a teenage boy learns to drive

The stuff of young boys dreams.  Bright chrome lake pipes and tri-power, louvers and painted flames, floor shift, dials and gages, bar grill moon hubcaps . . .


Cousin Jon and me pouring over the latest J.C. Whitney catalog fantasizing about racing through town in customized cars, soon as we got our licenses. He used to wax poetic about a hopped-up forty-nine ford coupe.  Windows blacked out so he could cut cookies in peoples yards without anyone seeing who was at the wheel. Fancied myself in a red sixty-one Corvette burning out of Dick's Drive-In parking lot after the Friday night game, open cutouts, cloud of acrid grey-blue smoke settling over the crowd of admirers.

The Sun Tac ads always captivated my longing beyond all the other treasures in those magazines.  Could almost taste the desire. Oh to have one of those things, shiny chrome white lettering on black dial, warm glow at night. I wanted the one that mounted up on the dash so a guy could keep one eye on the pulse of the engine the other on the lookout for cops.

If you looked over and saw it now, North Gate shopping mall deserted in the middle of the afternoon your blood would run cold.  End of the world or worse.  But in those days it seemed perfectly normal that stores closed on Sunday. Great place to learn to drive.  Soon as I got the learner's permit dad started taking me down there after Sunday dinner, three weeks after enjoying mom's chocolate pie on my sixteenth birthday a fresh new drivers license burned a hole in my back pocket.

Dad's car at that time was a light blue '57 Chev.  Four-door family car but not completely gutless.  Small block V-8 two barrel with three on the column, overdrive for the open road. No doubt in my mind it could beat a 283 with slushbox power-glide at least to the end of the first block.

Never actually raced that car but you can bet my heart took a leap inside the chest first time mom handed me the keys. Run up to the store on my own after dinner. Dry January streets, dark and not that much traffic around.  Burn me some rubber.

Had enough sense not to peal out in front of the house.  Still feel embarrassed about the time it happened front of a girl's house after church youth group one night a few weeks later. Streets were wet that night and once the tire broke traction, aw-shucks couldn't stop for a million bucks.

That first night with the car I  coasted around a dark corner slow, visualized the needle on my air tack jump fifteen hundred, dumped the clutch jam the peddle to the floor.

Hard to describe the feeling surging up a teenage boy's spine at that first squall of burning rubber.   Jolted back in the seat, adrenaline rush flashing through the entire frame.  Instant erection. I expected the adrenalin rush but the hard-on caught me by complete surprise.  Who would have thought there is a connection between all that junk and fast driving?  Hope the damned thing goes back down before I get home and have to walk into the kitchen.

Recently I had occasion to use Mary Jane's car, found myself amused to notice it has a tachometer on the right side of the speedometer.  Never look at the thing, forgot it was even there.

Amusing how one's passions change.  Red Corvette shiny chrome Sun Tac burning rubber at Dick's drive-in mellows over time into fantasies about red wine and quiet conversations.