Memory (two) Lane

I sometimes think about how I left California when I got out of high school and wound up in Missouri. I seriously thought you were supposed to leave town once you graduated. Why would you not? I still kind of think that, but I realize now that a good argument could be made to the contrary. 

It took me all summer to get my car in a good enough state of repair that I would trust it for a road trip like that. Well, I didn’t worry about it too much.  A little maybe—as much as I could worry about anything back then—but I must point out that my casual attitude was due not so much to lack of angst as it was to lack of information. I know a lot more now, and I could worry retroactively if I thought there was any point.  Kind of like watching Titanic.  At any rate, I eventually came around to this idea: Kansas City was a couple thousand miles from the Bay Area (San Francisco Bay,) it was about a three-day drive, thus, all I was asking of my car was that it last three more days. That’s like leaving work on a Friday before a three-day weekend and saying to your co-workers, see ya’ Tuesday! It would never occur to you to check with a couple people to see if they might be available to give you a ride to work. Three days. What could go wrong?

Probably only because I didn’t know any better, I made it. There was the incident with the new retread being out-of-round. I don’t know how that happens. I stopped and bought a used tire at a gas station in Kingman, Arizona, in the middle of the night. The best one they had seemed to have most of its remaining tread in the center, so I overinflated it a bit and went on. 

And the car ran and served me well for a long time after I got to Missouri.  Not a real long time, but a long time. That’s another story. That was a great car, though. It was a 1957 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery. As such, it was a two-door station wagon with no side windows behind the doors, just metal panels.  It had no back seat, and the rear tailgate was a single piece that hinged from the top, unlike the tradition station wagons. For a kid in the late Sixties, it was gold. A very rare, very cool looking machine. Mine was yellow, and there was only one other ’57 Sedan Delivery in the entire area. It was green, because I saw it once. 

This lent me a small amount of status when I got to Independence, Missouri, because I had this kind of hippy wagon with California plates, no less, and I had long hair. But therein lied another problem, which is that every cop either in Kansas City or Independence who saw my bright yellow hippy wagon, then saw the California plates, and then me, would inevitably pull me over. It was always under some manufactured pretext, usually that a car was stolen “answering the description” of my car. Which would be a yellow 1957 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery?  Hardly likely. Like I said—the other one was green. It took me three or four stops before I caught on. I learned to be polite. Once, I was stopped in the small town of Sugar Creek, which nestles right up against Independence, and asked if I was lost. I replied that I was only looking for 24 Highway (I knew where it was.)  

Oh, he said. Then you’re just passing through. Yep, I replied. Good, he said. “We have a nice little town here and we want to keep it that way.” I agreed whole-heartedly, and he let me go on. 

I wasn’t really a hippy, is the ironic part. At some point I got a haircut, but that didn’t help. All of this stopped when I finally got my Missouri license plates. I can’t help but think I would have gotten along a lot better if I had driven a Rambler to Missouri. Good cars. I wish I had one now.