A true story from the attic of my mind.
He was the least likely looking character to play the role. He had neatly combed hair with a pompadour wave in the front. He wore a madras shirt, Khaki pants, and penny loafers. He was handsome with a smile that revealed perfect teeth (I know, my dad was a dentist.). How to describe his job? Hmmmm. You’ve seen people whose job it is to refill candy machines or soda machines? His was a variation on that theme. It was to restock newsstands and stores that sold magazines with what in the ’60s was called racy or smutty publications. Looking in his trunk was like falling down an 18-year-old’s rabbit hole. He was the Mad Hatter of our salacious dreams. And we didn’t even know him.
We were at a party in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It had about run its course, and we were ready to go. He offered to give us a ride, and here came the second clue. The first was having a seemingly bottomless capacity to drink rum and cokes. The second was that he said he had to go to work and would make a few stops on his way into town to leave us off. Who starts work at 11 p.m.? The answer is people who stock stores that open early in the morning. His job was to leave these bundles of beauties by the doors.
He stopped us as we were about to get into the car, leaning in to scoop up a few stray copies that were on the back seat. They belonged in the trunk, he said. As he moved towards the back of the car, we were on him like hounds that had just hit on a scent. What else would be in the trunk? Inquiring minds wanted to know.
The open trunk revealed piles of magazines whose covers were adorned with partially clad, beautiful women leering up at us. There was Playboy and Penthouse, a newspaper whose name I can’t put in print here. It is named after a construction fastening implement: a spike with a head and a notch used to turn it into wood. For you crossword folks, it’s five letters ending in “W.” Still can’t get it? Ask and I shall tell.
There were others, most named after women’s body parts.
He had a brand-new car, one advertised as a rocket. I think it was an Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile or not, it would soon show why it was called a rocket.
We piled into the car and in a second learned why the rocket was called the rocket. He hit the gas pedal, and we made impressions on the car seat. It was the closest feeling I’d ever had to being an astronaut on blastoff.
Washington was one of the first cities in the nation to have beltways, called in some places circumferentials, highways that took you around the heart of the city rather than through it. At 11 o’clock at night, there were few cars on it, and those that were used it like the Indy 500. It was here that our boy decided why have a rocket if you weren’t going to use it.
It took no time to hit 60 mph and less to get to 70. At 80, we all began to sweat. We tried to calm him, to get him to slow down. Some of us reasoned, some of us screamed. A smile began to crease his face that was worthy of a Stephen King character. We were in trouble and at 90 we knew it. Strange things go through your mind at times like that. I distinctly remember this couplet from Shakespeare’s Hamlet popping into my head: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble.”
That’s what the grin brought to mind.
This car had a large speedometer set into a metal circle. It had large numbers so we could easily see that there were still a lot of numbers after 90. The rocket could do 140 mph. And it didn’t have seat belts. We were terrified; his grin was locked in place.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a car doing over 100 mph. You pass things very quickly. Highway lights seem to be strung together with little separation between them. And if you can think at all, you realize you have passed each exit sign before, and the next time you came up it was not all that long ago.
If there is a saving grace of racing at the three numerals part of the speedometer, it is that a car not designed for fuel efficiency uses a lot of gasoline at 120 mph very quickly. I don’t know if we’d done three or four laps. I do have a distinct memory of having already seen many of the cars we passed, but there came a time when thankfully we were running out of gas. It was here that our AJ Foyt wanna be decided he’d stop for gas and drop off his first load of smut. God’s hand must have guided us on the off-ramp; that’s the only thing that could have kept us from flying off into space.
If you are a believer, you believe God will show up for you when you need Him or Her most. They say every soldier in a foxhole is a believer. Well, believe you me, this was an Oldsmobile full of believers. God came through for us. When you are going at the speed of sound, or it seems like it, and slow down to 15 or 20 mph, your body seems to decompress. Hard to explain. Your body still thinks it’s speeding, but something is holding you back. Again, the hand of God? Call it what you may, we had a red light and had to stop. As we rolled up to the white line, I was the first to notice that in the next lane was a state trooper. As he looked over at this car overloaded with kids, I started to yell, push the kid next to me, and act the fool—anything to have him stop us, which he did.
I don’t know how we got home. I think AJ got nailed for DUI. Once we explained to John Law what had transpired and he saw we were sober (we probably weren’t when all this started, but fear burned the alcohol out of us), he let one of us drive the car home.
What’s the end of this tale? You won’t catch me going more than five miles an hour over the speed limit. And I don’t accept rides with people I don’t know. ’probably good advice to you as well. Columnist and author Bill Gralnick was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He recently finished a humorous memoir trilogy. The first book is “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales from Brooklyn.” The second is “George Washington Didn’t Sleep Here.” The recently published third is, That’s Why They Call It Work.” He is currently working on a novel. His books are available on Amazon and his other writings at https://www.williamgralnickauthor.com.
