Cars

I was inspired by Rick's comments to dedicate this post to cars. I hesitate to tell some of these stories because I still have teenage drivers at home but just let me warn my children that if I ever catch you doing anything similar to what I did then you will receive the same punishment that I would have received had my Dad caught me.

My driving experience began when I was about five years old. Greg would either throw hay to the cows from the bed of this big truck or perhaps he was throwing hay onto it but what ever he was doing, he asked me to drive the truck while he was doing it. I believe it was a big one ton but I know I couldn't reach the peddles so he pulled out the throttle just enough that the truck was crawling across the field and it was my job to stand on the seat and keep the truck going in a straight line. When we reached the end of the field he would hope into the truck, turn it around and then I would get it to the other end of the field. We moved to Waterton when I was about 12 years old and as we were building the motel I drove the tractor quite a bit. I loved that job. Once the motels were built I then drove cars between the two motels hauling dirty laundry and clean laundry back and forth. Waterton during the off season is a very small place with perhaps a hundred people living there. Since we moved up long before the season began and moved back long after it ended I had plenty of chances to drive around town long before I even had my learners license. Technically I wasn't allowed to deviate between the shortest route between the two motels but I found that I often took the occasional detour. Suffice it to say that by the time I received my drivers license on my birthday in 1974 I had plenty of experience driving and I was so excited about cutting that apron string.

When I first got my drivers license my Dad sat me down and we had a talk. Since I was child number five and three of my four older siblings had given my Dad more gray hair and wrinkles that any father should deserve there was no way that I was going to get away with anything since he had experienced it all. He pointed out to me that we had three or four perfectly good vehicles sitting in the driveway so there was no need for me to go and buy my own car. He told me that if I drove his cars that he would always keep gas in them and he would pay the insurance but if I felt that I really needed my own car then I would be responsible for my own gas and own insurance (that one convinced me right there). He said that he would give me no restrictions on driving except for two rules, I was never to go to Lethbridge without permission and I was never to stunt. I wonder if off-roading could be construed as stunting?

The big pass time in Cardston was "dragging main street". Thinking back on it now it seems quite ridiculous but boy was it fun when I was a teenager. There really isn't anything like it in San Diego but let me try and explain it. Cardston has one main street and all we would do is drive up and down the street all night long. All of your friends were doing the same thing so you would roll down the windows and yell at each other and talk but that was all we did. We'd drive north and turn around at the car wash and then drive south and do a U turn somewhere around the bridge. Later at night "dragging main" evolved into something much more exciting. This was especially popular after the stake dances. I don't remember exactly what the point of this was but I think the idea was to try and lose the guy following you. For example if Tom was out in his fancy new little car then I would follow him in the old Ford and Tom would try and ditch me. He would speed, take corners way too fast or sometimes we would go off-roading through some very treacherous terrain. We knew every single back alley and dirt trail in town and we would hit most of them in a night. Tom always had a nice new car or his little pickup but I either had the Ford or Dads big Chevy and Rick has the huge old baby blue beast of a car that he drove. What was that car, a Mercury or something? It wasn't just Tom and Rick either but it seemed like most of the youth after the dance were involved. I have no idea why I never got a speeding ticket or wrecked the car but we would drive crazy. The ride home after the dance was usually a lot more fun that the dance itself. From the social center where the dances were to my house was less than a mile but I'll bet it took us an hour (and about twenty miles) to get home.

One time I was cruising town in Waterton. The speed limit in Waterton is something like 15 mph and it is really tough to keep the speed down. While living in such a small town has it's advantages it also has it's down side. A Mountie pulled me over for speeding, he told me that he didn't want to give me a ticket but I was going so fast that he just couldn't let it go. I knew I deserved it but imagine my surprise when I walked into the house and the first thing Mom said to me was, "so you were driving a little fast today were you?". That cop had given me the ticket and then drove straight to my parents and apologized to them for giving me a ticket. You can't have any secrets in a small town.

Jacking up the axle of cars has become a family tradition but we used it frequently as a teenager. I'd totally forgotten about this until Rick mentioned it. If you jack up one of the drive wheels of a car and sit the axle on a block so that the wheel is about a quarter inch off the ground then the car can't go anywhere. The spider gears in the differential try and evenly distribute the torque on the drive wheels so if one wheel is spinning the other wheel can't turn. When people were in the movie we would sometimes block up their wheels so that they couldn't go. It is amazing how long it took some of them to figure out what the problem was.

I never really got into the stunting thing because my Dads warning always went off in the back of my head but I did pick up some bad habits from Dixie. On the road to Waterton, highway 5 crosses the Belly River and leading to the bridge the highway goes a couple of miles down a very steep and very long hill. To make it even more tempting it is as straight as an arrow the whole time. With no turn and a steep down hill guess what any teenager just has to do? That is right, you need to see if you can bury the needle. You could never do this in the old Ford but Dad always drove big enormous Chevrolet Impala's and they had the kind of speedometer that came up from zero on the left side and then you hit the maximum (either 100 or 120 mph) on the right side. If you kept going beyond the maximum there was no pin so the needle just kept going until it was hidden behind the panel at the bottom of the display. Once the needle was out of sight then it was "buried". I'm guessing you were way over 130 mph once the needle was buried but Dixie did it once when I was a kid and I about wet my pants. Once I had my license of course I had to do it for myself. Going that speed is incredible and every dip in the road becomes a major launching ramp. There was a road going out to Aetna that was also very straight with no turns. There was no hill but it was much longer and that was another place where we used to test the ability of Dad's cars. Very exciting but also very stupid. I think a gopher might have sent my car flying into the ditch if I'd hit one, can you imagine what a cow would have done?

I remember very well the story Rick was referring to. It was Halloween and we were now too old to go trick or treating and we didn't feel right about stealing kids candy so we decided we would set a bail of hay on fire in some cool location. We would of course be responsible vandals and make sure it was a safe location. We were in the Ford which was perfect because the cops would instantly stop any truck with hay in the back. With the van we could throw a bail of hay into the back and no body would see it. We drove out south of town and found a good field with lots of hay bails. We pulled off to the side of the road, looked around for any witnesses and then we quickly threw a hay bail into the back of the van and we were off. We didn't even get a quarter mile down the road and a Mountie pulled me over. I have no idea where he was because we looked but I guess he'd been through Halloween before and knew what to expect. I guess we should have gone further out of town. I didn't get a ticket (thank goodness) but that guy ruined a very cool Halloween trick.

My favorite pass time was after a rainstorm or during the spring as the snow was melting. Highway 5 came into Cardston from Lethbridge and just as you reached town it made a big sweeping bend towards the west just as it passed the Indian Hospital. The highway at that point was quite steeply banked and it always formed a long and deep puddle of water right there on the shoulder. We would wait until there were a lot of people beside the road and then we'd hit that puddle going as fast as we dared. It would send a wall of water at least ten feet high completely engulfing anyone who happened to be anywhere close. We would drive all over town looking for puddles like that and innocent bystanders who we could victimize.

I have to tell a story about one time when I was the victim of such a rude prank. We were at "Whoop Up Days" in Lethbridge. I can't remember if I was with a girl or with my family but it had rained hard as we are at the park but it had quit just before the park closed. I was walking with a girl (either a friend or a sister) to my car. We'd parked outside the park and we were walking along the street and there were hundreds of people crowded together all along this street. I didn't really notice that the gutters were running quite full all along the side of the street. As we were walking I could hear screaming way in the distance behind us. The screaming continued and was getting louder. Finally it got so loud and so close that out of curiosity I turned around and saw a car going at least 40 miles an hour with his right tire in the water in the gutter. He was throwing up a wall of water just as impressive as any I had made and he was completely drenching everyone on the side of the road. I had no more than a few seconds to react but there were so many people that I didn't have a chance of escaping it. All I could do was to try and shield the girl I was with and admire the jerk who was driving. I couldn't even get mad at him.