Durward and Charles – The Passing Lane

(continued from the previous post)

There was one incident with the Buick Electra in which I got to participate.

A few years had passed and I was probably about seventeen years old. Charles was visiting us again, and for reasons lost to history, I was driving my dad and his brother somewhere in the Buick. Dad was in the back seat and Charles was in the front passenger seat.

We were on US-1 headed north out of town. We were approaching a long downhill grade. At the bottom of the hill there was an old cement railroad bridge that had been built at a time when US-1 carried only one lane of traffic in each direction. The highway passed through short tunnels in the cement structure. The highway was four lanes wide (2 lanes north, 2 lanes south), but at the bottom of the hill, each direction of traffic narrowed to one lane to pass through the railroad bridge, so automobile traffic had to merge.

As we got to the top of the hill and started down the long grade, Charles put his left foot on top of my right foot which was on the gas pedal. The Buick had a powerful engine, and remember: we were going downhill. The Buick instantly accelerated. I pulled into the passing lane and within seconds we were flying past “slower” traffic moving a mere 55 or 60 mph. Durward yelled at Charles to get his foot off my foot. Charles laughed. I had no reaction. I was calm. For me, the situation was absurd, and absurd was normal. All I could do, at that point, was aim the vehicle. But I felt in control. Maybe I wasn’t in total control of the car, but I was in control of myself. Charles was just being playful. We weren’t about to die. Someone, in some car on that hill, might soon die, but I knew it wouldn’t be us. Not today.

We shot through the tunnel under the railroad tracks, a 4700 pound bullet with a 17 year old behind the wheel and a laughing madman beside him. Or, as I like to call it, good times.

Sometimes I wondered what other kids did when they weren’t in school. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my life was different.