OK, I love cars. Anyone that knows me can attest to that. I just want to get in them and go somewhere. Zoom-Zoom! But in my almost 6 decades I have managed to do some truly horrid things to them. I've trashed them, I've wrecked them and yes, I have even "borrowed" them. "Borrowed" them? Well, I think that sounds SO much nicer than stolen them, don't you? Besides, I never kept them long enough for it to be considered theft in my mind. More on that one later....
I've wrecked three Fiat's ( two 148's and an X/19), two Chevy's (both Monte Carlo's), a Chrysler (dad's Town & Country wagon), a Ford (a Falcon that encountered an apple tree), a Buick (a Skylark that encountered a deer), an Oldsmobile (a Delta 88 that met a similar fate) and my latest sacrifices, a Dodge and another Chevy (my Neon and a Trailblazer) that I t-boned at an intersection here in Madison after running a red light. My Neon had $2300 worth of damage and the Trailblazer was totaled. That alone should make you reconsider ever buying a Trailblazer. Those things are obviously crap! Zoom-Zoom!
As for that "borrowing" thing... I didn't set out to have a life of grand theft auto. It just sort of happened. Never turn down an opportunity I always say. My cars of choice? 1961 and 1962 Chevy's and 1968 Dodge Coronets and Plymouth Belvedere's. Why? It was easy as hell to boost those things. With the Chevy's you didn't even need the keys! You could actually turn the ignition over just by turning the raised sleeve that the key would fit into. If you had one. Which you didn't really need anyway. What was GM thinking? Because of them I "borrowed" my first joy-ride when I was 13. As for the Dodge and Plymouth rides, again, it's their fault. In an apparent attempt to cut production costs Chrysler decided it made sense to only put 5 different ignition locks in the entire production run of those two cars. If you had the keys to one of them you actually had the keys to 20 percent of all of the ones on the road. That served me very well in college if I needed to go do some shopping or was just too lazy to walk home after class. And yes, mom had a 1968 Dodge Coronet for awhile, so I was set.
My crowning achievement though, has got to be the time I helped blow up a 1966 Chevy. In the owners garage. What can I say, I was young. And impressionable. And I just happened to have some underwater dynamite fuse in my possession at the time. It was Orv Kraatz's car and he was a total dink. An insurance salesman to be exact. He owned his own company. He called it Kraatz's Insurance Company. The man had no inventiveness whatsoever! He was the kind of guy that buttoned his shirt all the way up to the top. Even the pull over kind. It was the summer of 1968, I was still 15 and we were at our cabin up north. I was loosely associated with a group of delinquents that called themselves the "UVA". That stood for the "United Vandals of Antigo". It was a bunch of juvenile idiots with spray cans of paint and too much time on their hands over summer vacation. I was only along for the ride. I did have underwater dynamite fuse, after all and that intrigued the hell out of them.
So, one day I share my recipe for some highly flammable and possibly quite explosive goodies with them. If you cook a mixture of half salt peter and half sugar down VERY slowly in a double boiler it turns into a liquid goo that is actually pourable while still warm. My thinking was to cook up a batch of this stuff in mom's kitchen, pour it into one of the old copper compressed air tanks from an air rifle my father was stupid enough to buy for me. Yeah, I was dangerous even back then.
Long story short. We do that. Almost set the kitchen on fire in the process too. Liquid goo, underwater dynamite fuse, teenage males and a small kitchen fire. What could possibly go wrong, right? OK, it was late August, one of those days that was hot with a night that was cool. LOTS of condensation that teenage boys don't notice. We had no idea that the duct tape we used to attach the "device" to the back window of Orv's Chevy Biscayne would come loose, roll down the trunk and get entangled in the license plate. Which, BTW, was exactly where the gas tank filler cap was located. Can you say HUGE explosion? Not just the car, but the garage as well. And windows for almost two blocks! Holy shit! It was bloody amazing! The cedar tree I was "hiding" behind hit me in the face so hard it knocked me on my ass in in the Garibaldi's front yard and damn near took off one of their window planters full of geraniums. Which as I recall, hurt like hell when they fell on me.
The last image I have of this, as we all scattered like cockroaches, was lights going on in all of the houses around me and Orv and his wife running out of their house. Her with her hair-don't wrapped in toilet paper in a flannel house coat and Orv in perfectly ironed and creased cotton pajamas with the top buttoned completely up. To the top button, for christ's sake How the bloody hell did he sleep like that??? His beloved Chevy in ruins, the garage roof half way out to the street and his side entrance roof blown half way through the side of his house. The siding on the west end of his house was totally fucked as I remember. He was running for the hose and I was running for my life!!! Hell, we all were!!!
Yes, I have blown up vehicles. Yes, I have terrorized insurance salesmen. Yes, I have set fire to stuff. Yes, I have been a terrorist LONG before it was popular. And YES I am proud of my accomplishments!!! Ahh, the UVA, long may you wave!!! Anyone have a bitch with a bowling alley? I'm there for ya, baby!!!
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