Daughter Elizabeth and I had flown to San Jose for a college application test. As a lark, I rented a Ford Mustang convertible for tooling around in. Although long past my midlife crisis (a convertible red Mazda Miata had sufficed for that), the car had an unexpected effect on me; I found myself driving like a coked-up Burt Reynolds on a cross country beer run.
Whizzing around the bay area put me in mind of riding the back roads of northwest Arkansas with mischievous intent, back in the days when disco was king and there was no such thing as lapels that were too wide.
It all started in the summer of 1976, when I took my first plane journey from Little Rock to Charleston. The state of West Virginia had flown in two kids from every state for the National Youth Science Camp, and I was one of the Arkansas delegates. For three weeks thereafter, the hundred of us enjoyed camping, science lectures, kayaking, NASA tours, rock climbing, more science lectures, spelunking, and even a US Senate visit, all topped with a nerdy dollop of more science, Maraschino-cherry-like.
The first day at camp, I met Scott Griffith, the other Arkansas delegate, who was enthusiastic and high energy. His eyes fairly burned with manic inner light, but in a good, non-serial-killer way.
Scott played drums with gleeful abandon and exhibited the world’s first and only case of Frisbee knee. His stories routinely transformed the mundane into the exhilarating with such contagious enthusiasm I could not wait to experience everything he described. That boy could make athlete’s foot sound like an E ticket ride at Disneyland.
Any time was a good time for Scott to wax eloquent. During the US Senate luncheon in D.C., just before Hubert Humphrey lauded the vast rewards of public service, Scott launched into his favorite science fiction stories. He joyfully recounted incredible space battles from the Lensman series by EE “Doc” Smith, utilizing an armada of silverware to pulverize the opposing fleet of overcooked green beans.
When I later read the Lensmen novels, I was surprised to find that Scott’s descriptions were far more riveting than the books themselves. I bet Scott had a fish story that would put Ahab’s to shame.
Come the end of summer, Scott and I both wound up at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. We lived in the same dorm and worked in the dorm food service as humble dishwashers. Scott introduced me to the industrial strength garbage disposal, which he occasionally used as a makeshift basketball hoop. A coffee mug tossed from across the room would bounce into the gaping maw of the disposal. It disappeared with a terrific grinding roar exactly like being devoured by a ravenous T-Rex. Exactly, that is, if colossal ceramic mugs had walked the earth in the Cretaceous Era.
Scott introduced me to the joys of skateboarding in the dark right up until I discovered the hazards of skateboarding in the dark. A brief tutelage ensued in how to wrap my elbow at 2 a.m. with only an Ace bandage and a liberal dose of regret.
Fayetteville was only 25 miles from Scott’s home in Bentonville. It was not long before I got to visit his family and see where he had grown up.
The Griffith family owned and ran a print shop, which was not a real money maker in a small town. His dad, Jerry, was also the volunteer fire chief. Scott’s adventures included helping out as a volunteer fireman in Bentonville, which sounded like fun and not at all perilous. He especially enjoyed “spraying the hell out of fires” with the hose, which he described as like riding a frenzied bull, but with less chance of your ass being gored.
Scott showed me around Bentonville, pointing out the Spee-Dee Mart where he trolled weekly for new science fiction and had purchased those space opera Lensman books. Of particular interest was the Tuck Florist sign, rising an impressive 50 feet above the blacktop. Scott had plans to someday, somehow paint a black bar across the cursive T “just for the fuck of it.”
In his parents’ carport, Scott proudly unveiled his car from under a protective black tarp. It was a 1964 ½ red Mustang. I asked about the half to make sure I had heard correctly. I had not realized Ford employed fractions in year models. Did they use imaginary numbers on experimental prototypes?
While I admired the Mustang, Scott enthused over a little thing he called “scumbagging.” A particularly nauseating tint of green paint was mixed with sand and ladled into plastic sandwich bags. These scumbags were then launched out the car window at road signs, all the while maneuvering at speeds that would give Chuck Yeager a stiffy.
We resolved to generate some scumbag/road sign interactions without delay. With no time for proper scumbag prep, we gathered several buckets of dirt clods, the original “dirty bombs.”
Minutes after sundown, we arrived at Scott’s preferred winding country road. Replete with a hundred sharp turns, it was dotted with signs indicating maximum safe speed for each curve. Soon, I was hanging out the window with a bucket of ammo clamped between my knees, keeping an eye peeled for these signs. Racing along at 70 mph, I was to throw a clod straight out sideways, trying to guess the correct speed and height to produce an impact with each sign as we whizzed by. A resounding clang was the reward for a gunnery job well done.
The problem, I quickly learned, was that immediately after each sign came the corresponding curve in the road. According to Scott, proper speed for hairpin turns was twice the posted speed plus 10 miles per hour. It was his considered opinion that only some kind of pussy would drive a sports car around those curves slower than that. “Meow,” I agreed, hanging onto the car roof for dearest life.
As a physics major, I full well understood Isaac Newton and his damned laws of motion. I was resolved to keep my highly valued and mostly non-replaceable body parts safe, and my testicles helpfully retreated to a point just above my spleen.
Eventually, we ran short of dirt and called it a night, thankfully before I ran short of bladder control.
In fall of 1977, Scott gave up on the U. of A. and moved to Boston to continue school at MIT, where his Science Camp girlfriend, Micki Howell, attended school.
I had kept in touch with a handful of other Science Camp delegates, including Karen Bobcek from Indiana. Karen was born on the same day as me, so I sent her a birthday card each year. In the summer of 1978, a passing comment grew into a shared 2 week road trip from Chicago to Boston.
Karen and I visited Scott and Micki at MIT for a single day on our trip.
At lunch in Boston, the waiter could not understand my Arkansas accent and I could not understand his Bostonian. Karen, Scott and Micki laughed at my futile attempts to order a roast beef sandwich. Later, after rock climbing at Quincy quarries, Scott and I turned off all the outside lights at MIT for a lark.
The trip was a wake-up call for me. By the time I arrived home in Arkansas, I knew I could not stay. A month later I arrived in West Lafayette, Indiana, with a cardboard box of clothes and my saxophone, attempting to enroll at Purdue the day before the fall session started. What I lacked in long term planning, I compensated for with short term optimism.
Forty-plus years later, I found myself cruising in San Jose with the top down, reminiscing. Was everyone’s life a series of unexpected curves taken too fast and damn the seatbelts? Looking over at Elizabeth, happy with the wind in her hair and the sun on her face, preparing for her next big adventure at college, I decided we should gather dirt clods first chance we got.
