When we got to be
juniors and had drivers’ licenses, I drove the old ’52 Chevrolet. Jake got to drive his folks’ ’59 Chevrolet.
Then we found out
what we had. One day I was to meet Jake
at his home. He wasn’t there when I got
there. His dad Ed and I were talking
just outside their house. Ed said, “There
he comes. Looks like he’s givin’ it the
devil.”
Two things led Ed
to that conclusion: the cloud of dust
and how the car appeared and disappeared as it topped the hills on the road
east of the house, and the sound the car was making. “How fast do you drive it?” I asked Ed to
divert him and possibly ameliorate a chewing out for Jake.
“Just as fast as
the [adjective deleted] [hyphenated noun deleted] will go.” I laughed.
Maybe Jake wasn’t in for a chewing out after all, and Ed definitely had
a lead foot.
Jake was
definitely giving it the devil, too.
Like father, like son, maybe.
Jake confided to me once that Ed had warned him that he must drive
sensibly when others were in the car, their lives in his hands. He considered me a special friend and that
rule didn’t apply when we were the only two in the car. If we shared a disastrous fate, it was okay. It
was like we were one. Touching. Maybe a little disconcerting.
So it was that
one moonlit Saturday night, we were driving north on 109, cruising 60 or so
when Jake decided it was bright enough he didn’t need headlights. So he shut them off. For some reason, he decided to switch them
back on. At the far reaches of the
headlight beams a big black cow materialized standing crosswise in the middle
of the road, only the eyes reflecting the light as she turned to look at us.
On came the
brakes. Jake managed to get the thing
slowed enough to give the cow time to move and to take a shoulder of the road
to get around her. I think we both breathed
a little faster for a while. We were
young. It was exciting. It took some time, maybe years for the
significance to sink in completely. Do
you believe in guardian angels?
Jake relied
heavily on the brakes. I wasn’t in the ’59
Chevy when the brakes let him down. His
mother was. They lived just south of
what is now Road P. To get to town, they
went east on Road P for about two miles where it went down a hill and dead
ended into the paved road, 109.
They topped the
hill and headed down towards the junction.
When Jake hit the brakes, the pedal went to the floor and the car slowed
not a whit. He reacted by punching the
emergency brake with his left foot and “hung with it” as he said. The emergency brake locked up the back
wheels.
When we passed the
site later, you could still see the tracks the back tires made as they slid
across the pavement. Jake had enough
driving experience to realize if he tried to turn left or right, he would roll
the car. So they ended up head on into
the bank of the ditch. The car stopped
before going through the fence. It sustained
some front end damage, but was soon repaired and returned to service. A brake line had developed a serious leak. It too was replaced.
One of the
attractions of the ’59 was the awesome sound it made when Jake stepped on the
gas pedal. The carburetor throat howled
as it attempted to ingest enough air to answer the demand of the floored
accelerator pedal. It sounded a lot like
the big boys on the drag strip. A look
under the hood showed why.
The car had a 348
engine. The Chevrolet V-8 evolved from
the puny 265 first introduced in 1955 to the 348. I’m not sure if the later 327 or the 396
could top that 348 engine. It had a
unique look. The valve covers (and
heads, I guess) were shaped like a number 3 instad of the typical Chevrolet
rectangular head and valve cover. It
would run, anyway.
I think the
climax of our ’59 Chevrolet experience came on what is now Road 3N. When I was a kid 3N was a section line, a
cattle trail. It was bordered by our
pasture fence on the north and the “school section” fence on the south. Only a half mile on the west end, from Road
26 east, was elevated and graveled. It
stopped at the driveway for the “Green place” which became the “Oller place”
after the Greens moved to Kiowa.
When the school
district wanted to shorten the bus route, they offered to pay us a small stipend
to provide transportation to the junction of 3N and Road 28, Road 28 known then
as the mail route. It would save the bus
about seven miles a day.
Part of the deal
was the county elevating and gravelling 3N for the mile and a half between 26
and 28. The county agreed because it
would connect north-south paved roads 109 and State Highway 71.
A second part of
the deal was a sign Dad made that said “SCHOOL BUS” which he attached to the
top of the old ’53 Chev. It was for
insurance purposes, I suppose. The sign
was made of wood, painted white with black block letters. It had suction cup feet and straps with hooks
that caught in the rim around the car roof, like a luggage carrier.
The sign lasted a
few weeks. It had to come off when we
used the car for other purposes. I think
it came off and stayed off when we met a big truck on a windy day. With the whoosh of the truck’s air wash added
to the wind and our momentum, the sign blew off. It never went back on.
On the newly elevated
road, there was an incline just west of the Frank Horak place. Going west, the hill went up at a modest
angle, but then it dropped quickly to the Lickdab creek where it crossed 3N. In the beginning, there was no bridge or
culvert. The creek bottom was elevated
only as much as the rest of the road.
When that crossing washed out a few times, the county installed a six-foot
culvert. To smooth things out and
provide fill material to cover the culvert, they cut down the hill.
There is still a
hill there, but the top is not nearly as high as it once was, and the culvert
raised the road several feet above the Lickdab.
That operation spoiled our fun.
The fun came by
going west over the hill. When you
dropped off the hill crest, it “tickled your stomach” we used to say. I guess the “stomach tickle” was a brief instant
of weightlessness.
Jake used to like
to come that way when he took me home.
We would crest the hill doing sixty or so and feel the thrill of the
drop. The ’59 would bottom out with a
thump when it hit the Lickdab.
Jake had a dog
named Skeeter. He was black brown, stood
about a foot high, and he loved to ride in the front seat of the car. He got to go on short trips with Jake
sometimes.
One day Jake,
Skeeter and I were headed west on 3N.
Jake hit the hill at about sixty.
Skeeter had to scramble a little to keep his balance when we came over
the hill. That gave Jake the idea he
should try it a little faster, so we turned around, went east a ways and tried
it again. I think we made the repeat
trip three or four times. On the last
try, we hit the hill doing eighty.
Skeeter came off
the seat, all four feet. It seemed like
he went a foot in the air, but it was probably only a matter of inches. He was airborne for a second anyway. He landed in the seat, regained his balance
and resumed his sentry position, watching through the windshield to see what
was next.
We probably
topped that hill a few more times after that, before the county smoothed things
out, but Skeeter wasn’t along, and we never topped the thrill of that trip.
As I look back
on it, I wonder that we lived long enough to graduate from high school, let
alone long enough to qualify for Medicare.
Guardian Angels, I guess.
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