I'm a newbie here, but a long time prepper and a beginning writer. This is the first novel length thing I wrote, and it shows of course, in the defects it has. I've done 3 more since this one that improved some. It is about 220,000 words, so be patient about me getting it all posted. But it IS complete, so I won't leave you hanging. This story has been posted on other forums so some of you may have already seen it. It becomes a PAW story after a long prep period. Here goes.
DIRTY MONEY
Chapter 1 RUNNER
In 1962, every teenage boy wanted a hot rod. Dad had driven his "old man's" model of '57 Ford to sell insurance until I turned 16 and got my driver's license, whereupon he treated himself to a new mid-size Ford with a small economy engine. I was delegated the old one to drive. It showed a lot of miles, burned just a little oil and was the Plain Jane model. No sexy trim and just a kind of lame V8, but at least I had wheels. I couldn't afford anything else with what I had saved from putting up hay and other farm work, so it had to do. Dad kept it in his name so the insurance was cheaper. There was no status to this ride whatsoever, so I had mixed emotions about it, but now I could at least ask a girl out, so that was good.
It was hard to get going, since the engine seemed pretty weak, but I limped around in it for a few weeks and got used to driving it. I found that it ran a lot better if I let it wind up in all 3 gears and that led to me cranking it up on a deserted highway one hot summer night, but I felt a bumping in the back and limped it home slow. I kept it clean and waxed, and even had a couple dates so things had been looking up until I found that big knot on the side of one of the recapped snow tires. Dad looked it over and said: A, I was lucky to get home on that tire. and B, it shouldn't have done this, so he called the tire shop in the county seat and they agreed they should replace it. Being summer, I was out of school, so it fell to me to go get it done.
They directed me to the last garage bay where an old guy with a gray buzz haircut took over. He looked at the tire, jacked it up and soon had it on the tire changer. He gave me a hard look and said, "You know that recaps won't hold up to what this car will do, don't you?" I gave him a blank look. He said, "Hot weather and high speeds will take a recap apart quick. If you're gonna run this thing hard, you need new tires, 'cause it will go fast enough to throw off the tread."
I told him it wasn't all THAT fast, afraid I'd have to pay for the tire. He just said, "Pop the hood." I did. He took a look and asked me what happened to the two-four's setup that was on the car? I swore it had never had anything but that little 2 barrel carb on it since Dad bought it. He gave me an odd look, then looked again under the rear wheel well. "Yep, this is the car all right, but somebody has changed the carbs on it. You DO KNOW about this car, don't you?"
I gave him another blank look. Over the next half hour or so that he tinkered with changing tires, he volunteered to "shave" all the tires round on some sort of lathe gizmo with a little round blade thing on it, and then balanced them for no charge. Business was slow, so we were the only two in the shop. He sat down and began to talk.
"You notice there is no rust on this car? Ever wonder about that? Every '57 on the street has rust around the headlights, under the doors, and behind the back wheels, but not this one. That's because it's got about 3 dozen coats of paint on it! This car came from a "dry" county down in Kentucky, and was used to run moonshine. They painted it a different color about every other week, to make it harder to find."
I sat there with my jaw hanging open and listened as he went on. "The reason it is so doggy taking off is because it has the rear gears from a station wagon that had an automatic trans in it, so the ratio is real fast. It will run over 60 in low gear, right?"
"Well, I know it will go pretty fast in Low, but I never went that fast."
"And it will do about 105 in Second gear, and with the 2-fours on it, you should see about 130 or better in High. I used to work on it some, since they wanted to keep it real dark down there in Kentucky and didn't keep it there."
"Kid, what you got here is not the 292 V8 you thought, but a bored out 312 cubic inch V8, with all the goodies that Ford made back then. They called this the "E2" motor. It makes right at 300 horsepower at peak torque RPM, and by the time you get it wound out, prob'ly about 3 and a quarter. They didn't put out good numbers on the HP rating, 'cause it made the insurance too high. Chevy did that too. That ain't all that much power, but this is the light body style, the Custom 300 model, and it is shorter and only weighs about 2600 pounds after they got done with it. So you got a better Horsepower-to-weight ratio than a new 'Vette! This thing is a RUNNER!"
My eyes must have bugged out and made him grin.
"You decide you want those 2 fours back on it, I think I might know the man who has them."
I indicated that I would dearly LOVE to have that setup, so he gave me directions to a country junkyard WAY back in the sticks. Half an hour later, I had bought the Edelbrock aluminum intake manifold with a pair of Holley four barrel carburetors on it and was 20 bucks lighter--a lot of money then, when 50 a week was a decent job for an adult. I got $5 a day for pitching hay and was lucky at that. I never said a word to Dad about this deal, and he never figured it out.
Lewis was a close friend and classmate whose Dad was not only a hotrodder, but also a State Trooper. What a combination, I thought, but it was true. I spent the weekend at his house, and after borrowing a second vacuum gauge to tune the carb settings, we got the 2-4's on it and running like it should. It burned a quarter of a tank of gas doing that, and I wondered if I could afford to feed this thing, but Lewis' dad explained progressive carburetor linkage to me.
"If you just keep your foot out of it, it will only use the small primaries to run on and will be just as economical as it was with the 2 barrel, but the minute you stand on the gas pedal, the gas gauge will go down about as fast as the speedometer goes UP!"
Okay, I understood. I would drive it sensibly.
But I HAD to know just what it would do, and Lewis' Dad knew that. He grinned and said, "Let's go see what it will do!"
I was aghast--this coming from a COP!! He reassured me and directed me to a long straight section of highway outside of town. The evening was cool, so I hoped the tires would hold together. At the edge of town, I had it up to about 70 when I hit the straightaway, as he'd told me, then romped on it. I chickened out with about 2" of gas pedal travel left, and slowed it down, scared the tires would pop.
Lewis' Dad said, "Not too bad, I got 126 on the radar, but it should do better than that."
I admitted that it had a lot left when I slowed down.
He nodded, "Yeah, can't push it with recaps on there. It oughta do 140, I think, and give my Dodge a hard run to keep up."
His patrol car was a Dodge "Dual Cross Ram", a 426 V8 with well over 400 HP. I was impressed, and knew I didn't have the tires, let alone the courage, to find out what it would really do. He gave me a serious talk then, about driving like I had some sense, so I didn't kill myself or somebody else. I took that to heart and vowed I would treat it right.
I drove home with a smile, knowing I had a real "sleeper" of a car--one that looked like an old lady might drive it to church on Sunday, but it had a dandy surprise inside for the teenaged hot rodders around home! Mom and Dad must have figured that Lewis and I had a great time over the weekend and suspected nothing. I was tuckered out from the late nights getting the wrench work done, and the stress, I suppose, so I slept like a log.
My gas budget wouldn't keep up with the car's appetite, but I learned that if I set the timing back a bit, I could run it on the cheap tractor gas in the farm tank. I tried not to overdo that, so Dad had plenty left for the farming. On a few Saturday nights, I set the timing back up where it belonged for good performance and paid dearly for half a tank of high-test gas. The local boys found out that it was not a good idea to bet me on a race, and the proceeds helped pay for the premium gas. Mostly, I kept it under wraps, about how fast that car really was. Unlike Lewis' Dad, some of the local law took a real dim view of kids and fast cars.
There were a lot of details the old mechanic had told me. The rear springs had a main leaf added, the leaves clamped together for stiffness, double shocks in back and "helper coil springs" on the front shocks. There was 150 pounds of lead poured into each rocker panel below the doors to lower the center of gravity, and make it less likely to roll over in a hard corner. That thing went through corners flat, like a go-kart. The clutch. driveshaft, and mufflers came from a dump truck, and it had oversize exhaust pipes. The engine had a super high performance camshaft that only needed the big carbs and a timing adjustment to let the engine squall like you stepped on the tail of a cat. He said something about Canadian forged connecting rods, a chromed steel crank, ported heads and "tuliped" valves. He had gone on for a long time, and I couldn't remember it all. All I knew for sure was that it was more car than I could handle, and drove it accordingly. For a while.
One other neat little feature of the car that he pointed out, was the button under the driver's seat. That car had the gas filler under the license plate, which was hinged to open and had a spring to keep it upright. Under the rubber mat in the trunk was a cable, like the throttle cable on a lawn mower. The front end of that went to the button under the driver's seat, and the back end could be hooked to the license plate, by unhooking the spring. Just push the button and your license plate laid down flat, so nobody could see it. Looked like it had fell off or something. Came in handy a few times.
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Chapter 2 BALL GAME
Indiana is a basketball state. High school tournaments are followed with almost religious fervor, by kids and adults alike. By the Spring of 1963, our tiny school had a great ball team and high hopes. The final game of the Sectional, Tri-County Tournament wasn't even close. We kicked butt from the start, and beat them all, including the big rival in the County Seat, where the tire shop was located, incidentally. In high spirits, kids and parents drove the 35 miles to that offended County Seat town to crow about the win, and clogged the streets with honking cars, kids waving and yelling at each other and at the locals, who didn't like it a bit. We cruised the town square so close together the locals couldn't get anywhere.
Myself and 3 other boys were in my car and decided to leave early before the law got into the act. I was just putt-putting over the hill near the edge of town when a red light came on behind me, and I had to pull over. Big John Law got out of the Town Marshall car, and tapped on my window. I just looked at him, not volunteering anything, wondering if he was going to try to tap me for speeding, but traffic had made that impossible. What could he want?
"Boy, this car's pretty loud, now ain't it?"
"I don't think so. One muffler's got a little hole, but they ain't that bad." It really wasn't loud. I hadn't done anything wrong. He was just looking for trouble for me.
"Well. START IT UP, so's I can listen to it!"
I did, just shoving in the clutch and keyed it. The warm motor caught right away and I let it idle
.
"WELL, WIND IT UP! I CAN"T TELL ANYTHING AT IDLE!"
He bent down on one knee, his head lowered near the doorsill. I gunned the motor. It wasn't all that loud. But the engine had modified heads with loose clearances for high RPM performance, and that meant that it used a little oil that leaked over the valve guides, and got blown out the exhaust. Idling for half an hour around town had allowed a lot of oil to collect in the muffler. The one with the hole. The one right next to his head.
He came up sputtering, with black oil all over one side of his face, and mad enough to eat me in one bite. Now, Momma didn't raise no stupid kids. I had already evaluated the abilities of his old 6 cylinder Chevy. He had not asked for my drivers license or registration, and I was pretty sure he had been too close to me, and too mad, to get my plate number. I saw instantly that this was no place for me to be. So, I side-stepped the clutch and did my first burnout with this car, learning on the fly just how damn fast it WAS! I made it over the next hill in record time, and was hitting about 90 in second when I caught up with a string of cars going back to our town after celebrating. I passed about 20 of them in a string and didn't let any grass grow under me the rest of the way home. Never saw that Town Marshall that night. He gave it up, seeing as how I had a big head start and his car was no competition for what he was looking at. One of the boys in my back seat said he was just standing there in the street when we went out of sight.
Again, not being an idiot, I managed to stay out of that town with THAT car for over a year and a half. It turned out that wasn't long enough, but that is another whole story.
Chapter 3 FIRST DATE
It was my first date with this girl. My mother and a friend of hers had set me up with her. That almost always turns out to be a disaster, but this was different in that I really liked the girl. The problems came later.
My problems were of my own making, mostly. I was just an ordinary farm kid back then, named Alan Walter. With only one grown sister, I grew up as practically an only child. Dad had done well on just 80 acres, raising a lot of high profit crops and registered livestock, but after a teenager's car hit his in the rear, the whiplash neck injury he got made it near impossible for him to continue doing the hard farm work. He tried, but it wasn't going to happen, so the farm work fell to me. Dad sold off the labor intensive stuff like hogs and a big lot of laying hens, keeping only some beef cows to make it possible for a kid to keep up with it. I didn't mind, and never knew anything else. All the neighborhood kids worked like dogs, but we all played hard, too.
Getting to my date was the problem, since I had to go through the County Seat town, or drive 20 miles out of the way. So, I went the short way, and hoped I could avoid that Town Marshall. I crept through the back streets in residential areas until I had to get back on the highway going east at the edge of town. I never saw the Town Marshall, so I thought I was home free, heading out the curvy highway.
It was a speed trap and had been for years. The road had a 20 MPH speed limit for half a mile out of town where it should have been 40 or 50. Everybody knew that, and watched for the County Mounties that got a lot of revenue from that stretch. One problem was the Sheriff's son. He wasn't much past 21 years old when his Dad got him hired as a deputy. He had an inflated idea of himself then, and gave tickets out as fast as he could write them, hoping to make a reputation so he could get elected Sheriff when his Dad retired, I heard. Wrong way to go about it, but, he was a kid.
When the State gave them money for an unmarked pursuit car, the kid got it. A brand new Studebaker Avanti, with the hotted up supercharged 289 V8. This was Studebaker's last gasp as a carmaker, but they did build a fast one. On a straight it would hit 150 MPH, I read in a car magazine. The company didn't put enough effort into the suspension though, and it handled about as well as a concrete truck.
I found the kid on my bumper headed out of town, and he STAYED on my bumper through that 20-zone, gunning the Studie, then dropping back, trying to egg me into a race. I knew better than that, but I also knew he would write me up for something, if he had to invent it. I puttered along in Second gear for half a mile, because the fast gear ratio wouldn't let it run in High at that speed. He stuck with me. All my choices were bad, once he had tagged onto me.
I realized that he couldn't have noticed my tag number, because he had stayed too close to me. It was dusk, and we both had our lights on. Okay. I pushed the button and laid the license tag down flat. His red light came on when I straightened up in the seat. I shifted to Low gear and it was on! I gained some through the rest of the curves, hitting second gear exitting the last one at around 60 as we hit the straight leading up a hill. The highway followed the ridgetop from the top of that hill, and was crooked again, going into a series of S turns.
We both were running about 90 at the hilltop when I let off and hit the brakes, knowing just how fast I could make that turn and crowding it to the limit. I had backed off to about 80, then nailed it again, using the high RPM in second gear to power through the first turn. He had been right on me, but I couldn't look back driving that hard. I let off just enough to cock the wheel the other way to set up for the switchback and nailed the throttle again, drifting the second turn with all 4 tires howling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw headlights jigging up and down far off to my left, but I was fully committed to driving the beast at that speed and couldn't look.
I knew he had to have gone off the road, because I didn't see headlights behind me. After another set of S turns, I got the car under control enough to look and saw headlights sitting still way off to the left. None behind me. Cool.
I went on to the next town and picked up my date, a really cute little brunette that was as nice as could be. We had a nice evening at her Junior Prom, but she was a bit young at 15, and her folks wanted her to come straight home. I set up another date for the next week and walked her to the door. I had high hopes for the future with her, but she was a just too young.
When I pulled out of her driveway, I remembered the cop chase again, and turned the other way. I went home by way of another town, at least 20 miles out of my way, but I figured there was no need to go poke the bear again tonight. Some time later, I learned that was a good decision.
Chapter 4 SECOND FIRST DATE
The county schools all got together once a year to show off their music programs with a joint show for the proud parents. I could never play any kind of instrument, but I could sing fairly well and got into our school chorus. This had the advantage of keeping me in close proximity to all the girls, which I thought was a lot better than running my legs off playing basketball to attract the girls' attention. I got enough of a workout at home and stayed thin and wiry.
Something over 200 kids got bussed to the school gym at the county seat for this deal, and mingled all day at rehearsal. Me and a buddy met a couple sweet young things seated near us that day and made dates for that evening. Me and Chuck drove to the event that night, having arranged to take the girls home later. The program went swimmingly, or did as far as I knew with my mind on the girl next to me. We talked it over and planned to dash out of the gym at the first possible chance to beat the traffic out of the parking lot, lest we be stuck there for an hour or more. We had better things in mind.
She was a little thing, but she was fast. We ran for the car to get started out well ahead of the herd. But some dimwit had parked a school bus right beside me, blocking my way out of the lot. No matter. I didn't see anyone threatening around and I had done a lot of off road driving around the farm. I went across the grass, through a couple yards and driveways, and we were free! Off to the Dog 'n Suds Drive-In for chow. Kids eat constantly, no matter what else may be on their minds.
Chuck had done something similiar, and got there right behind us. We ordered over the speaker thing and soon a curb waitress trotted out with our stuff. There was music on the Drive-In speakers as we ate chili dogs, french fries and slurped down root beer. I got to know Margaret a little better, especially those twinkling blue eyes and freckled face. Chuck and his girl took off ahead of us, still chewing. I didn't know EXACTLY where he was going, but I had the general idea. We all had scouted out some favorite parking places around the countryside.
We took our time eating and talking, learning more about each other. Margaret had several sisters and a couple little brothers. In those days, a lot of kids meant that each one didn't get much, and it showed some. She hadn't worn nylon stockings for this rather dressy occassion like most of the girls did, and her shoes were flats that had seen some wear. Her dress was a nice filmy thing, but just a little tight here and there, like she was outgrowing it. It made me think that she was probably not as well off as I was, and my family wasn't rich by any measure. I filed that away for reference.
She turned on the radio as we left, and found the rock station all the kids liked. I took it easy going out of town, not wanting any undue attention from the local gendarmes that watched young drivers like hawks. Out on the highway, I shifted into second gear and put my arm around her. The gearbox had been worked over to shift easily and I had a heavy chrome knob on the column shifter. When it got up to about 65, I just eased the clutch down and let gravity shift the lever down into high gear. That was a simple trick , but it always got a girl's attention. She snuggled a little closer and we were off down the road. It was a warm spring evening, and love was in the air.
Parking with a girl was a game that all the teenagers played. The trick was to not get caught by well intentioned adults who wanted to protect the virtue of all involved. Margaret directed me toward her home which was not in my usual stomping grounds. I worried over a place to park, but she had that covered.
As we travelled along the highway, she asked, "Do you know about the rock tunnel by Milltown?"
"Yeah, I've seen it going past."
"You can pull in there if you want. It's big enough to drive into and turn around back in there."
I wondered how she knew about this, and she caught that, adding, "My Dad used to work there when it was still going. That was a long time ago. He got laid off, and works at the gas station now."
That put a different light on things for me. Not much money to be made pumping gas. Even if he was a car mechanic, they had it pretty hard.
I checked for headlights, but there wasn't a car in sight when we turned off the highway and drove into the tunnel. It was really a limestone quarry. The top layers of limestone were poor quality, so instead of the normal pit style quarry, they had tunnelled into the side of the hill and blasted deep tunnels to get the good stone out. It had been shut down for several years. Very slowly, I drove deeper into the mine. There were huge pillars of stone left to support the stone overhead, but the open areas were roomy and about 10 or 12 feet high, following the layer of good stone back into the hill, and leaving the floor more or less level. Unlike some caves I had been in, it was bone dry in there. I found a spot to turn around and pointed the car at the entrance, probably a couple hundred feet away. The radio didn't work at all in there, so we were left with each other's company. That proved to be sufficient for an hour or so.
The car windows got pretty steamy, so we rolled them down to get some fresh air. It was pitch dark in the mine. I turned on the dome light in the car, and it hurt our eyes by then. She looked more dreamy-eyed than I had ever seen a girl before, and I got to wondering if it wasn't time for me to take her home. I had plans for college, and they didn't include winding up married to some girl I had barely met. It struck me hard then, that maybe I had become a target of opportunity for early marriage in her mind. It wasn't unheard of, for a girl in poor circumstances to figure out how to entrap a guy she decided she liked. I couldn't fault a poor kid for wanting out of a bad situation, but I didn't want to be a Daddy yet, either. Maybe that wasn't the case with Margaret, but there was a possibility there.
We got out of the car to cool off, walking around by the the dim light from the car interior. I could barely make out dim moonlight at the mine entrance far away.
"Did you drop some money," she asked?
"I don't think so." I looked as she bent to pick up a twenty dollar bill at the bottom of a rockpile. I saw several more behind that rock. We counted them up at $160!
"It ain't mine," I said, wondering how it could have gotten there. Margaret offered a possibility.
"Talk around here is that moonshiners use this place for a drop off spot. Maybe they lost it?"
I began to feel a chill that wasn't the cool mine air. Nobody wanted to cross that bunch.
"We better get out of here," I told her.
"Yeah! Let's go," she said a little nervously.
I put the money in my pants pocket and we dived for the car. In a minute or less, we were gone.
She told me where to turn onto a gravel road toward where she lived. I was right, the place looked pretty rough. We sat in the car for some time talking about the experience and decided we wouldn't say anything to anyone about it. It was a lot of money to us. I knew a man who worked as a millwright then and Union Scale wages for skilled trades barely made $100 a week, take-home pay. She was reluctant but I insisted that she take half of it.
I told her, "You found it. Finders keepers, they say."
That did it, and she tucked four twenties in the front of her dress.
"I better go in. Mom will be awake."
"Yeah. I gotta get home too."
She got out and headed for the door. I waited until she went inside and touched the key, bringing the familiar rumble of the old Ford to life. I eased off the hill where the house was, onto the barely noticeable creek gravel in what was supposed to be their driveway. An old pickup sat off to the side near the house. I drove only semi-conscious of my surroundings to the highway, my head full of the night's happenings. I was 15 miles down the road toward home when I figured out that neither of us had learned a way to contact the other. There had been no phone line going to their house, and I had not given her my number. I thought about it for a long time, considering the danger signals I had felt from her eagerness and from finding the money. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and decided she was an okay kid who was just getting carried away. But I finally decided to let it go, and didn't try to go find her again. College was calling me the next year, and I had my work cut out for me.
DIRTY MONEY
Chapter 1 RUNNER
In 1962, every teenage boy wanted a hot rod. Dad had driven his "old man's" model of '57 Ford to sell insurance until I turned 16 and got my driver's license, whereupon he treated himself to a new mid-size Ford with a small economy engine. I was delegated the old one to drive. It showed a lot of miles, burned just a little oil and was the Plain Jane model. No sexy trim and just a kind of lame V8, but at least I had wheels. I couldn't afford anything else with what I had saved from putting up hay and other farm work, so it had to do. Dad kept it in his name so the insurance was cheaper. There was no status to this ride whatsoever, so I had mixed emotions about it, but now I could at least ask a girl out, so that was good.
It was hard to get going, since the engine seemed pretty weak, but I limped around in it for a few weeks and got used to driving it. I found that it ran a lot better if I let it wind up in all 3 gears and that led to me cranking it up on a deserted highway one hot summer night, but I felt a bumping in the back and limped it home slow. I kept it clean and waxed, and even had a couple dates so things had been looking up until I found that big knot on the side of one of the recapped snow tires. Dad looked it over and said: A, I was lucky to get home on that tire. and B, it shouldn't have done this, so he called the tire shop in the county seat and they agreed they should replace it. Being summer, I was out of school, so it fell to me to go get it done.
They directed me to the last garage bay where an old guy with a gray buzz haircut took over. He looked at the tire, jacked it up and soon had it on the tire changer. He gave me a hard look and said, "You know that recaps won't hold up to what this car will do, don't you?" I gave him a blank look. He said, "Hot weather and high speeds will take a recap apart quick. If you're gonna run this thing hard, you need new tires, 'cause it will go fast enough to throw off the tread."
I told him it wasn't all THAT fast, afraid I'd have to pay for the tire. He just said, "Pop the hood." I did. He took a look and asked me what happened to the two-four's setup that was on the car? I swore it had never had anything but that little 2 barrel carb on it since Dad bought it. He gave me an odd look, then looked again under the rear wheel well. "Yep, this is the car all right, but somebody has changed the carbs on it. You DO KNOW about this car, don't you?"
I gave him another blank look. Over the next half hour or so that he tinkered with changing tires, he volunteered to "shave" all the tires round on some sort of lathe gizmo with a little round blade thing on it, and then balanced them for no charge. Business was slow, so we were the only two in the shop. He sat down and began to talk.
"You notice there is no rust on this car? Ever wonder about that? Every '57 on the street has rust around the headlights, under the doors, and behind the back wheels, but not this one. That's because it's got about 3 dozen coats of paint on it! This car came from a "dry" county down in Kentucky, and was used to run moonshine. They painted it a different color about every other week, to make it harder to find."
I sat there with my jaw hanging open and listened as he went on. "The reason it is so doggy taking off is because it has the rear gears from a station wagon that had an automatic trans in it, so the ratio is real fast. It will run over 60 in low gear, right?"
"Well, I know it will go pretty fast in Low, but I never went that fast."
"And it will do about 105 in Second gear, and with the 2-fours on it, you should see about 130 or better in High. I used to work on it some, since they wanted to keep it real dark down there in Kentucky and didn't keep it there."
"Kid, what you got here is not the 292 V8 you thought, but a bored out 312 cubic inch V8, with all the goodies that Ford made back then. They called this the "E2" motor. It makes right at 300 horsepower at peak torque RPM, and by the time you get it wound out, prob'ly about 3 and a quarter. They didn't put out good numbers on the HP rating, 'cause it made the insurance too high. Chevy did that too. That ain't all that much power, but this is the light body style, the Custom 300 model, and it is shorter and only weighs about 2600 pounds after they got done with it. So you got a better Horsepower-to-weight ratio than a new 'Vette! This thing is a RUNNER!"
My eyes must have bugged out and made him grin.
"You decide you want those 2 fours back on it, I think I might know the man who has them."
I indicated that I would dearly LOVE to have that setup, so he gave me directions to a country junkyard WAY back in the sticks. Half an hour later, I had bought the Edelbrock aluminum intake manifold with a pair of Holley four barrel carburetors on it and was 20 bucks lighter--a lot of money then, when 50 a week was a decent job for an adult. I got $5 a day for pitching hay and was lucky at that. I never said a word to Dad about this deal, and he never figured it out.
Lewis was a close friend and classmate whose Dad was not only a hotrodder, but also a State Trooper. What a combination, I thought, but it was true. I spent the weekend at his house, and after borrowing a second vacuum gauge to tune the carb settings, we got the 2-4's on it and running like it should. It burned a quarter of a tank of gas doing that, and I wondered if I could afford to feed this thing, but Lewis' dad explained progressive carburetor linkage to me.
"If you just keep your foot out of it, it will only use the small primaries to run on and will be just as economical as it was with the 2 barrel, but the minute you stand on the gas pedal, the gas gauge will go down about as fast as the speedometer goes UP!"
Okay, I understood. I would drive it sensibly.
But I HAD to know just what it would do, and Lewis' Dad knew that. He grinned and said, "Let's go see what it will do!"
I was aghast--this coming from a COP!! He reassured me and directed me to a long straight section of highway outside of town. The evening was cool, so I hoped the tires would hold together. At the edge of town, I had it up to about 70 when I hit the straightaway, as he'd told me, then romped on it. I chickened out with about 2" of gas pedal travel left, and slowed it down, scared the tires would pop.
Lewis' Dad said, "Not too bad, I got 126 on the radar, but it should do better than that."
I admitted that it had a lot left when I slowed down.
He nodded, "Yeah, can't push it with recaps on there. It oughta do 140, I think, and give my Dodge a hard run to keep up."
His patrol car was a Dodge "Dual Cross Ram", a 426 V8 with well over 400 HP. I was impressed, and knew I didn't have the tires, let alone the courage, to find out what it would really do. He gave me a serious talk then, about driving like I had some sense, so I didn't kill myself or somebody else. I took that to heart and vowed I would treat it right.
I drove home with a smile, knowing I had a real "sleeper" of a car--one that looked like an old lady might drive it to church on Sunday, but it had a dandy surprise inside for the teenaged hot rodders around home! Mom and Dad must have figured that Lewis and I had a great time over the weekend and suspected nothing. I was tuckered out from the late nights getting the wrench work done, and the stress, I suppose, so I slept like a log.
My gas budget wouldn't keep up with the car's appetite, but I learned that if I set the timing back a bit, I could run it on the cheap tractor gas in the farm tank. I tried not to overdo that, so Dad had plenty left for the farming. On a few Saturday nights, I set the timing back up where it belonged for good performance and paid dearly for half a tank of high-test gas. The local boys found out that it was not a good idea to bet me on a race, and the proceeds helped pay for the premium gas. Mostly, I kept it under wraps, about how fast that car really was. Unlike Lewis' Dad, some of the local law took a real dim view of kids and fast cars.
There were a lot of details the old mechanic had told me. The rear springs had a main leaf added, the leaves clamped together for stiffness, double shocks in back and "helper coil springs" on the front shocks. There was 150 pounds of lead poured into each rocker panel below the doors to lower the center of gravity, and make it less likely to roll over in a hard corner. That thing went through corners flat, like a go-kart. The clutch. driveshaft, and mufflers came from a dump truck, and it had oversize exhaust pipes. The engine had a super high performance camshaft that only needed the big carbs and a timing adjustment to let the engine squall like you stepped on the tail of a cat. He said something about Canadian forged connecting rods, a chromed steel crank, ported heads and "tuliped" valves. He had gone on for a long time, and I couldn't remember it all. All I knew for sure was that it was more car than I could handle, and drove it accordingly. For a while.
One other neat little feature of the car that he pointed out, was the button under the driver's seat. That car had the gas filler under the license plate, which was hinged to open and had a spring to keep it upright. Under the rubber mat in the trunk was a cable, like the throttle cable on a lawn mower. The front end of that went to the button under the driver's seat, and the back end could be hooked to the license plate, by unhooking the spring. Just push the button and your license plate laid down flat, so nobody could see it. Looked like it had fell off or something. Came in handy a few times.
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Chapter 2 BALL GAME
Indiana is a basketball state. High school tournaments are followed with almost religious fervor, by kids and adults alike. By the Spring of 1963, our tiny school had a great ball team and high hopes. The final game of the Sectional, Tri-County Tournament wasn't even close. We kicked butt from the start, and beat them all, including the big rival in the County Seat, where the tire shop was located, incidentally. In high spirits, kids and parents drove the 35 miles to that offended County Seat town to crow about the win, and clogged the streets with honking cars, kids waving and yelling at each other and at the locals, who didn't like it a bit. We cruised the town square so close together the locals couldn't get anywhere.
Myself and 3 other boys were in my car and decided to leave early before the law got into the act. I was just putt-putting over the hill near the edge of town when a red light came on behind me, and I had to pull over. Big John Law got out of the Town Marshall car, and tapped on my window. I just looked at him, not volunteering anything, wondering if he was going to try to tap me for speeding, but traffic had made that impossible. What could he want?
"Boy, this car's pretty loud, now ain't it?"
"I don't think so. One muffler's got a little hole, but they ain't that bad." It really wasn't loud. I hadn't done anything wrong. He was just looking for trouble for me.
"Well. START IT UP, so's I can listen to it!"
I did, just shoving in the clutch and keyed it. The warm motor caught right away and I let it idle
.
"WELL, WIND IT UP! I CAN"T TELL ANYTHING AT IDLE!"
He bent down on one knee, his head lowered near the doorsill. I gunned the motor. It wasn't all that loud. But the engine had modified heads with loose clearances for high RPM performance, and that meant that it used a little oil that leaked over the valve guides, and got blown out the exhaust. Idling for half an hour around town had allowed a lot of oil to collect in the muffler. The one with the hole. The one right next to his head.
He came up sputtering, with black oil all over one side of his face, and mad enough to eat me in one bite. Now, Momma didn't raise no stupid kids. I had already evaluated the abilities of his old 6 cylinder Chevy. He had not asked for my drivers license or registration, and I was pretty sure he had been too close to me, and too mad, to get my plate number. I saw instantly that this was no place for me to be. So, I side-stepped the clutch and did my first burnout with this car, learning on the fly just how damn fast it WAS! I made it over the next hill in record time, and was hitting about 90 in second when I caught up with a string of cars going back to our town after celebrating. I passed about 20 of them in a string and didn't let any grass grow under me the rest of the way home. Never saw that Town Marshall that night. He gave it up, seeing as how I had a big head start and his car was no competition for what he was looking at. One of the boys in my back seat said he was just standing there in the street when we went out of sight.
Again, not being an idiot, I managed to stay out of that town with THAT car for over a year and a half. It turned out that wasn't long enough, but that is another whole story.
Chapter 3 FIRST DATE
It was my first date with this girl. My mother and a friend of hers had set me up with her. That almost always turns out to be a disaster, but this was different in that I really liked the girl. The problems came later.
My problems were of my own making, mostly. I was just an ordinary farm kid back then, named Alan Walter. With only one grown sister, I grew up as practically an only child. Dad had done well on just 80 acres, raising a lot of high profit crops and registered livestock, but after a teenager's car hit his in the rear, the whiplash neck injury he got made it near impossible for him to continue doing the hard farm work. He tried, but it wasn't going to happen, so the farm work fell to me. Dad sold off the labor intensive stuff like hogs and a big lot of laying hens, keeping only some beef cows to make it possible for a kid to keep up with it. I didn't mind, and never knew anything else. All the neighborhood kids worked like dogs, but we all played hard, too.
Getting to my date was the problem, since I had to go through the County Seat town, or drive 20 miles out of the way. So, I went the short way, and hoped I could avoid that Town Marshall. I crept through the back streets in residential areas until I had to get back on the highway going east at the edge of town. I never saw the Town Marshall, so I thought I was home free, heading out the curvy highway.
It was a speed trap and had been for years. The road had a 20 MPH speed limit for half a mile out of town where it should have been 40 or 50. Everybody knew that, and watched for the County Mounties that got a lot of revenue from that stretch. One problem was the Sheriff's son. He wasn't much past 21 years old when his Dad got him hired as a deputy. He had an inflated idea of himself then, and gave tickets out as fast as he could write them, hoping to make a reputation so he could get elected Sheriff when his Dad retired, I heard. Wrong way to go about it, but, he was a kid.
When the State gave them money for an unmarked pursuit car, the kid got it. A brand new Studebaker Avanti, with the hotted up supercharged 289 V8. This was Studebaker's last gasp as a carmaker, but they did build a fast one. On a straight it would hit 150 MPH, I read in a car magazine. The company didn't put enough effort into the suspension though, and it handled about as well as a concrete truck.
I found the kid on my bumper headed out of town, and he STAYED on my bumper through that 20-zone, gunning the Studie, then dropping back, trying to egg me into a race. I knew better than that, but I also knew he would write me up for something, if he had to invent it. I puttered along in Second gear for half a mile, because the fast gear ratio wouldn't let it run in High at that speed. He stuck with me. All my choices were bad, once he had tagged onto me.
I realized that he couldn't have noticed my tag number, because he had stayed too close to me. It was dusk, and we both had our lights on. Okay. I pushed the button and laid the license tag down flat. His red light came on when I straightened up in the seat. I shifted to Low gear and it was on! I gained some through the rest of the curves, hitting second gear exitting the last one at around 60 as we hit the straight leading up a hill. The highway followed the ridgetop from the top of that hill, and was crooked again, going into a series of S turns.
We both were running about 90 at the hilltop when I let off and hit the brakes, knowing just how fast I could make that turn and crowding it to the limit. I had backed off to about 80, then nailed it again, using the high RPM in second gear to power through the first turn. He had been right on me, but I couldn't look back driving that hard. I let off just enough to cock the wheel the other way to set up for the switchback and nailed the throttle again, drifting the second turn with all 4 tires howling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw headlights jigging up and down far off to my left, but I was fully committed to driving the beast at that speed and couldn't look.
I knew he had to have gone off the road, because I didn't see headlights behind me. After another set of S turns, I got the car under control enough to look and saw headlights sitting still way off to the left. None behind me. Cool.
I went on to the next town and picked up my date, a really cute little brunette that was as nice as could be. We had a nice evening at her Junior Prom, but she was a bit young at 15, and her folks wanted her to come straight home. I set up another date for the next week and walked her to the door. I had high hopes for the future with her, but she was a just too young.
When I pulled out of her driveway, I remembered the cop chase again, and turned the other way. I went home by way of another town, at least 20 miles out of my way, but I figured there was no need to go poke the bear again tonight. Some time later, I learned that was a good decision.
Chapter 4 SECOND FIRST DATE
The county schools all got together once a year to show off their music programs with a joint show for the proud parents. I could never play any kind of instrument, but I could sing fairly well and got into our school chorus. This had the advantage of keeping me in close proximity to all the girls, which I thought was a lot better than running my legs off playing basketball to attract the girls' attention. I got enough of a workout at home and stayed thin and wiry.
Something over 200 kids got bussed to the school gym at the county seat for this deal, and mingled all day at rehearsal. Me and a buddy met a couple sweet young things seated near us that day and made dates for that evening. Me and Chuck drove to the event that night, having arranged to take the girls home later. The program went swimmingly, or did as far as I knew with my mind on the girl next to me. We talked it over and planned to dash out of the gym at the first possible chance to beat the traffic out of the parking lot, lest we be stuck there for an hour or more. We had better things in mind.
She was a little thing, but she was fast. We ran for the car to get started out well ahead of the herd. But some dimwit had parked a school bus right beside me, blocking my way out of the lot. No matter. I didn't see anyone threatening around and I had done a lot of off road driving around the farm. I went across the grass, through a couple yards and driveways, and we were free! Off to the Dog 'n Suds Drive-In for chow. Kids eat constantly, no matter what else may be on their minds.
Chuck had done something similiar, and got there right behind us. We ordered over the speaker thing and soon a curb waitress trotted out with our stuff. There was music on the Drive-In speakers as we ate chili dogs, french fries and slurped down root beer. I got to know Margaret a little better, especially those twinkling blue eyes and freckled face. Chuck and his girl took off ahead of us, still chewing. I didn't know EXACTLY where he was going, but I had the general idea. We all had scouted out some favorite parking places around the countryside.
We took our time eating and talking, learning more about each other. Margaret had several sisters and a couple little brothers. In those days, a lot of kids meant that each one didn't get much, and it showed some. She hadn't worn nylon stockings for this rather dressy occassion like most of the girls did, and her shoes were flats that had seen some wear. Her dress was a nice filmy thing, but just a little tight here and there, like she was outgrowing it. It made me think that she was probably not as well off as I was, and my family wasn't rich by any measure. I filed that away for reference.
She turned on the radio as we left, and found the rock station all the kids liked. I took it easy going out of town, not wanting any undue attention from the local gendarmes that watched young drivers like hawks. Out on the highway, I shifted into second gear and put my arm around her. The gearbox had been worked over to shift easily and I had a heavy chrome knob on the column shifter. When it got up to about 65, I just eased the clutch down and let gravity shift the lever down into high gear. That was a simple trick , but it always got a girl's attention. She snuggled a little closer and we were off down the road. It was a warm spring evening, and love was in the air.
Parking with a girl was a game that all the teenagers played. The trick was to not get caught by well intentioned adults who wanted to protect the virtue of all involved. Margaret directed me toward her home which was not in my usual stomping grounds. I worried over a place to park, but she had that covered.
As we travelled along the highway, she asked, "Do you know about the rock tunnel by Milltown?"
"Yeah, I've seen it going past."
"You can pull in there if you want. It's big enough to drive into and turn around back in there."
I wondered how she knew about this, and she caught that, adding, "My Dad used to work there when it was still going. That was a long time ago. He got laid off, and works at the gas station now."
That put a different light on things for me. Not much money to be made pumping gas. Even if he was a car mechanic, they had it pretty hard.
I checked for headlights, but there wasn't a car in sight when we turned off the highway and drove into the tunnel. It was really a limestone quarry. The top layers of limestone were poor quality, so instead of the normal pit style quarry, they had tunnelled into the side of the hill and blasted deep tunnels to get the good stone out. It had been shut down for several years. Very slowly, I drove deeper into the mine. There were huge pillars of stone left to support the stone overhead, but the open areas were roomy and about 10 or 12 feet high, following the layer of good stone back into the hill, and leaving the floor more or less level. Unlike some caves I had been in, it was bone dry in there. I found a spot to turn around and pointed the car at the entrance, probably a couple hundred feet away. The radio didn't work at all in there, so we were left with each other's company. That proved to be sufficient for an hour or so.
The car windows got pretty steamy, so we rolled them down to get some fresh air. It was pitch dark in the mine. I turned on the dome light in the car, and it hurt our eyes by then. She looked more dreamy-eyed than I had ever seen a girl before, and I got to wondering if it wasn't time for me to take her home. I had plans for college, and they didn't include winding up married to some girl I had barely met. It struck me hard then, that maybe I had become a target of opportunity for early marriage in her mind. It wasn't unheard of, for a girl in poor circumstances to figure out how to entrap a guy she decided she liked. I couldn't fault a poor kid for wanting out of a bad situation, but I didn't want to be a Daddy yet, either. Maybe that wasn't the case with Margaret, but there was a possibility there.
We got out of the car to cool off, walking around by the the dim light from the car interior. I could barely make out dim moonlight at the mine entrance far away.
"Did you drop some money," she asked?
"I don't think so." I looked as she bent to pick up a twenty dollar bill at the bottom of a rockpile. I saw several more behind that rock. We counted them up at $160!
"It ain't mine," I said, wondering how it could have gotten there. Margaret offered a possibility.
"Talk around here is that moonshiners use this place for a drop off spot. Maybe they lost it?"
I began to feel a chill that wasn't the cool mine air. Nobody wanted to cross that bunch.
"We better get out of here," I told her.
"Yeah! Let's go," she said a little nervously.
I put the money in my pants pocket and we dived for the car. In a minute or less, we were gone.
She told me where to turn onto a gravel road toward where she lived. I was right, the place looked pretty rough. We sat in the car for some time talking about the experience and decided we wouldn't say anything to anyone about it. It was a lot of money to us. I knew a man who worked as a millwright then and Union Scale wages for skilled trades barely made $100 a week, take-home pay. She was reluctant but I insisted that she take half of it.
I told her, "You found it. Finders keepers, they say."
That did it, and she tucked four twenties in the front of her dress.
"I better go in. Mom will be awake."
"Yeah. I gotta get home too."
She got out and headed for the door. I waited until she went inside and touched the key, bringing the familiar rumble of the old Ford to life. I eased off the hill where the house was, onto the barely noticeable creek gravel in what was supposed to be their driveway. An old pickup sat off to the side near the house. I drove only semi-conscious of my surroundings to the highway, my head full of the night's happenings. I was 15 miles down the road toward home when I figured out that neither of us had learned a way to contact the other. There had been no phone line going to their house, and I had not given her my number. I thought about it for a long time, considering the danger signals I had felt from her eagerness and from finding the money. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and decided she was an okay kid who was just getting carried away. But I finally decided to let it go, and didn't try to go find her again. College was calling me the next year, and I had my work cut out for me.
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