What follows are some car-related memories from my distant past. Once in awhile remembering the past is fun, however, for the record, generally, I prefer living in the present.
High school was over fifty years ago. I honestly no longer know if the stories I tell are totally accurate. I’m going with mostly accurate. I am not mechanically inclined and not really a car guy. I like using cars to do stuff, not so much doing stuff on cars.
Starting about a month or so before I got my license and about a half dozen times, my older brother gave me the keys to his turbocharged Corvair Corsa Turbo 6 to practice driving. He would say here are the keys, try not to crash. I then drove off alone.
It was probably the fourth time I drove his car. I had the hang of it. I knew how to shift and the like. It is just about sunset. I am turning left from County Road B heading north on the entrance to I35W toward I694. This section of the interstate was, at the time, brand new with very little traffic.
I accelerated, my foot to the floor, shifting through the gears. At about 100 mph the front end started to float. I was not at redline on the tach so I tried to keep going faster. To this day, I think I took my foot off the gas just a split second before I lost control. I did not crash but it was close. That is as fast as I’ve ever driven. I was too dumb to be scared, but smart enough to avoid wrecking my brother’s car.
The following summer I got a summer job at a fiberglass repair shop. I think it was located a couple of blocks from the Minneapolis Auditorium. They fixed fiberglass boats and did bodywork on Chevrolet Corvettes (their bodies were fiberglass). They rented some very dumpy storage space down on Nicollet Island. Part of my job was to shuffle cars from the storage space to the main shop. That summer I probably drove a dozen or so Corvettes down Hennepin Ave between the storage space and the shop.
One of the cars I shuffled was a custom 1966 Corvette painted British racing green with a dark racing stripe down the center pulling a hydroplane race boat on a custom trailer both painted to match the Vette. Everyone I passed along the way stopped and stared at a seventeen-year-old kid driving the Vette with a boat down Hennepin Ave.
Donnybrook Raceway started in 1968, (yes I looked it up). The following year, I drove my 1959 Pontiac Catalina in the middle of the week to watch a Sports Car Club of America event. Basically, amateur drivers put a rollbar in their stock sports car, put on a helmet, and raced each other. We were allowed to park and stay in the infield campground (bare field with a couple of porta-potties). I slept in the car. The next day my car would not start. I even talked one of the race mechanics into taking a look and he could not get it started either.
So that afternoon I hitchhiked home. There were two entrances to the track one for the general public and the other for the racers and track staff. The non-public entrance was closer to the infield so I walked out of that entrance and stuck out my thumb.
A green Ford Mustang pulled out of the track, pulled over, and picked me up. The car had a rollbar. The driver was wearing a helmet and racing gloves. He asked me where I was headed and drove me to the corner of County Road B and Highway 280, three blocks from my house. For the duration of the trip, he did not say more than a couple of words. Which was good because he was driving very fast. We passed cars like they were standing still. The tires squealed slightly as we rounded corners. He was in full race mode. Scaring the crap out of me was probably just a bonus.
During my Junior year of college, I was mentally not in a good place. I told my mom I planned to drop out of school spring quarter and hitchhike my way to the east coast. I didn’t drop out mostly because I was too depressed to change course. However, when my brother heard about my funk, he suggested I fly out to Norfolk Virginia, where he was stationed (Navy) then drive back home with him and his car. He was to be deployed for six months in the Mediterranean and did not want to leave his car on the base for that long.
His car was a custom 1967, maybe 1968, Pontiac GTO painted multiple shades of metal-flake green. Big cheater slicks so the car was raised in the back. Traded the Corvair Corsa plus some cash for it as I recall.
So I flew down and spent a week of my Christmas break in Norfolk, VA. Two days before Christmas we headed home. The first thing to know is I had long hair. The next thing to remember is it was a custom painted street rod. The third thing to remember is the 55 mph speed limit had just taken effect. About a mile from his base a Virginia highway patrol started following us. Hour after hour, as we drove from the eastern edge of Virginia to the western edge, a highway patrol car was right behind us. Periodically one patrol car would take an exit but another patrol car would pick us up.
When we got to the Virginia / West Virginia state line, there was a West Virginia state patrol waiting to escort us. The same routine, periodically the patrol car would take an exit, and a new car would be there to follow us. We stopped for gas and the patrol pulled in behind us. He nodded his head and tipped his hat but never said anything.
Once we got to Ohio we were no longer followed. The speed limit might have been 55 but we wanted to get home sooner than later. We treated speed limits as suggestions and drove as fast as the traffic would allow.
No moral to these stories. Maybe someday I’ll tell you some more. Learning how to break into cars is a good story. Anyone one of a half dozen teenage road trips is a good story. For now time for lunch.
The closer you look the more you see
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