you know who we are
part 7
got back to bills uncles house,and before we got packed up to leave he let me check out the fire engine he was building.pretty impressive indeed.said our goodbyes there and headed to lansing for a last night with the timlins.we hung out,played some music,talked and laughed about old times.the part that really
sticks in my mind though,is uncle paul out in the driveway checking out our car.he walked around it,kicked the tires and pronounced them unfit for travel.bill and i pooh-poohed that,with bill saying he had just put fresh retreads on before we left. hahahahahahahaha...i never could tell if he was kidding us or what.he had a great sense of humor,as i remembered from,well all my life around him.but i suspect he was serious.but hell,bill was 18 and i was 19...and at that age,you're gonna live forever,right?
as i think back on that episode i feel bad about our refusal to take him seriously.i don't know that it affected him in any way shape or form,he was just giving us his opinion. to the best of my knowlage ,outside of our goodbyes that was the last conversation he and i ever had...
anyway,the timlins had already taken mom and cyndi down to detroit to fly home,so it was just us that last night..we talked till the wee hours and then drifted off...
so morning came,we ate, packed up said our goodbyes and hit the road.driving away i had no idea i wouldn't see any of the timlins ,except big d ,ever again.
we reversed our route and went to columbus to say goodbye to the byers family.big lunch,some sandwiches to go and we said our goodbyes to them also . and again steve had no idea he would never see any of them again...
on the road out of columbus bill and i discussed the trip home..and the trip back to michigan in a couple of months.we were both both excited about our new-found "relationships", and desire to quickly return.we decided our best option was to drive straight though to san diego.after all,the quicker we got back to dago the quicker we could get back to mi.
we drove and drove,stopping only for gas and bathroom breaks. at least at first,then our sandwich supply ran out and we got a burger here and there..gone was all pretense of "seeing the country".we were on a mission.
i think we only stopped for a couple of hours and caught a few z'sssss.it was at a interstate rest stop somewhere in missouri..that lasted a couple of hours and then we took off again. barreling down the road in a '63 chevy nova at 60 miles an hour.the national speed limit had just recently be lowered to 55 mph across the country,so 60 was about as fast as we thought prudent.
the funniest,or strangest thing that happened on the way back happened in arizona.it's early morning,pitch dark and i'm driving down the mountains from flagstaf to pheonix.bill,who was sound asleep in the passenger seat suddenly sits bolt upright and shouts "whats going on here ! what is this? i demand to know what is going on here !" i of course start laughing and telling him to "wake up motherfucker,yer talking in your sleep" took him several minutes to gain what i thought was total consciousness as he sat there shaking his head trying to wake up.then he wanted to drive...i told him no way till he was wide awake,there was no way i would let him drive down the twisty winding roads,in the dark with me white-knuckling the whole trip.he then dozed off for a bit.we pulled into a little town and stopped and got gas and coffee.as we stood there talking it became clear i had made the right choice in not allowing him to drive...he had no memory of that little incident.whew ! dodged a buillet there fershure.
and so,43 hours and twenty minutes after leaving columbus ohio we pulled in the driveway at moms house.we unpacked my stuff and congratulated ourselves on a successful trip,said we would talk later on and he headed on home.
that trip still stands as one of the high points of my life...
7 comments:
Wow. Some of those paragraphs hit me hard. Thanks for sharing.
There is no better here than there, and there is no better there than here...
I do remember when you got in the car and left. I shook your hand and tried to do like the soul bro handshake, and we both blew it off and you said, "Ah, I don't do that shit." hahaha.
That was a big huge deal for us...you coming to Mi. I know we all enjoyed that. I mean that, I know both Tom and I were excited about your visit.
i found as i was writing this story that i really really wish i had written it 20 years earlier,when i still remembered all of it.and i have to confess that writing it now has produced a sort of melancholy within me that i didnt expect.i think there will be an epilogue of sorts,maybe that will help me shake this off...
and strangely enough,as i have been re-reading the story there are a few things that i recall that i didn't when writing.been trying to write them down for later use.for instance,late at night on the interstate bill tried to slipstream a big rig for twenty miles or so...or getting a ticket for a burnt out headlight...little details that i just didnt remember as i was writing...
Well godamit uncle Paul probably warned you about the headlight too, hahaha. I bet he was joking sort of about the tires to get a reaction out you, and don't tell me, ironically while Bill tried to slipstream the big rig, song of same title off Aqualung album was playing.
hahahahaha no the headlight incident was on the way out there.and i'm just not sure(and wasn't then) whether he was serious or not.he did have that way about him of looking serious and telling you something, then grinning and then you knew he was kidding...
Perhaps Dad was trying to get you to stay longer, hahahahha. He may have been genuinely worried about you, he did have that side of him that cared.
Melancholy baby...for sure.
Reminds of that line in Harry Chapin's Taxi:
"And she said we must get together, but I knew it'd
never be arranged...."
When you move 2,000 miles away, that's hard to keep it going, even visits, but now we have internet at least. Aunt Joann would come periodically, and when she did it was hard not to notice how she had aged (where you could see her everyday or so).
We were just kids, and we had no choice at the time, even in 1973. We will always wonder "what if you had stayed in Michigan..."
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