Tuesday, June 30, 2009

At 105 MPH, take the next right!


OK, it’s a bit foggy in the mind, but pretty close. The year was probably 1957 or 1958. It was “in the day”. I was out with Alan Forman and clearly some others, but who was there and where we were is still a bit foggy.

We were somewhere and we were drinking. I know this because it was the root of the problem.

We were racing with another car, I was with Alan in what I think was a 1957 Plymouth, which must have belonged to his father because I didn’t have one of those. It was a slow, six cylinder vehicle.

The other car coming from some party or another was full of guys; I remember Arthur Hoffman (of the Black Aggie incident fame) and Alvin Shevitz, for some reason. They disappear in my version of the story.

We were coming down (this is Baltimore County, MD) Reisterstown Road, from far out in the “boonies”, when we started racing with the other car. Just speeding under the influence, and we were winning! We pulled ahead and as we reached Pikesville we went over the 100 mph mark!

It was then I heard the siren! I thought quickly and yelled, “Turn right! “: (which we did somehow).

I figured the police car can only stop one of us, and why would he come after us when it was easier to stay on Reisterstown Road and chase them. Not too smart.! He went after the one fleeing the scene.

I decided that I’d get rid of the beer, so if they stopped us he wouldn’t know we were drinking. Not a good move either, because as I was tossing those cans out of the window I noticed the headlights on my hand! It seems he was following us closely and watching me throw it all out!

We were caught! There would be no way around it. I wasn’t driving (good point) but I was throwing, (littering, if nothing else). We know that “in the day” drunk driving was not the crime it has become, and was considered by us as more of a “contact sport”, but really just as dangerous as it is now. We were just stupid!

We pulled over and the policeman asked us to get into his car. We explained that a group of guys (many of them) we didn’t know were chasing us and we were scared. We were trying to get away from them. This was a pretty good excuse because we knew too much time had elapsed for him to catch up with them, and discover they were our friends.

He was not happy about the beer, but I explained we weren’t drinking it, but didn’t want to be caught with it on us. It was far fetched, but he started driving, telling us he would find the other car. However he wasn’t driving very fast so he could never get there.

He did tell Alan to look at me in the backseat, and look at my eyes; he used a flashlight to make his point. He told Alan that my eyes “looked like two piss holes in the snow”! This killed us both and we broke into gales of laughter which eased the mood considerably.

He eventually got us back to the car and let us go with a warning.

God Bless that cop. He saved our asses. We didn’t get into trouble again like that for at least another year!

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