Some summer days just don't work out the way you plan...
Some summer days just don't work out the way you plan...
Another beautiful June morning, but supposed to get hot again today and stay that way for several days. Older son, Jay, and I exchanged several texts yesterday morning. He observing his son, Gavin’s soccer camp at Lindenwood University-Belleville. He urged me to get the Corvette out and drive it in the streaming summer sun.
I told him I would and would ride my bicycle as well. I’m currently supposed to be training for next week’s 300-mile Grand Illinois Bike Trip. Sadly lagging in training. Will ride at least ten miles today!
Work intervenes. I get caught up in final negotiations for a multi-decade solar farm lease and then a few issues on pro bono work I’m doing for an East St. Louis church, thus four o’clock comes and goes. No Vette driving. No bike riding. But the feeling of accomplishment felt good.
Ah, I’d mentioned the Vette. Let me tell you about the Vette. First of all, I’ve never particularly wanted a Corvette. A Jag, yes. A Mercedes SL, yes. A Mustang, yes. An old International four-wheel drive Scout, yes. Corvette? No. I’ve owned all of the above at one time or another, but not a Vette.
In high school, “Chopper” Larson’s older brother, who was off serving in the Army, had a blue Stingray fast back. A ’63, I think. Since his brother was away, Chopper got to drive it. I rode in it a few times. Nice, but way beyond my wildest dreams.
Chopper’s parents were rich farmers. He had a nice car of his own, in addition to his brother’s Vette, but had to drive the Vette occasionally to keep the battery charged up don’t you know.
We, on the other hand, were, at best, working class. So, I drove my Dad’s ten-year-old beater “57 Ford Ranchero. Three speed, stick shift on the column. No power anything. Even in the freezing Northern Illinois winters, the windows had to remain open to dilute the burnt oil exhaust coming through the rusted floorboards.
I would put in a dollar’s worth of gas (three gallons back then) and a quart of fifteen cent bulk oil- recycled oil that you pumped from a 55- gallon barrel. At the time minimum wage was about a buck an hour. I made just over that as a stock boy at Hornsby’s Variety Store, that era’s Dollar Store and later bagging groceries at Art’s supermarket. After high school graduation, I hit the big time, $1.65 an hour, pumping gas at J and L Gas, across US Highway 34 from our house, just before leaving for the University of Illinois.
But I digress. The Corvette. This spring I had to take my beautiful, beloved red Mercedes 300 SL two-seater convertible to Springfield to get a hydraulic leak fixed. Annette and I bought the 1993 roadster in 2008 during my service as Adjutant General for the Illinois National Guard. A gorgeous car. Tan leather interior. Red hardtop convertible. Fifteen years old, but the doctor’s wife babied it til we bought it.
Ten years after buying it we’d managed to drive it all of 3,500 miles. At any rate, when I wheeled it into the repair shop, there sat a burgundy red, white leather interior Fiftieth Anniversary edition Vette. Six speed manual transmission. 9,400 miles. A 2003. Lust. I sat in it.
I paid the bill for the repair work to the Mercedes and left. Ten blocks later, the Mercedes engine stopped at a stoplight and wouldn’t restart. Noon-time traffic backing up. Cop comes. I call Robert’s. They dispatch old Bob himself. A powerpack starts the Mercedes. Back to Robert’s.
“How much will you give me for the Mercedes on the Vette?” I asked. I’d already inquired as to the purchase price for the Vette.
They responded with a number. “I’ll take it.”
Annette was furious. She thinks Corvette’s are a phallic symbol. They probably are. Who cares? I love that shift to second gear as the 350 horses wind the tachometer-and speedometer-up. I never look at either. I don’t need to. I shift by ear. The V-8 telling me when to power down on the clutch, just as I learned to do on that old beater Ford.
The acceleration in second gear like an F-16 hitting the afterburner. BAM-the clutch driven in simultaneously with slacking off the accelerator, while the right hand tries to drive the gear shift through the dashboard. Third gear! Clutch out. Gas pedal down. Rear end starting to drift to the left as the power hits the rear wheels. The Vette never missing a beat as my heart triphammers like the polished V-8 pistons.
The handling nothing like the precision of the SL or the BMW I had years ago. But the sheer bloody power.
How fast will it go? I dunno. The factory specs say 175 miles an hour. I believe it. But yesterday she sat in the garage, top up. Engine silenced. While I basked in the glow of a computer screen hammering out contract details, instead of powershifting from second to third with the slip stream threatening to rip the bullet proof sunglasses from my face.