|
Duster
and Maverick |
No, this is not about a cattle drive. It is about a couple of automobiles.
There was one especially scary incident that I remember clearly to this day. It was the night I turned Indiana Highway 62 into a speedway. I was leaving the Storefront Congregation, a folk music bar in Louisville, when some guy I barely knew asked for a ride home. I was feeling generous and said, "Sure, why not," and off we went.
It seemed that he lived in Clarksville, Indiana, just across the river. We zoomed out and I went over the downtown bridge to Jeffersonville. Then you took a road, I think it was State Road 62, that went on down to New Albany, with Clarksville in the middle. As I approached 62, I had a thought. My car was pretty new. I bought a blue 1970 Plymouth 340 Duster and it would get up and go. I liked it when my friends would say, "I knew that was you by the sound of your engine. It just sounds like a hot car."
I had never owned a "hot car."
The speedometer registered up to 130 and I thought this would be a good time to see what it would really do. I had street raced it a bit and it could really take off as it was lighter than most of the other muscle cars. They might catch me after a while, but I usually got the jump on them. I had not yet tried to top end her and this seemed like a good time to try.
So I pulled onto 62 and hit the accelerator. The car surged into action and up went the needle. It just kept going, but when it hit 120, I was running out of room, so I slowed and turned around. I had completely ignored my passenger, but when I made my turn around, I noticed that he was curled up on the floor and I remembered him screaming for a while. He begged me to take him home and I said, "Sure, I just have to make one more run."
I don't think he was too pleased with that answer, but I took off again anyway, this time going in the other direction. I wanted to hit that 130 mark.
Again, quickly up to 80, 90, 100, then 110, and 120 again. At his point it was gaining speed at a slower rate and topped out at 125. I had traversed the Jeffersonville to New Albany and back route at incredible street speeds and figured I had used up all my luck for the night. So I told the guy to quit whimpering and took him home. I then went straight home and to bed. I didn 't think about it much until the next morning when I rehashed the previous evening. I couldn't believe what I had done. 125 mph is pretty fast on the city streets and so many things could have gone wrong.
I can still recall the thrill and the terror of going so fast. I felt slightly in control, but pretty much on the edge. At those speeds, the risk factor is pretty high; the driver doesn't really have control. On a racetrack, you have a supposedly continuous, smooth road in front of you and everybody on the track with you is also a pretty good driver. But even those guys, used to driving super fast all of the time, will lose it if a tire goes down or if they hit some debris or if they don't calculate a turn just so.
For an untrained driver to go that fast, you are putting your life in the hands of Lady Luck and she is not always kind. In 1970 I didn't even have seat belts. I have thanked God many times for seeing me through that night and many others.
I
don't know, I just like to drive fast. One year there seemed to be a
sudden craze for Coors Beer. I don't know why, but everywhere I went
people were raving about Coors Beer. It was not available in
Kentucky. It was brewed in Golden Colorado, just on the western edge
of Denver. So my friend Randy had recently purchased a new yellow
Ford Maverick and I came up with an idea. Why don't we make a Coors
run?
We'll take some orders, collect the money and see how far west we would have to go to buy some Coor's. He thought that sounded good, as long as I would drive.
Okay by me, and I remembered when he bought an old Nash for some reason, but hated driving it, so I did. I made great fun of the thing and mostly, the giant steering wheel. I don't know what that was all about, but it was like driving a bus.
Anyway,
we took off at 3:00 am on a Saturday morning and drove through the
night to St. Louis later that morning. The Maverick was
fairly
small and surprisingly quick. It was easy to drive. We pulled in to
get gas and asked the attendant if they sold Coors in St.
Louis.
He said, "No, if you want Coors, you'll have to go to Kansas. Lawrence, I think. I know some guys who drove all the way over there just to get some of that, Ha Ha Ha. What do you think of that?"
"Wow, imagine that," we replied, in mock awe of such foolishness.
At least we now knew where we might have to go. So we rolled into God forsaken Lawrence, Kansas later that afternoon and sure enough, Coors signs everywhere. We went straight to a liquor store and loaded up. I don't remember how many cases we bought, but we divided it up between two stores and we had a trunk and back seat full of beer. We then headed for a motel, drank a couple of the products and slept.
We awoke later that night and the beer was still there, so we headed home. We zoomed through the night and made it back with no problems. Randy was amazed that we had gone eleven hundred miles in two days at 90 mph plus with a load of beer and encountered no difficulties. The Maverick handled like a charm.
We distributed the beer to our customers and everybody was happy.
I thought, "That was fun. We ought to do it again." Well, we didn't get to do it again because Randy quit making payments and they repossessed the Maverick.
"Who
cares," he chirped, "I
don't like driving in the first place."