The Best Years of Our Lives

February 6, 2010

We were driving along in Tad’s 1962 For Galaxie 500. We nicknamed her “Choking Doberman”. I think it was going to be the name of our production company when we got around to becoming media moguls. For the time being, it was a very worn out ’62 Galaxie. As a side note, a few years later I would acquire a 1963 Chevy Nova as my first car and it would be christened something that I think Tad was secretly jealous of. We called her the “Gagging Chihuahua”.

Tad and I were driving the Chocking Doberman pretty much everywhere. I don’t recall how legal she was, but we somehow had both the state inspection and registration stickers proudly displayed on her surprisingly clear windshield. It was in this car on one particular night when we encountered Timmy, the son of an affluent local from my side of the river. Affluence usually guaranteed certain rights of way that the rest of us didn’t have Affluence was determined by the simple fact of where your family was from. If you were from one of the dozen or so local families you had it, if you were a “come here” you didn’t. I was most certainly a “come here”. Tad? He wasn’t even from this side of the river so he was essentially no better than a “tourist” or simply the lowest of the low, at least this was the case in the eyes of the affluent. Tonight was the night that Timmy decided to put the “law” into his own hands.