Thread: New studio
View Single Post
  #75  
Old 09-16-2013, 01:35 AM
joseph engraver's Avatar
joseph engraver joseph engraver is offline
Platinum
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Sarzana,Italy
Posts: 662
Default Re: New studio

Thanks Rodger, always I appreciate your comments. I want to thank all who have been reading this thread. It gives me a lift each morning to know someone is finding the stories interesting. Here is another page from my checkered past that I hope you will like.
MY FIRST CAR
On a sunny Texas afternoon in San Antonio in 1972, I stopped at the A&W drive-in for a Root Beer Float. It was there that I met a cute brazen brunette Carhop whose name was Mary Lu. We started flirting and I asked her if she wanted to go out for a ride in my newly purchased 1946 Ford when she finished work. I was eighteen and dressed in my Air Force blues, full of myself and very proud of my first car even though it was thirteen years old. She agreed and we made a date. Later I picked her up from the drive-in and we headed off to the lake.
It wasn’t long before we were kissing and holding onto each other like familiar lovers. Then iIt wasn’t much longer before we were in the backseat becoming familiar lovers. I don’t know who wanted sex the most. I’m sure we needed each other at that moment.
I was with her every free moment I had and she was willing to have it that way.
Then she took me home to meet her mother, a divorcee living in a small house in the Barrio district of Abilene. The lady greeted me with great approval and even supplied us with contraceptives.
It was a few days later that I had the brilliant idea of teaching Betty Lou how to drive. We drove out into the countryside. Found a dirt road which wasn’t hard to do in West Texas, and urged her to start driving. With my woman behind the wheel of my first car I felt like a real big shot. I showed her to use the clutch and the brake and to start my car moving slowly down the road. While she guided the Ford down the road and back to the edge of town I showed he how to shift gears. A few blocks from where she lived, she pulled over to the side saying she was afraid to drive any closer to the town.
“Aw, c’mon baby, you can do it. Don’t be chicken.” I urged. She put the car back into first and got it rolling again. As we approached the corner of the street that led to her house I said, “See there is nothing to it baby. All you have to do is turn the wheel to the left and go slowly around the corner.” She made a half of turn and then froze.
My beautiful Ford was headed straight for the iron post that had the name of the street on top of it. I reached over and tried to push the steering wheel to the left to correct the angle we were heading in. But, Mary Lu held the wheel in a death grip.
“Step on the brake!” I yelled in panic. Her foot missed the brake pedal and she drove the accelerator pedal to the floor. The tires squealed as the Ford’s V8 came to life, down went the street sign, and about twenty feet of white picket fence belonging to the house adjacent to it.
I managed to get the car into neutral. With the engine roaring we came to a stop in the ditch. I got hold of the keys and shut off the motor. Mean while Betty Lou has jumped out of the car crying and has run across the street into her mother’s house, disappearing behind the closing front door.
From out of the smoke and dust appears the owner of the destroyed fence. He is yelling at me in Spanish but I can’t understand a word. By then I was out of my car and am staring at the white washed two by four protruding from my broken grill. The same white two by four that had one end embedded deeply into my gushing radiator. I am standing there naked except for a white g-string bathing suit. The Mexican is still yelling while I was about to wet myself.
Help arrived in the person of Betty Lou’s mother. She calmed the Mexican down and then we all surveyed the damage. Her mother decides that we can use her car to push me out of the ditch.
With the Mexican providing guidance, the huge bumper of her Buick “Road Master” is aligned with that of my beloved Ford. I get in, put the car in neutral and signal I’m ready.
Mrs. McCallum then steps on the gas, her bumper slides over mine and my fender crumples. We all stop I get out to survey and the new damage.
The Mexican has a better idea. We can hook a chain around the rear bumper to pull me out the way I entered. He brings a long chain from somewhere and like a good helping neighbor hooks it around the rear bumper of my smoking Ford.
After a bit of maneuvering and with hand signals from the Mexican, Betty Lu’s mom´s rear bumper is lined up and the chain attached. I climb once again into my poor Ford, grab the steering wheel and signal I’m ready. The chain tightens , my car starts to roll backwards. Suddenly there is a metallic ripping sound. I looked over the backseat and at the floorboards. Coming up through them is post of the mangled street sign. I stomp on the brake as hard as I can, yelling, ‘Stop! Stop!’ Betty Lou’s mom feels the resistance and decides that more power is needed. She presses the gas pedal to the metal. Tires smoke and scream, the chain snaps under the strain and comes whipping up at my beautiful white, waxed and polished wreck with the accuracy of a guided missile, taking out the back window. After much crying on my part, the piece of chain is hooked onto the front bumper and with more ripping sounds, the car is pulled out of the ditch and onto Betty Lou’s mother’s driveway.
Accompanied by Betty Lou’s crying, we all stood there surveying the wreckage. I promised to fix the Mexican’s fence as soon as possible. Then leaving the car as it is, I retrieved my uniform from the back seat, slipped my pants over my bathing suit, finish dressing in the yard and got Betty Lou’s mother to drive me to the main gate of the Air Force base then caught a ride to my barracks, finally showing up for my tour of duty, two hours late.
I was reprimanded and had to appear before the commanding officer the next morning. I show up expecting to be imprisoned for the next twenty years. I was allowed to give a brief statement explaining my reasons. Hoping for sympathy I explained in great detail the misfortunes that had just landed on my shoulders. The Captain has heard worse tales of woes than this, and I am restricted to the base for thirty days.
Having been given thirty days restriction caused other problems larger than my wrecked car. Betty Lou was frantic. Her lover had disappeared and had not been heard from in over a week. He couldn’t call her of course because she had no phone. She was sure that his departure from her life was due to the destroyed Ford. In hopes of finding a way to contact him, she went searching through the Ford’s glove box, encountering several letters written to me from my mother. Taking the name and address off those letters she decided to write my mother a glowing letter introducing herself and professing her love for me, and! Informing my mother that we would be wed. My mom, with her usual direct no-nonsense approach called the base commander who then in turn called the base chaplain. Who then in turn called my commanding officer, who contacted me by way of my 1st Sergeant.
I had just finished my first shift of guard duty and was headed to the mess hall when the 1st Sergeant caught up to me. Hey you !” he growled. I stopped dead in my tracks. I could sense that something was definitely amiss and I was about to find myself in more hot water. “Get your ass over to the chaplain’s office on the double.”
“Yes sir,” I said and I took off at a lope, heading to the chapel which was two blocks away. A short while later I’m standing in front of the chapel, heart pounding with anxious worry. I could not imagine why I was being summoned by the Chaplain. After I caught my breath, I entered the chapel and located the office. The door was open and I could see the Chaplain sitting at his desk. I knocked on the door frame and he looked up at me. I’m sure he was thinking, ‘You sure are a dumb kid, as he read my nametag.
“Come in Airman”. he said. I entered the room, approached the desk and putting on my bravest face, saluted him sharply.
“Airman, 2nd class, J.R. Lavenois, reporting as ordered.”
“I have been informed that your mother is very concerned about your activities with a girl named Betty Lou McCallum. Do you know such a girl?”
“Yes sir” I replied standing at full attention. The captain looked at me directly in the face.
“Are you in love and are you going to marry?”
“Sir,” I explained. “I just met her about three weeks ago at a drive-in. I am not thinking about marriage, besides she wrecked my car and is responsible for my restriction to the base. I don’t think I want to see her again, ever .Sir”
“That’s good to know, son,” said the Chaplain. “ Because in five days you are being transferred to Europe.”
“What about my car?” I asked.
“That’s a problem you’ll have to resolve on your own, but I discourage you from any further contact with the girl.” Shit, Damn, and all the rest of it.
The next day I went around the barracks looking for someone to buy the car. Finally the day before I shipped off to France, I signed the title over to my dorm mate and gave it to him. I sure loved that white Ford and had kept it washed and waxed, chrome and hub caps shined.
It was a great car until that fatal day when Betty Lou McCallum took the steering wheel.
__________________
"What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything"-Lawrence Sterne
Reply With Quote