Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Plastic Hearts


That sweet old sad drooping house quickly faded in the distance as the road curved and dipped across a low water bridge that stretched over onion creek on a single country lane that ran between the flats of dried up onion and bean fields. I looked out at the long skinny finger-like mud streams that had cut out deep slivers down into the black soil as if the earth just cracked open one day, leaving a spider-web of these long mud canyons that stretched out amongst cow-fields from here to Creedmoor.


I could almost still hear us as kids mucking about like it was yesterday. We were summer crazy, running wild out there being cowboys and Indians, throwing rocks and mud clods, fishing for crawdads with our long cane poles with whole chicken necks and bacon tied to a simple kite string that we dangled down into the water from the high banks. Our boots always squishing and sinking deep in the thick mud. We poked long sticks in snake and frog holes, and tried to shoot wiggly tadpoles with our BB guns as they popped on top of the murky mud water. Sometimes a spooked moccasin would break away, winding and weaving its signature ripple across the still surface. So often we would try and smoke the wild grapevine that grew everywhere along the fences. It was hard enough though to keep the little twigs lit, especially using soggy matches, but when the tip of one finally lit with a bright ember, we frantically sucked and dragged on them real hard to keep it going, burning our throats with the hot smoke making us choke and cough like mad, and then we would do it again cheering in victory if we could blow even a hint of smoke out of our mouths. The silliest thing we did was  compete to see who could pee a long arc all the way across to the other bank. Cousin Mike always won, and he would have you think he won gold in the Olympics! We liked being stupid and fun. We always searched the roadside for nude magazines after accidentally discovering them one summer while collecting paper to start a fire with. They always seemed to be strewn about in tatters, blown onto the thicket and barbed-wire like big matted cotton balls. Mostly they were Playboy or Penthouse. We never had to look too far to find any. They were either left by the older kids, or had been flung out of some passing car that some old man didn't want his wife seeing. A couple times,  Johnny stole them when working for Mr. Marks at the grocery. We would sit there and endure swarms of gnats and mosquitos buzzing all around our sweaty, sun beaten heads, necks and forearms, just to get a look at the water logged, mud covered pages that were so clumped together at times, that we had to tear them apart slowly to see barely anything. We always convinced ourselves we could see more than we really could on the sun faded, rain torn pages. Every now and then though, there was a somewhat whole intact copy that was a prize keeper. Those rare ones that were salvageable, we would roll up and stick under rocks for safe keeping, and the others we would light on fire and toss into the creek, hurling them up in the air like fire balls that would spin and break apart in mid air, sending embers swirling down to the creek bed. It's not like we were pyromaniacs or anything,  it was just always fun lighting stuff on fire. We would fight over who gets to light the next one, that is until one day we damn near burned down the entire creek and half of old man Jackson's hayfields, and then no one wanted to take credit for lighting anything. We didn't even realize we had caught the place on fire until we were almost back to the main road and smelled smoke, and heard this loud crackling sound rushing up behind us fast and furious! Instantly we knew it could only be one thing. We turned around in shock while staring at a wall of sky high flames already so out of control, and already so well beyond us being able to put it out, that we could have imagined the whole world burning down! I think we all screamed out loud. It was a fire so big and fast, and to our young minds, a raging inferno, which in fact actually was not an exaggeration this time. We were going to catch hell for this one. It was just when i told myself i'm not going to get in trouble anymore, i'm going to be good. For sure that wasn't our first fire, and wouldn't be our last, although this one really scared the daylights out of us and had so rapidly spread big enough to bring three volunteer fire departments in to put it out. Looking back now, it is quite amazing what we all survived some of those days, those years, and all the places life would take us from there on out, and especially this day which might be my last time on these familiar roads.


Those thoughts lingered as I sped past my childhood. Up about a mile was a big truck stop I had driven by half my life, but for some odd reason never once stepped foot inside the place ever. Things are funny like that sometimes. We are forever creatures of habit I guess.

I pulled in slowly, sizing up the place as if there might be real vampires or zombies inside. No doubt any one of the truckers drifting through here could likely be something of the sort, serial killer or worse. Can't say i ever really met a truck driver or wouldn't know if i had.  The only real concern mid day, might just be drunk rednecks that don't like my hair or my car! I took my chances anyway pulling into the gravel drive, pulled right up to the front door, got out and stretched while cautiously looking back over my shoulder at the idling rigs in the back, turned and walked in without a hesitation and still not sure why.

Inside, I looked around out of curious wonder, as well hoping to see a mens-room sign. I could see this place had been froze over in a time of checkered vinyl linoleum, big mirrors and whole pies.

To my stuttering surprise, I was stunned when i caught sight of a girl so beyond pretty, it actually hurt my heart , and i was instantly 12 years old again, dead center in a spotlight......oh my gosh, it was Susan Rainey!

She was putting salt shakers and ketchup bottles on the tables and appeared to be the only one in the place except for a lone trucker sunk into a back corner booth sipping his  precious coffee. It was a little strange being that there was half a dozen rigs outside with their engines running and the place empty. Where was everybody? Maybe there actually were Vampires around here, although i figured the endless walls of mirrors ruled them out.

I must have been standing there staring for a bit like a fool when i realized she had momentarily stopped what she was doing and was spying me from the corner of her eye.
"You lost?", she said in a tone a little more brash and gutty than i expected from her gentle face. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Passing Storm


I will forever be possessed by the Spring rains and brilliant Summer storms of my childhood that frequently graced our countryside farm. Big magnificent storms often rolled in unannounced, where fear and freedom came together as we watched in awe from where we stood. They came in fast, born between both Heaven and Earth, with my soul somewhere meeting at their center. Never can I forget on the days the rain would start to fall with the first giant drops as the clouded skies would blacken fast as shadows merged together turning day to a haunting night of magical twilight colors, where all blues would turn to deep translucent greens, towering against the mountainous rolls of gray with their columns of black rain growing a towering wall taller and taller, shedding off the last sliver of sparkled light that torched only the very tips of running clouds just before extinguishing into a blind dark fury unleashed like Gods in a battle. The wind came to me, thrown downward and across our pastures blowing Bermuda grasses into rolling waves of shimmering light dancing against their silk green blades. The enormous oak trees would come alive twisting and bowing as if paper mache dolls, while the sunflowers would bow in unison. Fresh linen sheets on the clothes line whipped as if sails in a gale force sea. In the twirling magnificent rage, the sky blasts opens with no warning, showering down massive sheets of warm and cold rain with giant drops, clear and silver, engulfing everything. Fear was but a moment in me that turned to elation. I then ran crazed, full of the lightning with my mothers frantic distant voice drowned in the overpowering storm. The rains came first, then hale began to pelt me in it's furious gusts as I laughed wildly insane into the wind until it laughed back at me. Small rivers began to flow over my bare feet. The mysterious smell of ozone mist assaulting all my senses as I ran full speed into the storm, chasing the eyes center into the fields of fury. The skies above opened wider as the clouds fell down around me with shattering booms, swallowing me in its rage, where I tempted the heavens with my arms outstretched to throw her lightning bolts through me, bright jagged streaks that were clawing ferociously down to earth with each roar.
And then as fast as the storm had arrived, and faster than I could run, it left without pause. The wispy fringe of the clear black towers fleeing, I watched them move on like a passing slow train leaving me standing alone with water running down my face and dripping from my chin, the fading deep rumble and flashes of lightning now at a great distance. I stood silent for no Godly reason, stood alive like a triumphant warrior pierced through the heart...

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

My Paris

mon chat a Paris
Paris
1988

In this emotional feast I starve my soul hungry for survival and freedom in turbid mind I am spiraling the day, searching the future, the race with time embattled in desire for permanence of stillness and calm.
I taste love being fragile and fleeting and separated that I dare not touch of dried butterfly wings and ash that would dissolve with the slightest breath a breeze or single tear-drop
no I am in a race no time in this crowded street. I see you 'Tour Eiffel' and Seine deep and dark yet you reflect my face as I lean over  from near the cobblestone.


I walk in the cold February streets of Paris past the zombies and thinkers all inward as I. You paint me at Sacre Coer yet which character do you paint as I have rummaged through the tapestries of the flea market and and fell drunk in the streets of les Halles with Henry Miller after sins in the shadows
yet i am always the main character of every novel I starve in this movable feast where i am not the hero yet I am good, i am kind in pain
and who are all these others walking around me some hand in hand laughing, I am among the cats on rooftops and climbing steps of the bridge


I skirt Notre Dame's shadows hurriedly before she falls on me, her gargoyles perched high watching me that I can no longer  hide in her treeless garden which was once my sanctuary, yet I stop only for a moment to look over the walls to the black shimmering waters below reflecting her towers in shimmering waves. I continue walking  alone in the cold streets of Paris, my Paris. I  hide in Rodin's garden and wish to understand the thinker and why so many cried for Balzac's death but I shed no tears I continue to walk the bridges back and forth and back and forth I can cross a thousand times from Pont Neuf to Pont Bercy and smoke gauloise  like Kerouac, with the dirty gypsy in the train tracks or drink my chocolat chaud at Angelines and stair at the Ferris wheel in the park

though you are left behind, you are naked in my room you lay too still for loves suppressing sad fate unquenching my thirst of the living so I walk on and on, wrapping my scarf one more time so i don't drop it. I left you quiet, angry, I had nothing left

I dip below the streets to block the wind under Pont Marie to hear the saxophone and bateau mouche pass in the water quietly throwing her bright lights on My Paris, I am alone once again and no place to go except for the narrow passage and alley-ways, dans la rue jai soif de vie mon Paris
                                                                                 
Je suis faim!

Friday, February 28, 2014

Racing Time



Life is little more than a race, a sprint to the finish line. It starts young, maybe not so much at birth, but soon after- as soon as you feel your engine start to run on its own power. You begin to break away with the peddling of your tricycle and coasting downhill in your little red wagon, wind taking your breath away in excitement and fear. You sensed the anxiety of your separation and freedom at an early age-“I can fly-I can fly”.

This is the tribal heritage, born into and of the American modern lower middle class, the generation of us who’s fathers were of the Atomic Age and third wave of a new industrial revolution, men who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s post “the Big War”, boys raised on rural farms or near poverty suburb homes bought on the coveted GI Bill and VA loans. A simple life with a Sunday devotion to the Church, always praying for a wing and a prayer while pushing a dollar just to squeeze by, and where too often they were forced to swallow their fruitless pride that they frequently washed down with alcohol, fueling laughter and the unexpected dancing of a jig, to the polar opposite of violent outbursts and a disciplining wrath that became as common as a dozen eggs. Belt wielding, hollering and singing fathers echoed block to block in every neighborhood and was accepted if not expected as the true values in the American family.

These parenting skills were limited and passed down, without a manual, from one bad generation to another with a universal belief they must instill above all, the ability to fend for ourselves. This came with nothing more than a mix of harsh disciplines, unavailable absence and forking out healthy portions of child labor, a generation void of hugs and quality time which were unheard of and not part of the equation most of the time. Norman Rockwell was not painting our neighborhood, although to us, being all we knew, it was a glorious time to grow up, and besides, the neighbor kid always seemed to have it worse.

It was a changing time of fragile optimism and uncertainty where over a decade of peace and prosperity was slowly being shadowed by a new world coming-with wars looming here and abroad from civil rights to Vietnam and “the Cold War” becoming the word of the day.
Despite the troubled worries and fears of our fathers, most of which were over shadowed, condensed and focused on daily financial woes, though despite such hardships, our fathers were non the less intensely eager and aroused by curious nature, making them inventive with a keen interest in how things were made and had a deep childlike enthusiastic connection to anything mechanical, which meant they were going to enthusiastically teach us all they thought they knew and "prepare us to fend for ourselves",  whatever that meant.
My father was all of this and then some. On one front, he was in a battle with his devout Catholic upbringing by a stern father on the rural farms of Kansas to the streets of Memphis Tennessee and on
another front, battling his own set of principles and moral obligation to new and dividing Southern culture.

He was a self-described rebel intellectual who after being drafted into the Marines, soon abandoned a military life to become a schoolteacher, but with a restless yearning for purpose brewing inside, he soon quit teaching, despite having a growing Catholic size family of children, and more on the way, and regardless of an uncertain future, he without hesitation and with blind intuition, joined forces with an unheard of grass roots experiment that was to rid America of dire poverty and in addition, although unforeseen, also would help ignite the civil rights movement across the south bringing change and chaos to an already unstable Government in Washington.

It was literally named 'The War on Poverty'. The new legislation and actual title of a program that began with the visions of Kennedy and introduced by President Johnson and directed under Sgt Shriver, which was a whole group of programs under the heading of “OEO” (Office of Economic Opportunity).
Johnson's "War on Poverty"

Sgt. Shriver, "VISTA"
Being that Shriver was the brain child and Father of the Peace-corps and Johnson facing a staggering poverty rate, that pinned him and his administration up against a wall, forcing him to do something in our own country where the level of minority poverty was reaching the 25% mark and much of it, especially in the South, where in some parts that level was surpassing that of third world countries abroad.
Shriver was urgently enlisted by Johnson to create our own form of domestic Peace Corps “VISTA” (Volunteers in Service to America). that came with the outcry, "we better save our own country before we save the rest of the world!"

Eugene Richards 'VISTA' corps
Despite huge opposition, especially by conservative southern Senators who didn’t want to upset the status quo or spend money, the war was non the less waged, and so with enthusiasm, young college grad's volunteered and joined the forces that would soon blanket the impoverished landscape of the sad and dark unseen side of America.
Mississippi Delta, 'VISTA'

As one of the head officers of the  new “Vista,” and training coordinator for the Mississippi Delta region, along with being an appointed spokesperson and advisor for the New Mexico Native American reservations, my Father was off and running in all directions - gone for weeks at a time with his new shiny diplomatic license plates disappearing in the distance to save the poor and perhaps his own moral soul, both stretching from the migrant fields in Florida, across the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas Mountains, and all the way to the boarders of Mexico, as we sat in our red wagons waving goodbye.

The country knew nothing of this war. 90% of nightly news focused on the brutal 'Tet offensive' raging in Vietnam. And with over half a million soldiers overseas, we needed a victory somewhere. The 'Credibility Gap' was widening from the horrible miscalculations and misjudgments with now visions of an endless war that continued to escalate with it's graphic reality of death being reported nightly by Walter Cronkite on 'prime time'. So much so, that we were all, at any age, aware of this war. We played Army daily and even would sneak out my fathers real Marine bayonet and helmet when he was gone.

I didn’t quite understand my dads job but it seemed grown up and important. We on the other hand were a full house of noisy boys full of dirty cloth diapers, boxes of powdered milk – at home with our mother who filled books of S%H green stamps while breastfeeding our little sister.
 So by circumstance, we were left somewhat to fend for ourselves as planned, as my father went off to war armed with a box of number 2 pencils and a briefcase full of legal size yellow writing pads, and off to fight an enemy that was yet to be defined.

work in progress
Aside from all that was serious in the world, my Father like most of that generation was a tool guy- probably just like his father- a man always in need of tinkering, and despite whatever else in life he did or needed to do, there was something he must fix first, leaving many 'a work in progress' sitting around. He was a hoarder of every kind of tool on the planet and then some, and there was at least three of each, which was the product of faulty thinking in believing he needed a new one every time he passed a Sears and Roebuck store - especially if there was a sale on (which was always). Then again, it is true that there was always a set borrowed from our garage and toolbox by friends, neighbors and family that rarely ever got returned.

Forever there will be a questionable mixed jumbled lot of revolving tool inventory to such a degree that as a joke my father wrote on every single tool and anything else in the garage for that matter including ice chests and bowling balls, the actual words, ” STOLEN FROM JOE BRUCH” on every item other than our foreheads.  It was a running joke but worked. Practically every house we visited had something with, ”STOLEN FROM JOE BRUCH” written on it that left us laughing for hours.

What was still left behind or eventually replaced, was a vast myriad assortment of much more interesting things to us little kids than any 100-piece horse and pony jigsaw cardboard puzzle or pile of tinker toys.
"Stolen from Joe Bruch"
There was no turning back for us once we opened up any one of our dads many varieties of heavy metal toolboxes. Most of the toolboxes from those days were actually just old military ammunition boxes you could pick up cheap at Academy- the local Army/Navy store.  Not much out ther­­e stronger than those green containers. Every time my dad came home with one of those boxes he also consistently picked out an adjustable army shovel-pick combo and or a big machete he thought would make a great present and like his multiple tool collection, I must have had 5 machetes and pick shovels before I was 10 years old, not to mention our cold steel army bunk beds that were stacked in rows outside the store with mattresses so thin we might have well been sleeping on the bare springs.

Once we were able to figure out the odd locking flip latches of the bullet boxes, we knew we had opened Pandora’s box as we stared cheerfully fixated with wonder at the galore of such a vast assortment of grease and rusted disorderly objects – a heavenly twisted pile of steel in all shapes, sizes and textures. Our hands were covered in grease, scraped, poked and pinched from rummaging through it all. Everything in there clearly with its own identity and purpose that we were determined to surely figure out what that use was. We would take them out one at a time turning them every which way.
There was a mystery, a story to them much more interesting than anything floating in our toy bins and even more so being that they were off limits to us kids!

Dad's tool shed

I can still hear the echo of my moms voice hollering for my dad to pick up those damn tools off the car-port before one of those damn kids hurts themselves!

As with most kids our age, and in our neighborhood, especially us boys, telling us not to do something was a sure bet we were going to do it anyway. The fear of a belt whipping was never a deterrent and we were somewhat numb to the thought or expectation, being that our memories were short lived and we had too much expendable energy to care about any such consequences.


Bowl-O-Rama
My Dad was now on the road a lot and so no better time to explore. There were too many of us for my mother to keep up with while taking care of a baby or two, although she had mastered multitasking like a circus performer. She could even bowl a 200 with a bowling ball in one hand and a baby in the other on the days she would drag us all down to 'Bowl O Rama' bowling alley, and would leave carrying a new shiny trophy in the diaper bag.
Back at home we were on our own to at least the limits of the chain link fence of our yard. It seemed us older brothers thought alike and had the same agenda because when the coast was clear, we would often cross paths, catching each other sneaking in and out of the tool shed and garage. And never once saying, “I’m going to tell on you”. We knew we had a key to a treasure trove to share and best to keep it a secret.

Before you knew it, we were forced to form a secret alliance and combine our secret time - united out of a mutual curiosity and the beginnings of discovering on our own a true mechanical ability and working knowledge of almost every tool after spending much of our summer afternoons in and out of the shed slowly developing our skills.

While our father was gone and mother tirelessly cared for our baby sister, we were out there busting knuckles, pinching, sticking, smashing and cutting fingers and hands on everything from pliers, wrenches, clamps, vises, blades, punches, hammers and the occasional tool that to this date I still have no idea what it is or used for.

We soon mastered most of these to a confident degree and set out to prove it. The first profound impact was being able to fix our bikes on our own without the help of an adult. We fixed in just a few days all our bikes that would normally sit around broken for weeks waiting for our father to get around to for something as simple as a chain off its sprocket or simply a flat tire.

It wasn’t long after that before we were not only fixing our bikes, but the other kids bicycles in the neighborhood and before you knew it, we were actually building and modifying whole bikes from scratch out of spare parts and frames, some of which we found at the creek and left in ditches.
It all became routine and simple except for the occasional deep innards when we would spill out tiny ball bearings from a rear axle or handlebar neck, but other than that, we came to know that with a ½ inch, ¾, 9/16 wrench, flat head screwdriver, expandable pliers or crescent wrench, we had all you needed to build an entire bike from the ground up.



By the time we were nine years old, we knew each tool and wrench size by sight as well any nut and bolt. Every now and then we even had to make do with the rare metrics, but even they would surrender to a little extra torque pressure and hammering if you didn’t strip them first.

As a small gang of latch-key kids running wild and rampant across several small neighborhoods, we passed and traded knowledge like painters and apprentice’s always with a little brother next to the box passing tools to us surgeons as needed.

Although bikes didn’t have engines, it was limited only to the imagination what could be done. We extended front forks into low ride choppers and even flipped bikes upside down with all components reversed putting us six feet off the ground, but we were still novices in the world of mechanical engineering. That’s not to say we were nothing without our bikes. They were our two-wheeled life force and the one thread that connected the myriad wild pack of kids on every block for miles around. They took us across miles of sidewalk and curbs, through trails of creeks and woods, to chasing the mosquito truck"s billowing DDT smoke or downhill racing over trashcan jumps and ramps before power sliding in the gravel.

Being that our parents were absent from our world for the most part, we learned by necessity. We were not a privileged bunch as was the same for most kids that we ever came to know, and if we were going to be a part of anything, we had better make do with what we had. But to advance we realized we had to graduate to things that were gas powered.

The next hurtle in line and a first with a combustion engine were our beat up old lawn mowers.
We had to mow lawns on weekends as chores to make any gum or soda money, even though we didn’t have a say when it came to our own lawns gum or not. We were out mowing here or there - waving at the other kids doing the same on their yards. So, if by chance a motor sputtered, choked and conked out with the lawn only halfway mowed, you better know how to fix it or learn quick if there was a chance of hooking up with the other guys hanging in the cull-de-sac or corner curb waiting on you. We soon could diagnose a problem before hand by the distinct sounds recognized by our well tuned ear. A screwdriver in the back pocket could usually do the trick with a quarter turn of a carburetor screw or drying off a wet spark plug or for the most part realizing it was just flat out of gas.

Soon we were experimenting and able to amp up the power on small engines of all kinds by simply adjusting the 'governor' and throttle linkage on the pre-set factory settings of a carburetor and throttle cable. That little secret had our engines screaming and backfiring with impressive added power that had us smiling ear to ear.
 We once snuck on a golf course and in seconds had locked forward the governor throttle on half a dozen gas golf carts by simply lodging them wide open with a golf Tee. The golfers would start off and give them a little gas, at first amused by the loud backfire, but not a second later were in full panic when their carts took off hitting speed of 30-40 mph dumping golf bags back all over the fairway.

We were by no means rocket scientist at least not yet, but on our own we had grasp the workings of small motors of all kinds, the half of which started by a rope pull cord. Several yanking pulls brought electric life to the silent heaps of cold stagnant metal and gears, now turning and churning alive by one tiny spark plug that turned into a mini power plant explosively igniting fuels. Those plugs also delivered many a heart stopping shock, shooting electricity up our arm at times, but that shock also meant we knew we had fire, and after a painful yelp, cheered with joy as if we lifted off to the moon.

It was a time of self taught progressive evolution. We soon knew how to beat, bang and slap a deserted engine back to life. We knew how to mix 2-stroke fuels, what engines took kerosene and what ran only on diesel. It came with a little trial and error and full out dangerous mistakes. Getting any of those fuel mixtures wrong taught us what not to do after causing some impressive explosions and causing fire-breathing carburetors to shoot springs and levers in all directions. But we learned as we went and found uses for everything. A simple tub of axle grease could be used on quite a number of things, some strange and unusual. Although it was initially used for packing most everything from bearings, brakes and wheel hubs, it also had many off label uses from healing a rattlesnake bite or deep open wound on your dog or farm animal to greasing a hog. It’s still not clear whether you can cook with the stuff or not.

We saw the advent of WD-40, which actually did have a use for everything short of cooking, and before we knew it, there was a can of it everywhere you looked and came in every size as if they grew there from nothing. With a little WD-40, some duct-tape, bailing wire and maybe even some bubble gum, you could quick fix just about anything back then and I bet that still holds true today. My brother Larry caught a five pound "mud-cat" with a fat wad of Bazooka bubblegum.

There seemed to be no limits on what we could learn and accomplish on our own with the right set of tools and a little imagination. We Built large tree houses from a rope and pulley system,  dug forts underground, constructed big barge rafts on creeks, go-carts, slingshots, and even bicycle spoke zip guns that would shoot as powerful as a 22 rifle.

We caused many a parent or adult to stand there scratching their heads while watching us strip apart everything from broken fishing reels to a four barrel carburetor, spreading loose pieces across a tarp on the driveway, and then within a couple of hours, it would be all put back together and working better than new.

The same laws of mechanics we found seemed to apply to almost everything on the planet from home made rockets to stitching a football and it all felt innate to us. We fixed things we had never seen before and were pretty much only limited by our age and lack of means.
All of our knowledge and how we obtained it would have most likely, from the beginning, would have gotten us in trouble and punished, but lucky for us our parents were nowhere to be found but what we learned and mastered in secret would also lead somewhat to our own demise and burden us by expanding our chores and workload with new expectations unheard of for children our age that was dealt out by our fathers with an iron fist. Those same fathers that never even questioned how we came to know what we did but they sure benefited the most from what we learned and even proudly claimed we must have learned it all from them- which we all knew the truth to that.

We took a huge load off their own duties and even more so, depending on the number kids they had but we having no choice, pretty much took it in stride with a moan and a groan here and there and a few wallops on the back of the head. We kept moving forward, and as bleak and boring as those chores could be, that was all about to change. We were going to teach ourselves how to drive!

It came as our greatest triumph of all and their biggest convenience, when by age eleven, which happened to be about the time we could finally reach the pedals, we not only learned to drive but on a standard transmission stick shift at that.  Subsequently, the biggest advantage came more for our fathers than us. For us it was the most fun on earth but for them, they  could now send us to the local convenience store to pick them up a six-pack or case of cold beer and only instructed to put it on their store credit and go ahead and get a soda for ourselves while we were at it. It was strange that our dad's never questioned how we learned to drive in the first place and even more strange was the man at the country store, Mr. Marks, that never questioned us buying beer.
1949 Chevy

My cousin Mike and I were the first to teach ourselves how to drive in what we called 'the goat truck', which was an old 1940’s split window, rusted out Chevy pickup truck with a 4 gear H column shifter on the long skinny steering column. It was so old and rusted we had to screw down scrap metal and an old license plate to the floor board where it had rusted clean through to the point you could have fallen clear all the way to the street if you by chance slipped off your seat from bouncing up and down on what little shocks and suspension were left.

We would pull our chest tight up against the steering wheel to be able to stretch our legs just far enough to be able to push the long pedal clutch close enough to the floor to keep from totally grinding off the gears as we shifted, but once we lunged into that first gear, without stalling, we were off and running. The steering on the thing was so loose, we were almost spinning around on the large wheel, flipping violently in both directions like a carnival ride just to keep it straight on the road. It took a combination of athletic ability, country strength, guts and pure luck to get anywhere. But soon after the initial grinding, spitting, spinning and stalling, we got the hang of it and with bursting, eager cockiness, we w too often could be seen sliding purposely sideways on the winding dirt roads like young outlaws, or doing wild donuts in the muddy hay fields after watering and feeding the animals. It was a win win situation in the race to freedom, although we might have taken out a couple fence posts along the way and found ourselves stuck in the mud more times than we cared to admit, it was still pure joy like that first feeling of freedom on our runaway wagons. Yes sir, we were driving!
Fence down or not, or stuck up to the frame deep in the mud, we had a solution for that also because by now we not only drove the truck, the cars and boats. We could drive anything with a clutch, especially the double clutch on our ancient old red Alice Chalmers tractor that had multiple mechanical uses, and with a long enough chain, and the torque of her 'grandma gears', we could have pulled a barn down, so getting a little truck stuck in the mud was just a dirty annoying setback that left us cursing about ruining a clean bleached white pair of converse all-stars, but even that was soon forgotten when all four wheels were on dry gravel spitting rocks and chalky dust in our furious rambling wake of hollering freedom.
Me and Mike-RIP cuz

It wasn’t too long when our driving ability soon got us into trouble just a year or so later when we happened to miss the bus to school and cousin Mike-without a thought, ran and jumped into the truck as if he waited for this moment all his life. The old thing didn’t even use a key - started it with a flat-head screwdriver and said,” get in, lets go!”- And so we did.
We arrived at our Jr. high several minutes ahead of the bus we were supposed to be on, to the welcoming cheer and admiration of other students being let off, but not a moment later we were left in silence to the shock and awe of the Principal Mr. Henry standing there in the crowd shaking his head before immediately marching us off to the office and suspending us in the first week of our freshman year. What less could be could be expected though, I thought, and blamed my crazy cousin who once had me take a goat for show and tell back in kindergarten? In the end, it still worked out in our favor.  We might have missed a couple days of school and gotten a beating that was sure to come with it, but we were moved up in popularity as if we parted the ocean as the crowd of kids backed away watching as we were escorted off to the principles office.

Our dads might have about killed us for that one, but if we could have argued it in our defense, we would have made them out to be the biggest hypocrites in the world, being that not long after the school incident, I would have to do road trips with my dad to Dallas, and often after a few too many beers, he had me driving us all the way back home- nearly three hours, even though I could still barely see over the dashboard and then to his awakened surprise, we had a full car that even I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure out why I had picked up every hitchhiker hippie on I-35 from Waco to Austin, and they were the more surprised ones of all and a little reluctant to get in, but just stoned enough to think it was as weird as it was cool and they weren’t going to get anywhere faster by standing there google eyeing a kid driving the car with a man slouched in the passenger seat snoring, so off we all went. The far biggest surprise though came to my mother when I would bring our merry band of smelly passengers home with us. She would go off on all directions of crazy to the extent that we barely made out a single word she said flying from her frenzied fit of rage. She was mostly mad at my Dad for drinking so much and putting her son in danger by letting me drive and possibly be murdered by the likes of three long haired strangers. They on the other hand were most likely regretting ever getting in the car in the first place and probably thought we were from another planet, especially being that my mom went about pulling out pillows, blankets and fresh sheets for them to sleep on in the living-room floor, without skipping a beat in her tantrum. Jump forward a week later and they were still in the house and didn’t want to leave after a week of my mom’s motherly hospitality of taking care of strays. They simply mixed in with the hoards of scraggly kids and my dad's hippie 'VISTA' volunteers running in and out of every room in the house.

Mom
My mom didn’t mind too much despite her initial protest, and acted if everything was normal, which threw even more caution to our guests that were still here well after a week, and soon doing daily chores, which worked in my favor. Besides, she now had companions she could smoke and drink wine with - albeit the wine was occasionally poured into your mouth from a leather bladder pouch, and the house for days reeked of cheap marijuana, Kent light 100’s and dirty feet, yet as usual, she hosted with ample energy to spare keeping all entertained with endless stream of song and conversation. She had more energy than all of us and the only thing that bored her was people whining and complaining.

But as all things pass, before you knew it things were pretty much back to normal in the house with our unusual gusts long gone and back on the road. Our summers were dreadfully filled with a lot of tedious sometimes-pointless hard work from day one.  Being that we could all drive a dual clutch tractor by now, or work truck and were able to assemble all the tractor hook ups from post hole diggers to mowers and lifts, meant that we were now obliged to set fence posts, bail hay and mow acres and acres of grass and hay. I hated doing work of any kind. Not that it was hard but I hated that we were ordered to do it and were never rewarded. Not even a pat on the back. On the contrary, it always felt like we were in trouble for nothing even as we were sweating half to death and finishing all of it.

Work always seemed to come in the middle of play no matter how involved. It seemed cruel and done on purpose. We could be in a field with our baseball gloves playing grounders and flies and a minute later someone had us moving a rock pile or cleaning out a 110-degree barn, breathing hay dust while laboring, defeated angry and silent.

The only time I can remember that we didn’t bemoan, groan and protest work was on the weekends when we did trips to the junkyard or made a trash haul to the county dump. That’s not to say that putting a dump load together on a trailer or pickup bed wasn’t backbreaking hell, but the dump and junkyard itself was a unique sanctuary of sorts that we more than looked forward to exploring. As soon as we pulled up and our car doors opened, me and my brothers or cousins leaped and raced out with synchronized impatience and excitement which we had contained until that very moment in fear of being stopped from our adventure before we started.

 We had a lot of machinery on our property and never a new automobile, so we always needed parts for something. So a trip to the junkyard was always in order and saved us a fortune in parts and labor.


This was back in the day when you went out and harvested the parts yourself and then brought them up to the counter to haggle over a price. This would buy us ample time to explore while my dad was searching for parts and admiring heaps of junk that he thinks he could do something with. We went the other direction quickly out of eyesight, disappearing so fast my father probably stood puzzled questioning if he even brought us with him. We knew we had to get far enough out of earshot so we had an excuse for not helping him dig out an old radiator or starter motor.

We approached the junkyard with excitement and fear - an arena for discovery - trespassing into grown ups territory. It was a far cry from the baseball fields or playgrounds.

Before us were walls of towering cars stacked in metallic carnage, inexplicably


artistic like an abandoned and neglected sculpture. We ran down the dirt paths paved by shards of windshield glass that sparkled like diamonds in the distant, uninhabited abandoned city of twisted metal. It had a sad allure - loneliness in its breath. The cars towered apocalyptic in a metropolis of broken automobiles leaning towards us, life like, in high multi-stacked levels, looming and watching our moves as we passed below. They all had a story most fragile. People had even died in some of these cars. The junkyard itself was a mystified, somewhat dark sanctuary for us that we cautiously trespassed into. Once amongst the forsaken wreckage, we put all our personal  trivial rivalries and competitions on hold when entering this boogeyman world. Needing safety in numbers, we went and explored as a unit with the biggest fear being the Rottweiler and old bony Doberman sleeping chained to an axle under the shade of a car. You never know when they would ferociously lunge out or if they were silent and loose roaming the perimeter fence line. We knew snakes would crawl up into the straw stuffing of old truck seats so we avoided those. We knew exactly what we were looking for as we traversed acres in search of the newest delivery of a total wreck before it was put in a crusher. We would first identify the unmistakable spider web cracked windshield that protruded in a domed outward shape, obvious evidence that someone’s head had indented the windshield. It was a sad morbid curiosity we couldn’t turn away from, fueled by trepidation and apprehension with a foreboding anxiety knowing we might witness something we shouldn’t. We had seen the wrecks here before. We would stop at a distance before approaching, getting the heebie-jeebies afraid of what we might see. You knew it was bad if blood was on the windshield with hair still stuck in the glass. If you looked close enough, you might make out pieces of skin. We moved slowly looking in the tangled wreckage. Blood was never red but you know the dark stains on the seat and floorboards were someone’s blood. If these cars could talk the stories they would tell. It was creepy and always left us uneasy and silent after such a discovery. My brother Larry said he saw a finger once but we didn’t believe him. These sights intrigued and haunted us at the same time and we always left not wanting to come back, but since time forgets, we always returned as if we had forgotten the last experience.



We once again walked back to the car sullen, passing the barrel fires and smoke. Sometimes the forklift driver would stop and point out a good wreck for us to check out, but we had seen enough and just wanted to get back to playing some baseball or TV.  What was to be our walk on the moon became a field of ruin and darkness that left us feeling shameful and uneasy.

The county dump, not far down the road, was often combined in the same junkyard trip, that could be even more menacing with its overwhelming mountainous and cavernous landscape. We literally would walk to the edge of a smoldering valley of tires, peering at the realm of gigantic walls made solely of discarded tires that they would burn in the landfill, turning the place into the gates of hell with giant clouds of black smoke
billowing above the pure and sharp orange flames that stretched up off the melting rubber as if screaming souls were frantically trying to climb out of the fires of hell. It was quite a sight to witness in the days before a burning and landfill ban was passed into law. I can still smell that petroleum tar and rubber burning across rolling acres in this devils inferno. I can only imagine what it was like for the poor faceless souls I saw working in the middle of the these great piles, driving in the enormous beat up rusty earth moving machines – bulldozers and caterpillars that were dwarfed and appeared tiny by the enormity of the canyons of towering stacked tires stitched and woven together seamlessly like a giant tapestry. The earth machines stood out bright and easy to spot with their rusted yellow cages-the only color that could be seen in stark contrast against the lifeless black and grey smoking abyss. It was a haunting sight and thrill now gone to ecological conservation.

County Dump


We became regulars at the dump and junkyards, even the raggedy guard dogs would wag their nervous tails when we walked up. We weren’t that educated on environmental pollutions and their impact on humanity, although it would seem to go hand in hand with my fathers efforts to relieve the plight of mans suffering but we never scrutinized it to those depths and justified it as the true notion that one mans trash is another mans treasure. We were at least recycling all that might be crushed or buried in a wasteland. We saved money and they profited.

These trips with my dad began to fade, as did our childhood. We grew up fast and learned a lot- a lot more than I think we knew. Despite discrediting our fathers teachings, from lack of presence, in truth, we had to admit, most of what we knew, we learned from them regardless of their praiseless methods, and  from whatever means, we now had lifelong skills with such a vast and broad range, we would always be admired and questioned as to how we knew so much. We may have fought hard for encouragement through all the things we hated and unknowingly searched for love even in punishment and as opposite as it should likely be, but everything that could go wrong in our childhood, was in a strange way the very thing that held it together and I often think the same was true for our fathers. Where they may have failed, we both struggled in a battle with ourselves to make it right even if built on shame, guilt and anger, the mechanics worked in some odd way. Growing up the way we did, we were young adults before we were even teenagers ready to rule the world and again fend for ourselves and fathers did the best they knew how. Anyway, by the time high school came around, we were rebellious to an unruly degree, and growing more distant from a family unit that no longer seemed to have boundaries of any kind. My parents, especially my mother could no longer bare the burden of our defiant wayward ways. I couldn't blame either of them for my actions. I was all too aware of trouble on the way that I ran head first into, knowing I would eventually pay the piper, but for now we were invincible!




Our High School was a small city of over 4000 students pouring in and out of its doors daily, that even over flowed into the barrack style portables and anywhere else they could stuff us. Needless to say, education was a joke and suffered greatly at this school from over crowding, busing and inadequate staff. The teachers were barely more than hall monitors. The Principal merely threw his hands up in the air in defeat and hoped for the best, year to year. He had already lost control a long time ago anyway to the most dreadful head Dean, Mrs. Anita Spane, who truly may be the Devil incarnate herself. Stuck here away from her dreams of a world filled with Debutant white Princesses and Ivy league glory, she was determined to make anyone’s life miserable in this place she saw as a hell-hole. She was a spawn of UT alumni and its tacky sororities, and if that type of prestige was not to be your future, then you were an underachiever and a waste in her eyes. She focused, any if not all of her bitter prejudiced attention, on the schools army sized drill team of young, pretty, “good girls” under the sole direction of Miss Daniels who was quite cute herself.  Anita Spane on the other hand, was not, and the closest Spane actually came to ‘royalty’ of any kind, were cheap hotel ballroom beauty pageants that she grew up attending from  which she now tries to impart her worldly knowledge and creepy sorority sisterhood on this sea of lovely pom-poms.
And as big as this drill team was, all the support in the world could not help our pathetic athletic department. You would have thought with that many students and strong country boys, we would have had a good football or baseball team. Not a chance, dead last place every year, if we even won a game at all. Though on weekends a bunch of us “Heads” and “Freaks”(as the jocks called us}, would play tackle football with the schools football team and annihilate them. Come Monday morning the coach would call us into his office chastising us for hurting his players while begging us to play on his team or at least run track instead of hanging out and smoking between classes. Well that never happened and the teams kept losing, we kept smoking and meanwhile many of the short skirted cuties from the drill team and even a few cheerleaders that were getting discouraged, began drifting in the direction of us so called bad boys and turning down their preppy collars.
I was so hated by Mrs. Spane, and had already gained enough of a bad reputation that she had Miss Daniels tell her girls to stay away from the likes of me and my kind and to stay out of the parking lot hang out across the street or they would not get to attend a game or whatever. I don’t know where she thinks she had the right to enforce such an idiotic order but when word got back to me, I was flattered and thought of it as a badge of honor.

Quite a few of us had already been together since elementary, if not Jr. High or had older siblings already there ahead of us, so we floated in smooth and easy from the get go. We initiated ourselves into the cool crowd and had rode in with just enough popularity to fit in seamlessly, and tough enough to avoid any silly initiations or bullying.
We were a breed apart- segregated from any school association. We were the fruition of that fend for yourself upbringing. It didn’t take long for our group to take charge of our own destiny outside the brick walls of school. Curfews didn’t apply to us. We might have been thought of a latch-key kids, but we weren’t kids at all. We really weren’t, most of us were, by circumstance, well beyond our age in many ways, which also broadened the generation gap from the school traditions, but that wasn’t so much by our choice, it was merely the nature of our reality that kept us from conforming to structure. We took on the job parenting ourselves and took care of each other the best we could despite the fact that much of that independence would in fact lead to more trouble than we would have ever bargained for. But we were the 70’s generation in all its glory. The time was ours and destiny was being made day to day by ourselves and that destiny was bursting out of us with passion and impatience.

Armadillo World Headquarters

I actually got along with most everyone I came across and despite my reluctance to go to school, still managed to make A’s as more of a salute and endorsement to my father, whose intellect was hard to not absorb when growing up with such a diverse assortment of smart people coming in and out of our house shouting out political, historical, humanitarian, civil liberties and ecological campaigns in a living room filled with everyone from Senators and lawyers to Catholic Priests and Rock-stars . 


The school was unquestionably larger than most but universally similar in that it was equally diverse and divided as expected into many different clicks from popular to punk and everything in between.  There were the jocks and rockers, hippies and cosmic cowboys, stoners, nerds, freaks and a few gang thugs to an extreme few that were literally and certifiably bat-shit crazy insane, and I was lucky to have had friends in almost every click including the nuts.  I had already been pool hustling on the eastside since I was a kid with Billy, so I knew half of those being bussed from the projects- (half of which still owed me money.) We had covered most of our bases before we ever arrived. We even found time to go skinny dipping in the creek behind our property with rebellious wayward cheerleaders, and I think I had by now already sold cheap weed for the past two summers to anyone here that mattered, so the transition into school was somewhat in place when we arrived. The only significant difference from Jr. High was the wonderful amount of new pretty girls- four whole grades of them, passing in flooded halls, racing the bell and fiddling frantically with the combination lock on their lockers. But besides all the girls, I would say hands down the best was of all was the fact that we could now officially drive cars.


It was a big difference from my first lone adventure with Mike and I driving to school in our goat truck.
Here, there was no shortage of students arriving in cars even with the mile long stretch of school buses carrying half the school here from all over town. The parking lot was strewn with hand me down clunkers of every size and shape, many in worse shape then any of those we rummaged through in the junkyard, and although we were a large and diverse school, it was by no means even close to being a rich kids school. We were all middle class at best with a sprinkling of a few UT Alumni wealthy offspring. But with the new busing regulations, kids were brought in from everywhere as far as the east side projects to the trailer parks in Buda and everywhere in between. A car though, of any kind, was freedom plain and simple for those lucky enough to drive at all. Even the hand me down station wagon was better than the bus and would move you up in your social pecking order and buy you just enough time of your own free world, even if just to drive home for supper.

You saw a lot of family four door Buick’s, Chevette’s, Maverick’s, Grand Prix’s in the school parking lot but there were no Beamer’s, Mercedes or sports cars like all the west side school kids had, but a car was car, ugly or not and was the number one priority and desire.
When I think of cars though, it’s not the mom and pop hand me downs or the $200 clunker that comes to mind when you think of what was cruising south Austin. We had something the rich kids didn’t and that was the ability to actually build cars which was evident that once south of the River, at any light and at any given time, you could see the flash and roar of a customized true muscle car driven by greasy busted knuckled teenagers.

With that 4000 plus students, there was a high concentration of mechanically inclined teens that grew up just like me around things that ran on gas and oil and all those same mechanical contraptions that need to be fixed or worked on. The level of mechanical ingenuity and building of engines was nowhere matched than in our high school.

Among those I hung out with, we may not have been the most popular group, but to us, we were all there was and all that mattered. Amongst my friends, what separated us, other that our wild independence, was that when together in groups, we were fearless and unstoppable and what was so unique was in the mix of us, there was a serious band of hot rod outlaws that stood out as true grit rebels ahead of their time in tune with our rock and roll culture that was the background to all we were. These were the intimidating Mavericks that drew the line into a slightly more dangerous territory that pushed our boundaries and dared you to spread your wings and fly from the nest and away from your safety zone.

Our school truly was a hot rod haven to say the least, reminiscent of the 50’s California car clubs and with the same enthusiasm as the early days of roadsters. These guys knew their cars and were in a different league from anything we ever tinkered with.
Many of these characters, that possibly didn’t quite graduate, were no less students and the protege of Mr. Bobby Ratz, who was the schools only auto mechanics teacher. What this school lacked in academics and sports, it soared in his infamous mechanics class. Mr. Ratz was not your cookie cutter MIT graduate. He was an outlaw in his own right-left over from the days of ‘Mods and Rockers’, styled from head to toe as a rebel of a faded James Dean culture - sporting an impressive combed and greased back DA, complimented by the shoe black side burns - long and tight. His ivory button sleeves rolled up high past his elbows snug against his sinewy muscular arms that were grease stained to his fingertips in contrast to his spit shined rockabilly polished presence. A bit of an Elvis as we saw him.

Where Mr. Ratz might have been questionable in modern style, he was a hotshot in mechanical knowledge the moment he walked through his own personal classroom doors, which were two special automatic garage doors at the side of the school. He was the only teacher that rebelliously drove a bored out hot-rod pick up with custom paint and ‘glass pack headers’ that rumbled as he pulled to a halt with his name clearly custom stenciled on the side panel and Johnny Cash blaring from his eight-track. If you didn’t have his class, like I didn’t, you might not ever hear him utter a single word and might just be lucky enough to get a James Dean nod and grin in passing. I only ever saw him from a distance, but just his rare silent presence commanded respect. It’s still somewhat a mystery of what went on behind those closed doors except for the students that took his class, but there is no denying what emerged were teens with a wealth of knowledge for creating true horsepower along with being able to recount the detailed history of the “hot rod.”

Whether you had Ratz or not, saying this school was full of gear heads was somewhat of an understatement, probably wouldn’t get them work at NASA, but seeing the cars they would build, not only made them qualified mechanics by any standard but put them in a class stature all their own. Either way, whether from the notorious Mr. Ratz class, or passed down by our fathers, we had some bad-ass boss cars and souped up street machines of pure muscle.

 Just across from the school was a small strip mall and the Rylanders grocery store parking lot - acres in size and surround by sad no name shops and standing alone was 'Jumbos', the one lonely burger joint that was the sanctuary from school boredom and a meeting point when cutting class. Girls would hold court at the outdoor picnic tables shaded by the few scraggly oaks with noisy crows and grackles perched squawking in the trees eyeing a dropped french-fry or tater-tot.  It seemed every car hangout in history had its burger or soda joint and we had ours.

Daily, the lot would be speckled by this group of Super-cars that were too cool to be parked in the school lots and though Rylanders was a public lot, you had to earn a spot or take your chances. At night it became the biggest car hang out in the city that seemed harmless enough by day, and would quickly clear out up until nightfall, and then like rolling thunder, as the sun began to set, one by one, they arrived like clockwork, pulling in slowly, just barely scraping front spoilers before giving their signature quick burst and initial chirping screech of tires as if announcing their arrival, and before long, the place was crawling with some of the most impressive street racers you could find anywhere. The stadium size parking lot could be empty one minute, but go drive around the block for a bit and you could come back and it would be over flowing like unearthing an ant bed.

This hot rod Mecca -mostly muscle cars, bought and built on a dime-most under a thousand dollars to begin with, came in all shapes and sizes but most were purely American muscle with every variety from the ‘pony cars’, and ‘mopars’to the El Camino's and bucket cars.

They would roll and crawl into the parking lot with near idling fury beneath the hood, some spitting fire beneath bulky hood scoops that hid huge six-barrel carburetors.  You could hear the earth-shattering rumble of ceramic exhaust flowing loud between the ‘Protrac’ 15 inch center line drag rims.  The sounds were a harmonic symphony starting with their deep rumbling idol that in an instant could explode and blast out a thousand more octaves of earth shattering roar with the touch of a gas pedal.  The coveted jewels for sure were the sleek ‘pony cars.’  Especially the Challenger and the 69 fastback Mustang, the Super Sport SS Camaro’s, the Barracudas’ and the early Firebirds’.  The cool pretty boys preferred these as did the girls riding in them.  They were streamlined and sexy with compact frames that made them the best quarter mile car around aside from the Corvette, which was way too expensive and rare on this scene. It was a simple age-old concept- small car, big engine, equals fast!

The bulk of the cars though, were not quite as pretty as the pony cars. If you wanted more bang for your buck- although less pretty and the least sexy, you could go for the meatier bunch of pure Charles Bronson muscle – these were the bruits – rough and spackled with primer and sanded spots of ‘Bondo’, these would be the Mopar Charger's, the Buick GSX with its huge whopping 455 big block, and its twin rival the Chevelle SS with a screaming 454.  There were the massive Roadrunners, the Goats – GTO’s were common among us.  There were a few Nova’s and Torino’s and without mention, the one iconic 71 Riviera Coup – actually a luxury family car that hid a quiet 455 with stump pulling torque of over 2800 powerful rpm’s., and driven by crazy Stevie Stevens who could be seen at any time fishtailing that massive boat across four lanes like a giant whale out of water and just when you were sure he had lost control of the back end, he would  with calm precision, straighten like an arrow in his lane before nailing it to the floor and out of sight. The few times I rode with him and terrorized the back roads of San Leanna, I was sure I was dead each time, and found God when I survived another day.


Not saying everything on wheels coming into the parking lot was a hot rod, and most clearly not.  Most were actually hand me down mom and pop cars. But driving was driving and there was no shame in showing up in their old Impalas, Dodge Darts, clunky 10-year-old station wagons or even the muddy hay trucks.  A rare few had shiny new wheels, mostly the pretty daddy’s girls, but most was what one could afford on KFC and Dairy Queen wages or the many weekend mall jobs.

I had been through a few cars already and after Luis destroyed my beautiful Fiat Spider by crashing three different times at my own birthday party in which afterwards, I actually ditched it in a cemetery, and then settled for what i call a budget muscle car, which quite simply is one that is already put together-just get in and drive.  It was a stock 69 Firebird.  Not much under the hood and noisy with cheap cherry bomb exhaust that gave the impression that it was more than it was.  But then again, even a stock 350 -V8 engine, and only a two barrel carburetor was still no slug being that all the auto factories at the time competed to make these stock cars fast from the get go and all wanted to win the title.

Unlike the group of gear heads, that live and breath exhaust, I was at a point where didn’t care if I ever turned a screw on an engine again and didn’t know as much as I thought I did to begin with after an hour spent with any one of these guys. I had pretty much given up on mechanics all together unless I had no other choice.  It was as if I woke up one day and didn’t want to get my hands dirty anymore.  I guess it was simply in part from years of having cars and machinery running only on a gambling prayer, and knowing that when bad luck or shoddy maintenance failed you, and them, you were left no choice but to be stuck or waiting to be towed.  I was tired and bored of it.  Something always needed fixing.  I began to dread turning a key half the time, as I would sigh too often, waiting for something to go wrong before even going into gear, and more too often, it did go wrong.  Just hearing my Dad come in the house hollering, “Go get a tow rope, “ was enough to make you want to cry.  Most of the time it was someone else, that I didn’t even know who had broken down and was either halfway to Waco or San Antonio.  And then of course, you knew it was going to be an all day affair.  And of course, we were not going to just tow it, we were going to stay there all day until dark if need be and fix it first.  And so of course, out the door we would have to go.  And of course, it would be on a beautiful day when we would set out with a full gas can, WD-40, a tool box, jumper cables, flashlight, and of course, a flashlight in hand. 

I didn’t have time for any of it anymore. All I could think about was pretty girls and the warm summer nights around the corner. Listening to that last period bell ringing was music to my ears.

I figured for transportation, all I really needed to get around was something reliable enough to get me from point A to point B, or simply just hitch a ride to and from, in whatever form that took, short of taking a city bus that is.
Drop me off anytime on a hot summer day at the hillside slope of Barton Springs was my thinking. I could spend five days a week there and often did knowing all too well there will be some pretty girl there with a golden tan that I will gladly trade rubbing baby oil on those hard to reach places for a ride back.
Barton Springs

It was a sure bet that practically any day of the week I was there, I could find either Karen, Tracey, Lani, Charlotte, or Suzanne, along with half a dozen other girls all laying in a perfect row on giant beach towels halfway up the hill as If they were on the French Riviera sunning their lovely bodies that glistened with beads of ice cold water and shiny baby oil. This was the destination to be, and even if I didn’t get a ride and had to walk or even hitch hike back south, it was still worth spending the day if just to watch the likes of sweet Lani climb in and out of that freezing water wearing what little there was of that dark green suede bikini that blended into her silky tanned olive skin shining in the sun with trails of water flowing from head to toe over her perfect body, dripping all the way down her back and legs from throwing her long dark hair in one arced swoop as she climbed up the poolside ladder.  She smiled and shivered with goose-bumps all over from the cold spring water and every time she got out the same way, hurriedly wrapping her self in her towel in a flurry to get warm, and would for the tenth time say, ”that water is sooo cold”!.
She didn’t need to say much of anything to hold our dumbfounded attention. That magnificent smile alone was enough to drive you wild crazy as was just about every other girl in sight, especially this all too familiar bohemian clan sprawled, and lying stretched out thick as thieves in a lovely, dizzying display of sensual beauty with their innocent yummy laughter of their inner circle secrets, overflowing free spirited hippie charm with their wild-child mischievous clever sense of freedom.

They were my weakness for sure- that ever-splendid variety, as intimidating as they were enticing, when hanging together in numbers, made us look clumsy and stupid. They wielded power by doing nothing.
A simple straightening the lines on their bikini bottoms by running their fingers between the band and across silky wet skin was enough to make you stutter and trip over yourself.
I usually went most days to the pool with Luis, who I never once saw swim, but was no less thinking in tandem with me if not one step ahead of my thoughts, and likewise, I knew simultaneously every detail he happened catch glimpses of as he frequently dropped his head laughing, “damn”! Oh the painful bliss of beauty and all that it so marvelously disrupted! We were so focused and captured by the ease in which they coexisted together- unlike our often sense of stressful worry of impending doom of futures looming over a cliff- so we made the best of these moments by joining in- to lay back, get high and take it all in was the only solution we could muster.

No doubt our weakness for pretty girls was a pleasure and a curse. We couldn’t seem to get anything done that was worth a damn, but we didn’t focus much on that negative aspect of it and it wasn’t going to stop us from having fun wherever we could find it.

Those summer days were nearing, and the Indians were getting restless- days were hotter and the nights longer and engines all around were being revved literally.
It was one of those Fridays and school couldn’t have been out fast enough.
There was talk of a drag race happening, which usually took place on Fridays. Most of the time that meant it was no more than just a quick sprint of flexing muscle by racing light to light and showing off a new header or what not, but the chatter of this nights race had spread like wildfire and rumor had it a big race was going down involving several cars and some heavy hitters not from around here. No location had been decided, but this was going to be for money or pink slips and full out quarter mile fury. Things were starting to get punchy and for some, it was time put up or shut up, which was understandable after how much these guys had put into these engines. They were always a little keyed up and fidgety as summer neared, ready to stretch them out and quit talking about it.


Most of the races over the past couple of years had taken place out by me on 1626 in Manchaca. It had the perfect quarter mile strip to within an inch, starting from ‘Old San Antonio road’, right at the corner of Kitchens baseball field, to the first banking turn where the San Leanna population sign was posted. Billy and I could watch from the front porch of the old shack just above on the hill. The biggest problem on this stretch of road was coming into the finish on that high banked corner while doing over a hundred miles an hour. More than a few had missed judged that sharp turn and went through old man Reimer’s fence. The last being Mike Griffin in his pretty green Corvette, who actually went airborne and sailed clear over the cedar posts, and the only reason you knew he was OK was because he got out took a chain from his trunk and went to beating his car to hell. We just left him alone- no one dared get between that flying chain and fiberglass.

360 Bridge location
Recently the races had moved over to loop 360 which was a brand new stretch of highway west of town on the south side of the lake, where they were planning to put a long arced bridge across, but for now there wasn’t much built out there and since it dead ended at the lake front, it had a perfect straight quarter mile stretch with four newly paved lanes perfect for racing out of sight with no traffic.





Back out in Manchaca things had lately become a little too hot with city police now making their way that far south ever since they built this fancy high end sub-division of Onion Creek with its new mansions and private golf course and even though they were clear on the other side of the highway and over a mile from kitchens field, some local yahoos had one afternoon taken their street rod and were power-braking, while pouring oil and Clorox over the rear tires that sent a volcano of smoke a mile high and wide, tires spinning with a full bore engine maxed so far into the red line it was on the brink of exploding-flames were shooting out from the exhaust so far it was enough to scare you like a roaring dragon coming after you. It must have set off a little panic in that fancy new neighborhood with the young debutante's calling out for daddy. The same debutante's that soon would be sneaking out and climbing into the windows of our sinister cars for a ride they would not soon forget.

It was still not clear where this Friday night race was going to be, and the location could change at anytime. To me, it didn’t matter where it was as long as their were pretty girls in the equation somewhere before or after. I was just going along with the flow.

Jumbo's hang out
Just after school I crossed with buddies Luis and John over to the parking lot. I was parked right next to John’s beautiful cream white 71 Challenger. In crossing we noticed the usual group of girls on Jumbo's picnic-tables. From a distance I could make out for sure Sheila, Jan and Karen who I knew had been there skipping since 5Th and 6Th period. I had bumped into Theresa and Adrea earlier and already told me hours ago they were planning to all go to the ‘Armadillo’ that night and we should meet up later at the ‘Back Room.’

Reluctantly we decided to sneak long and wide to avoid them for the time being. It turned out, between the three of us, we had traded off interactions of sorts with more than a few of the same girls, so unsure what our presence with all three of us together would cause,  be it good or bad, we cowardly figured it better safe than sorry and giggled like girls as we weaved and bobbed our way past them only to be met point blank by sweet M’lissa, stopping me with just the raise of her finger as we tried to skirt around the back side of Jumbo’s. “Where do you think you boys are going?” Luckily she was just curious what we were up to and didn’t keep us but teasingly kept an eye on us non the less as we sheepishly moved on trying not to look back.

We took off to regroup some and shake off the school cobwebs, played some Foosball, got a little baked, and ran around town for a bit. Luis always wanted his jeans pressed and starched, so we had to go do that before heading back.

Before you could blink, it was nearing sunset and the Rylanders lot was already filling up with our little ragtag gang of misfits.
Despite how we may or may not have been judged, we were by no means a band of heathens as it might have appeared from a distance. We were more of an informal fraternity of sorts that gathered nightly in our disheveled, circled camp of unity… We were somewhat a Bohemian group of long hair cowboys, pot head rockers, mischievous bad boys, a few outlaws, and for sure a whole lot of the prettiest girls roaming free in their jean cutoffs, sandals and flowery cotton tank tops. We were all just looking for a good time and no spiritual redemption or salvation was needed.

Charlotte
The West Coast had your surfers and skaters, East coast, your baseball, hockey, Coney Island and Manhattan or Philly. We were known as ‘the Third Coast’, although we were three hours from
any coast at all. Quite simply, this was a weird little Texas city and we were at its grass roots, a hippie rock and roll town in a hot Texas oasis we turned into a big playground.


M'lissa


No doubt we thought we were pretty cool. Cars assembled as they came in with a natural order of ranks and hierarchy. We parked all muddled in a chaotic, disordered, ever changing clutter that flowed in its own controlled disarray- cruising perfection of calculated cool.

Everyone was out on this night along with some of the most impressive street racers from here to Detroit.
All those trips to that junkyard paid off-the hundreds of hours of sanding, grinding, twisting, torquing, tweaking, tightening and beating day after day on these scrap heaps of metal and five hundred dollar rust buckets that were beat and molded from the ground up with every last familiar nut and bolt turned into a Super Car. Mr. Ratz would be very proud.
They were beautiful in every shape and size, but aside from a few fancy paint jobs here and there, these were reflections of the Earl Shive $99 special and most were in different stages of primer gray or black, which for a muscle car, only made them look more menacing and dangerous.

Under the hood was a different story. Cable clips and hood locks kept you from looking under most of the hoods, but everyone spent half the night talking about their engines so much that there really was no mystery, at least not amongst this gang.

And this night it was the whole gang of merry pranksters out in full force and entering from all corners of the lot. 'STP' stickers displayed on each windshield like their trademark badge.

I leaned with my boys against my pretty but mediocre Firebird admiring the scene and myriad of spectacular machines, as usual, rain or shine foolishly still wearing my aviators even with the sun setting.

Several hoods were popped up. Every one of their engines had been over bored to the max - most fitted with new Holley four barrel carburetors - Hurst and Muncie four speed transmissions and 4 on the floor slap-speed shifters with their T handles and pistol grips resting between the low seat console. They rolled in on positive track - some with Mickey Thomson wheels and offset Craigers or even the expensive aluminum center-line rims.
And then there were the few that went the distance, running on nitrous fuel, real racing traction bars and even wide rear drag slicks. They had racing small tach-gauges on the steering columns - hood scoops for blowers and some cars were stripped of every piece of metal leaving only a thin outer shell and roll bar draped over a massive engine. I could tell Darryl came in here ready to switch over to his nitrous kit, and I wondered if he might be racing anyone tonight. 

These cars were like a drug to these guys and every penny they could get your hands on went into them. It was a never-ending money drain, and money they needed. These guys blew through clutches, tires and transmissions faster than cheap tennis shoes. Ironically one of the highest dollar items in the whole car was the stereo system, which was a must have. Without the right stereo, the package was not complete and it would be like watching a movie without the soundtrack. It had to be a 'Craig' or 'Pioneer super track' with 'Jensen tri-axle' speakers and a high dollar power booster that mounted and bolted to the console under the seat along side the 'Hurst' shifters. There were holes cut in every imaginable place they could find to put a speakers and sub -woofers that mounted all over the backs of seats to inside the trunks that would blast out our favorite Aerosmith, Zeppelin, ACDC, Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Scorpions, and for sure, Rush 2112. Everyone with the same endless rock playlist blasting sky high as loud as their engines...
For me, nothing compared to that sound. Sitting in the back seat you could close your eyes and drift away into the sky with Ziggy Stardust and Pink Floyd, and when behind the wheel and driving, you felt your cool wash over you as you cruised in slow and loud. It was the soundtrack to your own movie with Robert Plant, Tyler or Hendrix as your passengers echoing loudly through your head and out the window for everyone to hear and take notice. There really is nothing quite like the sound of music mixed with the harmonics of a well tuned engine, especially a Mopar ‘Challenger’ with a full blown Hemi' or a Z-28 stretched out and red lined in second gear-a sweet rumbling purr to a screaming roar in 0-60 madness, in sync and mixed with the intoxicating pounding bass of ‘Bad Company’.

Everyone was so young. We were all just teenagers and most of this was experimental trial and error. Half of us barely had a diverse license yet. All these fancy racing numbers and stats thrown around was a long way from my days of lawn mowers and goat trucks and most of this didn't make sense to me anyway. It was no longer my thing. I guess I would have no bragging rights to tell my kids one day except for the fact that I could claim I was actually there and lived it. I loved and appreciated the cool cars like the next guy as long as they looked badass, could fry the tires doing burnouts, and donuts and that's about all I cared for when it came to these cars. I was a spectator at best.

The true reality of muscle cars though, no matter how cool, and other than looking and sounding tough, had only one purpose, and that was to go fast, mostly limited and constricted to a straight line in hopes that the back end doesn't get so far away from you that you can't catch up or stay in front of its massive
spinning torque. Other than that, they really weren't worth a damn or good for much. You couldn't go over the smallest bump even without a front-end spoiler and if it was wet or on a gravel road, you might as well leave it parked at home.  And you better hope you called shotgun and are not the guy with long legs riding in the back seat of a pony car or fastback. Can't look cool sitting in the back, cocked half sideways with your knees up to your chin.

It was a toss up who had the fastest car here and not sure until the moment if anyone was really going to race at all. They were all pretty fast and respected as the real deal. There was of course the exaggeration of ten second quarter mile runs when in fact I doubt, when even the best of them ran full out, ever did 13 seconds or better, which in itself is crazy fast by any standards and barely street legal at that. It was fast enough to blow your tires clean off the axle if you didn't have positive traction. That’s when you look silly with your bumper on the ground stuck at a light and then having to explain to an officer where your wheels went, which was pretty obvious with two ten foot stripes of rubber behind you still smoking.


Despite any shortcomings of Detroit engineering and lack of front wheel drive, we still scoffed at the European rally cars and more so the Japanese cars that were growing in numbers because of the gas embargo. They had now taken over the road races at Aqua –Fest and every parent wanted to trade in their station wagon for one. I knew there was only a couple Ferrari's in the whole city owned by rich Arab exchange students at St. Edwards University but nowhere near our parking lot. These here were redneck suburban hippies with no dreams of the racing the grand prix . They would be happy and lucky enough just to end up on the redneck flat-track at ‘Speed O Rama’, Austins motor speedway or the quarter mile drag strip down in San Antonio.


As the night progressed, I recognized right off most everyone pulling up and moving into circles of their usual pecking order- cruising in and pulling up so close, door to door, you could barely slip a piece of paper between the mirrors, which also made it easy to pass a beer or the familiar alligator roach clip that hung off most every keychain in the lot.

This Friday it was sweltering hot even more so on the asphalt clamored around several idling engines.

I could see Homer, Rusty and Gene from a distance- all skinny and shirtless as
usual leaning against the ‘Charger’ and Homer’s ‘fastback’ - laughing silly while smoke poured out of Gene’s bright orange  hippie shag van. Cousin Mike was making his rounds. I was hoping he wasn't looking for a fight with one of the Friar brothers...




Sweet pretty Liz was hanging off her boyfriend’s neck, making us all jealous, breaking hearts as she swayed  her body happily back and forth. Her bare feet danced on her tip toes, showing off her long skinny legs in those ever so short cutoffs and soft cotton halter top. I at least once stole a kiss from her in Jr. high at an all night skate party at the hot wheels skate rink but that was as good as it got for me or anyone else for that matter.

Jeff's Z-28
Before long the place was packed but not satisfied until the slick royalty rolled in on their dark horses- the tough pretty bad boys in their sleek pony cars - slunk low down and cool,  Dave hunter sitting quiet and smiling as usual looking like Robert Redford alongside Jeff in his sweet gold and black pin striped turbo z-28 Comaro.
                                           
Dave Hunter
Just behind me came the twins Donny and Ronny, as usual loud and fast, grinning
ear to ear, scanning and blanketing all corners of the parking lot and looking like
Donny
they just got back from surfing in Hawaii with their bleached blonde hair and
puka shells tight around their neck. You would have thought they were running
from the law the way they moved so hurried in a scurrying manner but that’s the
way they came through any door as far back as I can remember. They came in the
same every night. All they cared about, from birth on, was weed and where all the
pretty girls were - and in no specific order but preferably together. I'm sure they even gave their babysitters a run for their money. You couldn't tell them apart at
all. I even think several of the numerous girls they ended up with even got
confused at times and had to lean back and do a double take. I know they had
traded places going to classes this way and pulled it off a number of times, so I'm sure they pushed the envelope with their unique DNA in and beyond fooling pretty girls. but being one in the same as they were, I doubt the girls would protest and might actually like it.

Mark Tolar and Randy
Tolar and Randy, who were about as crazy, came flying in about the same time, bouncing the curb like a bug bouncing off a light bulb. I don't know what possessed him to get that bright yellow VW bug, but he just about took out one of the twins, flying in here in that yellow ball like it was a NASCAR, then rips the emergency brake slinging him in an impressive 360 to a perfect halt at the toes of a small crowd that backed up just inches from being slammed. Tolar jumps out front and center as if perplexed with both hands in the air- one hand holding a Frisbee, innocently saying,” what"! As he flings his rolling tray frisbee at Stclair’s head.
The place was jumping. I was thrilled to even see a small flock of Ms. Daniels coveted sweet Tex-Ann’s show up after another losing game. And out of the corner of my eye I saw that young adorable Kelly B walking slowly in our direction. She had grown up. That cute shy kid was now turning a lot of heads, grown up into a pretty flower with some frisky confidence in that perky stride. The night couldn’t be unfolding better. How could anything go wrong on a perfect night like this?

Barry Briggs
Then, with no introduction necessary, I could hear the beautiful rumbling purr of that unmistakable 69 fastback mustang. Everyone unanimously turns their head as the infamous Barry Briggs cruises in slow motion, (or so it seemed), one hand hung over his rosewood steering wheel, elbow out the window, head nodding a salute with that damn grin of his as he passes by, slung back in that beautiful matte black awesome mustang of his. Not only was it the coolest car, but Barry was the closest we had to real James Dean and looked just like David Cassidy with even better hair.
He had movie-star piercing blue eyes that made every girl around sigh and loosen a little of their grip from around their boyfriends as he rolled in. Even Liz slid her feet gently back to the ground with a sigh. I was pretty good friends with Barry and got to ride shotgun with him just enough times to be cool by association that gained me a few points I was calculating in my favor. I could only hoped the right girls were around to notice.

Mark Wheeless
Liz
His brother Bryan Briggs came in a minute later behind Barry, but riding on a motorcycle, showing off a perfect wheelie. He rode in on bikes with Mark and Randy. They were part of Bill Kason’s motocross racing team and could do just about anything on two wheels. These guys raced world class motor-cross religiously throwing rooster tails in in everyone they passed while banking turns on every dirt track from Dallas to San Antonio and everywhere in between, especially Mark, who's real last name was, ironically, ‘Wheeless’ as if it were a birth rite to it because for years we all witnessed that his feet rarely touched the ground, at least not two at the same time, and If he wasn't on a motocross bike, he was flying on the sides of a pool on a skateboard or a go cart, or jumping rows of cars on a beach cruiser bicycle. He looked like someone just snatched him up from the strand of Santa Monica beach in California or  the halls of Berkeley. He never wore more than a pair of shorts and his slip-on checkered vans, except for an occasional elbow or knee-pad for doing some insane stunt. He was fearless and wired way different than the rest of us and if you wanted to keep up with him you better have rockets on your skates and cold water in your veins. I would say he was the true coolest cat maybe of all, and it's because he was pure humble about it-unlike me, who was so vain, I made it a chore to be cool. I bet I must of glanced sideways in every car window I passed to check my hair, unlike Mark, who tried to figure out how he could ride something up and over the roof of every car around here.

Darren 'Lake Travis 'flats'

The night rolled on as we huddled in our masses. So many of the same group of us could be found from the sand flats at the lake, all the way to Spring break trips in Padre, or any other given time, most likely some hay field or back yard where we went in search of the remains of half empty beer kegs floating sideways in melted ice, where we left a little worse for wear, including a few chigger bites. The thousand-dollar question was always, "Where is the party?"

The night was unfolding flawlessly with ease and delightful amusement as if the world was perfectly on its axis. It was almost too perfect, I pessimistically was thinking and hoping the night would continue to envelope us all into a state of joy.
That bliss, unfortunately was all about to change.
 I asked about a race, not really caring either way, and was told it already happened with Mahaney’s new Willys nitro truck. But then where was everyone all of a sudden going? Half a dozen cars took off together. Like chasing a firetruck we were not going to miss out.

Impatience was contagious and replaced any sensibility with restless wanderlust amongst all of us. We read signals with over eager impulses. We were at a point where we would follow the herd off a cliff with blind faith. And so went the exodus of the parking lot this night. Cars blocking all other traffic like a funeral procession as they turned south, bumper to bumper, weaving and revving in a loud frenzied convoy with a stretch of cars that made any on coming traffic slow and stare with perplexed fearful faces of childlike awe. The line of cars stretched into the dark, in narrow lanes where the city streetlights had stopped and cow and hay pastures lay dark on either side of the road.

Within minutes the lead car reached the end, turned left without hesitation on old farm and market road 1626 in the direction of 'Kitchens field'. A few had went the other direction from the East, winding up Slaughter creek on old San Antonio rd.

We came up on what looked like had already been some racing or just stretching of
engines through the turns.

The trick was to get in and out of there fast. For the most part, this was usually
not too much a spectator sport, and most at the parking lot would only get wind of it
long after it was over. After all it was only seconds in a quarter mile whether
exaggerated or not.

But this wasn't the case tonight. Within minutes, there were cars everywhere.
Any other time we were casual enough to glance in the distance for the law, and
 had enough CB radios to know if it had been tipped off. We would lean
casually while engines heated up and rubber heated enough on the asphalt to get
traction, but tonight was a full looker-on sport that had spread like wildfire.
It was obvious nothing good could come of this..

The cars along 1626 were parked half in the side ditches in a line like a
derailed train on both sides of the narrow road. You had to wonder just how
smart the Sheriffs deputies and DPS officers were to begin with, because at
anytime they could have capped either end of this road, blocking us all in with
no escape, but instead, they always gave themselves away on their approach. You would see their red and blue lights reflecting high in the trees from over a mile away as they wound their way up Slaughter creek or crossed over the overpass of the highway in the far distant at onion creek.  In the other direction, Manchaca was a sad and quiet town and had no law enforcement and half the time the DPS officers that patrolled the area outside city limits were such good ole’ boys they couldn't be bothered
with a quick race and might even be related to all involved. Even back at the parking lot the APD would just cruise slowly through nodding and admiring with respect fin regards of a well built street car, all the well knowing that any one of us had dipped our hand behind our leg hiding a joint or beer can as they passed.

Tonight was out of hand though. Luis rode out with me in my Firebird. We jumped
out looking half confused as anyone else half in or out of their car. No one
knew what was going on and like going over that cliff, we weren't sure if anyone
was racing at all or did we just play follow the leader.
We went to find out. I spotted right away Cody Brook taking big steps along the
row of cars. Cody was one cool cat that just made you laugh to have him around
and he always knew what was going on as if he was our chamber of commerce. He was a hearty energetic kid who weaved through every click in high school and beyond as if he were the mayor with no sworn allegiance to any of them. He liked everyone and everyone liked him. He showed up at any event and moved around like a lightning bug, lighting up here, then there, and then back behind you. If you took your eye off him for a second, you would lose him. At these races, he ran on foot almost as fast as the cars. We watched him running up and down the row, slapping hoods and hands as he passed only stopping momentarily to check who rode in back seats and to bum a cigarette, even though he had a lit one dangling from his lip. As usual, he had some little cutie trailing behind trying to keep up.
Before we caught up with Cody, we heard a scream of an engine just in time to
look up and see the nitrous blown Willys truck get all squirrely as it pulled the
front wheels off the ground before dropping back down in a sea of smoke and come
screaming past us like a  mad beast! He must have been out here for a while if we heard about him back at the parking lot.
We weren’t out of our car more than ten seconds before we saw the blue and red lights in the distance. I knew I should have stayed back in the parking lot. This was such a waste and to think I could have been chatting up Kelly all this time, hating that I saw her walking off with Wheeless, when clearly she was coming over to me. Instead, I ended up here stuck in a bad predicament with a bunch of knuckleheads.

Cody spun on his heals with an 'Uh-Oh' grin on his bright happy face, in a hurry to get the hell out of there and back to whatever car he came in, or whatever one would let him in just in case his ride
had already gone or was blocked  in during the chaos. He could jump in with us, so I
waved him in our direction and that's when the unthinkable happened.

All the cars were parked this way and that, cockeyed hastily out of any order, and although Cody as usual was always looking out for the best interest of everyone else and despite being in as much of a hurry as the next guy, he still was methodically and characteristically taking charge by getting people moving in a somewhat orderly manner while hollering, “come on!” as he jogged in our direction pounding on the hoods as he went.

One of the cars parked along the road was an old mid 60s Impala just next to us.
Its engine started with a deep rumble and exhaust hiccup, spitting out a puff of
white smoke. The engine gasped and coughed for gas flow a couple times before
firing up, and just as it was ready to take off – us seeing the tail and brake
lights brighten, Cody ran up behind the Impala at that exact moment ready to
slap the trunk to wave them off like the others, when the most improbable jaw dropping insane thing happened with the oddest most bizarre one in a trillion probability in life's crazy circumstances. The dreadful timing, unforeseen, unfolded and aligned in front of us as perfect as the stars above.

An old Impala as stylish and impressive as it may be, has dual antennas mounted
on the back,  slanting back off the rear panels at a 45 degree angle that stretched out to about head high when fully extended.
At just the right moment, as if the Gods  had struck lightning upon us,  Cody was
stopped,  literally near dead in his tracks, as he ran up on that unseen needle
like invisible antenna that instantly plunged straight into his eye, jolting
his head back as if he just got hit with a hard right hook. The car was parked sitting
just enough down in the ditch to put the tiny steel ball at its tip exactly at
eye level that shot out of the dark and right through his eye and deep into his
head leaving him impaled and shaking on his toes with his hands  flailing by
his side as if electrocuted, while his head stayed frozen motionless in terror.
He immediately started screaming,” STOP -STOP -STOP THE CAR!"
We were on him instantly, helpless, shocked and even more confused than he was,
thinking at first he might have gotten his foot ran over.  The situation at a glance was more horror and frightful confusion as apposed to anything actually gruesome. There was not even a single drop of blood anywhere, but no mistaking, the antenna had plunged deep into his head through his right eye and the worst of the situation was this car was revved in gear and ready to take off in a hurry. The whole immediate experience was enough to make your knees buckle.
Jason Mackey was driving the car and had no idea what was going on and by now several people were pounding on the car and the police sirens were visibly getting closer.
Jason, not knowing what happened, figured the pounding was a way of saying take off, so he put the car in drive and shifted his foot to the gas peddle ready to punch it and get the hell out of there. We knew what was about to happen as we envisioned Cody's eyeball, and possibly parts of his brain
being torn and ripped out of his eye socket, and then flung by the antenna out
into a hay field and possibly even leaving him dead or just standing there
without an eyeball.
 As if in slow motion you could hear the transmission engage into gear at the very moment Charles Rogers lunged his entire body across the whole hood of the car, with his hands raised halting the car while also pounding frantically and yelling, " STOP,STOP,STOP the car"!
Jason jumped out of his door in a frantic huff but was silenced seeing Cody impaled by his antenna. With the crowd around him growing, Cody raised his hands in protection not quite touching the shaft while screaming in fear,” don’t touch it- get back get -back -its deep" DON'T TOUCH ME!”
Holy hell, we were all thinking. This was something no one had ever seen except for maybe a fish that often gets a steel hook through the eye.
We didn't even noticed that two DPS officers pulled up beside us, and they immediately knew something was wrong as they  hurriedly exited their patrol car with hands on their guns clearing a path right to Cody.
"What the hell"? They looked at us for answers. Cody became more panicked and agitated screaming louder not to touch it.
Cody must have been able to feel the little ball tip moving around in his eyeball or somewhere in the back of his brain.
Luis bent down low to get a better look and was amazed to see that Cody was staring back at him through the very eye the antenna was sticking out of.
Miraculously it appeared that the antenna had gone through only his eyelid and rolled up over his eyeball, yet that still meant it had for sure pierced into his brain. "Damn Cody! man Can you see me?"
One officer called for an ambulance while the other shined on his flashlight unsure what to do and trying to ask questions all at the same time. This was as new to them as it was to any of us and immediately stupid solutions started fly from all directions with more than one person saying, "you just have to yank it out really fast". That sent Cody into a frenzy with his arms trying to protect the
antenna and his face even more, while keeping anyone within arms length away with his
other hand.
" Come on you just have to pull it straight! yank it!",  was the brightest
suggestion repeated through the crowd in unanimous ignorance like a bunch of
dumb hillbilly's.
It was obvious we had to first get the antenna off the car.

The officers had a pair of industrial wire snips. Even Cody knew it had to be cut and though it was a unanimous decision, he was the only one dangling at the end of an antenna and had to endure the trauma alone despite all of us feeling a little queasy by now and no way was I going to be the one cut it. As Johnny slowly opened the snips at the base of the shaft he paused as if about to cut the wrong
wire on a detonator . Cody's foot started tapping rapidly in anticipation. And then he cut it fast in one go, but the release sent Cody backward with a scream, still holding two feet of the shaft hanging from his eye, now moving unstable on his feet trying to steady the wire. Cody held it low and steadied himself, still tipped forward and staring at the ground. We all froze momentarily until he stopped moving.
 I wondered how he was still standing, and were we a moment away from him dropping dead or going into a seizure. He was pail white and looked close to fainting, but said in a calm quiet murmer that he was OK, just get him to a hospital.
 He seemed calm and focused as long as no one touched him including the paramedics that arrived.
We  helped him into the back, sitting up without a stretcher. He wanted control of all movement and sat silent taking long slow exaggerated breaths.He didn't even answer questions. You could tell he wanted to get this done and over with. He was clearly in a living nightmare unsure of what the outcomes would be as were all of us to some degree.

They were off and gone and the rest of us disbanded without much fanfare. The DPS  officers, after a few questions more, most  just out of their own curiosity, basically waved us off in disbelief, telling us just to  get the hell out of there.


By the time we got to the hospital they had already clipped the antenna leaving only 6 inches of the thinnest part sticking out of his eye, and a CT scan and X-ray confirmed the ball at the end had pierced through his brain all the way to the back of his skull.

As bad as it seemed to be, it was unfortunately just in our nature to poke fun, and we had already started calling him "radar" and voiced our concern he was going to pick up reception to a really bad radio station- maybe even AM opera.
He clearly wasn't as amused as we were. This was our poor mans defense mechanism. We had come to learn if someone was  still alive in tragic situations, they were fair game for ridicule and teasing. It was our naive way of coping. We had already buried several friends over our young years, and being
light hearted helped us believe everything would be OK until it actually was- a
prayer of sorts.

Doctors got us out of there as quick as they could, but for the most part,  they had no better answers of what to do than we did. He was not rushed off to surgery but left with an antenna still sticking out of his head, and through the whole night. Would they have to take his eye out? Would it kill him pulling back through his brain?
As coherent as Cody was, it was still a serious and critical situation in a trauma hospital with doctors just scratching their heads on what to do.
Surrendering to the pressures, they consulted Mount Sinai in New York, and the next day they had a leading brain surgeon on his way to Texas.
I can only imagine how time passed for Cody in those long tortuous hours.

When the surgeon arrived he took one look at the X-rays and at Cody and had him in surgery without hesitation or even a consultation, saying he was going to be just fine. We hoped that was confidence and not plum crazy talk.

And low and behold, he was right! How did the doctors miss the logical solution? This fancy Jewish doctor spent literally minutes in surgery. He first made an arced incision, then pealed back
a flap of skin, and then cut a perfect small round hole in the back right side of his head, exactly how you would cut a pumpkin top, so the piece would fit back in place. He then simply pushed on, with his finger, the protruding tip sticking from his eye, causing the ball and shaft to exit smoothly in one piece out the back hole. He then simply put back the removed  piece of skull, folded over the flap, and stapled him up, and it was over.
The eyelid had only two tiny stitches barely noticeable and all was done. The doctor explained to him in a simplistic manner, saying, "Son, didn't you ever see a cowboy movie? You don't pull an arrow back out of the hole, you have to push it through." - sounded logical to me.
No brain damage that we could tell, although that would be forever debated, and in a day or so he could go home. The worst being that he couldn't get his head wet going into another sweltering summer.

The comic relief in this situation though, was the giant scar left on his head that was in the exact shape of a question mark from where the flap had been cut and peeled back, and although the scar would be covered back over as his hair grows in, we made sure we would never let him forget the fact that there will always be a big question mark on his head. He didn't think one was funny either.

That was the end to a long and memorable day that stretched into the weekend with the story being told over and over again in distorted and twisted versions, exaggerated and glorified as we do most stories, but all that mattered was that Cody was safe and well.


I truly was over the moon happy Cody survived the ordeal but it was enough drama for me to last a while. I had already by the next day, set my sights on the future, which was to be locked together gripped by toes and finger tips while floating on rafts linked together with any one of those bohemian
beauties, drifting down a lazy river, or any number of our many watering holes where I could simply close my eyes to that young playful laughter, the rippling water under a big blue sky full of the sounds of Summer coming alive in the welcomed warm sunshine. Or on second thought, maybe I might just stop in and see my dad. He has another old wooden boat he built and needs some help with it, and after all, who can build their own boat other than my dad?….

Dad's Boat
 Looking back there was no doubt, by some measure, we were the coolest gang of misfits around. In twenty years or so that might not be the case but we will one day surely long for those endless nights of parading bravado leaning skinny and shirtless on hot summer nights, drawing on a Marlboro with pretty girls hanging draped on our shoulders while living a small dream in a game of chance, where the nights unfolded around our cool silence waiting for the unpredictable or magic to present itself, which it often did in many forms making us once again feel like we can fly, we can fly….

RIP Brother Larry