Drag Racing Down Walker Mill Road
The old Buick had personality, we all agreed to that. Perhaps it was just our way of accepting the crack in the lower left corner of the windshield, the clicky whine on ignition, and the emergency brake that had to be disengaged with a hammer. Whatever. It was a car, and in 1961 very few teenagers had cars. Really. But Dad bought himself a Ford pickup and gave me the old Buick. I was 16 and could strut-my little band of artsy-fartsy intellectual outcasts from high school society had WHEELS. And the interior of that car could hold a lot of clowns. We were set. Sorta. If we didn't think about Mom.
Mom was not like Dad, and the concept of the attraction of opposites was too mild a theory to apply to that pair. We all agreed on that, too. To be my friend, you had to sign a sworn statement not to ask questions about my parents. Dad, the outgoing, hail-fellow-well-met, vocal, opinionated Irishman was balanced on the see-saw of life by Mom, a superstitious, reticent, thrifty German who would squeeze a buffalo nickel for fertilizer before spending it. It was her superstitious nature that drove Dad to drink-Southern Comfort with ginger ale. It drove us kids crazy. But when Dad gave us that car, we could drive ourselves anywhere we wanted, so Mom sorta faded into the background where she could flip tails-up pennies and avoid the neighbor's black cat all day. We loved her anyway, in a weird, eyes-to-heaven fashion.
Mom had serious objections to Dad's decision to give me the car. "The next thing you know," she had nagged as he took a swill of the Southern Comfort concoction and lopped a big piece of blue cheese off the wedge on the cheeseboard, "she'll have that car full of kids, drag racing down Walker Mill Road."
Mom was also suspicious, and I had often received some of my best ideas for summer activities from overhearing her telling Dad what she thought I would do. Drag racing down Walker Mill Road sounded good to me.
Walker Mill Road ran behind our property, separating it from the woods that featured a creek with clear, cold water flowing under a bridge on the road. Mom always thought terrible things would happen to kids in those woods and declared them, and Walker Mill Road, off limits, which is why we went there. I walked down to Linda's house (her mother wasn't afraid of walking under ladders or open umbrellas in the house), we went into the woods and followed the creek 'til it reached Walker Mill Road. One afternoon, Dad had come home early from work, driving happily in the old Buick along Walker Mill Road and found us sitting on the creek bank, our feet in the water. He stopped the car, leaned across the passenger seat, and rolled down the window.
"Does Mama know you're here?" he asked, then, "No, I guess she doesn't. Don't be late for dinner." And he drove on.
Yeah, Dad and Mom were as different and toast and jelly, but they worked well together. I made it home on time for dinner, Dad winking at me as I sat down at the table, dishing onto my plate a double-sized portion of mashed potatoes.
I was 11 then, but suddenly I was 16 and the Buick was all mine. And there was Walker Mill Road and the challenge of Mom's crystal ball thinking. Before long, my friends and I had persuaded a couple of other kids with cars (well, actually, Ken had borrowed his mother's car and loaded the trunk with cinderblocks to make the front end rise menacingly-cool!) that a drag race would be fun. At the appointed time we gathered, swaggering and boasting. The artsy-fartsy crowd was there to cheer me on.
I dunno. We lived in a pretty small town and everyone knew everyone else, and everyone knew my parents, so that might have been why the local police stepped up surveillance when I got my driver's license. Or maybe it just seemed that way. Whatever. The police never patrolled Walker Mill Road, so why there should be an officer conveniently driving along it just as we started the race I'll never know. I never cared to ask. But I was the ringleader, so it was my car that one officer drove to the station while I rode with the other in the squad car. Hoo, boy! I could hear Mom all the way to the station, which meant I got blessed out twice by the time I got home to actually hear her. Not only had I disobeyed, but I had been caught doing it. Hauled off to the police station, yet. My friends walked the short distance to my house, where they hid out in the back yard. What a way to spend a Saturday evening.
"Yeah, she's here," the sergeant told my dad over the phone. "Come on in and take her home."
We walked out to Dad's pickup in silence. I looked at my car, parked between two patrol cars.
"We'll get it later," Dad said. I didn't say anything; Mom's I-told-you-so lecture still ringing in my head before the fact, I knew better than to interrupt her. Dad and I rode in silence.
"Well," he finally said, and I waited for the inevitable lecture about riling Mom, waking sleeping dogs, whatever. "Did you win?"