"What’re you youngn's up to?!"

That was the most common inquiry from my friend Mark's dad, as we'd get into one mess or another. And we’d either take on the lamb, if he hadn’t yet spotted us, or we’d hang our heads in disappointment if he had. It was the early 1970's, and the world was changing fast. Upstairs at Mark's house was where I'd watch Richard Nixon's resignation address, play Stratego, and lust after his sister, who (at the time of the wondrous discovery I'll tell you about in just a minute) was just old enough to drive, and used to woo me into shoveling the driveway, take in her shopping and um, other things, with a lilting drawl that was the stuff of dreams. Being a preacher's daughter, Donna never let me get too far beyond copping a feel, but nevertheless, ooh-la-la, and all that. In retrospect, what the heck was she doing, messing with the mind of a long-haired layabout, 2 years her junior?

I digress.  

It was downstairs, in Mark's basement, where we'd race our slot cars for hours on end, and my yellow Corvette - modified with tape and card stock to look like a Lemans contender - would regularly beat his vehicle of choice, a Pete Brock Daytona Coupe. It wasn't because I was the better pistol-grip pilot, but because Mark didn't like to loose at anything. He was always able to beat me at running, baseball, hoops, snowball fights, girls, etc., though my long gangly arms allowed me to fling a Frisbee farther than he ever could. However, in the basement, that was his downfall. I was the master, and he was always second-best. My pal's impatience always got the best of him on the sprawling racetrack down there. That same basement, rumor had it, once housed escaped slaves, hidden there near the terminus of the Underground Railroad.

In those hour-long, ozone-tinged battles of men and machines, I was Prost to his Senna, although neither of us had yet ever heard of either of those guys. If I could pull almost even with him, he'd get cocky and overcook the turns, and I'd calmly reel off laps as he'd retrieve his prized Cobra from the far reaches of the dusty "Michigan basement". And that is where I found the mother load!

Magazines! Shelves and shelves of magazines, with pictures of exotic curves and all kinds of things I had only dreamed of seeing, or wished I had. Before you get too excited, they weren't Playboy, Gent, or any other such puerile publications - those were under my buddy Brad's father's bed, a couple of blocks over, past the train tracks. No, these were the stuff of a young gearhead's dreams! Popular Mechanix, Modern Mechanix, and yes, Mechanix Illustrated, featuring the masterful test-and-tell scribbling of none other than Uncle Tom by-gosh McCahill! But what the heck were they doing here, in the cellar of the world’s biggest jerk? (And why the heck did they always misspell Mechanics? Was the word copyrighted or something?) 

Mark's dad was a part-time Baptist preacher, a tool-and-die man by trade, and a full time PITA. If he ever spied us cranking walnuts over the fence with our baseball bats, or chatting up the girls by the driveway, or - horror of horrors - caught me looking at Donna, I was banished! “You best get home, young’n”. No more slot cars, no playing ball, no nothing, till he was out of sight again. And he was prone to whacking his kids with a startling regularity. What an a-hole! While that country drawl was a thing of wonder from his daughter lips, he crafted it into something evil, in a Deliverance-meets-Mr. Haney kind of way. I couldn't imagine why he, of all people, would have this treasure-trove of automotive and mechanical magazines. Where would he find the time to enjoy them, between bible-thumping and kid-thumpings, and whatever he was thumping at the machine shop?

I never found out, but I think they might have been given to Mark's brother, who was killed in 'Nam. Perhaps they were passed on to him by an uncle or grandpa with a greater sense of wonder and imagination than his grumpy preacher dad. As I look back now, maybe losing his eldest son in that war is what soured the old man. If I were to lose my boy that way, I’d find a lot of the joy of life sucked right out of me, too.

As pored over those magazines, which I never purloined - though I wish now I had - I was taken to another place, another time. A magical, parallel world where I could build a car out of wood, powered by an outboard motor, read about the flying cars that were just around the corner, once production ramped up, and run my hands over the fenders of a Phantom Corsair - the car of tomorrow, built many years before I was born. It kick-started my love of cars, which kept me out of a lot of other trouble, as I worked on my own car, and those in shop at school, and drew cars that hoped I'd someday design for a living. And lusted after cars, almost as much as I did Donna.

Just like her, though, many cars would lead me to the brink, and then leave me there. There was the '67 Mustang GT, white with blue stripes, which I almost bought, but waited a hair too long to buy. Why? First, it had problems - like the maple seedling growing where the engine used to be. And to make the note on that car, I'd have to move back home with mom and dad, across the street from where I had once dreamed of the curvy girl with curly hair, poured over the pages of automotive dreams, and ruled the racetrack. But Mark's family was gone, after the machine shop shut down, the result of one in a never-ending cycle of slow-downs in the automotive business. My friend had gone off to college, and I never heard or saw him again. His sister stayed in the area, met a decent guy, settled down, and that dream went *poof*. My older brothers were gone to the far reaches of the US , along with my fear of them, the result of many poundings in our own back yard. Once I finally made up my mind to do it, to move home, the car was gone.