by CDR Jack D. Woodul, USNR(Ret), artwork by Carl Snow
It started way before Puresome learned that fighter pilots drank Scotch whisky and black coffee — and drove fast cars fast. Automotive devices that were sometimes available to Youthly in his formative years were limited to his Father’s pick’m-up truck, and COL P.A. Puresome’s vocational agriculture students used to ax if he had to shovel out the cowflops from the back before he went off on dates.
So, while his high-school pals zipped around in ’55 Chevies with moon hubcaps and roaring Smitty exhaust pipes, and their girlfriends lounged on Juarez tucked-and-rolled seats, Youthly pooted around in his daddy’s six-cylinder Ford truck that was totally straight and had a terminal velocity less than jackrabbits. It also smelled faintly of poo.
Off to university, Youthly eventually inherited the family 1955 Ford sedan that had been bought second-hand and ridden hard by the Puresome boys. It had been distinctively customized by Puresome’s evil little brother, who had been driving at some speed when the hood came unlatched, peeled back and pounded the car’s roof. The badly wounded car had been taken down to their father’s shop, the dents more or less pounded out and spray-painted to more or less match the rest of the car. Puresome hoped that this blemish would be obscured by the cloud of oil smoke that belched from the tailpipe.
Certainly, it was some better than always double-dating, but it was not a bittersweet day when this loaner was passed along to the evil little brother, who richly deserved it.
So it was that Puresome lusted in his heart for cool wheels. The matter was made worse by one of his college buds, a Cannery Row Californian who showed up in a Bathtub Porsche 356 convertible with its up-front trunk filled with canned fishes. James Dean had morted himself in a Porsche, and the car was the ultimate in cool. When Youthly finally was able to buy a Volkswagen Beetle, — it was German, had the trunk in front and the engine in the rear, and it was easy to pretend that he was racing Juan Manuel Fangio and the Ferrari boys at Le Mans. But driving the Bug like a maddened sewing machine eventually wounded two engines, and the comparison paled with the muscle cars sold to NavCads by the predators outside Mainside Pensacola.
With the coming of little children, Puresome and the Child Bride had to move on to practical wheels that could carry wicker bassinets and tubs of dirty diapers. But they did buy a sporty red Triumph Spitfire convertible for Tunita to chase her husband around the Mediterranean. As an attention-getting device, it was almost as effective as the femme driving it. Back at Cecil Field, it became Puresome’s transport, and he had many a spirited race home with his pal, Weed, substituting for J.M. Fangio.
As time passed, Puresome joined Grits Airways, moved to Texas and started flying Crusaders with the Reservistas. He still was driving the sporty Triumph, but it was getting long in the tooth and suffered in comparison with the red Jaguar driven by Crazy Horse or the classic Porsche driven by Dork at the Air Patch. An itch started to work on him, and Youthly snuck off to far-north Dallas to the Porsche place.
After several more sneaks, Puresome could stand it no longer. He rose up one morning and told Tunita that he was off to buy a Porsche. When he drove home in a shiny Porsche 911, the bill on the seat beside him came to $7,200. It was almost as big a shock to Puresome for actually having done it than it was to the Child Bride, who visualized having to feed her cubs on powdered milk and government cheese. There was some turbulence.
But Puresome was rapid! The car had five speeds, and one had to go through the gears, so he was observable only when he came out of warp.
His Grits Airways seniority was such that he was flying a DC-9 trip out of Lovely Field that departed at 0520. That meant a report time of 0420 and a get-’em-up time of 0300. He was able to drive back roads that suddenly opened up to a beautiful four-lane that lasted six miles or so before torturous urban Dallas, and it was mandatory that he hit the four-lane at maximum rpm in fourth gear, drop into fifth gear and accelerate to the speed of light before dropping back to reality when the good road played out. There was no traffic at zero-dark-thirty, so life was real good.
One very dark morn as Puresome had just dropped out of warp leaving the four-lane and was pooting along at leisure, he happened to glance at his rearview mirror. Etai! Japanese word for pain!
Way, way back there was a twirly light. Zippedy-pop thoughts raced through his brain and two options rose up — switch off the lights, break left and exit the fight at high speed or come to Hesus and stop. Option one might produce a clean getaway, but it might mean being caught, having epaulets ripped off, being jailed with drunk perverts, and being drummed out of Grits and the Reservistas in shame. Coming to Hesus and stopping meant having to pay for a 130-mph speeding ticket. Ultimately, selling a kidney or something to pay the fine sounded better than spending the night in the faggity drunk tank.
So Youthly pulled over and stopped, peeled off his brand-new It-lian leather racing gloves that Tunita had gifted him, a sure sign that, while she considered him mad, it was more practical to keep him for trash duties than summon help from the Family.
The minions of the law finally came to a stop behind the gleaming sporty car that made ticking noises as it cooled down from white heat. Puresome jumped out of the car and ran back to say howdy, the cop’s headlights shining on his Grits uniform. He was prepared for up to 700 snivels a minute, but when he got there, they were larfing their Facisti arses off!
It had been a very slow night until Youthly had come along and gave them a jolly good chase with gumball flashing and siren wailing. It was the best time they had since the early-shift jelly donutfest, and they didn’t even make him eat too much crow. They charged him with going 55 in a 45-mph zone, and tole him not to be speeding no more, heah?
Times being tough, what with all Youthly’s coin going for car payments, coming up with the fine money on the sly was a test of fighter pilot ingenuity. But Puresome mistily prefigured the Godfather movies, and he knew usury was better than sleeping with the fishes.
Doses of reality reached Puresome in the years that followed. He finally figured that going through the gears would eventually lead to his being locked up, or to fistfights with mothers transporting children to soccer games in large, slow vehicles blocking his path, or morting himself ignominiously.
So he sold the gleaming machine to another famished-eyed individual and bought himself a Ford pickup. He figured he could always go rustle up some cowflops and use it to humiliate his children when they got old enough to date.