Drive - A Memoir 80th Installment
the
tire made in the dirt. It’s only about 2 inches wide!”
“Exactly!”
I marveled. “I went full throttle, in high gear, the speedometer
went up to 100 miles per hour, and the left wheel was stopped. That
means the tire you were watching was spinning at 200 miles per hour
and the centrifugal force threw the tire out as thin as a pancake.
Did you see the rooster tail of dirt was thrown clear over the shop?”
“I
did! I did! Well, not over
the shop,” Russ corrected me.
“Let’s
get out of the dirt and onto the asphalt; we need to see how much
smoke we can churn up as we burn the tires.” I yelled over my
shoulder as I ran to beat Russ to the driver’s seat. We charged
down the dirt drive onto the asphalt road. Drawing a deep breath and
gripping the steering wheel I jumped on the accelerator, the tires
screamed, the engine roaring we gathered speed fast and I thought it
was going to fishtail so I slammed on the brakes. We stopped and the
blue smoke caught up to us wrapping around us like a fog.
“Smell
that?” I said excitedly. “Don’t you just love the smell of
burnt rubber in the morning? Let’s really put up a smoke screen,
and make enough smoke the neighbors think the desert is on fire!” I
powered the wheels into a spin in first, threw the Whiz Gizzy into
second keeping the tires smoking, then third powering the V–8 at
full throttle. The speedometer swung up over a 100; the engine noise
without mufflers was painful, but still not loud enough to cover the
sound screaming tires. We were just picking up some speed when the
‘wheel hopping’ started.
“Ugh,
ugh, ugh stop – ugh, ugh,” Russ forced out, his knuckles white
from griping the windshield frame, but not as white as his face.
“S..st…st…sto..stop.”
I
was bouncing so hard I couldn’t think. I could barely hold onto the
steering wheel tight enough not get bucked totally out of the Whiz
Gizzy. Suddenly the engine died, the earthquake bouncing stopped, and
I hit the brake, my heart pounding. I was bounced so hard and held on
so tight I was in pain. We just sat there for a time gathering our
thoughts, trying to get our minds around what just happened.
“I…I
don’t think we should do that again,” Russ managed.
“Ya
think,” I breathed.
“I’m
real glad you shut off the engine!” He said.
“I
didn’t.”
“What?”
his eyes flashing with confusion.
“I
mean the engine died on its own,” I admitted.
“You
think God
saved us,” Russ, ‘the faithless,’ questioned quietly.
We
look back at the black streaks that gradually turned into black
dotted lines left by our tires and gazed at the pieces and parts that
were bounced off the Whiz Gizzy. First, there
500 more words tomorrow
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Comments