blue moon (2)

Friday, August 17, 2007

I Few Thoughts ©

I was sitting here the other day writing part eleven to The Red Clay when the phone rang at around midnight.
It’s not strange for my phone to ring at that time of the night with friends all over the world who know I am a night owl but this wasn’t a long distance call but a local one.
It was my mother.
Now this is one of those people who I don’t like getting a phone call this late at night.
There are phone calls that we know will come one day that you dread.
Unless the old man cranked it up and my mother was calling to tell the world then I knew this was a bad call.

She tells me someone I know, son was just killed in an accident.
I have met the boy a couple of times through his father who I know but not as well as my brother who is one of his closest friends.
The kid was a fucken genius when it came to computers, computer software and satellites but that’s as far as it went.

I remember when I was sixteen, I was a free spirit and invisible, crazy but not stupid.
I did some fucken crazy things, I get the chills thinking about them still sometimes but back then it was a buzz.

My first car was a power blue 1976 Mustang, I snap the frame after bottoming out at about 80 miles an hour.

Then I had a 1968 blue Bel Air I got from someone who was fed up with Canada and sold me the car and left the country vowing never to return.
That was one of the best cars I have ever owned, they don’t make cars like they used to.
Anyway I was parked on the road one day and a building fell on it.
Oh and that guy that vowed that he would never return.
Well he lied and when he went to get his drivers licence it seems he owed $5000 in parking tickets.
Well he did VOW he wasn’t coming back, so why switch the ownership papers to my name.

After that there was the 74 Plymouth Fury Grand Sedan, or my pimp mobile.
The inside was customized with more blinking fucken lights than there were stars in the sky.
Can I tell stories that started in that car.
I walked out one day and it wasn’t there and when I did find it, it looked like one of those skeletons you find out in the desert of a dead animal.

Then I got a Chevy Chevette, this was the toughest little car I ever saw and I hardly ever had to do maintenance on the car.
Nothing bad happened to this care but it does have a history.
I bought it at a garage for five hundred bucks and drove it for three years then gave it to my brother to use for courier.
He drove the crap out of it for three years then sold it some someone for five hundred dollars.
It had had almost 400,000 km on it.
A couple of years ago the SIL was going through some pictures and showed my brother a picture of a car she had bout 20 years earlier and in was that same Chevette, she had bought it from the guy my brother had sold it to.

After that I cranked up the volume with a beefed up 75 dodge dart.
If you ever want to loose your drivers’ license in a hurry, this is the type of car that you need.
You turn the key and the rumble of 500 wild horses surge through the metal shaking your soul to life.
When your foot presses down on the accelerator, the blood in your veins starts to boil and fills you an energy you can’t describe you could only feel to understand.

With the clutch on the floor you rev the engine so you could boost your confidence and challenge the car next to who is sitting in another beast.
It’s 2 am and we are on a road known for the drags racing that went on it because it was deserted and four lanes wide.
The rules were simple, lights to lights, looser gets a free buzz from the others tailpipe.
There were some big races involving pink slips but those were held out on the deserted airport road.

Even though what we were doing was illegal and dangerous we did our best to stay alive and make sure others were not hurt.
That’s why most of the drag racing was done in the wee hours of the morning.
We all took care of our cars and spent heaps of money on making them look good, fast and mechanically fit, the last thing you want it to find out you don’t have brakes at 180 miles an hour.
I remember those days with a little envy I must admit but that was back then.

My friend’s son was somewhat the same way as I was back then.
25 years old and full of fire and adventure lurking in his soul.

While writing The Red Clay I have also been doing a lot of reading into the history of the path the story is going and I have to admit that life was an adventure back then.
Ok the wars aside, I am talking about going out into the world to see and learn about some other place you have never heard of before.
To go out there and have an adventure
Technology and its advances have ruined a lot of that because you can just go on line and read about it.
Slow ships across the ocean, no one asking if “we are there yet”.

So to satisfy their zest for life today they look for other outlets to be satisfied.
In his case is was speed, fast cars and recently motorcycles.

My brother called me at 2 am and told me that he was killed while racing his motorcycle in a residential area.
He drove up the ass end of a car at 150 km and was found dead in the car.
The person driving was hurled into am on coming car and was smashed head on.
By some miracle other than being scared to death the driver wasn’t hurt at all but if there had been people in the back seat they would probably be dead.

Today I find out that the motorcycle had no breaks and that’s why he didn’t stop.
Not only did he not have brakes but also he knew he didn’t have any.
Throw in the fact that he had no insurance on his motorcycle and you have to wonder who you should be sorry for.

I feel sorry for him mother who I understand was uncontrollable.
They wouldn’t let her go see his body at the hospital.
There was nothing to see, it will be a closed casket.
I feel sorry for him father who could not stop talking about his son.
His sisters will miss the older brother who made then laugh.
His younger brother won’t have him to look up to.
I am happy he didn’t kill someone but I am not feeling sorry for him.
I am sad, but not sorry.

When I think what mighty have happened if he had drove into a van with kids in it, all I could think of was, "how stupid were you"?
How can someone who is that smart be so stupid?
What we do to ourselves is our business but we all have a responsibility to others, even strangers to keep them safe especially when we are the architects of our actions.

I know street racing is illegal but it’s happening and will always go on until they find some other way to feed the need for speed but there are safe ways to street race and in a residential area at 11 pm isn’t one of them.

Oh and my Dart, I sold it to a kid who drove it into a bridge two months later.

Have a nice weekend

Walker

7 comments:

Jenny said...

Oh, this is sad. I'm so sorry for the family.

I hope you have a great BBQ this weekend!!

Joanna Cake said...

Wow, Walker. What a sad post. But, as you say, in a way you just have to feel glad that his irresponsibility only backfired on him when it could all have been even more tragic.
The kids in our family are all just coming to the age where motor vehicles are permitted. It is a particularly frightening time. They have now moved beyond our control.

Isabella said...

Sounds like he was on a very dark mission to me. His poor family now have to deal with this awful tragedy but like you said, it could have been so much worse. The driver of the car should go and buy a lottery ticket. Someone was surely watching over him for him to have survived something that horrific.

So who is the lucky shooter girl? Hope the bbq is a smashing success.

Vickie said...

Such a waste but one we see so often. A young person who is very smart uses no common sense.

I feel for his family---may they in some way find comfort and peace.

Take care of yourself---It seems as if Murphy has always followed you. I hope he stays away tomorrow and your BBQ is a big success.

Peter said...

You're right Walker, it's hard to feel sorry for someone who blatantly ignores both the law and the law of common sense.

BlazngScarlet said...

Like you, I feel sorry for the parents.

nachtwache said...

I haven't read any blogs in the last few days and I read this post, after writing mine Saturday, on how not to ride a motorcycle, after watching a guy wipe out on his bike. He was lucky, just seemed to have a bad case of road rash.
When our son turned 16 he was so out of control and strung out on drugs, we refused to sign for him to get his license. That was pretty much the only thing we could control when it came to him. I bet it saved his life! Was he ever mad though.
One of his friends has owes ICBC so much $, he'll have a hard time paying it off and can't get his license back 'till he does.
I feel for this young man's family.