With my right foot pumping the gas pedal, while my left one maintained pressure on the brakes, I shouted to Paul to initiate the prelaunch checklist.
“Parking brake off?” Paul asked.
Looking down and to the left, I could see the brake pedal was not set. “Roger, brake off.”
“Check for bogies.”
“Radar is clear of any police and any law enforcement entities.”
“Clear of women, children, and civilians?”
“Roger,” I replied, “I have a visual; all is clear.”
“Reverify checklist.”
Once again I mentally and visually ran down the checklist. The only anomaly I noted out loud was, “I’m noticing a patch of fog on the other side of the tracks…”
“Noted,” Paul chimed in.
“Clear left, clear rear, clear forward,” I said in final preparation.
“Roger. Clear right, clear rear, clear forward. I concur,” Paul stated. “Let her rip!”
I took a deep breath, held it, and squeezed my butt cheeks together, while clutching the leather steering wheel. With my foot planted firmly on the brake pedal, I began to slowly apply more pressure to the gas pedal. “On my command…” Paul ordered, “…in five… four… three… release brakes… one… Punch it!”
Obeying my mission control copilot, I released the brakes, which unlocked the rear wheels as I floored the accelerator at the precise moment, forcing the back of the car to swerve wildly to the right as the car shot forward. “Apply rudder control,” Paul barked.
“Copy,” I replied, before easing off the gas, which alleviated most of the shifting momentum. But now my main concern was proper alignment of the car, for the incline and the tracks were nearly upon us.
“More to the left,” the copilot advised.
“Roger,” I flatly responded, as I nudged the Camaro to the right before aligning the entire car to the left.
“No, no, no!” Paul countered. “I said left, not right, but more left!”
“I got it!” I said, brushing Paul off, knowing I had to correct more to the right, then realign my take-off point, so we didn’t land too far to the left and beyond the pavement and into someone’s front yard. After making a slight course correction I now had the perfect visual launch point and the car exactly where I wanted it. As the Chevy abruptly pitched up from the incline, my brain suddenly processed everything in slow motion. I looked over at Paul and uttered as if in some echo chamber, “Seat belts… did we ever say anything about seat belts…?” Paul’s eyes widened as if to say ooohhh… nooooooooo! but it was too late. The roaring sound of the engine ceased momentarily as the car leapt into the air. For a few split seconds Paul and I were free from the earth’s gravitational pull as Paul’s body casually floated to the ceiling like some Apollo astronaut, while my stash of pencils, pens, sheets of paper, and car brochures hovered, too, before sailing wildly in every direction.
By the time my eyes readjusted back outside, the front end of the car crashed into the pavement. Before I could fire off a snappy one-liner critique to Paul on his landing miscalculation, the back end of the Chevy followed, forcing both ends of the car to wallow from its weight. By the third bounce I could see we were now in serious trouble. Not only was the Camaro on the wrong side of the road, but the edges of the left tires were in a soft ditch, and I feared the weight and the speed coupled with the left tires’ slippage would flip the car over. As if to protect myself from impending doom, I wanted to suck in a deep breath and tighten every fiber of every muscle, but instead yelled over to my copilot, “Brace, brace, brace!” Once again, as I had years ago when I thought I was going to splatter little Amy Neyland with my minibike, my mind spun with options, but bringing the car to a screeching halt was not one of them. Nor did I believe I had the luxury of time to carefully ease off the gas pedal and allow the car’s momentum to come to rest, for I could feel the car being pulled by the invisible inertia and toward the ditch. The only remedy that came to mind was to snap the Camaro to the right, praying the speed and the sudden jolt would force the car out of the trench and back onto the safety of the pavement. As I jerked the steering wheel to the right, and as the car came out from the ditch, I felt a small bump from under the left side of the Camaro. Suddenly time stood still. When I glanced over at Paul, he appeared smaller, as he was squashed against his bucket seat. While trying to process another possible dilemma, the equilibrium from my ears told me something was not as it should be. The car seemed fine, but as I steered it straight ahead the handling seemed a little odd.
In a low-pitched, squeaky voice, Paul uttered the words, “Two wheels. You’re… driving… the car… on two wheels…” My heart froze. My fingers became glued to the steering wheel, as I tried not to breathe—thinking my exhaled breath would somehow tumble the Camaro over. When Paul repeated his observation, I glanced down at him, seeing just how close his head and his right shoulder were in relation to the road that blazed past him just a few feet away. Carefully turning my head toward the front of the car, I could make out two odd-shaped, off-centered white dots approaching my path. From my high altitude I thought how funny the white specks looked and why they were on my side of the road… unless? Before I could utter a syllable, Paul—the ever-so-cool, calm and collected—instructed, “If you would, please, steer a little to the right. Just… just a tad. Don’t overthink it, but a tad to the right.” As I nudged the steering wheel, I prayed my hands didn’t suddenly slip from the pools of sweat collecting on my palms. As I applied the slightest pressure on the hypersensitive steering wheel, I could feel the left side of the car wobble as the right-side tires began to squeal. When the other car ahead hesitantly drove past our Chevy, I had had more excitement than my nearly soiled pants could stand, so I made a sudden move to the left. Before I could yell out another command of, “Brace, brace, brace…” the Camaro bounced once before settling, as if nothing had happened, except for the fact that somehow the linkage to the transmission shift became broken, locking the mechanism in first gear.
By the time Paul and I limped back to his house, David stood outside like an excited puppy. “Cool car, dude. Let’s go for a ride and cruise the Strip. The chicks will definitely dig us now.”
“Too late,” I broke out in a laugh.
David shook his head as he slid into the cockpit of the Camaro, inspecting the multiple gauges and playing with the newest, chicest device known to car audio—the eight-track tape player. “What’s wrong? You need money for gas or something?”
Standing in the middle of Dan’s driveway, Paul and I relived the entire episode, explaining in detail how everything that happened was not only intended but professionally executed, as if my friend and I had re-created the same scene from the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever in which Agent 007 casually piloted his fire-engine red, Mach-1 Ford Mustang on two wheels while evading those wishing him harm.
Afterward all David could blurt out was, “No way! For real? You mean, the car’s broken?” David asked in confusion while now checking for any dents or scratches. “It’s brand-new and only has… forty-four miles?” All I could do was shuffle my feet while admitting yes. “You mean to tell me you’ve had this car for four hours and it’s already trashed? That’s, like, a record.” I nodded yes, while feeling as if I was being scolded. But then David broke out in a wide smile. “Cool!”
I didn’t think it was so cool and neither did my bosses at the car dealership, who were far less understanding and much more expressive in their displeasure. Yet, with no visual damage to the car, I fabricated a tale on how I was casually driving at night, on a darkened street, when… I hit a series of potholes… and… somehow… the transmission linkage simply broke. Displaying confidence rather than fear, I quickly added, “Good thing it was me driving the car and not some customer; otherwise they might sue or, worse, demand a recall of the other Camaros!”
With no evidence of misbehavior, I was lightly scolded and semithreatened with unemployment unless I sold a
nother allotment of cars. Over the weeks that followed, I somehow fulfilled my manager’s quotient of sales and in the process, much to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, I was awarded salesman of the month. To upper management’s horror, I was presented with keys to the ultimate prize: a glistening black Corvette with removable T-tops. But before I could drive off, the owner—who I’d never seen making an appearance at the dealership before—pulled me aside, promising me death by peeling off every layer of my skin if I came back next week with even bird droppings on the car. That evening as I drove home to the Turnboughs, in the far right-hand lane at five miles below the posted speed limit, I prayed that when I parked the car I wouldn’t scratch, dent, or dismember the extra-wide, extra-high wheel wells on the car, that made it practically impossible to park the Corvette.
The only thing separating my grand arrival to Duinsmoore as if I were Caesar returning to Rome after years of victorious battles was that I had been banned from the neighborhood for two weeks. The Sunday before receiving the Corvette, after eating dinner with the Howards, David and I convinced his parents that the two of us would spend a few hours at Paul’s house. At the same time, Paul convinced Dan and Beth that he would spend a few hours at David’s home. Moments later, outside in the cover of darkness, the three of us giggled like kindergarten kids as Paul steered my loaned Chevy step-side truck while David and I, in stealth, pushed the truck down the block before climbing in, in search of new adventures that somehow went awry. Hours later upon our return, I surprised myself by having the idea of shutting off the truck motor, to elude any noise and pilot the truck on its own momentum. I felt pretty sure that Paul’s and David’s parents would be none the wiser… until I strained my eyes to see a pair of silhouettes… ghostlike figures standing in the middle of the street, covered within a swirl of grayish fog, with their hands glued to their hips. With a rush of adrenaline still surging from our latest exploit, I nearly burst, “Hey, guys, do you see what I see?”
Beside me I could feel Paul’s body tighten. “Oh my God!”
“Holy crap!” David replied. “It’s the Moms!”
Nothing I had faced came close to the fury of the two mothers who unleashed every syllable of every phrase of every unkind word in the history of the English language at the three of us. Slumping their shoulders, Paul and David suddenly acted as if I had, against their own will, kidnapped them as part of some deviant plot to my diabolical scheme. Only afterward, as I motored away, did I feel any sense of justice when I saw Mrs. Brazell lead Paul into their home while clamping her fingers onto his ear, and while David endured a lungful of Mrs. Howard’s nonstop high-pitched verbal assault.
Now, upon returning to Duinsmoore, the Corvette and I did not receive praise, let alone oohs and aahs, from a single person on the block. Even Sandy Marsh, who adored Corvettes and had never been for a ride in one, was only mildly impressed. I could only guess that Sandy had still been upset with me— which kept her from enjoying the car. After a brief visit with my friends, who were stuck within the confines of their own parental penitentiary, the guilt of cruising around in a black sports car while blaring the eight-track tape player spread to me like a cold. The next day I flung the Corvette’s keys onto the sales manager’s desk—without an explanation, and without a single nick.
Overall, the car wasn’t for me. Sure, for anyone else it was, “a babe magnet.” But not me. I had to practically beg a girl I knew in high school, promising to take her to a fancy Bay Area restaurant. At dinner I became so nervous that my eyes kept twitching, while I stuttered through a non-stop set of apologies for my sudden inflection. Later that evening after spending my paycheck, I didn’t feel so cool as I escorted my date back to her parents’ front door while fantasizing the much anticipated good-night kiss, and suddenly tripping on the walkway, falling flat on my face, giving myself a bloody nose. With one hand covering my leaky nose, all I could do was shake her hand with my other one. The whole status thing of the Corvette made me too paranoid of wrecking it. Even when zipping down the highway, I couldn’t relax; I just knew everyone was trying to crash into me.
While I admired the mysterious world of girls, my only ambition now was to study during the slow part of the day at work in order to pass my upcoming GED. With every day, I learned not only how foolish I was, but also how on the mark Dan and Mike had been. The whole car sales thing, while fun for a while, was not for me.
Expanding my day-to-day education, I became engrossed in newspapers to truly understand the depths of the country’s recession and the magnitude of gas prices shooting to record highs. Then, when the management announced that due to slow sales the dealership could no longer offer demos for the staff to drive, I knew it was only a matter of time. But I needed a car, so spending as little as possible I purchased a horrible-looking, fourteen-year-old Ford Mustang whose underpowered six-cylinder engine was in need of a major overhaul. But I didn’t care; just as long as it got me from point A to point B, that was more than enough for me. Feeling confident about my upcoming GED test, I randomly circled a date on the calendar and when that Friday arrived, by a stroke of luck I sold two cars in the morning, then proudly walked into the manager’s office to proclaim the end of my career in car sales. The men were so stunned, completely speechless, as I hopped into my dilapidated, oxidized-orange car before proudly sputtering down the endless rows of dealerships that covered the avenue.
My plan was simple: Pass the GED, then beg, barter, and, if necessary, beg some more on my way into the U.S. Air Force. After two attempts and feeling a little more humbled I finally passed the high school equivalency test. Within minutes I raced over to the recruiter’s office to flash my paperwork in front of the overly stoic sergeant’s face. Months before I hung up my job at the car dealership, I began spending my off time planted next to the reluctant recruiter’s desk, retaining every brochure, watching every video, over and over again, while memorizing any paper that I could get my fingers on. Now with my GED, and after filling out endless reams of paperwork, I was well on the road to enlisting in the service and beginning my journey into adulthood. Yet, the closer I came to completing the necessary forms, the more I worried about my past being exposed. The issue came to a head when a senior master sergeant scanned through my list of different addresses. Tilting his head down, the recruiter growled, “Are you one of those foster kids, boy?” While doing my best attempt to stand in a mock attention stance, I answered yes. “What’d you do to become a foster kid? You got a problem with authority? Well, do ya… boy?” I shook my head no. While he continued to stare right through me, I began to count to myself, knowing that this man held my future. After thinking, praying, and planning, and after all the stupid blunders I’d gotten myself into, the service was my only path to pull myself together. By the time I had counted to twelve, I knew my chances had evaporated. I let out a sigh, and as my rigid posture slumped, the grim-faced sergeant snatched a black government pen from his desk and signed my papers.
Within weeks I had passed every hurdle and was finally offered a slot to enlist. As excited as I was to begin my new life, I felt I needed a week to tie up any loose ends. First on my list was the Turnboughs. While I thought they had no idea of what I was up to, I was surprised to find out they had known my plans all along. Alice and Harold, who had been through so much with me, felt relieved that I had done something positive for my future, and their only concern was, “Are you going to tell your parents?”
Leaning back in my seat, where I was only moments ago fidgeting nervously, thinking how I was going to break the news, I now flashed a rare smile. “I just did… Mother, Father, I’m joining the air force. I leave next week.”
A couple of days prior to flying off to basic training, The Sarge asked if I’d drop by to say good-bye. Thinking ahead I crammed my precious belongings—a quadraphonic eight-track tape player sound system and my priceless, rolled-up James Bond promotional movie posters that had covered every inch of my old room—into my old Mustang and prayed the
car would somehow limp its way to Duinsmoore one last time. Making the final left turn into Suburban Park, I slowed the vehicle to a crawl, inching my way toward Mike and Sandy’s house. As I had years ago when I first moved into the neighborhood, I could still hear the sound of the gentle breeze from the huge trees that hung over the immaculate sidewalks that led to the manicured lawns of the majestic-like homes. In all the endless weekends, no matter how high-strung Paul, David, and I may have appeared to act, I never once failed to stop and appreciate the serenity of Duinsmoore.
Bringing my squeaky car to a stop in front of famed Marsh Manor, I was taken aback when The Sarge greeted me in combat fatigues and a military Airborne beret, followed in unison by his junior squad members, William and Eric, attired in their own set of camo’ gear, with little Eric sporting an Aussie hat while clutching a cork-string pop rifle. It was only after I spied Dan walking across the street, dressed in a female hillbilly outfit showing off his knobby knees and blacked-out teeth, with Paul and David behind him in their own quasi-Boy Scout/commando gear, did I understand that dropping by was a going-away party. Stepping into their house, Sandy greeted me with a hug, while my unofficial stepmom of the block, Mrs. Howard, thrust an enormous care package into my hands. It took several moments for me to comprehend all the balloons, streamers, and banners that engulfed the same living room where I had spent so many hours devouring books on aircraft and that had somehow helped propel me into the next era of my life.