|
Adventures
In The Green Truck |
|
One drunken night in the Pub Steakhouse, closing time came and as often happened, I still wasn't ready to call it a night. It was 2:00, but the only person left to party with was some old guy with whom I had conversed off and on during the evening. I didn't even know his name, but it didn't matter if he wanted to drink some more, so off we went in his car.
It was a fairly nice car as I recall and we decided to get some whiskey, so we ended up in the middle of the projects off of East Market at 3:00 am looking for some after-hours whiskey. Somehow we found a guy and made it out of the projects in one piece, drank at least some of the whiskey and finally decided to sleep in our cars for the night in the Courier Journal parking lot.
I had done that a number of times and thought nothing of it. There were a number of cars in the lot because the Courier ran twenty four hours a day. I was driving my old green pickup truck and climbed in the cab to bed down. My friend was parked a dozen-or-so spaces down. The lot was sparsely lit and quiet so I drifted off.
About an hour later, I heard some commotion down the way and looked up to see some guy trying to rob the old man. Without thinking, I jumped out of my truck and grabbed a 2x4 plank, which was in the truck bed for some reason. It was 6 feet long and I charged at the guy waving the board around while cursing at him.
Obviously alarmed, he faced me for a second and then took off like a shot. I got to the old man and he was shaken up, but unharmed.
"The guy had a knife," he said. He was suddenly pretty sober.
"I'm going home," he informed me and left.
I figured the robber would probably not come back again and went back to my truck. I slept in the parking lot several times and had not encountered any trouble before. I guessed I was just lucky. If the guy would have stood his ground, I don't know if the 2x4, being rather unwieldy, would have been any help to me or not, but I'm glad I didn't have to find out. Again. . .luck or ??
I had a lot of fun with that truck, though. One time I was in the Pub Steakhouse where we all hung out after work and four of us decided to go to the Blue Cottage, another hangout on Bardstown Road. I was the only one who had a vehicle that night so I drove, sort of.
We all four piled into the cab of the truck and I decreed that we should all take a hand in the driving so I wouldn't be the one responsible if we were stopped. I operated the gas and clutch pedals, Bill, seated next to me, would operate the brakes, Ted would handle the steering wheel from the third position and the Professor, sitting by the passenger door would handle the gear shift lever.
We wobbled up Broadway and out Bardstown Road with great aplomb and gales of laughter. We somehow made it without serious incident.
The driver's side window soon became stuck wide open, which made it less fun to drive in the rain. People began wanting to borrow it to haul bricks and furniture and stuff, but I turned them all down. I had no desire to go into the hauling business.
It wasn't a very good date vehicle, but it didn't matter much at that time because I was often in the company of "The Pranksters." Four young women from the hinterlands of Kentucky who roomed together and wandered into the Pub Steakhouse one night and became fans of the current folk singer in there, namly me. We had some good times and some raucous late night parties at their Southern Parkway digs.
One evening they literally kidnapped me and forced me to go to the Brown Theatre in downtown Louisville and made me suffer through the entire production of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
They had told me of their wish to see the show and I expressed my aversion. But they showed up in force at my place and literally dressed me in a decent outfit and combed my hair, and with hands on, to prevent my escape marched me to their car and drove to the theatre. Surrounding me, they ushered me into the building and to a seat.
It was there I endured eight or ten hours of horrendous play-acting and stage cavorting by a group of Broadway wannabes before I was mercifully taken home and dumped on my doorstep.
I tried, but it is impossible to explain how miserable that evening was. They later apologized, but it took several parties to fully get over it.
I
finally cleansed all vestiges of that experience from my soul by
ridding myself of the truck and buying a new Plymouth 340 Duster
right off of the showroom floor.