Bill’s Driving

      Bill Beamgard was a charitable, altruistic person who would do almost anything for almost anybody.  Countless people overnighted at Bill’s house while waiting for repairs to a car at the family’s Dodge dealership.

       Bill once picked up a kid walking along I-70.  The kid had abandoned his car a mile or two back where it had quit on him.  Bill soon elicited the kid’s story:  he lived with  his grandparents in Denver, he was in trouble with the law, he had a court date in a day or two and he was running away. 

     Bill convinced him he needed to return to his worried grandparents, face the music in court, and then to start anew and try to turn his life around.  He took the kid home, had him call his grandparents, kept him until they could get there to pick him up.  Bill also took a trailer and picked up the kids’ broken-down car and kept it until his grandfather could come get it.

     Bill Beamgard behind the wheel of any motor-powered device was an entirely different animal.  Once he dropped a fairly new riding lawn mower into the lake bed while trying to mow too close to the edge of the lake at Lions Park.

     Bill had a competitive spirit which, like al lot of us on the roadways today, turned him into a different breed of animal.  One Christmas long ago, we had been at the country club for some kind of Christmas gathering. 

     The Goodwife and I were in her ’55 Chev.  Bill and Jeanie were in his blue Barracuda.  I made the mistake of getting out of the parking lot ahead of Bill as we left to go  home.  Lake Road parallels the lake shore.  At the northwest point of the lake is a spillway that does double duty as a bridge.  It was built in the 1930’s as a WPA project, I think.

      The spillway bridge is about 100% concrete, concrete floor, concrete posts providing support and serving as railing.  It’s not very wide.  When two cars meet, usually one will stop and wait for the other to clear the bridge before crossing.

     I knew that Bill would have to try to pass me.  I knew the Chev with its little 265 V-8 was no contest for the Barracuda.  I thought maybe I could get to the bridge first and wipe him off there.

    But no, Bill got beside me just as we came to the bridge.  If anybody got wiped off, it would be me.

      There was about Bill the ability to provoke people into doing something they would not ordinarily do.  As a teacher, it was a good thing.  He could goad lackadaisical students out of  their complacency and into attempting something that would help them realize their true potential.   

     This ability to provoke often had a down side.  So it was that rather than backing off and let the Barracuda cross the spillway bridge ahead of me, I held my ground and my speed.  As we entered the narrow bridge side-by-side, the Barracuda’s tail lights were even with the Chev’s door handle. 

      We were probably doing about forty or fifty miles an hour.  It seemed much, much faster.  The Goodwife shied to her left as the cement pillars of the bridge railing whizzed by inches from the Chev’s right window.

      I kept the Barracuda’s fender an inch or two off the Chev’s left side.  I had to let the concrete bridge railing take care of itself.  To glance to the right would have meant dents on my left.  Neither of us applied brakes or backed off the accelerator.

     In the blink of an eye, we zoomed up the incline of the bridge’s west end and out onto the pavement where Bill gunned it and got ahead of me in time to hit the brakes just before the stop sign at the highway.

     He won that one.  It wouldn’t be the last contest we would have.  It was probably the last time our contest would involve automobiles.

     Bill always said, “Never play the other man’s game.  You can’t win at that.”

     I took that lesson to heart, at least when it came to cars.  Bill would always have more powerful, faster vehicles than I cared to have.

     There was another time, years later, when I was on his side in a car.  Involuntarily.  Mark Twain said an innocent bystander was someone who didn’t have sense enough to get out of the way.

     Bill invited Tisha and me to ride to Hoxie with him to a football game.  We were in his fairly new red Omni, I think it was.  It had front wheel drive.  It  had an aluminum flywheel, which allowed it to achieve maximum rpms in a hurry.  It had low-profile tires suitable for racing, but rather rough to ride on.

      The trip over was rather uneventful.  Bill had taught driver’s ed in Nebraska.  He told his students there was only one reason to have a car in front of you:  to pass it.  It was difficult for him to observe that practice on the way to the game because of the long line of traffic headed to Hoxie and the numerous yellow-lined lanes over the hills on the way to Colby.  He had to stay in line.

      He had to do an errand in Colby which put us way behind the crowd for the rest of the trip.  Thus, no cars ahead of us to pass.

     Coming home was a different story.  We weren’t the first out of the gate following the game.  Bill passed a few cars as we headed west towards Colby.  There was one that refused to let us pass.  When Bill started to pull into the left lane, the car sped up.

      It was a big old Ford.  A Ford in front of Bill was a red cape to a bull.  The Ford was driven by Gordon Leadfoot.  He wasn’t about to let us around if he could help it.

     As we approached Colby, Bill realized he would not be able to pass Gordon before we reached Colby.  “I know a shortcut,” he said.

     We turned north and flew over a railroad crossing, past the country club, didn’t observe the stop sign where we turned left on what was the outskirts of Colby in those days.  As we pulled up to the stop sign at Highway 25, Gordon cruised past headed north.

     Bill activated the turbo charger on the red car and we were soon tailgating Gordon.  When we finally reached the flats a few miles north of Colby, Bill made his move.  With no traffic coming south, Bill pulled into the south bound lane and spurred his horse. 

      We pulled up beside Gordon, but it wasn’t a cakewalk.  I could hear the Ford’s tailpipe absolutely gushing, as Gordon had his foot in the carburetor, as we used to say.  It was a matter of some tense seconds before we pulled ahead far enough to return to the north bound lane.

     When we got back in our lane, Gordon conceded and backed off the old Ford.  Bill too slowed down to a more sensible eighty miles an hour, which got us home pretty quickly.    

     When my heartbeat slowed down some, I asked, “Bill, how fast were you going?”

     “I don’t know," he said.  "The speedometer only goes to 120.”