered them having preflight. The front bumper was off the car and I could see it protruding from the underbelly of the car, twisted like a piece of used dental floss or a discarded pipe cleaner. The back bumper was pushed up so high, the trunk would more than likely not open it was so dented in. This car looked like something Picasso might have designed, a veritable modern art master piece.

As Mikey and I exited from the now destroyed former space ship and my Dad’s most prized possession, I learned an instinctive maneuver that day and one I would later utilize numerous times to include the scaffold swinging incident and when confronted by the Police at front door of the Denny’s years later during the D&D days Brian and I enjoyed together.

 I ran.

Mikey Langford and I ran as far and as fast as we could away from our homes and up Avon Avenue. We were going to join the Peace Corps or something, anything that would keep us from facing the hell that would be my dad when he found out his car was trashed and I had done it. In reality, Mikey had pulled the shifter into neutral and I could have thrown his ass under the bus but I was just as guilty and he was my friend. After all, I had put my P.F. Flyers on the Silver, yes silver, leather seats, crossed Avon Avenue AND drove (aimed) my Dad’s car without knowledge or permission, so I was dead three ways right there. We ran all the way to Mitchell’s Store, at the far end of Greymont Drive and the back gate of Ft. Mac, what seemed to be a mile or two but in reality were just over three eighths of a mile from my house. We did our usual; we walked around to the back of the store, grabbed six bottles each that had already been turned in for deposit, marched to the counter collected our thirty five cents each, and walked out with a cold Coke and Chic-a-stix each in our young, juvenile delinquent hands. The drink and candy had enough sugar to make your hair stand on end and keep you from sleeping for a good two days, which I am sure I would need if I were to be a fugitive. I am sure Mr. Mitchell was wondering what two seven-year-olds donning football helmets might be up to, but I am sure he had other things to concern himself over, and we were paying customers…sort of. Our appearances never occurred to us as we could only focus on  avoiding death, so we formulated a plan; we’d make a long walk down a side street from Mitchell’s store which was across the road from the back gate of Fort Mac, paralleling Greymont Drive, and circle all the way back around to our houses returning in the complete opposite direction from where the Riviera’s untimely death had occurred. A seven-year-old mind had decided playing innocent was the only way I would ever see the light of day that summer, as punishment back in those days was having to stay indoors and this infraction might keep me indoors for a good year or better. It is funny how times change. Punishment these days is making a kid stay outdoors, indoors was a fate worse than death to my crowd of friends. I borrowed a page from Hogan’s Heroes (a kid and adult favorite TV show from the sixties) and all the conniving antics they pulled on Commandant Clink and Shultz were going to finally pay off. And my folks were convinced that watching TV was a bad thing!

It took us a good forty five minutes to return to our houses the very long back way. When we rounded Linville Street, the street that circled into and eventually butted into Greymont Drive and Mikey’s house, we noticed there were no kids out playing. We walked next door to my house, as innocent looking as a pair of newborn babies and what we beheld was like seeing a UFO for the first time. There were cop cars with lights flashing and folks from all over our neighborhood in attendance at the show. It looked like a flying saucer or the Lost in Space ship had landed on Avon Avenue (the TV one, not the one we had piloted earlier that day) and every kid and adult was in attendance to witness the mayhem that was the crash landing of our former spacecraft. I instructed Mikey to play dumb and not whisper a word to anyone anywhere as his mom and dad would have to pay up for the damages to my dad’s car. Mikey was indeed the ships navigator and had pulled the shifter out of park causing the death and destruction to my dad’s most prized material possession. He asked me if I thought it would work and all I knew was, it had to be better than the truth. I recall all the events of that day rushing back to me when I saw the movie Animal House and the scene after Boone, Otter, Pinto and Flounder (a pledge) took Flounder’s brother’s new four door Lincoln Continental on a road trip and killed it dead by drunkenly crashing it into everything and every car on the road. It was later to be resurrected as the “EAT ME” mobile, Flounder’s older brother Fred’s former Lincoln Continental after the road trip and subsequent destruction of same vehicle. The upper class brothers instructed pledge Flounder to lie about its demise and they’d back him up. It went something like this:

“What’ll I tell Fred!!??” Flounder asked.

“We’ll tell him you were taking great care of the car. You parked it out back and in the morning…it was gone!!” says Eric Stratton, reassuringly.

“Will that work??” replies Flounder, in great distress.

“It’s gotta work better than the truth,” Stratton, says with confidence.

Mikey Langford and I grabbed a seat on our front steps and quietly watched the action from our elevated vantage point. I could see my dad, his arms raised in abject confusion, asking questions I am sure only I could competently answer concerning the fate of his car. I am sure he asked the police in attendance numerous questions they could not answer. He was asking in the direct, calm manner that always scared the shit out of me whenever he quizzed me concerning the comings and goings of any young man in need of guidance from a father that cared. Next thing you know, my mom and Mikey’s mom appear out of what seemed to be nowhere (Mom skills), and drilled us both new ones, individually and collectively, military style concerning our “where-about’s” during the destruction of my dad’s most favored automobile. I am sure their actions originated out of the excitement concerning the events at hand and the adrenaline that accompanied it. The “Where in the hell have you two been?” factor played a small role in their concern also, I assumed. We wisely stashed our space/football helmets in my crawl space to conceal evidence and to prevent any outside chance of premature death or incarceration for us both. My mom grilled us, then Mikey’s mom. Then they grilled us separately and then switched us up and grilled us again, in an obvious attempt to extract the truth if there was any truth to be extracted that day. Neither one of us broke.

Mikey did slip up and confess to going to Mitchell’s store, a crossing Avon Avenue infraction, so I got my ass busted by my mother. Three licks from her with a small belt and it never hurt, ever. Getting a whipping from her was an easy piece of time, so I just hollered a lot then she usually felt guilty and let up. She usually ended it with the “this hurts me far more than it hurts you” speech, a card most Moms played when confronted with having to whip a kid’s ass. Truth was, it actually did hurt her more than it hurt me as she was a real wimp with the rod of correction. My mom couldn’t whip her way out of a wet paper bag if her life depended on it. I would much rather have been tied to and dragged around behind her 1956 Bel-Air for punishment rather than be lectured by her for what seemed like days. She’d speak of the early grave we were digging for her with our disobedience, one shovel at a time, and crap like that, all intended to layer guilt upon us a like a carefully crafted double-decker Dagwood sandwich, usually served cold with a side of poor-poor-pitiful me soup. My brother, sister and myself knew she would live to lecture for at least one hundred plus years or better and would probably have to be gagged before we chucked her in the clay. My guess back then was if she died and was buried you could put your ear to a drinking glass above her grave and still hear the lectures she had not completed this side of the dirt. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but I hope you have a clue to what I am saying here. I figured when parents had kids they went to birthing classes first and then had required kid-lecturing classes second. I am a world class lecturer now myself. Just ask my three kids. It’s genetic I guess. You inherit it from your own children.

I often wondered about whatever place my mom might end up in after her death, and I also wondered if God would allow me to be lectured by her if she and I both made it to heaven. If she did indeed get to lecture me there, I thought maybe I would rather go to “the bad place”, kinda like in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” when Huck told Aunt Polly when he’d just soon go to hell rather than have to sit still and get lectured by her. For me (and Huck Finn too I guessed) the down side was that if the Devil was in charge of Hell and distributing eternal punishment, he might have my mom imported there to lecture me for eternity so I lost either way. I wasn’t sure how God worked back then, but I was sure that he would not allow one person’s heaven to be another person’s hell, if you catch my drift. I figured I’d let God sort that out as I was as close to meeting Him, or the Devil as the case may be, as I had ever been in my young life based on the events transpiring right then. If Mikey squealed or I caved in from guilt concerning the previously unwrecked car we had been occupying earlier that day, I was indeed going to meet God or Satan. It would definitely be down escalator for me that very day if the truth got out and I kicked the bucket right then. I figured it was better than having to confront my father, and an eternity of lectures by my mom, so I made peace with it.

When my dad concluded his business with the local authorities, he walked into our house with a face as red as cherry Kool-Aid. Only half mixed strong and blood red, when you just had gotten the sugar to dissolve, before filling it up to the eyebrows on the Kool-Aid pitcher. He was pissed off after he had been told by the cops that a rash of crimes similar to this had taken place a few streets over from us and in Atlanta also. My dad was insured to the hilt as he believed it was better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it when it came to proper insurance coverage.

Of course, he lectured me on never getting in the car ever without him present and of course to never put your shoes on the leather seats. It took two months to get that car fixed and he sent it back twice to General Motors for other items in need of fixing due to the accident. The insurance company had discovered that Buick and GM were having issues with transmissions slipping out of park and causing damage. My old man had his beloved Riviera fixed and never experienced a rate hike afterward as a result of my covert and still as of yet undiscovered cruise in his car. The insurance company and GM wanted to “total it out” but he asked either of them how hard it would be to locate a custom ordered Midnight Black with silver, yes silver, leather interior fully loaded with the same rare engine and dual four barrel carbs, train horn option that would wake the dead, cruise, power everything, including a ball scratcher as my Dad so lovingly put it. I always asked him where the ball scratcher button was, but he said if he told me he’d have to kill me, as ball scratching with anything other than one’s writing hand below the age of eighteen might cause premature blindness. He wore glasses on occasion, so I guessed he’d hold down the mysterious scratch button until he needed the reading spectacles, avoiding blindness altogether.

The Riviera came back to us in pristine condition and my Dad loved that car as much as any man could love an inanimate object. He would probably own it today if my mom had not given it to a towing service for the towing bill generated when my dad was out of town on business and she had unexpectedly broken down. I think the move was strategic on her behalf as I figured she might someday ask for him to choose between the two of them and she was hedging her bets. Also, my dad had Triple A and they would handle anything car related and towing was included. This fact alone furthered my dad’s theory that my mom had purposely wandered outside of the boundaries of safety my dad had carefully constructed with car insurance and Triple A. I thought he might divorce my mom over that incident and it still remains a sore topic forty plus years later. I distinctly remember my dad calling the towing service and arguing with them over a twenty dollar towing bill versus an extremely nice Buick Riviera as payment. The dudes at the towing service knew they had a jewel of a car in exchange for a minor service and never budged. It sat beside the towing company’s building until many years later the company closed and the Riviera disappeared.

Ironically, I happened upon that same Riviera in a junk yard when I was in my thirties, and I asked the owner of the junkyard’s son if I could buy it in an attempt to restore it and give it to my dad as a gift someday. The dude stated his dad had bought it new and he would never sell it. I marched him over to the car and showed him the old gas tickets in the console; still lovingly organized by my dad, the Marine, in the little folder he kept them in along with all the service records to accompany it. While I was looking through the console I spotted a small red button in the front of the console and for a brief moment thought I had located the much heralded ball scratcher button my dad had expounded upon so long ago. I figured I was over eighteen (way over) and I would not go blind at this point, and maybe I could just let it scratch until I also needed reading glasses instead of full on blindness, like my dad, but I digress.

The owner’s son insisted it was not my dad’s car and refused to sell it even after I asked him to reach his hand down beside the back seat behind the driver and see if their was a silver Mustang Hot Wheel I deposited there and played with when I as a kid. Sure enough, it was there but the butthole didn’t budge and I left empty handed, save for the Hot Wheel, leaving the receipts in case I ever crossed paths with my former spacecraft and my Dad’s most prized inanimate object again. I never saw that car after that day and I have looked through many junkyards since then in hopes of finding, restoring and taking one last ride through a major or even a minor galaxy or two with my son.

I am fifty now and I am certain my dad will someday read this account concerning his Riviera and its brush with fate. Screwing around with the time space continuum by two young boys flying a spaceship without a license proved to be a daunting task. I was glad Mikey Langford kept his mouth shut and I was sure I had saved his life by not telling. I also realize that I would just now be getting off restriction, forty three years later, if I had fessed up to the whole thing way back when. Live to tell the tale another day seemed to be the best rule of thumb.

  
It had to work better than the truth.