Almost every morning I wake up around 3:30 am and can't get back to sleep. Invariably, my mind is racing with thoughts that make it better to just get up and do something. Therefore, I've been reading a lot more books and watching more movies on TV, lately. But the mind games of my quarantined health existence also inspire me to write more stuff. This blog is an example of trying to overcome my boredom. Here is another...
Can you list every automobile you have owned in your lifetime? List the year, make and model if you can. What I quickly found was a story behind each vehicle. Some were held for long periods of time and others were very short. The cars that lasted the longest, that we held onto longer than others, were often the ones with the best stories. The occasional clunker or lemon was not without its rich stories as well, but since we got rid of these cars as quickly as possible, their stories may have likewise faded from our memory. So here is my list as best as I can recall:
- 1963 Ford Falcon (was Rachel's car but I had it most of my high school years)
- 1968 Chevrolet Camero (first car I bought myself without any help)
- 1973 Ford Grand Torino (paid cash for that one)
- 1974 Dodge K-Car
- 1963 VW Beetle (Janine's first Car)
- 1976 Audi Fox
- 1979 Datsun Pickup Truck
- 1980 Audi Fox
- 1986 Datsun Wagon
- 1987 Toyota Pickup Truck
- 1996 Ford Ranger Pickup Truck
- 1993 GMC Mini Van
- 1996 GMC Mini Van
- 1998 Buick Lasabre
- 2001 Buick Century
- 2004 Toyota Highlander,
- 2006 Honda CRV.
Wow, quite a list! Seventeen vehicles from 1964 until now. Fifty years of life stories through the lens of my cars!
I had to include two vehicles that I did not buy as their stories reflect a period in our teenage years so reminiscent of our growing up when a 15 year old gets their driver's licence. My '63 Falcon and Janine's 63 VW could tell some stories. Inside those cars, we grew from children to adulthood.
My favorite Falcon story was the "Subway Incident". That '63 Falcon was the running joke of my friends in high school. Muscle cars were the things to be desired back then. The Falcon sounded like a sewing machine when you floored it. And that's exactly what I did far too often. I probably got more speeding tickets in that slow car than all my other cars combined. The ticket I didn't get one Summer's night in 1966 was the one that landed me at the Meridian Police Station, however. That afternoon, my best friend Donny Miller and I went out to Dalewood Lake to help my dad with some work around our property. Later that night we got back to town and started gathering our friends for a night out on the town, so to speak. Eventually I ended up with 4 other guys in my "Big Bad Bird" as Willie Frazier called the Falcon. Donny and his brother Johnny along with 2 others were in Johnny's pride and joy, a 1955 Chevrolet sedan, rebuild by him with a hot V-8 engine. His car would fly while my car would creep along. I remember cruising 8th street that night and we would drag race from every stop light or stop sign to the next. Johnny would lay rubber at every start and they would laugh at us in the Falcon when we would finally catch them at the next stop light. This went on for several blocks until we headed toward's most of their homes in the south side of town. We turned off 8th Street at 26th Avenue and headed south for a few blocks until we came up to the infamous "Subway" in Meridian.
Willie Frazier was crazy! He would do anything! That night he almost killed us all. The Subway is a tunnel in Meridian that travels under the main railroad tracks in the downtown area. It extends about the length of a long city block, maybe 250 to 300 yards long. It is a two-way street with a divided barrier and support columns separating the north and south bound lanes. There are traffic lights at street intersections just outside of each end of the tunnel.
Johnny's car was in front of me stopped at the traffic light heading into the subway. There was another car in front of him that contained an older adult man and women. As soon as the light changed to green the older couple slowly entered the tunnel with Johnny close behind. To Crazy Willie this was our chance to pass them and once and for all out race them to the intersection outside of the other end of the subway. He kept daring me to pull to the left and get into the lane of the oncoming traffic. He was even nudging my steering wheel to the left as he insisted I could make it through the tunnel going the wrong way on a two-way street. I looked into the tunnel as far as I could see and saw no cars coming toward me so off we raced. I was blowing my horn and going as fast as that Falcon could go. About half way into the tunnel we caught even with Johnny's car so it was going to be a piece of cake to pass them by as the older couple were barely going 25 MPH, effectively blocking Johnny from passing them. Willie, as he was often prone to do, pulled down his pants and hung his ass out the front passenger window, "mooning" them as we flew by to the end of the tunnel, just in time to pull back over to the right lane as we exited the tunnel. We got stopped by the traffic light at the end of the subway, but we had made it through alive and ahead of both cars, with Willie still mooning them.
After we all got to Donny's house everyone from both cars were laughing and retelling my daring story. We hung out for another two hours before they finally went to their homes for the night and I headed back home several miles away in north central Meridian. It was about midnight as I was traveling north along 39th avenue heading towards Highland Park. Suddenly, I saw a police car behind me with it's emergency blue light flashing. I knew I was not speeding or violating any traffic laws so I moved over to the right lane to let it pass me. However, the police car stayed right behind me and the officer then gave a short blast on his siren, signaling me to pull over and stop. I complied, immediately. One policeman, in plain clothes came to my car, ordered me out and told me I was under arrest and took me back to the police car. He then drove my car following the police car as we traveled to the police headquarters. I told them I had done nothing wrong and demanded to know why I was under arrest. He would not tell me anything more than I was being arrested for reckless driving earlier that evening.
I'm now remembering the "subway" incident from earlier that night but decided to say nothing until I heard more about how the police had found out. Unfortunately, I had to call my parents to tell them I was at the police station. All my teenage life I remember my Dad telling me and my brother and sister that if we ever got arrested to not call him because he would not come and he wanted us to spend the night in jail to teach us a lesson. So I was relieved that my mother answered the phone when I called and told her I was being held at the police station for something I did not do. By then I had been told that a citizen had reported my car (they must have gotten my tag number) had been seen going through the subway the wrong way. I denied doing this but figured that the older couple who I had passed in the subway must have reported me.
My Dad arrived at the police station and I was released into his custody probably because I was a minor. The ride home was in total silence but I could tell my Dad was very mad because I could see the veins in his neck popping out. All he said was that we had to appear in municipal court on Monday to answer the charges and to stand trial. I remember that was 3 or 4 days away. I continued to deny doing anything wrong and telling my parents that someone was doing this as a bad joke. I'm thinking that if the older couple do appear in court I'm probably sunk, but I would still deny it and figured it was my word against theirs. (to be continue....)
