The Species with a Call

The Gospel According to a 1965 Chevy On a cool October afternoon in 1969 I stood at the curb of my high school parking lot enjoying the scene of yellow and orange maple leaves flickering in a light breeze. It was around 5:00 and most of students had gone home for the day. As I stood at the curb, I saw the football team emerge from the athletic building. They were big guys, especially Ralph Dickerson. He shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked toward the waiting cheerleaders. Reena Todd, one of the cheerleaders saw him and waved. She bounded up and kissed Ralph on the cheek. Arms around waists, they headed toward his red GTO. The two of them took no notice of me, enviously standing at the curb waiting for my father to come and pick me up. I had been part of the third student group to have practiced that afternoon - the orchestra, and while Ralph had his arm around Reena, I had my arm around a cello. Ralph opened the door for Reena and when he got in on the driver’s side, their shoulders nearly fused. I sighed heavily because a girl like that would never notice a skinny cello player. Besides, I didn’t have my driver’s license yet and to top everything off, I was waiting for my dad to come and pick me up. That’s when dad drove into the parking lot in his 1956 Chevy. He stopped in front of me and hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate that I was to put the cello in the trunk. I slammed the lid down, took a last look at Ralph and Reena, still one silhouette in the GTO, and slid in beside my dad. Dad did a tight u-turn, and headed back out. He asked me how practice had gone and when the concert was and I started to tell him when I noticed him staring in the rearview. He worked an unlit stogy across his lips, pulled it out of his mouth and spat a brown stream out the window. He crammed it back and growled, “That pretty boy behind me’s gettin’ me MAD.” I looked over my shoulder and there, no more than a half car-length behind us, was Ralph’s red GTO. He wove back and forth behind us, barely a half car length away, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear. I could see my father’s face turning red. I could see his jaw bones working as he chewed his stogy. My dad hated tailgaters. Oncoming traffic cleared and I heard the baritone crescendo of the GTO as Ralph whipped out to pass us. He glided up rather easily beside us. His rear bumper was just about even with our front tires when it happened. Actually, Ralph had no way of knowing what he was dealing with. My father had bought the ’56 as a second vehicle and had taken it to a friend of his who built small track race cars. They’d taken out the 283 power glide and installed a 409 four-in-the-floor with a Holly four-barrel carburetor. They’d stiffened the suspension and put in rack and pinion steering. If you ever paid attention to the low rumble when it idled you would suspect that if revved up, this engine would register 9 on the Richter scale. My dad’s perfectly domestic looking ’56 Belair was a monster in disguise. We had been going about 40 miles per hour when Ralph got almost past us. That’s when dad “stood on it.” Accompanied by a loud, bass growl, blue smoke erupted from around our rear tires and we shot forward like a navy jet from a catapult. I felt a powerful shove against my chest as I sank into the seat cushion. Objects blurred as they shot past the window. My hair blew straight back. After a few seconds, I looked over at the speedometer. It needled past 95. We plunged down a long straight-away toward a shallow swale where Lawyer’s Road crossed a creek. About a quarter mile later, dad hit the brakes to bring it back down to the speed limit. I looked back over my shoulder and Ralph’s GTO was a red blotch in the distance still descending the slope toward the creek. I looked at my father. “I can’t believe you did that! Man, that was cool!” My dad’s shoulders were shaking, he was laughing so hard. “I just couldn’t resist it!” Then he quit laughing and said, “Not a word to your mother, you hear?!” “Oh, no sir! No sir.” Of course not. This was a moment of true male bonding and I wasn’t about to reveal it to my mother. I settled back into the seat and fancied myself driving that ’56 to school after I turned 16 . . . My heart beat faster when I imagined it. Nothing would be more satisfying than pulling up beside Ralph in his GTO and watching his eyes bug out when he heard the sound of my 409 growling like a caged lion beneath the hood. As dad turned from Lawyer’s Road onto Idlewild Road toward our subdivision, I felt pride and a sense of power. My dad chuckled. “Did you see the look on his face? His mouth was hanging open!” And we laughed again. I said, “Man, I can’t wait to get my hands on this thing!” That’s when dad’s laughter tailed off and we drove the rest of the way home listening to the sound of the wind through the open windows and the deep throated hum from underneath the hood. I hooked my right arm out the window and grinned into the breeze. All was well with the world. Then, in March of 1970, one month prior to my 16th birthday, dad sold the ’56 Chevy.