Don't try this at home -try it in Kansas!

July,1976, Manhattan Kansas. When the hard working Fort Riley Police Dept. caught up with us the Pontiac Bonneville had just crashed into a tree. While my accomplice Bobby Reed (who claimed he could out-drive the cops just like Burt Reynolds...that is, the Bandit!) was trying to restart the engine, I got out of the car having decided to turn myself in. I had begun to doubt Bobby's skills -the Police hadn't crashed into anything yet. By the way, the old movie trick of pulling over, then taking off again when the cops don't suspect it doesn't work in Kansas (isn't that where they got John Dillinger?). After I was aimed at, shouted at and handcuffed, I was asked lots of questions about whether Bobby (they didn't actually know his name yet) was an armed and desperate felon vowing not to be taken alive, or was he just a dopey teenager in his grandfathers old car. Bobby had restarted the car and could be heard tearing around the area, police still in hot pursuit at 3am, tires squealing, sirens wailing.
My next phone call home to San Diego was not an easy one to make. I always hated telling my Dad that I had done something wrong.
The Bonneville needed a lot more attention than the tree did. Bobby's father probably made him wish he'd gone out in a blaze of glory. They were from The South and Mr Reed had that "Sheriff Buford T. Justice" vibe. At one point before I fled Kansas he explained that he'd be taking Bobby's share of the car repair bill out his son's rear end and asked if I wanted the same deal, or would I like to pay cash for my half of the damages. Parenting sure has come a long way, even in Manhattan KS I reckon.

Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

Can you imagine living in a house with only one television? Better yet, one T.V. and no VCR, TiVo or DVR? Seems unthinkable. Imagine Thanksgiving morning as Dad insists on watching college football on the T.V. he paid for as the kids whine about watching some parade in New York, Chicago...wherever. By the way, the intellectual entertainment equivalent of a parade is now on television five days a week; it's called Teletubbys. Why on Earth did they make more than one episode of that show? The target audience of Teletubbys can't tell one episode from another... come to think of it, neither can I. They might as well keep showing the same episode day after day -save a litte money.
By far though, the best T.V. on Thanksgiving day was always the Twilight Zone Marathon. Wally Cox, Art Carney, Burgess Meredith... a classic. Too bad the hottest ticket these days seems to be 7/24 news. Another show I miss is Beverly Hillbillies. Jed and Jethro taking their shotguns out to "shoot some golfs" (all they could ever find was their eggs, which even Granny couldn't find a way to cook), or who could forget Jethro's Hollywood persona "Beef Jerky".
Wally, Burgess, Art, Jed and Granny are all gone now. Oh yeah, Mom and Dad too. Thanksgiving just isn't the same without college football so I'll try to catch some on the T.V. I paid for, even if I don't especially care about the game. It has a kind of seance quality that seems to bring my father's spirit into the room. If the food is good, It'll feel like Mom is there too.

-Steve

Being rear-ended the other day snapped me out of a complacency I didn't realize I'd fallen into. Since then I notice that when a car pulls up behind me too quickly I tense up a little. I'm sure the effect will wear off before too long. As a child I don't think I was ever complacent in the family car; I doubt any of us were. At least not when mom was in the car. We knew that at any moment dad might pull over and ask mom if she wanted to drive. He had to ask, mom drove in Michigan but never got a license when they came to California. She wanted to drive. He couldn't just say "no, the children need to know we love them". We begged, we cried, we asked if we could walk home (anger, denial, bargaining... you know the drill), but dad said no. Mom drove way too fast, swerved a lot, really got the tires squealing. It should have been a lot of fun, except we all felt like mom had just as much control of the car as we did.
I think my sister Amy had the worst experience. Mom took her to the grocery store one day while the rest of us were at school. She told Amy to wait in the car till she was done shopping (yep, people could actually do that back then). Mom forgot though, to tell the car to wait till she got back. The car (a Ford station wagon) started to roll towards an embankment about ten feet high overlooking a gas station (drum roll).
In the movies the stunt double jumps from the speeding car just before it slams into the giant generic explosive thing. I say big deal, My little sister was doing that when she was five years old. One small difference; the car stuck on the curb and never reached the gas pumps. Still, my sister rocks. This girl has ice water in her veins. After that, none of us ever wanted to stay home from school.
My brother Roger and I probably had the best experience. In high school we got pulled over for running a stop sign on our ten-speeds on the way home from school. The cop gave us each a ticket which meant we had to promise to appear before the judge. I assume they wanted us to promise just so they could see if we would actually show up. Failing to appear would have told them we would be trouble later. Mom drove us. As we waited to exit the traffic court parking lot I saw that the steering wheel was cranked over all the way to the right. Mom was lecturing us about being irresponsible as I wondered if she knew she had to straighten the wheel as she pulled out. I thought about telling her, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not interrupting a lecture with driving instructions also meant not going without dinner that night. I looked to the right of the car, fire hydrant Hm.
So much for the lecture. I guess I really could have used it.
In the movies (and sometimes in real life) fire hydrants shoot geysers of water into the sky. Mom's was made of sterner stuff. Sure, it leaked a little around the edges, but the car (a different Ford station wagon) fared far worse.
Our mom did many things well, but she was not a big car person.

I used to think Christmas was the season of miracles but the monopoly seems to have been broken. On Halloween morning as I was headed to work I stopped at a red light (as usual), waited about 30 seconds or so, then got rear-ended. Not hard enough to be hurt, but too hard for my car to just shrug it off. The guy who hit me could have made things so much nicer if he had bumped me directly from behind, but in his mind the logical thing to do was to split between the two lanes and scrape along the side of my car so as to do far more damage. Maybe he was actually trying to hit two cars; I didn't ask so I cannot say for sure. As it is, his black, rubber, partially biodegraded bumper left a kind of skid mark (with bent metal and plastic) which started at the corner of my rear bumper and wrapped around to just behind the rear wheel on the driver's side of my car. I guess it's possible that this may have involved some highly skilled driving, I'm just the wrong demographic to appreciate the payoff for the hours of practice it must have taken.
The only other explanation I can come up with is that guy who hit me must have some tragic form of reverse color blindness that renders all white objects invisible. Not just any white, that trademark Toyota Arctic White we see on roughly 70% of the world's Corollas. On a sunny day, I suspect I'm visible from the MIR space station, he should have seen me.
So. We pull over, get out and etc... I've been hit by a 20something kid with Kenny G hair, a '91 Chevy Cavalier, who is moving soon(he says), and his only phone number is a cell out of St Louis Missouri. My guess is that I'm badly hosed on this one. Then I saw my first miracle that day... HE HAS INSURANCE! With a card and everything. The angels must have wept at the sight. I let him know I wasn't going to sue him, I just wanted my car fixed. He agreed it was his fault, but verbal means nothing and I don't expect a written confession. I went to work and began calling around to my and his insurance companies to get repairs started, worrying he may change his story and claim I rolled back into him... people try it.
Around mid-day I called my voice mail to check my messages and behold, my second miracle! There's a message from TGWHM (the guy who hit me -no need to share his name). The message = Hi, I'm TGWHY (the guy who hit you).. sorry (admission of guilt), and maybe I could just pay you and lets not talk to any insurance people. Oh well, too late for that. Besides, having dodged one serious hosing, why double down for a second one? What a relief. That message is a keeper. Still makes me laugh.
For now I'm driving a rental. A Suzuki Forenza... I'm not angry though. In fact, after my car is fixed, if he still has the same out of state cell number, I'll offer to send him a half pound of Kona coffee to let him know I appreciate his honesty.-Steve

Why Elephant races?

Elephant races? That was how my father used to describe the sound of my three siblings and me thundering from room to room (upstairs) as kids. Born between September 1959 and January 1963, I see my siblings as one of the greatest gifts I've received in life. We were four smart kids who loved making each other laugh; usually at the expense of someone on the "idiot box". We picked up our senses of humor from dad(mom was sort of "missing" for quite a few of those years). As a single parent working full time, there must have been many times that we tried dad's patience. Sometimes when we were all doing our best to make each other hysterical my dad would come in (annoyed) and tell us it sounded like an idiot contest. Though I can't recall a single time I wasn't declared the winner, I decided to name the blog Elephant Races. I've won and defended the idiot crown, there's nothing left for me to prove there.
The blog will touch on my family a lot, I'm sure. The blog's basically about me, but I'll do my best not to get self indulgent. My sibs and family mean a lot to me. I'll express that, and (I hope) tell a good story and make some people laugh.
-Steve