... of New Years Eve '80-81
Cricket's folks had a cabin by The River near Amarillo. I never knew what Cricket's actual name was, and I didn't know the name of the river at the time. I think it was the Canadian River, because Amarillo is pretty close to Canada, but it never mattered. There was only one river with water in it anywhere near Amarillo, so there was no need to disambiguate. Anyway, Cricket's folks had this cabin, and seeing as how they were away in Mexico for New Year's, Cricket invited about twenty ne'er-do-wells out for a party.
I was planning on taking my car, but my VW's fan belt had done what VW fan belts do, so I called up a frenemy who lived close and got a ride. We loaded up Mark McLheran's perfectly restored 1965 Chevy Impala with four grocery bags of leftover Mexican fireworks, two cases of Coors and a shoe-box full of 8-tracks before setting out from Amarillo at about sixish.
We were jamming along screaming out the lyrics to all the tunes on "Get The Knack" by The Knack. We had listened to it on 8-track so much that we knew where all the track changes were and made a point of looking at each other and saying "ka-chunk" every time one rolled around.
Everything was going along fine until we turned off the highway onto the twenty mile stretch of bad road that twisted around into the river valley; that's when I looked at the domino. I pulled one of the Roman candles out of the bag in the back seat and deployed it out of the passenger side window. If you've ever shot a Roman candle from the window of a moving vehicle, you know how cool it is. What you might not know is how disproportionately UN-cool it is if one of the little fireballs reverses out of the wrong end of the candle and enters the passenger compartment. Trust me here. It's bad.
We batted it around a few times before it wound up in the shoe-box of surprisingly flammable 8-track tapes. The car choked up with thick black smoke, so being spry and fleet of foot in those days, I jumped in the back and grabbed a Coors that I tried to pour into the shoe-box. Mark was so profoundly distracted that he swerved off the road, drove up a berm, and launched us into unrestricted airspace.
The Impala flew over a small ravine and landed so perfectly on a tree stump that all four tires were an equal distance from the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of us and we both thought we were dying. We fell out of the car choking and after we got our wind back, spent the next hour cussing and rocking the now remarkably less than perfectly restored 1965 Chevy Impala around on the tree stump. It would still start and when we got it at the right angle, the back wheels would spin. At one point, I stood in the back corner of the open trunk to keep one of the tires on the ground while Mark held the gas pedal down. We didn't get enough traction to get off the stump, but it was a lot of fun because we got enough traction to spin around a few times and dig a nice moat around the posted Chevy. When we finally gave up it looked a lot like a Stanley Marsh car-sculpture.
This having all taken place when phones were still non-mobile household appliances, we set out on foot in search of a house where someone would let us use theirs to call Mark's dad, "Red." Red was a genuine Appalachian Mountain hillbilly. He had red hair, a redder face, and the typical Scottish tendency to violence. On the way to find a phone I argued that the Impala wasn't going to be any more screwed January 1st than it already was on December 31st, so we should call Cricket, go to the party, and deal with the Chevy-on-a-stick issue first thing next day. It was a hard sell, but I had beer and fireworks on my side, so when we finally found a phone we called Cricket.
It turned out our wreck was pretty close to the cabin, so Cricket walked over and met us at the car. After he suggested we try all the same stupid ideas we had already tried, he left us there, walked back to the cabin, loaded his wife, his baby, his dog, and two elderly hippies into his beater pickup truck, then dropped by to pick us up for a trip to the gas station to get ice.
I was supposed to bring the ice. I didn't forget to get the ice. I just forgot to bring it. No worries; it being January in Amarillo it didn't melt, and I was able to take it to another party a few weeks later.
Cricket wanted us to ride up front, so he put his wife, his baby, his dog, and the hippies under the camper shell in the back of the pickup and we tore out for ice. I was recounting the part about the Roman candle to Cricket who was so amused that he almost hit a stray dog, but skidded into the ditch and rolled the pickup over one and a half times instead. We came to rest on on the passenger side door. Cricket and Mark climbed out of Crickets window, but I just laid there awhile because I didn't want to see all the dead people. After a few minutes Cricket stooped down in front of the shattered windshield and said, "Are you OK? Yeah, you're OK. Everybody is OK. Come on. Get out."
Now this may strain credulity, but no one was hurt at all—not even a scratch. After we all climbed out, the baby was actually laughing. Mom was fine; the dog excited and a little freaked out, but OK; Hippies same as the dog; Cricket, Mark, and I same as the dog and hippies, but using a more colorful string of expletives. We all assembled next to the ditched truck and when the hysteria died down, we came up with a plan to get everybody back to the cabin and send someone else for ice.
On the way back, we stopped by the post Chevy and got the beer and fireworks, then went back to the cabin and settled in for an otherwise uneventful New Year's Eve party. The fireworks were great, but the beer had run out around one o'clock—-and yes, the baby was still fine, so we watched an episode of Love Boat, and then we all just went to sleep. We never got around to getting any ice because we had a group epiphany and realized there was absolutely no need for it.
In spite of being so nearsighted he couldn't see beyond his fingertips, Mark didn't notice his glasses were missing until the next day. I didn't notice either---until he woke me up in a panic about it. Apparently, the glasses cost more than the Chevy, and this was what was going to earn him the lash. We set out to search the various crime scenes we had created the day before. The glasses were nowhere in or around the cabin. They were not in or around the post Chevy, but we did stand in awe of it for a while. The whole car was kind of drooping over the stump, and in the calm morning light, it had moved out of Stanley Marsh art-car category and now looked more like a Dali work.
At first, we didn't find the glasses in or around the ditched pickup truck either. We had both become very solemn and for the first time, we realized just how lucky we had been. Now, here goes any remaining credibility I may have had; I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that, having been raised Baptist, I looked to heaven and yelled, "Thank you God!" Mark, having been raised Presbyterian, looked up and said, "Yeah. No kidding."
Then, as I lowered my gaze, I spotted Mark's glasses hanging off the tip of a windshield wiper that was twisted out and pointing straight in the air. They were just hanging there as if someone had folded them up and put them there, and unlike every other piece of glass involved, they were unbroken. When I climbed up the bottom of the truck, took his glasses off the wiper and handed them down to him, he broke out in a spontaneous fit of Presbyterianism that included a ten minute prayer highlighting most of his sins, all ten commandments, and the better part of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. After that day, he took to calling me "Saint Andrew." Apparently, Presbyterians can just beatify people right there on the spot like that.
Encouraged, we contacted Red who drove out in his perfectly restored 1956 Chevrolet Apache pickup to get the impaled Impala off the stump. He met us at the point where we had left the road, and without a word, we calmly walked over the berm and crossed the ravine. When we reached the moat, Red calmly took in the scene, and then calmly started slapping the shit out of us. This wasn't weird. Red always hit us—sometimes just for practice, but on that day he was hitting us with an unsettling lack of emotion that seemed to actually give force to the blows. He started asking questions and any time we tried to answer he would just slap us again. He slapped us all the way back over the berm and into his perfectly restored canary yellow 1956 Chevrolet Apache and all the way to the gas station to call a tow truck, then all the way back to meet the tow truck guy who seemed half afraid that Red was going to hit him too.
The canary yellow Apache was Red's prize possession and he never (no kidding) drove it over thirty miles an hour, so it was a long drive back to Amarillo. When he calmed down enough to speak, Red started shaking his head and periodically whispering, "IDIOTS" over and over. We took this as a good sign. He finally stopped and we drove along for hours without speaking like guys are supposed to do.
It was about sixish again when we got back into our neighborhood. We were on 35th, just a few streets from the turn to my house when a girl in a Ford Galaxy ignored the Yield sign and t-boned us. She struck us on my side going maybe twenty, so it was jarring, but again, there were no injuries—at first. Galaxy girl jumped out and ran circles around the scene screaming about how she was sorry and how she hadn't seen us. I was just sitting there, kind of tracking her around the arc and wondering how anybody could not see a canary yellow pickup truck, when I noticed that Red was purple and that he was an especially bright shade of purple around the area of the teeth he was gnashing. He turned and looked at us like something he had to fish out of a septic tank before he punched Mark in the side of the head so hard that his head slammed into mine which bounced back off the window and set up a kind of Newton's Cradle reaction.
I got a goose egg above my right ear from hitting the window and one above my left ear from hitting marks head twice. My goose eggs matched the ones on Mark's head that he got from hitting my head, and hitting Red in the fist with his head, respectively. We looked like Micky Mouses wearing fright wigs.
Later that night, as I held a couple of packs of frozen corn on my head, I realized I had been in three car wrecks in the span of twenty four hours, and the only injuries were four temporary hematomas that were not even crash related.
Red called later that night to apologize for hitting me in the head with Mark's head and promised the next time he punched me that he would do it directly. He said it was unlikely because he had a strong desire never to see me again, and he wouldn't do anything to me unless he did. Mark spent the next six or eight months chained up in Red's garage doing repairs on the Apache until it was perfectly re-restored, but early on the morning of January second, the day following what I have come to understand as the day God delivered me from the gaping maw of my own stupidity, Mark called to thank me for finding his glasses. I thanked him for not ducking the punch and apologized for setting his car on fire, but after that, I didn't hear from him until a few years later when he started sleeping with my girlfriend. It all comes out in the wash I guess.
I don't know what ever happened to Mark's Impala, and I don't really want to know because I like to think it's still twisting around on top of that stump, maybe serving the locals as an avant-garde weather vane showing the direction of the infamous High Plains wind while sending oscillating strains of "My Sharona" echoing through the valley all the way down to the cabin where Cricket is retelling his version of this story to the child of the baby who has grown up and had children, but is still just fine.
OK, probably not, but it's my delusional fantasy, and I'm keeping it.
Cricket's folks had a cabin by The River near Amarillo. I never knew what Cricket's actual name was, and I didn't know the name of the river at the time. I think it was the Canadian River, because Amarillo is pretty close to Canada, but it never mattered. There was only one river with water in it anywhere near Amarillo, so there was no need to disambiguate. Anyway, Cricket's folks had this cabin, and seeing as how they were away in Mexico for New Year's, Cricket invited about twenty ne'er-do-wells out for a party.
I was planning on taking my car, but my VW's fan belt had done what VW fan belts do, so I called up a frenemy who lived close and got a ride. We loaded up Mark McLheran's perfectly restored 1965 Chevy Impala with four grocery bags of leftover Mexican fireworks, two cases of Coors and a shoe-box full of 8-tracks before setting out from Amarillo at about sixish.
We were jamming along screaming out the lyrics to all the tunes on "Get The Knack" by The Knack. We had listened to it on 8-track so much that we knew where all the track changes were and made a point of looking at each other and saying "ka-chunk" every time one rolled around.
Everything was going along fine until we turned off the highway onto the twenty mile stretch of bad road that twisted around into the river valley; that's when I looked at the domino. I pulled one of the Roman candles out of the bag in the back seat and deployed it out of the passenger side window. If you've ever shot a Roman candle from the window of a moving vehicle, you know how cool it is. What you might not know is how disproportionately UN-cool it is if one of the little fireballs reverses out of the wrong end of the candle and enters the passenger compartment. Trust me here. It's bad.
We batted it around a few times before it wound up in the shoe-box of surprisingly flammable 8-track tapes. The car choked up with thick black smoke, so being spry and fleet of foot in those days, I jumped in the back and grabbed a Coors that I tried to pour into the shoe-box. Mark was so profoundly distracted that he swerved off the road, drove up a berm, and launched us into unrestricted airspace.
The Impala flew over a small ravine and landed so perfectly on a tree stump that all four tires were an equal distance from the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of us and we both thought we were dying. We fell out of the car choking and after we got our wind back, spent the next hour cussing and rocking the now remarkably less than perfectly restored 1965 Chevy Impala around on the tree stump. It would still start and when we got it at the right angle, the back wheels would spin. At one point, I stood in the back corner of the open trunk to keep one of the tires on the ground while Mark held the gas pedal down. We didn't get enough traction to get off the stump, but it was a lot of fun because we got enough traction to spin around a few times and dig a nice moat around the posted Chevy. When we finally gave up it looked a lot like a Stanley Marsh car-sculpture.
This having all taken place when phones were still non-mobile household appliances, we set out on foot in search of a house where someone would let us use theirs to call Mark's dad, "Red." Red was a genuine Appalachian Mountain hillbilly. He had red hair, a redder face, and the typical Scottish tendency to violence. On the way to find a phone I argued that the Impala wasn't going to be any more screwed January 1st than it already was on December 31st, so we should call Cricket, go to the party, and deal with the Chevy-on-a-stick issue first thing next day. It was a hard sell, but I had beer and fireworks on my side, so when we finally found a phone we called Cricket.
It turned out our wreck was pretty close to the cabin, so Cricket walked over and met us at the car. After he suggested we try all the same stupid ideas we had already tried, he left us there, walked back to the cabin, loaded his wife, his baby, his dog, and two elderly hippies into his beater pickup truck, then dropped by to pick us up for a trip to the gas station to get ice.
I was supposed to bring the ice. I didn't forget to get the ice. I just forgot to bring it. No worries; it being January in Amarillo it didn't melt, and I was able to take it to another party a few weeks later.
Cricket wanted us to ride up front, so he put his wife, his baby, his dog, and the hippies under the camper shell in the back of the pickup and we tore out for ice. I was recounting the part about the Roman candle to Cricket who was so amused that he almost hit a stray dog, but skidded into the ditch and rolled the pickup over one and a half times instead. We came to rest on on the passenger side door. Cricket and Mark climbed out of Crickets window, but I just laid there awhile because I didn't want to see all the dead people. After a few minutes Cricket stooped down in front of the shattered windshield and said, "Are you OK? Yeah, you're OK. Everybody is OK. Come on. Get out."
Now this may strain credulity, but no one was hurt at all—not even a scratch. After we all climbed out, the baby was actually laughing. Mom was fine; the dog excited and a little freaked out, but OK; Hippies same as the dog; Cricket, Mark, and I same as the dog and hippies, but using a more colorful string of expletives. We all assembled next to the ditched truck and when the hysteria died down, we came up with a plan to get everybody back to the cabin and send someone else for ice.
THE BABY WAS FINE!
On the way back, we stopped by the post Chevy and got the beer and fireworks, then went back to the cabin and settled in for an otherwise uneventful New Year's Eve party. The fireworks were great, but the beer had run out around one o'clock—-and yes, the baby was still fine, so we watched an episode of Love Boat, and then we all just went to sleep. We never got around to getting any ice because we had a group epiphany and realized there was absolutely no need for it.
In spite of being so nearsighted he couldn't see beyond his fingertips, Mark didn't notice his glasses were missing until the next day. I didn't notice either---until he woke me up in a panic about it. Apparently, the glasses cost more than the Chevy, and this was what was going to earn him the lash. We set out to search the various crime scenes we had created the day before. The glasses were nowhere in or around the cabin. They were not in or around the post Chevy, but we did stand in awe of it for a while. The whole car was kind of drooping over the stump, and in the calm morning light, it had moved out of Stanley Marsh art-car category and now looked more like a Dali work.
At first, we didn't find the glasses in or around the ditched pickup truck either. We had both become very solemn and for the first time, we realized just how lucky we had been. Now, here goes any remaining credibility I may have had; I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that, having been raised Baptist, I looked to heaven and yelled, "Thank you God!" Mark, having been raised Presbyterian, looked up and said, "Yeah. No kidding."
Then, as I lowered my gaze, I spotted Mark's glasses hanging off the tip of a windshield wiper that was twisted out and pointing straight in the air. They were just hanging there as if someone had folded them up and put them there, and unlike every other piece of glass involved, they were unbroken. When I climbed up the bottom of the truck, took his glasses off the wiper and handed them down to him, he broke out in a spontaneous fit of Presbyterianism that included a ten minute prayer highlighting most of his sins, all ten commandments, and the better part of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. After that day, he took to calling me "Saint Andrew." Apparently, Presbyterians can just beatify people right there on the spot like that.
Encouraged, we contacted Red who drove out in his perfectly restored 1956 Chevrolet Apache pickup to get the impaled Impala off the stump. He met us at the point where we had left the road, and without a word, we calmly walked over the berm and crossed the ravine. When we reached the moat, Red calmly took in the scene, and then calmly started slapping the shit out of us. This wasn't weird. Red always hit us—sometimes just for practice, but on that day he was hitting us with an unsettling lack of emotion that seemed to actually give force to the blows. He started asking questions and any time we tried to answer he would just slap us again. He slapped us all the way back over the berm and into his perfectly restored canary yellow 1956 Chevrolet Apache and all the way to the gas station to call a tow truck, then all the way back to meet the tow truck guy who seemed half afraid that Red was going to hit him too.
The canary yellow Apache was Red's prize possession and he never (no kidding) drove it over thirty miles an hour, so it was a long drive back to Amarillo. When he calmed down enough to speak, Red started shaking his head and periodically whispering, "IDIOTS" over and over. We took this as a good sign. He finally stopped and we drove along for hours without speaking like guys are supposed to do.
It was about sixish again when we got back into our neighborhood. We were on 35th, just a few streets from the turn to my house when a girl in a Ford Galaxy ignored the Yield sign and t-boned us. She struck us on my side going maybe twenty, so it was jarring, but again, there were no injuries—at first. Galaxy girl jumped out and ran circles around the scene screaming about how she was sorry and how she hadn't seen us. I was just sitting there, kind of tracking her around the arc and wondering how anybody could not see a canary yellow pickup truck, when I noticed that Red was purple and that he was an especially bright shade of purple around the area of the teeth he was gnashing. He turned and looked at us like something he had to fish out of a septic tank before he punched Mark in the side of the head so hard that his head slammed into mine which bounced back off the window and set up a kind of Newton's Cradle reaction.
I got a goose egg above my right ear from hitting the window and one above my left ear from hitting marks head twice. My goose eggs matched the ones on Mark's head that he got from hitting my head, and hitting Red in the fist with his head, respectively. We looked like Micky Mouses wearing fright wigs.
Later that night, as I held a couple of packs of frozen corn on my head, I realized I had been in three car wrecks in the span of twenty four hours, and the only injuries were four temporary hematomas that were not even crash related.
Red called later that night to apologize for hitting me in the head with Mark's head and promised the next time he punched me that he would do it directly. He said it was unlikely because he had a strong desire never to see me again, and he wouldn't do anything to me unless he did. Mark spent the next six or eight months chained up in Red's garage doing repairs on the Apache until it was perfectly re-restored, but early on the morning of January second, the day following what I have come to understand as the day God delivered me from the gaping maw of my own stupidity, Mark called to thank me for finding his glasses. I thanked him for not ducking the punch and apologized for setting his car on fire, but after that, I didn't hear from him until a few years later when he started sleeping with my girlfriend. It all comes out in the wash I guess.
I don't know what ever happened to Mark's Impala, and I don't really want to know because I like to think it's still twisting around on top of that stump, maybe serving the locals as an avant-garde weather vane showing the direction of the infamous High Plains wind while sending oscillating strains of "My Sharona" echoing through the valley all the way down to the cabin where Cricket is retelling his version of this story to the child of the baby who has grown up and had children, but is still just fine.
OK, probably not, but it's my delusional fantasy, and I'm keeping it.
