Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003 - 2:45 p.m.
Back when I was working at the Lincoln dealership for my dad the summer after graduating high school, one of the perks of the job was that about once a week I got to travel to the far corners of the state to pick up used cars the dealership had bought at auction. It was always a gamble as to how pleasant the drive back from auction would be, as those of us who went up in the big van to pick up the cars would determine which was the best car in the group and draw straws as to who would drive that one. Then, the rest of us took the less desirable ones for the trip home.
Occasionally, I got lucky, such as when I got to drive back the Lexus LS400 (all the way from Murray, KY, about three hours of pure driving luxury!) or the yellow Mustang convertible (top down, of course, but I put it up a block from the dealership so I wouldn't draw too much attention from the boss). Other times, I was stuck with the usual Mercury Mystiques or Ford Escorts - fine cars in their own right, but not much fun for a seventeen year-old yearning for the open road.
One day, I was paged to the general manager's office over the intercom and reported to find him sitting with a gentle looking elderly couple. I was instructed to accompany them to Nashville to pick up two cars the dealership had just bought at auction down there. This was a usual practice, as when there were only one or two cars to pick up, the dealership would pay a couple of people they kept in a transportation pool thirty or forty bucks rather than pay a few employees a half day's overtime (our reward for making the trip).
So, off we went in a red Mercury Cougar to the Music City.
"Cool," I thought, "a few hours in the backseat of a car, I can take a nap, watch the scenery go by, all on the clock."
Not so much. The husband (heretofore referred to as Gramps) and his wife (Granny) were two hip, happenin', swingin' octagenerians. Gramps peeled out of the parking lot, leaving rubber tracks on the asphalt as we careened onto the highway heading south. Once we hit the interstate, he floored the gas until the robust V-8 brought us to about 90 miles per hour. Granny promptly turned up the stereo all the way and put in one of her old time Southern gospel tapes, singing off-key to classics such as "The Old Rugged Cross" and a rocking rendition of "How Great Thou Art." What she lacked in singing in key, she made up for in pure volume. Yeah, the nap wasn't happening. And with the scenery dashing past, I didn't trust Gramps's shaking hands to keep the car stable at such a high speed. I used all my energy concentrating on the road from the back seat and devising a plan on how to get out of the two-door car in the event of a collision with a Stuckey's billboard.
About five miles out of Nashville, the sky turned navy blue and rain came down in buckets. For some reason, Gramps upped the ante and took the car up to 95 miles per hour, even though the windshield wipers could barely clear the torrential downpour from the glass.
"This is how people die," I surmised. I'm surprised I didn't leave an impression on the overhead grab handle I was gripping for dear life.
After about a half hour of navigating rush hour traffic and incorrect directions, we pulled up to the auction house and found the two Chevy trucks we were supposed to pick up with keys already in the ignition. I chose the shiny red '97 model with a CD player, because I had been wise enough to bring my CD wallet with me. And so began the trip home.
Granny took control of the Cougar as Gramps and I drove the trucks. I was relieved for a second, because Granny seemed much more cautious a driver than her hellion husband as we made our way out of the city. We weren't on the interstate more than five miles before Gramps passed us up and took the lead. I was half tempted to stay behind and take my sweet time, but he had the power; he had the company gas card.
So here I was, driving a massively huge Chevy truck up Interstate 65 at about 85 miles an hour, my knuckles white from gripping the leather-wrapped wheel. Getting the nerve to reach down to adjust the volume on the stereo took a good ten miles. We filled up on gas in Bowling Green, and shortly thereafter I swear my truck was almost blown off course by the brisk wind blowing toward the east. That was the point that I had had enough. I slowed down, watching his black truck and the Cougar disappear into the sunset.
The dealership was already closed by the time I got there, and it looked like Gramps and Granny had dropped off their truck a good while before I did. Sure enough, the general manager called me into his office the next day asking why I hadn't returned the truck with them, as they showed up just as the dealership was closing down. I relayed my story to him and they were taken off the driver list immediately.
The moral of the story: don't fuck with a nervous seventeen year-old. I'm just saying.
