"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!"

[Teach]

Teach: “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday. I’ve got about 150 kg ATF. My oil-sending light is flashing bright-red.”

Tower: “Come in Delta-Charlie” (I’m driving a 1954 Dodge coupe). “Maintain heading 330. Repeat, maintain heading 330. We have you on radar" (at least the police do).

Teach: “Delta-Charlie 330.”

Tower: “Delta-Charlie, can you see the airport lights? You’re five miles from ‘touchdown.’” (I had just passed Lawrence, MA).

Teach: “Delta-Charlie, I see the lights, but I don’t know if I can make it? I’m losing power!”

Tower: “Lower your speed to 60 knots." (In an airplane that would definitely create a stall).

Amazingly, I “landed.” I made it to the Rockingham Park (Salem, NH) parking lot. Barely.

This was the fantasy I was conjuring up – call it what it was, a delusion – as I attempted to bring me “crippled craft," i.e., my used car – with four of my friends as passengers -- to Rockingham Park for an evening of harness racing.

On that spring evening in the early-1960’s we were “running late.” There had been no time to “gas up.” No pit-stops! I wanted to get there in time for the early double. Then, about two-thirds of the way up Route #93 to southern New Hampshire (my car is buffeting) my oil-sending light starts flashing red (steam is starting to come out from under my hood). I’ve got to make it. I’ve just got to.

Crazy! Pazzo!! Mishugenah!! Loco! Fou! In whatever language, yes, I was “nuts!” Was?

I was then a college student. Up until that time, I had my driver’s license, but no car. I relied heavily on the largesse of my friends, e.g., “double-dating,” trips to the track, etc.

About a month or two earlier, one of my apartment-house neighbors told my mother that he was selling his car, a ’54 Dodge coupe, manual transmission (the shift was on a pole). Although it was close to 9-years old, it was a low-mileage vehicle that had only been driven, for the most part, on Sundays. The cost: $35 (the under-25-years old driver insurance cost me well over five times that). But now, at long last, I had my own “wheels.” Looking back, the car was “a tank.” But in those days, gas was “dirt-cheap.”

When it came to going to the races, I was eager to reciprocate for the kindness that my friends had shown me when they got their parents’ car to take me and other friends to the track (I did get my father’s car on a couple occasions, but he needed it for business. Besides, he’d check the odometer the next morning to see how many miles I had traveled. “I thought you told me you were going bowling. Where did you go, New Hampshire?” I thought to myself, “Dad, you shoulda been a private detective!”

Soon after I bought the neighbor’s car. I had a local mechanic check it out. I remember it needed a few minor adjustments, i.e., turn-signal was broken, etc. I do remember the mechanic saying to me, “Don’t push this car! I don’t think it can handle high speeds.” Typical me: “In one ear and out the other.”

During the next month, I had had driven the car back and forth to school and on dates. I would tell my dates that my other car was a Porsche.

Then, about a month later, in early-May, I take my Dodge coupe with four friends up to Rockingham. I’m throwing caution to the wind. I’ve got this car up to 65-70 mph. What was it that my mechanic told me? I had to make that early double. Then, I look at the dash. The oil-sending light is red. Then I see steam starting to seep out from under the hood. How I made to the RP parking lot was a miracle.

Now, I’m in denial. It’s as if it didn’t happen. But it did. I make the daily double, but I lose. In fact, it was a losing night - in all respects - made that more mortifying by the fact that, surprise, surprise, when my friends and I get back to my car, it won’t start. Not even a sputter. I later learned that the engine has fused. I was told that I was lucky that my friends and I weren’t killed.

In any event, when I realized that my car wouldn’t start, we had to call my friend’s father to come up to New Hampshire to get us and bring us back to Boston.

The next morning, my mother looked out the window and said, “Where’s your car?” I said, “It’s in New Hampshire.” “What’s it doing there?” she asked. I said, “That’s where I left it?” “At a bowling alley?” my mother asked. “No, at race-track.” “A race-track,” she repeated.

At that moment, I had to “come clean.” About a week later my grandfather comes to our apartment for a visit. We drive up to New Hampshire’s Rockingham Park. The car is just where I left it (At that moment I wish I could have crawled under a rock; my squeaky-clean image had been tarnished). As the psychologist Carl Jung might have said, “I’m revealing my ‘shadow’.”

Soon after we arrived at Rockingham, one of their maintenance people came over to where we were standing. I popped the hood. The maintenance guy looked over the engine. He told us that I’d have to “drop in” a new engine to get this car up-and-running (In those days that was hundreds of dollars. Not worth it.). The mechanic told me that he’d “take it off my hands.” I signed the car over to him. No money changed hands.

As I think back, I have say that the ride back to Boston was a tough one. My mother, but especially my grandfather, had no clue that I had a wild, degenerative side.

The only solace I can take from all this was that, thankfully, no one got hurt. Had I learned my lesson? Hardly. Oh, I wouldn’t burn out another engine. But I would still race to various tracks to make daily doubles. Yet no more “May Day” calls. I always filled up my tank before long trips. I also took great pains to check the oil.

In closing, I will tell you this, as a matter of habit, I still periodically check the “idiot” (warning) lights on the dash. From an one animate “idiot” to a bunch of inanimate ones.