I don't think it was bad judgement for my brother to sell me my first car when I was 15 for $200. I don't think it was bad judgement for me to buy the car for what seemed like a small amount of cash at the time. As an active 15 year old boy, I was positive my parents were not using bad judgement by allowing me to obtain a driving permit. However, I do think it was bad judgement for the Universe to allow the union of this particular car and me as a 15 year old boy to happen.
Those of you who lived in my neighborhood or perhaps the entire town of Winner, may remember the 1972 Ford Galaxy 500 with a large V-8 engine sporting a rather open exhaust system that had a tendency to rattle windows from time to time as far away as Colome or Hamill.
The car sported beautiful maroon paint with a white vinyl top as well white vinyl seats and black carpet. Being a two door car it was tricky getting in and out of the back seat. My driving skills, as well as social skills were such that there was not a long list of people clamoring to get in the back, so it wasn't much of an issue.
The car ran well, looked OK and sounded mean. The 8-track player was "iffy", but seemed to work more often than not. I'm not sure a boy could ask for anything more, except gas money. Cooking part-time at a local burger joint provided all the gas money I could burn up. We used to be able to know exactly how many "U's" we could flip in one evening on exactly $10 of gas, assuming we didn't get side-tracked and end up at Goat-man bridge or something, but I digress.
My friends and I drove this beast around the town so much that first couple months, we even discovered if you drove two miles per hour below the speed limit that you would hit the stop light perfectly going both east and west, putting the nose of the car at the edge of the intersection at the exact time the light turned green without letting off on the gas or applying the brakes. It drove other passengers, drivers and a cop or two nuts. Oh we thought we were the funniest guys in town pulling off stunts like that, but I'm guessing it was ONLY us that thought that way.
My sister had a nick-name for the car. She called it "The Shark" It was right after the movie "Jaws" came out and the car did have a small unexplained deformation in the left front fender that actually resembled a shark's tooth. That physical attribute and the fact the car never seemed to stop moving as if in a territorial prowl for victims made the nick-name suitable, I guess.
One day, The Shark's carpet needed vacuumed before the evenings activities. I turned on to the highway by my house from the alley. The previous night's rain provided a little mud-hole in that alley. That's where my back tire picked up some chunks of sticky gumbo. I had put my two quarters for the public vacuum machine on the transmission hump of the floor of the car. Once the car was straight on highway, I heard and felt clumps of mud and goo knocking around the tire and wheel-well. That's when I decided to stomp on the accelerator (bad judgment one). I figured the big V-8 motor would break the tires traction and spin off the excess mud on the tire. That activity caused the quarters to fall off the transmission hump on the passenger side floor. I'm sure they were safe there, but I reached across and down to pick them up immediately (bad judgement two). The stretching and torquing of my body caused my foot to press down on the gas pedal even further.
I grasped the coins and sat up in my seat just in time to see the back end of a giant white Buick Electra 225. The 225 means "225 inches long". That's 18 and 3/4 feet of iron stopped in the highway waiting to turn in to the Dairy Queen when The Shark attacked it from behind. I've never heard a sound like that nor have been tossed about inside a car like that, except for one time when I called a girl the wrong name. When the smoke cleared and the cars had come to rest, The Shark was missing its nose and bottom jaw. The giant buick looked like a white turkey with its tail in the air. Nobody was injured and a small traffic citation was issued to the other driver for the infraction of "Driving in Front of an Idiot" Atleast, that's the way I remember it.
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