Slip, sliding away

Just scraping by

It was after dark. My best friend Steve and I were attending a basketball game at a rival high school. I personally had zero interest in the game or sport. Or 'school spirit'. But Steve had successfully persuaded me to come to this particular game because both Sienna and Sue Anne would be there.

Sue Anne was a cheerleader from our school, while Sienna was our recently elected class body president (and recent beauty pageant winner as well). So she'd had some significant write ups about her in the local town paper lately.

I was round-the-bend crazy over Sue Anne. Despite not really knowing her very well. Yeah, sure, she was beautiful. Blonde. Model tall (or basically the same height as the average guy her age-- which was tall for a girl). She was also a fairly quiet and polite person, so far as I could tell.

But in hindsight, it was likely a combo of her natural pheromones and my own burgeoning puberty that really did me in. For instance, I never even noticed Sue Anne until happenstance placed me in a desk immediately behind her in a class. See the proximity there? Smack dab in her pheromones field! Tsk, tsk.

(Pheromones are natural scents which can play a huge role in attracting sexual mates, and are exuded by both men and women. Pheromones are likely their strongest soon after puberty, and your own will have the greatest effect on someone of the opposite sex who possesses an immune system very different from yours (for pheromones are designed to bring together two people who could produce children with hybrid immune systems stronger than that of either parent))

Unfortunately, even had I been aware of these factors then, I'm sure I wouldn't have possessed the presence of mind to successfully fight them off anytime soon. No, my fate was to suffer terribly through that horrendous crush for the remainder of high school, and somewhat beyond. And perhaps let a few considerably better opportunities slip through my fingers in the meantime.

Sheesh!

Sienna was no slouch herself in the beauty department: recall the recent beauty pageant win. She had long, medium dark brown hair, and was of average girl height for her age. She bore a single narrow blonde streak through her hair that I was never sure of as being natural or not. If not, then it was by far her most radical characteristic appearance-wise. She likely got better grades than Sue Anne: but I believe we're talking the difference between a valedictorian and straight-A or nearly so student. Sienna wore glasses, and seemed a paradoxical mix of outgoing and shy. For instance, she could hold her own in public speeches or debates, but seemed nearly as shy as me in closer one-on-one encounters.

Sienna also dressed and behaved very conservatively-- which may have been the single biggest reason she never tried out for cheerleader, what with the mini-skirt costumes and all involved.

Steve and I had helped Sienna with her presidential election campaign, and had spent an evening or two at Sienna's home with other campaigners, making posters and planning strategies.

I'd also accompanied Sienna sans Steve to a few other public gatherings of note, by this point. But we hadn't actually gone out on a date (though the idea did seem increasingly appealing to me).

Now tonight, at the game, Sienna was supposed to give some sort of brief speech during half-time. But for reasons I still to this day don't fully understand, Sienna and Vicki got waylaid in the parking lot before they could get to the gym.

Vicki was Sienna's best friend of the time, and a cute girl in her own right. About the same height as Sienna but somewhat slimmer, and with very short light to medium brown hair, which mostly ended at the nape of her neck.

Apparently the rivalry between our two schools got out of hand that night, or maybe mixed up with something else brewing at the time. But whatever the cause, Steve happened to hear about it while visiting the concession stand, checked out the situation for himself, and immediately rounded me up to help him throw together a rescue plan.

Though I was uneasy about leaving Sue Anne there, she didn't seem to be in danger inside the building, surrounded by her fellow cheerleaders, our basketball team, the audience in the bleachers, etc., etc. But according to Steve, Sienna and Vicki most definitely were at risk outside, and couldn't get into the building.

We knew from prior experience that trying to solve the crisis with whatever adult authorities were around would likely take too long-- if you could get them to do anything about it at all.

"You get the girls to your car while I distract the bastards," Steve told me.

As time seemed of the essence, I didn't question Steve on his method of distraction. Steve was extremely resourceful, plus pretty shrewd in regards to human nature. I was sure his distraction would work. What I was less certain of was Steve's personal safety in the matter. For Steve sometimes took enormous risks.

"Okay. Be careful!" I urged him, as once outside the gymnasium we went our separate ways.

There was another dynamic here that I guess bears mentioning. Namely, in just about all things in those days, I was more often Steve's side-kick, than the leader of our little duo. For Steve was just generally more charismatic than me, plus tended to seize the initiative on things more often than I did. He was also far better with the ladies than me. So when it seemed to turn out that Sienna perhaps preferred me over Steve, that put things somewhat askew between Steve and me. And although I know for a fact that Steve liked Vicki very much too (and she him), I believe Sienna's preferences served to fire up Steve's alpha male ego even above and beyond its usual intensity-- thereby making him more determined than ever to win her over.

So the present mob threat in the parking lot might have been just the chance he needed to do so (to Steve's mind anyway).

Me, I was far less energized over the issue. I mean, I did like Sienna quite a bit. But the Sue Anne thing left me almost apathetic towards other romantic possibilities of the time.

And from what I know of pheromones now (almost 40 years later), once one set has a lock on you, it might keep it for a year or more, on average. Agh!

Plus, I was sure that since Steve was after Sienna, even had I contested it with all the resources at my disposal, I likely wouldn't have stood a chance. Or that was my mindset, anyway.

But back to the parking lot mob...

When Steve said he'd distract the gang, he meant it. And it was spectacular. In a scary and outrageous sort of way.

I have to say it was pretty brave of him. And creative too, seeing as how he had to come up with something on the spur of the moment with no prep beforehand.

Steve suddenly appeared out of nowhere, stark naked and shouting epithets at the mob. The crowd's attention quickly shifted-- at least temporarily-- to the crazy naked guy seeking suicide. Giving me the chance to locate Sienna and Vicki and hurriedly maneuver them towards my car.

I hoped to hell that Steve could elude the wrath of the mob after they discovered they'd been duped.

Shadow in those days sported a black enamel paint job like maybe every tenth car you saw on the road. I'd done little visible customization to his appearance so far.

His interior was a sickly white, forever dingy from whatever the heck the previous owner had done with him. I couldn't get the interior to look better no matter what I did to it.

He'd received virtually zero hot rodding modifications but for traction bars, due to my need simply to get him running and presentable after purchase-- and then running and presentable a second time, after three different crashes took their toll. Ouch! But I had been gaining experience driving him at speed, and trying a few practice versions of maneuvers I read about in car magazines.

Surprisingly (perhaps), the three bad crashes I'd had with him so far had not involved any of those practice maneuvers.

So anyway, the night of the game mob Shadow was sporting the best look he'd had in quite a while. Completely restored body work and fresh paint. It'd cost me a small fortune to put him right again like this.

Steve had lost his own Boss 351 Mustang in a crash sometime before, and so was presently dependent upon me and Shadow for much of his mobility.

It was fairly dark in the school parking lot, as it didn't offer many light poles across its span: but at least we could see something. And the semi-darkness had helped as much as Steve's display in the retrieval of Sienna and Vicki from the angry crowd.

When we reached my car, I was surprised to discover we'd been pinned in by other vehicles in the lot since arrival.

As the rural school parking lot lacked much in the way of guidelines or markers, people had parked in a largely pell-mell fashion. There remained a narrow corridor running half a dozen car lengths directly behind Shadow, which we might navigate to get out-- but it appeared at least slightly too constricted in spots. Agh!

But our situation was serious. I was positive somebody was going to get hurt before that mob was satisfied. And I didn't want it to be Sienna and Vicki.

The mob of course was now between us and the gymnasium. So there was no escape there.

We couldn't open Shadow's doors due to the closely parked cars on either side, so I had to help Sienna and Vicki slide in through the open windows. As the two of them were wearing dresses, and fairly proper in their ways, it was an uncomfortable experience for both. Nice for a teenage boy though!

And yes, Steve and I had left the windows rolled down in the parking lot for some reason. Mostly because we were young and inexperienced and taking lots for granted, I suppose. But partly because we hadn't yet suffered the thefts and vandalism we would later on.

But it was lucky we'd done so that night. For otherwise we might not have been able to get away at all.

I'd take a lesson from this night, and after that always seek a parking spot at the periphery, rather than the center of things. Yes, that means more walking as a byproduct-- but walking's good exercise anyway!

I slid into the car too after the girls, and cranked up. Sienna was in the front passenger seat, Vicki in the back. I figured I'd better start trying to back out of this place immediately, in order to increase our chances for escape.

But gosh, it was an agonizing task. The smell of my new paint still made itself known to you every time you got into the car. Now I was going to be scraping it off to get us out of the lot. All that bodywork and paint had cost me a fortune. I wished Steve was there to help.

And suddenly there he was! Standing at the passenger side window, urging Sienna to climb between the front seats and into the back to make room for him.

Prim and proper Sienna was helped move to action by the fact Steve was still naked, carrying his clothes tightly bundled under one arm.

Me being an immature American male, the sight of squeaky clean girl-next-door Sienna turning her head to be so crudely confronted seemed to be the height of naughty hilarity. I wondered if somehow Steve had planned for that to happen.

Sienna blushed mightily I'm sure at that-- for I'd seen her do so before with far less provocation. But I don't know for certain, because of the dim lighting and the hurried circumstances.

I had to restrain myself from laughing aloud, in order to spare her further embarrassment. But there was no way I could keep from smiling fiercely.

Shadow still had a back seat in those days. Or at least what Ford called a back seat. In actuality it was something less than that. But technically it would hold two adults of slightly less than average stature in cramped style. And more, if inflicting various degrees of misery upon your passengers wasn't a concern.

Once he realized the need, Steve partially disembarked from the car again, sitting naked on the window sill of the passenger side door, trying to direct me through the parked car maze with a minimum of damage to all concerned.

I had my head out the window on my side trying to do the same. But the other cars were so close that our efforts were largely futile. Plus, Steve and I weren't well practiced working together yet.

That moment would have made a good sight gag for such classic slapstick as one guy giving the other the go ahead in maneuvering a vehicle (until the sound of a crash was heard), at which point he yelled "stop!"

The noise of our passing was awful. Like the ultimate scraping of fingernails on a chalkboard-- only the nails being made of metal. The scraping was punctuated by an occasional sound of metal rending or popping, or the glass in a side mirror busting to sprinkle the ground.

We scraped cars on both sides, through maybe three or four of the rows, to get out. Yikes! Amazingly (to me) my driver's side door mirror didn't get ripped off along the way. I had no passenger side mirror at the time.

But we felt we had little choice about our actions. Just as we emerged from the horde of parked vehicles, here came the gang, with murder in their eyes.

I had to drive backwards at a fairly rapid clip after that, to get entirely through and out of the parking lot, and around a winding drive, as the gang threw bottles and other things at us and tried to pull us out of the car as we passed.

I tried to go slowly enough to give everyone a chance to get out of the way, but if someone had insisted on it, I would likely have run over them in that moment. Luckily nobody challenged me that way.

I think Steve punched one or two of them along the course (he'd slid back completely into the car once we'd escaped the scraping metal gauntlet). Me, I pulled one guy's grasping hand off me as we passed through.

Though it was all quite a noisy commotion at the time, I could still make out gasps and little shrieks coming from Sienna and Vicki in the back as we proceeded. And Steve cursing, of course.

A glance through the windshield indicated some of the gang going for their own cars in our wake.

"Looks like they're coming after us man," Steve said in a low voice he seemed to be hoping Sienna and Vicki wouldn't hear, even as he hastened to get dressed once again.

"I know," I replied the same way.

"What are you going to do?" Steve asked me, as he continued donning his clothing. Although Steve was usually the leader between the two of us, I was the one driving at the moment, in my own car. And on occasion I had a decent bout of creativity in such situations.

But being already busy, I couldn't do much ad hoc formulation. So I was open to suggestions. "Don't know yet. Any ideas?"

"Let me think about it," Steve answered in non-committal fashion. Heck: Steve had done his job of distraction. Now it was my turn to get us out of here! But first things first.

"Everybody put their seat belts on! You're going to need them!" I exclaimed. As I was pretty occupied with the steering wheel, Steve helped me get myself belted.

I got to a place I could turn around with minimal mob hassle, and did. I wasn't yet skilled at fast, on-the-fly 180 degree turns, in this stage of Shadow ownership.

We approached the intersection of the main highway with me wondering which way would be best to go. Toward town, or away?

Both directions offered some scary curves to traverse at speed. But toward town we'd also encounter cops during our high speed run, and likely have to high tail it onto a whole different highway out of town soon after. I wasn't sure we could get through the shortest route to Sienna's house on that course.

In the direction away from town lay a long, mostly winding road eventually leading to Gatlinburg, one of the biggest local tourist traps around. About three-quarters of the way though began some decent straights where you could cover lots of ground fast, and usually see way ahead of time someone threatening to pull out of a side road into your path.

Of course you didn't have to go to Gatlinburg via that route. By simply not turning right at a certain intersection, you could head up into the mountains towards Cherokee country instead. But that might mean Steve and I having Sienna and Vicki out way past the curfews we knew their parents had on them.

Yeah, I guess it sounds funny about me worrying over curfews under such circumstances. But in some ways I was personally almost as respectful of parents as Sienna herself. I guess I was also maybe too confident about escaping pursuit. For now that I had the girls on the road, I felt like it'd be difficult for any pursuit to delay me for very long, if I was truly doing my best to get away.

My subconscious nudged me to the left, and we took the more dangerous course, tires squealing as I briefly floored it to build up some speed fast. If we could get out of sight before the first gang car emerged, they'd have to split their forces and try both routes.

Alas, I'd forgotten that this road for the next half mile or so sort of ran around an elliptical valley, with a vast field of grass sunk down in the middle, and no tree cover to speak of there. So even at night like this, our tail lights were still clearly visible for a long ways afterwards.

I realized this as I watched in my rear view mirror every single car pulling out behind us heading in our direction.

Well, let them come, I thought.

I wasn't yet an expert driver. But I was working on it. And frequently practiced on this very road, among others. So I was maybe a little ahead of the game driving it fast at night, than our pursuers might expect.

Plus, Shadow was plenty fast. And handled pretty decently too. Despite being factory standard in everything suspension but for wheels and tires.

1969 Ford Mustang Mach Ones were set up for a surprising amount of derring-do right from the factory-floor. But it'd be a while before I realized my dumb luck on that point, in choosing such a car in the first place.

Well, I had added traction bars. But just to combat wheel hop during hard acceleration and deceleration. I doubted they'd help much on anything else.

We raced around somewhere between a half dozen and a full dozen curves, all four tires squealing from the lateral G-forces, as I sought to build up a lead our pursuers couldn't overcome.

Then I saw it: I'd forgotten about the parkway! At least consciously. I needed to make a sharp left!

"Hold on everybody!" I yelled, just before I stomped on the brakes. Shadow made a drastic deceleration to maybe 30-40 mph, and I veered to the left onto the parkway in a tiny power slide (it was a 90 degree turn).

Then I got heavy on the gas again to try getting out of sight before our pursuit came around the previous bend of the highway. I hoped the sheer suddenness of the maneuver would surprise them as well, making them not even consider the possibility of such a turn.

But I knew I shouldn't count on it. So I powered up the inclined roadway which normally offered tourists a scenic route through the forested hills here. The place was also something of a local make out spot, with several locations where up to twenty or thirty cars could park at once. But rarely did you find more than a handful anywhere, even at the height of the tourist season and in the middle of the day.

Steve and I had actually discussed our desires to bring Sienna and Vicki up here to park, once or twice in the recent past. But never gotten the chance so far. Now here we were, but we didn't dare stop.

The parkway was fairly curvy itself in spots, but the asphalt was deliciously rough. Almost perfect traction-wise for taking curves at speed. When I say rough, I mean the general texture; there were few if any potholes or other such annoyances to speak of there.

Alas, there was little banking on the curves, though. For the road wasn't meant for rapid transit.

I knew the parkway even better than the previous highway. So I fluctuated between 40 and 80 mph along its length, reaching its connection to the interstate within only a minute or two. No way the gang could catch us now, I thought, as we wound around the fairly radical interstate entry ramp at the parkway's end.

And radical was the word for it: even experienced racers capable of breaking records on the parkway itself, might find themselves crashed here, in the final turn. For the curve was tight, and wound around maybe 270 degrees to enter the interstate.

It was neat! One of my very favorite curves in the whole area! I could never get enough of it! It was too bad you had to traverse such a lengthy out-of-the-way course to get to it. The entry ramp's mate-- the interstate exit onto the parkway in this location-- was much more of a normal track, and so not nearly so much fun.

I turned out to be correct about our pursuit: I'd lost them with that turn off onto the parkway. But even if I hadn't, there were few around who could have caught us after that, with the lead I'd built.

But there's always things going on behind the scenes of which you're unaware. Or else stuff you don't consider, but should.

Naturally Steve and I didn't afterwards speak much about that brief chase, for lots of reasons. Heck: that chase had not been much different from our usual routine-- but for ruining my paint job, and the girls being involved, that is. But Sienna and Vicki did talk about it, apparently. And not just with one another.

And that eventually led the gang responsible for instigating the mob in the parking lot, right to me.

The gang hadn't really gotten a good look at either Steve or I that night (face-wise, I mean). But they had gotten an idea as to Shadow's make and model. And pieced together the whole scraping escape thing. Which made the scraped evidence along Shadow's sides a handy identifying marker for them. It wasn't much of a leap to figure that Steve and I were students from the same school as Sienna and Vicki, either.

And yes, I was a teenager. Completely oblivious at times to even the most obvious of things.

For instance, I didn't realize that I should immediately buy a dollar can of black spray paint, and make the most obvious scrapes on my car disappear (even if such touch ups would look crude and amateurish on close inspection). No, I figured I'd have to drive it like that for several months, while saving the money to have professionals do the enamel thing for me again. You know? Vanity? Teenage high school vanity.

So between my unthinking behavior, Shadow's telltale battle damage, and good old girlish gossip, the gang was able to set its sights on me.

Surfing to beat the band

I met my friend Ben about a music tape, at his car in the parking lot after school. I'd known Ben since around the second grade, and for a while in high school he was probably my very best friend. Until Steve came along, and rapidly took his place.

Basically Ben was too much like me. Steve was much more outrageous and adventuresome and fun than either Ben or myself. So as the weeks passed, I spent more time with Steve, and less with Ben.

During the time of this story though, I believe I was still in the midst of that transition.

Ben had a very nice looking, light green pearl painted 1967 Camaro, with black vinyl top. Maybe it had a two barrel carb, 327 cubic inch motor in it-- that's difficult to recall, as Ben wasn't into racing like me. Though his Camaro was older than Shadow, it'd been much better cared for by its previous owners, and it showed. It seemed almost like new both inside and out.

It wasn't raining at the time of that lot meeting, but it had been earlier in the day. The ground and air seemed well drenched with moisture.

That's when Ben and I noticed Lindsay. She was standing with her back to my car, leaning against the driver's side door, some distance away from us. She seemed to be waiting for somebody. But I figured it surely wasn't me. For I'd never seen her before in my life.

Even from afar, you could tell Lindsay was a looker. Or at least had great potential in that area. Lindsay was about average height for a teenage female, which translated to a bit shorter than Ben or me. Exquisitely proportioned female-wise, she possessed long legs, and a slender but well defined hour glass shaped torso. She was pale-skinned, with a fabulous mane of long, flowing, blazing red hair. Her shade of red wasn't the dark crimson type resembling semi-clotted blood, but that more like a deep orange. An orange which practically glowed at times, as if it was a hot, solid metal, nearing the verge of collapse into a liquid state.

Even being head-over-heels over Sue Anne as I was, I could still have been compelled in a court of law to admit that in some matters of appearance, Lindsay even outdid Sue Anne. WOW!

Lindsay was wearing glasses, some sort of thin vest thing over a T-shirt, and blue jeans. Her long strapped pocket book looked to be denim clad as well.

"Well, I wonder who she's waiting for?" I posed a not wholly rhetorical question.

"She's at your car, Jerry," Ben pointed out.

"Yeah, but I don't know her. She must be looking for somebody else."

"I hope so," Ben said quietly.

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"If she's who I think she is, she's bad news. I'd stay away from her if I were you," Ben told me.

"You mean you know her?"

"No. I've seen her before though. Or I think I have."

"So why the dire warning, if you don't know her?"

"Just things I've heard, is all. But I could be mistaken."

"Well, she's not budged from my car, so I guess I'll have to go see what the story is."

"Be careful Jerry."

Ben turned out to be right of course. But I just had to find out for myself.

I walked up to her, and we began talking. I learned her name was Lindsay Finch. She was hoping I'd give her a ride home.

"Why me in particular?" I asked.

"Sienna York knew I needed a ride today, and told me to ask you. She said you'd helped her with a lot worse trip, and figured you'd do the same for me."

"You're a friend of Sienna's then?"

"Not exactly. I met her during the beauty pageant."

"Oh! You were a contestant too?" Darn if she didn't seem to qualify, from what I'd seen so far! I hadn't attended the event, or even read about it in the paper. Just heard about it from other sources.

"No," she smiled. "I was just there with friends. But I did meet Sienna there."

"Just exactly what did Sienna say about me helping her with a trip?" This was the first I'd heard of Sienna telling others about our little escape from mob-ville. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to worry about the girls talking about it.

"Nothing much. Just said it was a little scary, but turned out okay."

Well, that sounded all right. "Where are you needing to go?"

"Up Crosby way. Past Pyles apple orchard."

Wow. That'd take me a little while. I checked my watch. Well, if I didn't make my usual stop over at the house before work-- and stepped on it a bit-- I might not be late for my job. If we left right now.

"Okay. Hop in," I told her, nudging her aside to unlock and open the door, then reaching across to the other side to yank up the lock button there, as she rounded the front of the car.

"Better strap in. I'm going to have to hustle to get back in time for work," I warned her. She did as instructed, as I did the same. Then I cranked up Shadow, and we were on our way. A light misting rain would be apparent off and on along the route.

Lindsay was going to direct me through those spots I wasn't familiar with, on the way to her place. In-between those course corrections though, we made small talk.

I realized something was bothering me.

"So you go to Brewster High?" I asked.

"Yeah. But not long. Just the past week or so. My family recently moved."

Okay. That made more sense. For I was certain I'd have noticed a looker like Lindsay at school, over past months. There were only some 1200 kids at our school, total.

"So where'd you go to school before?" I probed a bit more.

"Crosby."

A little alarm bell went off in the back of my mind, but I ignored it, figuring it was just a coincidence. Then Lindsay told a surprisingly dirty joke that made me laugh, and forget all about her previous admission.

Sometime later I'd realize Lindsay had been lying her ass off there. About things like attending my school. And playing me like a violin. Like where she told that joke, to allay any concerns I might have about her being from Crosby.

But inexperienced teenage boys like I was at the time-- easily distracted by pretty girls like Lindsay-- often have little defense against such manipulations. The good feeling that comes from nothing more than having a beautiful female stranger that close by-- plus being alone with her-- can serve to dull our wits in all manner of ways.

After we turned off the main road, we encountered several miles of rough asphalt. By that I mean it'd been patched to death, and still not enough. Potholes abounded, and had to be avoided where possible due to their severity.

The poor state of the road slowed our progress down some.

Lindsay's directions soon led us into a big junkyard. It resembled an enormous fort with walls built of trashed cars, and its own maze of similar structures inside. I began to get uneasy, despite Lindsay telling me her dad ran the place, and so their home was nearby.

"So how come you switched to Brewster from Crosby? It seems like Crosby would be closer here," I observed.

"We're right on the dividing line between school districts here, so we can choose which school to go to. I chose Brewster after we moved," Lindsay told me.

Well, she'd explained it. But still I was getting a bad feeling about all this. And Ben's words returned to me: ...she's bad news. I'd stay away from her if I were you.

"How much farther is it?" I asked. I was now wanting to drop her off and get out of there, quick. All the dead cars stacked around us seemed ominous for some reason.

"Just a couple more bends..." she encouraged me.

We turned a corner into a large open space, which came as a surprise after the cramped maze. There, I could see several junker automobiles which still sported wheels, sitting on the ground in the space, with a few guys either sitting atop them, or leaning against them, like they were taking a break. Or waiting for something.

The wheeled cars were parked along the foot of a wall of stacked junkers, which seemed to form a rough circle around the open ground.

The place strongly resembled a sports arena built of mangled machines.

The handful of possibly mobile wrecks parked around the circle had numbers crudely painted on their sides. But their bodies were so battered, it looked like the numbers had been applied ages ago.

There was a tiny shack to one side of the place, and Lindsay indicated for me to stop there.

I headed across the open space for the shack fairly slowly, nervously checking the place out by turning my head first to one side and then the other. That's when I noticed it.

Behind us-- the way we'd come-- one of the previously parked junkers moved to block the exit.

Oh shit.

I sped up to cross the muddy expanse-- also looking for another way out-- thereby alerting the gang that I was now wise to their trap. Lindsay began yelling she wanted out, but I was now afraid to stop at a place not of my own choosing. I figured I'd let her out anywhere but the little shack.

Then I noticed all the guys I'd previously assumed to be taking a break, getting into the other parked junkers.

I'd apparently driven straight into a home-grown demolition derby arena-- by arrangement of some of the Crosby school gang members me, Steve, and the girls had escaped from before.

I could find no obvious way out at the far end of the arena, and so spun around to a stop there.

I turned angrily towards Lindsay, and ordered her to get out immediately if that's what she wanted. I think I scared her (I hoped I did). She jumped out, and I stretched way over to slam her door closed again, then pushed the gas pedal down once more.

Lindsay slipped and fell in the mud, in her haste to escape my fate. Maybe Shadow's spinning rear wheels contributed to her new brown coating some, too.

Lindsay's mud-splattered form gave me an idea, and I began racing around the arena in an enormous doughnut as fast as I could, spraying as much mud as possible over all the other cars just now beginning to get underway.

I was hoping to blind the suckers. Or at least reduce their visibility.

Thank God for that mud! And Shadow's wonderful mud-throwing capacity! I managed to get in almost a complete 360 degrees run of heavy duty mud-slinging, before the demolition cars got to moving too well for the trick to continue working.

Yeah, there weren't any windows to speak of in the derby cars. But I could sure coat the helmets or bare heads and faces of the drivers in many cases. I figured any reduction in their visibility I could affect now would be helpful in what was to come. And the mud might make their steering wheels, shifters, and pedals all more slippery, too.

Then I saw an even better opportunity: another exit from the arena not easily visible until you were right on top of it. It was a place where the inner wall ended on one side but continued on the other, only angling outwards at a tangent, hiding a course which led to somewhere else in the yard.

I felt I had no choice but to try it. So I would.

If I could make it around one more time, that is. For I'd seen it too late in my first pass to exploit it in the slippery mud, and with the power slide I was using to catapult brown muck all over my enemies.

The second pass would be tougher. The junkers were all in motion now, and I wouldn't be able to command a track as near to the outer perimeter this time, as I had before. Now it was dodge ball time: with my car! Agh!

It'd sure take lots more than paint to fix anything these junkers did to Shadow!

The middle of the arena was much more treacherous than the perimeter, as your enemies could come at you from all directions there. And it didn't help that it was one unholy mess either, ground-wise. I guess because it'd suffered more traffic over its lifetime. It was not only slippery with mud, but filled with hard humps too. Years later I'd hear Steve refer to hard-packed snow versions of these on ski runs as "moguls".

I'd had a bad experience with dry versions of such humps (accompanied by gravel) in my last crash, which resulted in great damage to my car and a humongous repair bill. But that had come from me not wearing my seat belts and being thrown around inside my vehicle, thereby losing control. I was belted in now.

Speeding over these muddy humps and splashing back down again on their far side-- only to then smash front first into the next-- felt like it was pretty hard on Shadow. But what choice did I have?

Fortunately the humps also helped prevent my attackers from getting a fast and straightforward run at me.

Luckily by that time in my early driving years I had already learned the trick about turning into skids to regain control of a car when needed. I used that one over and over again that day!

Shadow and I played keep away with the thugs for a minute or two, until I finally got close enough again to the hidden exit to go for it. And I did.

Suddenly we emerged from the maze of stacked car walls to see the muddy flats surrounding a big pond. It was at least a couple dozen or so car lengths wide, left-to-right. Maybe a bit less than that from the nearest shore to its far opposite. I skidded to a stop, frantically looking for somewhere else to go. But there was nothing there but the damn pond and various sorts of metal debris as you might expect in such a place. With miscellaneous car junk and some large trees running right up to the pond's edge and beyond (into the water), there was no way to go around the vast liquid obstacle before me.

I understood now why they hadn't blocked this particular exit.

Here came the ramming mob. One at a time, as the gap marking the arena's exit was fairly narrow.

I was going to have to try running through the pond, I decided. It looked way too deep for that, but the only other option was ramming my way through several tons of enemy autos, with a winding junkyard maze to get through after that...

I couldn't believe what a spot that Lindsay girl had put me in!

Then I felt a glimmer of hope. It was crazy, but it was there.

There was some sort of large wooden framed panel on the shore of the pond. It looked intact, and big. Its flat surface (it looked like it had one) facing down. Maybe it'd once been a piece of a highway billboard sign? Or was one wall of a demolished mobile home? Or a chunk of a prefab house kit? I had no idea of its original purpose, but it was far bigger than Shadow, it was at least partially wooden, and it was somewhat flat.

If I could take that panel with us into the pond, it'd cut down a little on the water's depth, plus give us a surface less slick than mud, and so maybe offer us a fighting chance to get to the other side. If the pond wasn't too deep, anyway.

I gunned it again, but not too much, in order to compensate for the slippery mud. Then I rethought it all, and down-shifted to first and tried again. The first damn derby car was approaching on a course to angle ram us in the driver's side, as we got underway again.

The junker drivers were apparently experienced and knew our rear end was our least vulnerable spot. Targetting our broadsides and ramming our vulnerable front end were their priorities. After first immobilizing us that way, they could do anything else that they wanted.

For a second I actually tried to consciously work out how to achieve what I needed here-- but then realized I couldn't in the time available. I'd just have to feel my way through.

As we neared the water's edge though my hopes dimmed, as my certainty grew that I'd have to abandon a sinking Shadow in the middle of the pond, swim to the opposite shore, and try escaping on foot.

If I made it out okay, maybe Shadow would be safe from ramming in the pond, and I could come back with cops-- or weapons-toting friends-- and get him towed out of there. Damn it!

I guess I should also mention here that I was being optimistic in regards to making a swimming escape. For the sole swimming experience I had up to that time was a Red Cross course my mom had enrolled me into at the city park pool, maybe five or more years before. I'm not sure if it was a one day affair, or several. But it seems there were something like a half dozen or so stages to the instruction, with each stage more advanced than the one before. I did great in all of them-- except the final one. The last stage involved diving into the deep end of the pool and swimming out, and I guess I panicked in the water. So I didn't pass the course.

Sometime after this junkyard pond experience, I'd prove for sure I'd grown beyond the deep water panic of my Red Cross training. But in the moment I wasn't too concerned about drowning, even if I should have been. Maybe the additional years of experience in dicey situations had made me more confident.

I managed to get up a pretty good velocity prior to reaching the panel. Our front tires hit the first rails of the wooden frame like they were railroad tracks. Ugh! I was sure I'd damaged Shadow in some way with that. It proved even more violent when the rear tires hit, skidding atop and over the thick wooden members. We had to cross other such exposed frame work planks too, some at angles. It was awful.

I wasn't sure at all of my timing. But I figured as slippery as everything was, I had to stomp on the brakes just as soon as I was sure the rear wheels had landed inside the border of the first framework beam. And hope we didn't bust through whatever material formed the floor of the thing.

It seemed to be working! The whole vast panel-- helped I suppose by the slippery mud and water beneath it-- seemed to be set in motion by our skidding stop atop it, and headed out across the pond towards its far shore.

Hey! We were surfing, man!

For about half a second I thought we had it made. Then we began diving like a submarine. Holy shit!

I watched the front end of the huge panel slide beneath the water ahead of us-- with the rest of it following immediately behind.

Shadow had come to rest about a third of the way from the tail end of the great sign or whatever it was-- so the bulk of the structure stretched out ahead of us. Therefore, I got to watch a lot of sign go underwater before the liquid reached us.

A look back at the shore showed a mix of dumbfounded and gleeful faces amongst my pursuers, as they beheld the spectacle of our pending submergence. Goddamn it!

The outside water level soon reached the bottom of the doors and began pouring in there. Shadow was still idling, but I didn't know for how long.

A few months before I'd flooded him out in a similar situation, by attempting to drive through a temporary pond at a suburban intersection near my home. I'd been headed to school the morning after a heavy overnight rain.

That stranding had proved quite embarrassing for a high school student such as myself, and I'd since tried to analyze what happened, and take some preventative measures against future incidents of that nature. Mainly, I'd made my own radiator fan shroud to replace the one missing on Shadow when I bought him. My dad had helped me figure out how, as I was new to metal fabrication. I figured the shroud would reduce the amount of water thrown over the engine by the fan, in high water situations. Later I would do more in this regard, but at the time of my junkyard pond predicament, that was it.

What could I do now, as we sank? I could maybe rev the motor higher, to stave off choking as more and more water made it past the shroud. But when the end came, I'd have to shut it down to minimize how much water was pulled in.

Of course, that might not matter at all after Shadow sat on the pond bottom for hours-- or even days(!). I wondered how much it would cost to fix him after this.

Yeah, I suppose I should have been more worried about the beating I might get from the hoodlums if they caught me, but I was accustomed to that due to my daily school environment. I preferred one-on-one combat of course. But you can't always get what you want.

I usually suffered only a matter of hours or days from most beatings. Making the money to fix up Shadow though-- that pain could linger on for months.

The water got high enough to soak my butt in my seat, and Shadow was starting to cough, so I shifted into neutral and revved him some to add more gas to the mix he was drinking. I was holding us in place with the brakes.

Steam began coming out around the edges of the hood, and I realized it'd been doing it previously from all around us, as the water contacted the hot exhaust system on our underside.

The windows began to fog up all around too, so I switched on the defroster fan.

The absurdity of it all would have been funny if vehicle loss, possible drowning, and a fierce beating didn't all seem imminent.

Shadow's normal engine sounds changed as the water muffled them more and more into something like gurgling.

We'd made some progress across the pond with our big sign assisted slide, but we were slowing up now, and it looked like it was getting time for me to cut the ignition and bail. I guessed the pond must be fairly deep.

Then I perceived a possible signal of redemption: the long forward section of the sign ahead of us seemed to be surfacing again! Coming back up from under the water! We were rising! Hallelujah, we were rising!

I didn't know how or why, but our glide through the water was headed up in altitude again.

Then I realized the reason. The front of the big board was rising because the rear-- where we were-- was descending. Yikes!

Oh man! And we were almost across the pond! So close!

I looked around again, and could see and hear my antagonists hooting and hollering at my plight from the far shore. By that time Lindsay too had apparently made her way to the edge of the arena exit. She was hard to immediately pick out with her new mud covering, against the not much different color scheme of the lower arena wall. Damn her. I was too far away to make out her expression. But I supposed she was grinning and laughing along with the rest of them.

Shadow's cough was getting worse, we continued to slowly sink, and our progress towards the shore was slowing dramatically. It was now or never. I decided to try one last thing before giving up and abandoning my car.

I let up on my revving of the engine to put us back into first gear again, then went for it: a desperate leap for the shore (I mean, why not? What did I have left to lose, if sinking was inevitable anyway?) So I gunned the motor.

But rather than go anywhere, Shadow seemed pretty much to stay in the same spot. And even offer me a real world example of Newton's laws of motion, as the lighter weight board below us began shooting backwards towards the shoreline we'd just left. Damn it! The only good thing about the action was our progress over the sign's wooden board framework was cushioned a little by the water's buoyancy.

So we basically rolled the long panel out from under us, and fell into the water. Damn it!

But we were tantalizingly close to the shore now, and Shadow and I strived mightily to get there before we drowned out.

The water around us seemed about half the way up the outsides of the doors now, with it somewhat lower inside, covering my lap, and still pouring in the many small gaps available in my ramshackle car (Shadow had been wrecked multiple times, and so was nowhere near water-tight). But our wheels seemed to be touching bottom, so we had a chance (I hoped).

Shadow's engine compartment, being the forward-most part of us, had the lowest water level at that moment.

Our rear tires were doing a lot of spinning, maybe digging too deep into the pond bottom muck. But we slowly-- agonizingly slowly-- made some progress out of the water. Spinning all the way.

I kept on spinning Shadow's tires, keeping his revs relatively high, trying to give him more gas than water, as he fought to make the shore.

Horses can swim, can't they? And he was a Mustang, damn it!

Amazingly, we reached the shore at last: spinning our rear wheels the whole way, Shadow's tail end swerving from side to side, almost like a big dog trying to shake off water after a dunking.

I was desperately afraid that Shadow would die if I let up on the throttle, as drenched as I knew his engine compartment had to be. So once we made the shore, I continued on at as rapid a clip as I dared, seeking a further escape from our literal quagmire.

I couldn't afford more than a fast glimpse back at them, but our tormentors no longer seemed to laughing.

Shadow and I semi-skidded along the shore, to soon reach and pass through a welcome break in our next obstacle: the trees-and-brush barrier surrounding the pond on this side.

I had to keep Shadow revving high, or he'd die, I was sure. So I stayed in first gear, even as I sought more legs to add to our escape route.

Shadow's engine began giving off some awful squealing noises then, denoting what I assumed to be horrible water damage of some kind. And steam continued to come from various body seams. Maybe the cold water had busted the hot engine block, and we were losing compression? Agh! All I could do was hope that he'd hold together a little bit longer.

I finally got us onto a course running around the base of the junkyard's outer wall, dodging various debris like randomly placed junk cars and parts piles, and mowing down some bushes and saplings.

I was sure the amazingly loud squealing and screaming coming from Shadow's motor would help those inside to monitor our progress around their big steel playground.

We made it around to the main gate of the yard. I could retrace the rest of the steps from memory, to get us back to the main highway.

Shadow was still coughing some, but running good enough to get us away from here, it seemed (except for the squealing like a stuck pig part).

Of course the damn derby drivers had had time to wind their way through the yard maze too by now, and they started emerging from the gate about thirty yards behind us.

I figured they'd try to disable us or run us off the road before we reached the main highway, for those junkers were highly illegal to drive there, what with no headlights or taillights, and no glass in their windows either.

Crap! We sure weren't out of the woods yet! There were several miles of piss-poor asphalt here, which would be pretty hard to take at speed, even if we weren't still half-choked with water. Hitting the pot holes was like being struck by miniature grenades. The plentiful water still in the floorboards splashed and sprayed across the interior from the shock of some hits, spotting my eyeglasses and windows with beads of water, and clouding my vision.

I instinctively turned on the wipers for help, but of course most of the water I needed removed was on the inside, rather than outside of the glass. It was a weird and confusing situation, with my windows somewhat fogging on both inside and outside surfaces, plus being spotted by water droplets both places too, at the same time.

I couldn't believe I hadn't already knocked one of Shadow's wheels clean off the car-- or blown a tire-- when we'd ran edge-wise over the two by fours (or whatever the boards were) in the framework of the sign. And now we were bouncing through sharp-edged craters in the road. Agh!

At least the jarring impacts from the holes helped a bit to take my mind off Shadow's continued wailing. Argh! I must be doing enormous damage to him somehow, I thought, judging from the weird squalling which wouldn't stop.

Could it be water had gotten into my transmission or something? What on Earth could be causing that awful noise? And with the motor still powering us forward, too?

As the pot hole gremlins and their sledge hammers worked on our underside, I did my best to keep us on the road despite the zingers being delivered by the torn up asphalt, our current need for speed, and my strained visibility.

The demolition cars behind us were so badly ravaged by previous sessions that I could only recognize a single chassis for its original make: something like a mid to late sixties Ford Fairlane, I thought. The others' original incarnations looked to have been relatively large cars too, but from what manufacturer even, it was impossible to tell.

Their longer wheelbases than ours seemed to be helping in the present contest, as Shadow and I could cut the corners a little easier. I guess the derby cars' junk wheels and tires were hurting them on that, too.

But Shadow's own near-drowning had left him with breathing problems, which made all this much closer than it should have been. He missed and sputtered and gagged every time I allowed him to drop below a certain rev level.

We neared the main highway intersection, and I saw a passing car there that I thought I could beat, to put it between me and any junker which followed. If Shadow had been running better, there'd have been no uncertainty at all. But as it was, I figured it to be a squeaker.

At the last moment I was having more trouble than I expected, and so aborted the attempt. The foremost junker would be on me in moments, so I could ill afford the stop at the intersection joining the present road with the state highway. Crap!

That stop proved costlier than I expected: for Shadow quit on me! I'd let his revs drop too low when we slowed down!

Here came the first junker into sight around a bend behind us, as I wound on the starter, begging Shadow to awaken once more. When he didn't revive even as my battery seemed about to give out, I pushed the pedal all the way to the floor, and he finally roared back to life.

Just in time, too. For no sooner had I begun spinning out of there and onto the highway, than the first junker came at us from behind at full ramming speed.

Fortunately he barely clipped us, running straight across the highway after that, and into a ditch on the opposite side.

His clip spun us around into the opposite direction I'd originally been pointing in, but I didn't care, and headed that way, back towards town.

I high tailed it all the rest of the way back to town, not letting Shadow rest until we'd made it to my workplace. I was amazed to find that I wasn't late!

Ah: the life and times of Jerry Staute (the TV show), I mused. Rather than think about my hurting car.

Yes, I was personally drenched from the pond dunking. And the pothole induced splattering inside the car. But that didn't matter much, as my after-school job was dish washing at a fairly large hotel restaurant. I typically got soaked there anyway. I was able to park Shadow in a cubbyhole near the dumpster and back door, where casual passers by wouldn't likely see him, and where I could check on him during breaks.

So what were Shadow's total damages from this escapade?

Well, he was horrendously dirty just about everywhere, inside and out. There was a quarter-inch of muck inside the car over the carpeting. Apparently the stuff had been suspended in all the water we took on.

The carpeting and sound insulation had to be pulled out of him to allow a truly complete drying. It took me a week (and a growing odor), to understand that.

His front spoiler was history. Apparently ripped off his chin as we bounced through the muddy moguls of the arena. Or maybe when we were bouncing through the framework beams of the enormous sign. Or running over the brushy terrain around the exterior of the yard. Take your pick.

I'd had troubles with that chin spoiler ever since I'd installed it: it just caught hell down there. After finally losing it in this incident, I would not utilize a factory style front spoiler again, but rather build my own, more durable version.

By some miracle, all the wheels and tires and suspension seemed undamaged. At least so far as I could tell. Maybe the front end was knocked out of alignment-- but I'd already found plain old rough roads or hard driving to do that in more typical runs, both for my car and others.

I was sort of stumped about the extreme squealing I'd heard after emerging from the pond. Because it'd gradually quit afterwards, and I couldn't find any hint of what had caused it under the hood.

After talking with more experienced drivers though, I learned it'd most likely been my fan belts. The water and slime of the pond had made them extra slippery on their pulleys, and so they'd slipped a while until drying out again. That was all. What a relief!

The little bump from the derby car at the end had sheared off the tip of one side of my back bumper. It looked like the metal had been cut off with a sharp knife. I'd eventually replace the whole thing-- but it'd be a while.

It turned out Shadow didn't just lose stuff in the melee though. He gained a pound or so too. In the form of a woman's pocket book. Lindsay had accidentally left it behind when she jumped out.

Ha! That'd teach her! I thought. Yeah, it was pretty weak revenge for an assassination attempt. But it was all I had.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have dug around in her bag except to identify the owner, and notify them of my find. But Lindsay owed me. Owed me a lot more than a peek into her bag.

So I scrutinized the items that one Lindsay Finch felt important enough to carry on her person, when setting up an innocent guy to get his car crushed (and maybe worse).

The rummaging wasn't very satisfying though. Lindsay had nearly thirty dollars in her purse; a hand-written letter of apparently trivial content; some chewing gum; the usual compact, lipstick, etc.; and keys. Ha! I hoped she was having a hard time getting by without those keys!

A couple of items I couldn't identify, and figured I'd ask my sister about later.

I did learn Lindsay's real address from her identification cards. And some phone numbers from other items (though exactly whose numbers they were, was unclear).

I wondered if she'd try to retrieve her purse. It'd take a lot of gall on her part, sure. But she'd already proved herself to have no shortage of that.

I figured I might be seeing her again.

What happened next? Shades of gray.

Above is an admittedly rough artistic recreation of an actual photo taken of Shadow not long before the time of the events related here, sitting in a lot off the parkway described in several stories on-site (even the real photo was of poor quality like this, due to being snapped on one of those cheap 'instamatic' cameras of the era).

At the time I took the photo, Shadow possessed fresh new paint and bodywork, plus a factory chin spoiler I think I'd bought used. I'd also run a white pin stripe over some side body lines, ending in the rear fender scoops (the pin-stripe was perhaps the main feature distinguishing my 1969 Mustang from that of Sue Anne's football player boyfriend of the time).

I believe the actual photo I'm aping here ended up in the possession of the real-life "Lindsay" who helped inspire this account.

My friend Steve's 1971 Boss 351 Mustang looked like this before it was totaled.

My friend Ben's 1967 Chevrolet Camaro.