Joyriding: an Introduction to Mortality
"Holy Sxxt!" It wasn't the first timeI had heard these words. My friends and I were of an age that they were quite common. What distinguished them this time from other times was the authenticicty of the fear that was intoned in them. My friend Pinky was scared.
Fear takes many forms. It sometimes generates an excitement or exhilaration known as an "adrenaline rush". Many adults live for this rush through activities such as skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving with sharks, and other dangerous activities. For children and young adults the pursuit of this feeling is as natural as breathing. One of the most fearfully exhilarating experiences I have had was the very first time I drove a car.
The events unraveled early on that memorable day; the day I turned sixteen. I didn't feel nervous that day at all. Although I was scheduled to take my driver's exam to get my first liscense, I was unusually calm. I was actually so confident that I drove, unlicensed, to the Department of Motor Vehicles to take my test. I passed it readily, having driven secretley for several weeks in advance. To celebrate, I was to drive my four closest friends to the old swimming hole, an abandoned stone quarry nine miles outside of our town.
My first car was dubbed "the tank". I had purchased it from my brother-in-law for all of seventy-five dollars. It was a nineteen fifty-four Oldsmobile and built like a tank with heavy chrome bumpers. This was to be its first maiden voyage onto the open road outside our town.
We traveled light, taking only swimsuits, towels, and one very large inner-tube from an eighteen-wheeler that we tied to the top of the car, running the clothesline we used around the inside of the car through the rear windows, thus sealing the rear doors of our four-door tank closed. The only other personal effect we took was an ancient cavalry sword that my friend, Pinky, had inherited from his deceased uncle and which he had brought by to show the gang.
The very motion of our new-found freedom made us giddy with excitement. We had barely traveled the two miles through town to the opposite side where we joinded up to the route 30 bypass before everyone began banging on the outside of the doors and shouting.
Five miles into our journey we passed through the only town along our way. It was appropriately named Mountville because it sat on a small hill. The entire town was only four blocks long and had one stop light in the middle. This light was extremely important because on the outskirts of Mountville the road descended in a long steep hill which ended in a sharp right curve. There was a passing lane, but it began almost halfway down the hill and ended just before reaching the curve at the bottom.
Our tank was a huge sturdy machine, but it was not fast. It's top speed was only eighty miles an hour and you needed a long stretch downhill with a good tailwind to reach it. There were four cars in frong of us as we slipped through Mountville and we all prayed we would not have to stop at the traffic light. By making this light you approached the downside of the hill outside of town with the extra momentum we would need for extra passing power.
We made the light.
Anticipated heightened our already excited outlook as we approached the crest of the hill. There was no approaching traffic in the passing lane and so immediately, although admittedly illegally, I swerved into the passing lane and shouted to my friends, "watch me take all four!"
"No way." said Dickie Stokes, who had called "shotgun" and was riding in front as my co-pilot with an unlit cigarette hanging casually out of the corner of his mouth. "way." I said. I was already pressing the 'pedal to the metal' and we were approaching the second car.
The trailing three cars of the caravan I was attempting to pass seemed horrified that I was passing in the 'no passing' zone and I could tell by the look on their faces that they doubted our tank's capability to finish this task successfully.
The tank was moaning as it struggled to respond to the obscene demands that were being placed upon it. With two cars now behind us and two cars ahead, moving downhill with a good tailwind, I felt confident we would make it.
My friends were ecstatic. They had all the windows down and were banging on the sides of the doors. Pinky had leaned way out of the rear window and was swinging his calvary sword over his head in ever-widening circles and in wild abandonment screaming the tune from the Lone Ranger; "Duh Duh Dunt, Duh Duh Dunt, Duh Duh Dunt Dunt Dunt - Duh Duh Dunt, Duh Duh Dunt, Duh Duh Dunt Dunt Dunt."
We were flying with the full fortitude and power that comes with youth in its most frightening form: FREEDOM!!
Then... Disaster! Pulling even with the third car, I surveyed the road ahead and what I saw made my heart stand still. At the bottom of the hill, coming around the bend, was an entire line of oncoming cars moving purposefully with their lights on. It was a funeral procession! We were flying smack at it at seventy miles an hour with closed traffic on the right and a steep drop off on the left. No way out!
As our situation dawned on my friends, one by one they became quiet and as I searched in mad panic for some type of evasive action I could see the blood leaving their faces as the shock of fear set in. All except Pinky, who was still hanging halfway out ot the car window singing his Lone Ranger medley and swinging his calvary sword.
"Floor it!" my friends seemed to scream in unison. "I am" I countered, "This is as fast as it gets!" In those few instants we all became intimately acquainted with death, or at the very least we stood for a moment on his doorstep as the door slowly creaked open and he solemnly approached, appropriately, in a hearst.
Then, from outside the car came Pinky's realization as he became aware of our plight and uttered his immortal cry, "Holy Sxxt!".
Indeed his intonation readily captured the moood as was our own joint offering of immediate prayer. And, as Divine Intervention would have it, Heaven responded by slamming death's door and whisking us to salvation.
The driver of the lead car to the right saw the critical situation and responded by braking hard as did the others in the caravan and a hole magically appeard to my right. I swerved the tank immediately and we cleared the rapidly closing gap in front of us by less than one hundred yeards. As I checked the mirror to assess the damage, chllls ran down my spine.
Pinky's gyrations with the cavalry sword had severed the clothesline holding the inner tube to the roof of the car. My sudden swerve to the right to save us from collision had completed the task and jerked loose the inner tube. It was now rolling down the hill in the opposite lane heading directly towrard the funeral procession. As I watched in horror, one by one, the black elongated hearst and followers were forced to brake hard and swerve toward the overhang side of the road to avoid collision. I could only imagine the faces of the occupants as they watched that giant black donut rumble by.
As quickly as the moment had come our panic subsided, being morphisized into raucous humor as youth is prone to do, but beneath the reassuring jokes and laughter that we all feigned to exhibit our false courage there was the pulsating undercurrent of fear. For each of us, for the very first time in our young lives knew that we were mortal after all and to this day no one speaks of that truth.
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