There are a few pivotal times in a boy’s life when he feels that he has reached a milestone and is about to enter a new phase of maturation. I don’t mean the obvious ones like Bar mitzvahs or Graduations. I’m talking about the ones that are events that come so close to the edge that they are a risk to life and limb. Youth has its rewards and pitfalls.
Avondale Jr. High School; that’s what it was called in the mid 1960s. Today it still stands, but it is now called a Middle School. This was done to satisfy pedantics who cite the studies of psychologists that prove conclusively that students graduating from middle schools have higher self esteem than students graduating from jr. high schools. I’m sure that there have since been studies that provide overwhelming evidence that they were right.
Walking out the door with the sound of lockers opening and closing still echoing in my ears, I followed the sidewalk past the big yellows with their loud popping exhausts, heading due east: the general direction of home.
Many on those buses were on their way home to watch Soupy Sales on TV, or listen to their radio or phonograph, prepping themselves by sitting or standing in the bus singing, “and you know you should be glad” and then shaking their heads and loudly exclaiming “Woooooooo”. Some would promptly spend the next three hours talking on the telephone, while a few others would soon be doing their school work in earnest, or reporting to afternoon jobs. I was above all that. My plan for the remainder of the afternoon was to make sure that my new dress shoes with the Cuban heels would be polished, and my suede shoes would be brushed. The dress shoes were in their ceremonial position in my closet. The suedes, were on my feet.
Walking down the sidewalk into the street, I deliberately avoided the route taken by most walk-home students. All around the back of the school, there was a sharp sloping ground that was about 10 feet high, and probably a little steeper than 45 degrees. In an easterly direction, beyond this abrupt rise, there was a gradual upward slope that was moderately bumpy and served as the rear grounds for an elementary school that was adjacent to the Jr.High. This continued upward for about 2 tenths of a mile, until the top of a hill was reached, where this gradual slope met the sidewalk. The vast majority of walkers took advantage of this short cut. I stayed on the street, so I would take a bit longer to get to the same spot on the other side of the elementary school. The street that I chose intersected another that went up precipitously till it arrived at the same hill top as the more direct route via the short cut.
I had sworn off that short cut. I took the longer way so that my suede shoes wouldn’t get dirty.
There would be no more taking short cuts, running, bicycling, or doing anything that would be kid-like for me, as I had now reached a new level of sophistication, and was concerned with higher things. The only thing that was more important than the cut of my clothes, was my eventual acquisition of a car. After all, in three short years I would be 17 years old, and be of age to drive.
I arrived at the road that would take me up to the hilltop, turned right, and started up the long hill. A left turn would have taken me down to the Auto Parts Paradise, where there were more junk yards per square mile than there were bars in South Amboy, or retail outlets on Route 22 in Union County. Some towns have sections unofficially devoted to certain ethnic groups; Avondale had several graveyards where GM, Mopar and Ford were laid to rest, and resurrected for the Rolling Undead. I would be driving some of these monstrosities in later years.
It was a long uphill walk of about a quarter mile, and I walked it with the ease of a young person with a strong constitution and an awareness that was uncommonly good for someone so young. For what was probably the first time, I noticed that spring was in the air, and it occurred to me that, maybe I didn’t need that black leather coat that I was wearing. It stayed put, of course. After all, the big yellows were now coming up the hill, and I couldn’t be seen out of uniform on the way home from school.
After receiving a barrage of obscenities from a few key bus riders, I reached the top of the hill and was stopped by a shrill whistle off to my right. Charlie Hagenbaugh was coming up the long dirt slope, via the short cut. “Jon, wait up”, was all he said, the words coming up the hill quite clearly. I watched him come up the hill, and as he got closer, I could see his pointed shoes accentuating his pigeon toed gait.
Charlie had moved to Avondale about three years earlier, and we had become friends right away. He was a remarkable young guy. He had one of those little bicycles with 20 inch wheels and oversized handlebars that were popular in the sixties. He was the only kid I knew who could pull a wheelie on that little bike, make it last for 10 or 20 feet, and ride that bike down the street on one wheel as if it were a unicycle. But the thing that I most admired about Charlie was his knowledge of, and, enthusiasm for cars. He knew them better than all the rest of our peer group, and many of their parents. Indeed, at that time there was a car in his back yard — I think it was a ’58 Chevy. He used to crawl all over it with greasy wrenches in his hands and pockets all the time, fixing this or changing that. He never had it on the road, it was just sort of a large toy car that someone had left in his yard. His name was Hagenbaugh, but I liked to call him Hagenwrench.
I waited for Charlie to come up the hill. Time spent with him was never boring, and always proved to be eventful. Today’s encounter would be no exception. Indeed, as we shall see, it will prove to be the beginning of our most memorable adventure.
When he was within five feet of me he said, “Come on. I’ve got something to show you”, and then just kept right on walking, out into the street and over to the other side.
“Where are you going?” was all that I could think of to say. The area was very sparse, there was no traffic (the buses were long gone), and the other side of the street was nothing but woods, but still, I could see no reason for following him over there, and hadn’t moved at all.
“Come ON! It’s in the woods.”, he said.
“I’m not going in there.” I retorted, “I’m wearing my suedes.”.
He walked back over to me, looked down and said with a grimace, “You’re wearing those striped socks again. I can see them through your pixie shoes and your iridescent pants”.
As much as I enjoyed Charlie’s company, there were times that he just didn’t understand some of the aspects of life that were not related to internal combustion engines. Still, I can see in retrospect, that he did have a point: With those severely pointed shoes that had toes that turned up a little, and the green iridescent pants, I probably looked like a 5 foot 10 inch leprechaun in a black leather coat… with acne.
I did a quick mental reshuffle. “What’s in the woods?”
“It’s a car.”
“Get out!”, was all I could think of to say.
He then brought out that old platitude that I had heard used so many times before, “Wanna bet?”. There really wasn’t any appropriate rejoinder for this, and the magic word ‘car’ had started me wavering.
He persisted, “Come ON!! There’s a car in the woods. Let’s go check it out”.
Gingerly, I followed him into the woods, being careful not to catch my nylon socks on any of the brambles. Little did I know that in a few years, this natural woodland would be replaced by scores of apartments, thereby insuring that future inhabitants of Avondale would be even more transitory, and this change would enrich our lives beyond measure. I know it seems almost impossible to imagine now, but, sadly, during my teen years, we didn’t celebrate diversity.
It wasn’t very long before I saw the object of our search in a weedy shallow depressed area, surrounded by small trees and bushes. It was a pale green Renault Dauphine with random patches of rust that looked as though they had been deliberately applied to give the car a weathered appearance. The middle of the roof was dented and looked as though someone had been jumping on it. The general appearance of abandonment was made complete by the absence of glass in any of the windows, and the seats that had been removed and strewn about on the ground. Surprisingly, the car had all four wheels, but the tires were flat.
These cars were very common during the sixties. They were sort of like a French Volkswagen, although for every Renault on the road there were probably about five VW beetles. The Renaults were small four door sedans, with a rear mounted engine, and were almost always painted a forgettable pastel color. This one was sort of the color of spinach pie… before it is cooked, or, after it is eaten.
I stood there, awestruck. It was a fantastic find for a couple of eighth graders who were enthusiastic about cars, big, and knowledgeable enough to tinker with them, but still lacking the good sense to realize the potential danger. If we had been just a little bit younger, or, older, we would have gone home and let this sleeping sedan lie. My mind was racing. The possibilities before us were tremendous, and I felt giddy with anticipation.
“Well?”, he said.
At first, I couldn’t say anything. Indeed, for the next day or so, there was much that we DIDN’T say; I guess, for fear that we would talk about what we were going to do, and then see how insane our plans were, and then not follow through with them.
“Yeah, it’s a car,” I managed to verify for us both.
We didn’t put it into words between ourselves then, but from that moment on, we would do what we had to do to play with our new found toy. It was irresistible.
Charlie said, “Reggie Schichause’s big brother and his friends left it here”. They were Big Kids. Oddly, this idiom was still used by us then even though I was almost six feet tall. As we got older, our conception of Big Kids got bigger. By the time we got to high school, we didn’t use the term anymore, but the concept remained, and Big Kids would then be in college. Today, for me, a Big Kid is a grey haired, or bald man with a handsome pension and investments, and successful offspring…..who doesn’t digress.
We immediately started to plan. I had an old fashioned hand operated tire pump at home; the kind you would see in a Laurel and Hardy movie with Ollie pushing it up and down on the side of the road while Stan stood and watched, moon faced. I left to go and get it, forgetting my former plans. My date with the can of kiwi would have to wait.
In about ten minutes, I walked into my home, uneventfully arriving like any other day. I don’t remember much about what I did at home for those few minutes that I was there. I do know that I didn’t announce to my parents, “Hey, me and Charlie found a car in the woods and we’re gonna try and take it out on the road!”. Soon, I was on my way back to our four wheeler with the pump under my arm, and wearing more suitable clothes: dungarees(we didn’t call them jeans, then), a sweatshirt, and sneakers. Let me also hasten to add: these were Work Clothes, and, not, Play Clothes.
I arrived back at the car before Charlie did, and spent some time looking over our new set of wheels, taking in every detail.
There was no carpeting or headliner. The door panels were intact and the doors would open and close, but the window cranks were useless because all of the windows were broken, and there were little pieces of safety glass all over the interior. Fortunately, the steering wheel was intact, and functional. I opened the lid on the engine compartment in the back where an American car would have a trunk, and found that the engine was missing. There was no cover on the differential housing between the two rear axles and the gears were plainly visible.
I was soon joined by Charlie who came back with a small hatchet and a can of red spray paint. The first thing we did was collect the seats and place them on the bolts that were sticking up from the floor. So, the seats weren’t really secure, but at least they were in their proper positions and wouldn’t move around too much. After this, Charlie started hacking away at the small trees in front of the car in order to make a pathway out of the woods, and I started pumping up the tires.
After about 10 minutes, I asked Charlie, “How’re we gonna get this thing outa here?.” The car was in a slight depression, and would need to be pushed up and out. “Think we can do it?”
“I’ll go get Jimmy. He should be done with his route by now.” was Charlie’s answer, and he was soon off on his mission of collecting Jimmy Flynn for the cause. It was just as well… I had two more tires to inflate. It is one of the wonders of the age that all four of those tires held air.
Jimmy Flynn was a most industrious boy. He had his paper route, and would soon graduate to part time jobs at local businesses. Always polite, a former Alter Boy at St. Josayfus’ church, Jimmy was the picture of good taste and good sense. Today, would be the first time that I saw another side of Jimmy that was unlike the stodgy one that always obtained. He lived a couple of blocks away, across the street from Charlie, so they, or at least, Charlie would be back soon.
Once again alone with our new status builder, and now finished with the tires, I felt like decorating it appropriately, and what better way to do so than to give it a grand NASCAR facelift? Fireball Roberts had recently passed away, so my current hero of the pits was Fred Lorenzen who drove the Lafayette Ford number 28 at the NASCAR races. This was in the old days when the cars at Daytona looked like stock cars, before all of the advertising made them look like giant beer cans on wheels, and when you saw a photograph of a race car driver, his jacket didn’t look like it was covered with post-it notes.
I used Charlie’s red spray paint to put the number 28 on the driver and opposite passenger doors and the roof, and 427 cu.in. on both sides of the hood; actually the trunk lid in the front.
Our pit crew had now grown from two to three as Jimmy arrived and said, “Wow, does it run?”
“Only downhill, I’d say,” said the mechanically minded Charlie, as he stowed the now unneeded paint can, tire pump, and hatchet under a bush. “and we need your help to get it outa here.”
“Ok”, he said, and promptly fell into action as if he were born to it.
Pushing a car through an irregular underbrush is difficult enough when you know what you’re doing, and furthermore, if it had been a contemporary Galaxie or Impala, we probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. But, we prevailed, and, as implausible as it seems, thanks to the exuberance and foolhardiness of youth, our little French set of wheels was about to regain her rightful place on the road.
As we neared the street we saw two more members of our circle of friends on their bicycles: Kenny Birdseye and Herminio Sanchez. Their reactions were similar, but their actions were as different as night and day.
Kenny exclaimed “What are you doing?”, and made no attempt to join us in our endeavor. He kept a respectful distance, stayed on his bicycle, and watched the proceedings from afar. Kenny was as much a fixture at the Wimbledon Presbyterian Church as Jimmy Flynn was at St. Josayfus’; in fact, when this whole comedy of errors reached its climax the next day, and the police showed up, Kenny assured me that at that time, he was in church.
Herminio Sanchez also expressed surprise that suggested disbelief, but then immediately laid his bicycle down in the bushes and helped with the pushing. Hermie, as he was called, was industrious like Jimmy, and also had a paper route that he was done with for the day. His parents were from Puerto Rico, but Hermie and his younger brother Bob were just like the rest of us; and on this Grand Day we were all a trifle WILD. Except for Kenny.
The Renault was now on pavement once again, with those dry rot donuts faithfully turning and supporting it as they had so long ago, but we didn’t keep it on the road. I offer as proof that we were not totally insane or irresponsible, the fact that we chose to take it down the long dirt slope that led to the Jr.High for its Renaissance, rather than going down a public street that led to the automotive graveyards; after all, we didn’t know if the brakes worked, and we might run into traffic. Wisdom prevailed.
We had to push the car over to a spot where there was no curb so that we could get it up and over the sidewalk and onto the dirt. This took some time and doing, but we got it done and were ready for action. I remember trying not to think of what I would do or say if a police car happened along. Would I just continue as if I were doing no more than playing with a large go-cart, or would I run like the wind? It seemed to me at the time that we must have been breaking some law, but I wasn’t sure what it was. This ambiguity was one more ingredient that made our endeavor so exciting. For once in my dull life, something was happening.
It was at this point that the leadership in this adventure passed from Charlie to myself. I can make this claim based on the irrefutable fact that it was I who got behind the wheel so as to let Newton and Galileo’s old friend take us for our first joyride. Jimmy sat in the passenger’s seat, while Hermie and Charlie sat in the back. It didn’t occur to me to tell everyone to fasten their seat belts. Nobody did that in the mid sixties, and, I offer here as the ultimate understatement: there weren’t any seat belts.
After finding that the brakes DID work I started our descent, only to be startled by a commotion from the back as the car rocked a little more than it should have at that speed. “It’s Bolassi!”, said Charlie, turning around and looking through the back window that was now a hole that had once been protected by glass. Hermie’s younger brother Bob, had jumped on the back of the car (he was prone to do such things), hanging on with what I am certain was a big grin. I couldn’t see him because there was no rear-view mirror, but knew what had happened by the motion of the car, and Charlie calling out Bobs nickname, Bolassi, the origin of which escaped me then and still does.
We stopped and Bob was soon in the back seat with his brother and Charlie, and we were about to start anew, when I looked up and saw Kenny Birdseye sitting on his bicycle up on a ridge off to the side, laughing out loud. He had been watching this fiasco and sat there exclaiming how crazy we all were. Today, he wouldn’t get an argument out of me.
It’s hard to describe the feeling that I experienced as we started down that dirt slope so many years ago. I remember it well though, and can attest that as we accelerated, it was enhanced proportionately. I guess it was probably like the feeling one gets when flying in a glider: the mild alteration of gravitational pull due to the slow downward movement, coupled with only the sound of the wind in ones ears. In our case the wind was in our faces due to the lack of safety glass, and the sound was that of our collective laughter amid whatever creaking noises the springs, or any other of the car’s components made. I glanced over at Jimmy, as he sat there with a big grin, his arm wedged in the window with his elbow along the bottom of the window opening and his hand up at the top. The guys in the back had a rougher ride, bouncing up and down more and more as the terrain became more irregular. The fact that the seats were so lackadaisically installed made things in the back worse for our passengers. I looked back there and saw Hermie hit his head on the ceiling at least once during that wild ride.
But now came the piece de resistance. There was a slight calm before the storm as our faithful four wheeler rolled across a blacktop behind the elementary school that served as an area where students were forced to play those competitive pagan games like dodge-ball, and other savage self-esteem killers from those dark dog-eat-dog days. Beyond this there was a gradual slope that went down to the precipitous drop that would dump us into the Jr.High parking lot. This last drop was about 10 feet, and at an angle that was easily steeper that 45 degrees. It must have taken us from 5 to 10 seconds to roll down from the blacktop to the drop. My anticipation knew no bounds.
What we did that day wouldn’t be possible today. The steep slope is still there but there is a curb at the base of it, delimiting the parking lot. In those days there was no curb, so I simply let acceleration due to gravity take over and propel us down, though, while not at 32 feet/sec2, it was certainly fast enough to evoke the maximum excitement for five adolescents. In the heat of creative excitement after entering the parking lot at a good clip, I grabbed the steering wheel at about 7 o’clock, as the clock face depicts, and abruptly turned it right, to about 4 o’clock. The steering apparatus and wheels obeyed, turning the car dramatically to the right, and the tires supplied a very satisfying characteristic squeal, lasting for 2 or 3 seconds. Fortunately, we stayed on four wheels. It was better than……….. the Wild Mouse.
The car came to a stop after completing the ‘U’ turn that I had imposed on it, and we all piled out, gradually resuming normal breathing. It was amid the jollity and frivolity that ensued when I heard Jimmy say the thing that was so uncharacteristic of him, and made me re-evaluate my opinion of him and his gift for earthy expression. I guess he actually spoke for us all when he said, “That was tough as Hell!”. I silently took this as an indirect compliment of the highest order.
We milled around for a few minutes, considering our next move; as anticlimactic as it would have to be.
Forgive me dear reader for the Newtonian references, but we were now faced with the corollary to “What goes up, must come down”, which is “What goes down must come up”, that is, if it is going to go down again. We were faced with the problem of returning Frenchy to the top of the hill for another ride down, or, in order to put it to bed for another jaunt tomorrow. We certainly couldn’t push it up the steep slope that had just jettisoned us into the parking lot, and we couldn’t leave it where it was. The only option was to push the car along the route that I had taken a few hours ago: the street. And, we proceeded to do just that.
This was REAL goal motivated behavior. We pushed that car for the quarter mile or so that got us over to the street that would take us up to our starting position, which was another quarter mile up the hill. As we progressed I again wondered what we should do if we saw a police car, and when we reached the intersection with the other street and started to push the car uphill, encountering a couple of other cars on the road, I became more concerned. It was a literal uphill battle now, and it slowed us down considerably,
I couldn’t understand it. There was only one Dunkin’ Donuts in Avondale at the time. Where were all the cops?
It was then that providence came to our rescue by sending us a savior in a ’56 Ford. I was constantly on the lookout for trouble, so I saw him coming up the hill from the automotive graveyard section of town. He was a Big Kid, and no doubt had just been to one of the junk yards and probably had a used carburetor, needle-nose bubble skirts, or a spotlight in his trunk, and a shrunken Head or fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. He asked us if we wanted a push (it was pretty obvious that we needed one), and we accepted.
When that Ford came up behind us and made contact I was behind the wheel again. For the first few seconds we went up slowly, but as our benefactor increased our speed we soon started to define a zigzag pattern up that street. We started going up straight, turned, compensated, overcompensated, and over-overcompensated. We were obviously going too fast for my skill level, and frankly, we were lucky that we didn’t hit the curb.
His good deed complete, the kid in the Ford left us at the top of the hill where our adventure had started.
It was a heady time for us all; we were back in the same spot where we had been maybe 45 minutes before, but now infinitely richer in worldly experience. If I had been a connoisseur of hats at that time, I would have had to buy all new ones. It had truly been a momentous day, and we decided to put the car back in the woods for safe keeping until the next day, which would be Saturday. I went home and slept the sleep of the mighty.
I was never an early riser on Saturday, or any other day-off that I had, or have. That fateful Saturday was no exception. It must have been about 10 AM when I arrived at our new off-road course, and was amazed and dismayed by what I saw.
The Renault had been taken out of the woods, and was now stopped at the top of the slope that had been our starting point of the day before. There must have been 20 or 30 kids in it, on it, or around it: Big Kids, Little Kids, and everything in between. It seemed that they were all clamoring to go for a ride at the same time. Eventually, someone inside the car had had enough and decided to go by simply taking their foot off the brake. Some of the dissenting ones were standing in front of the car, trying to stop it. Gravity proved too strong for them, so they wisely moved aside, and either watched the car’s decent from where they stood, or ran after it as it followed the same route that we had taken the previous evening.
I was now in the position that Kenny Birdseye had been in when he had witnessed the beginning of our maiden voyage. Unlike Kenny, I took off on a easy jog toward where the car was headed (I guess it was OK for me to do such a kid thing because of the real gutsy grown-up thing that I had done the night before). It was when I got to the blacktop at the elementary school that I saw the black-and-white pull into the Jr.High parking lot from the street. About a second later the revolving red light on the police car went on and started its twirl-around. The lights on police cars in those days didn’t assault the eyes as much as they do today, but they carried just as much weight. This one stopped me and everyone else associated with the car in their tracks, and the car, that hadn’t yet reached the quick drop to the Jr.High parking lot, became a run-away Renault. All of the kids ran from it like rats jumping off a sinking ship, and by the time it reached the drop, it was empty.
I saw it disappear as it once again obeyed the laws of physics, plunging down the slope. There were about three seconds when I couldn’t see it. It was during that time when I heard the siren on the police car. It was an acoustic siren that sounded like a siren and not like a sound effect from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I could see one of the officers as he got out of the car and walked toward the slope, and it was then that the Renault again came into view on a direct course to the school. As the car came nearer the school the officer’s nonchalant attitude became more agitated as he decided to try to stop its progress. It all happened so fast that I’m not sure of the particulars, but he ended up with coffee spilled all over his blue serge, and the Renault took a good sized chip out of some of the bricks on a corner of the building.
We all left in a hurry.
It must have been the following Saturday when Charlie Hagenbaugh told me that he knew where our car was.
“It’s in a junk yard on the other side of town”, he said, “Wanna go see it?”
Knowing full well that I would have to ride my bicycle to go with him, I agreed to do so. I guess our activities of the previous Friday night had brought me so much closer to grownupedness, that I didn’t mind a little infantile backsliding; besides, I wanted to see our car.
We had to travel about two miles to the part of Avondale that had ANOTHER junk yard district. We stopped just outside the entrance to the yard and there it was, flattened to a height of about 2 or 3 feet and piled on the back of a flatbed truck trailer with several other pieces of metal that had once been cars. It was our car alright; I could just make out the 28 on the door and the color was unmistakable.
Closure. I went home a little sad that day.
Ok, so maybe I made up the part about the cop and the coffee; but the rest is gospel truth. Just ask St.Josayfus.
Jonathan Womelsdorf 2012