A guy I used to know who was a hanger on in the circle of friends I was a part of in high school drove around in his parent's 1973 Caprice Estate that was just like this. He was a year older than all of us and he had his license so his "in" into the group was that he would take us wherever we wanted to go. The sense of freedom was exhilarating even if it was in his mom's station wagon. The problem was the guy was completely insane.
His name was John and while we were all a little crazy the difference was John was really, I mean really nuts. Add alcohol and god knows what else to his muddled mind and it's a miracle none of us were killed whenever we went out with him. Imagine as many as 8, maybe 9 teenagers out and about in this thing while the driver drove it as though he was an impaired driver at the Indy 500 or in a demolition derby.
The way he drove that car you'd swear it had more under the hood than just a 400 V-8; the car felt amazingly powerful and fast. Of course it did because he was always flooring the gas and he kept the transmission in "1" to maximize acceleration by not allowing the transmission to upshift.
He'd also like to shift the poor car from drive to reverse and back with regularity. Seriously. We'd be doing 45 miles an hour and the maniac would throw it into reverse. Amazingly, the oh so skinny 78X15 right rear tire would start a reverse smokey burnout and the big car would come to a split second stop and then start going backwards. A second or two after that he'd slam the gear selector down in to "1" and floor the gas. Another second and a half later we were accelerating forward as fast as the car could go. Eventually, the car stopped being able to go in reverse. Geez, I wonder why? Made for some interesting parking maneuvers let me tell ya.
That was the craziest thing he did to the car, per se. He also found great delight in driving it into curbs and over curbs, over sidewalks too. How he drove over all was so recklessly I can't believe that nothing really bad ever happened at least when we were all with him The speeding and weaving in traffic that he did was incredibly dangerous not to mention the drag racing; he'd race or pretend to race just about anyone with many of us in the car. We're talking the early '80's in a 1973 Chevrolet with a big, torquey V-8 and 3.08 axle. It's not too hard to fathom that that car had better acceleration than just about anything else on the road at the time.
The act grew tiresome, though and we'd see less of him when we all started to get our own licenses. That only made him do even crazier things whenever he'd be out with us. The last time I went out with him he drove over a group of ducks that were on an island or tree lawn near my house killing them all. He took great offense at my ranting tirade because he thought it was the damn funniest thing he'd ever done.
John did come from a very messed up family but then again so did a lot of us. Thing is, none of us who came from "tough" households did anything nearly as insane as half the stuff that he would do. And I'm just talking about stuff we knew about. I always felt that what he was doing was to draw attention to himself - problem is that the outrageous antics get old and people who do nutty things for attention have to keep inventing new ways to stand out.
Again, Crazy John was a hanger on of our group and he would come into and out of the group with a fair amount of regularity. As we got older and we were all driving, when we would see him he'd brag about stuff he was doing and some of the stuff was truly alarming. Mostly burglary and vandalism; we thought nothing of it because none of it we thought could be true. Just "Crazy John" looking for attention by making up stories of nutty things he was doing rather than making us part and parcel to his shenanigans. Turns out, he wasn't bragging.
John eventually wrecked the Caprice; something I recall about him drag racing and losing control and wrapping the car around a telephone pole. Somehow he escaped injury and the bent and mangled car was somehow still running and fairly driveable afterwards. Got to love those GM "B bodies". Actually, the Caprice Estate was built off GM's C body chassis but I digress.
Last I knew of the guy he was in jail for something or other and that has to be thirty years now if not more. I can't find him anywhere on the Internet all though I wonder why I search for him. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and makes you do things you really should think twice about doing. I think it's just morbid curiosity that gets the better of me. Seeing that I can't find him anywhere I have to assume Crazy John is dead. Would not surprise me.
No comments:
Post a Comment