Not a spring goes by that I do not reminisce of a time when I was seventeen and my friend who was eighteen drove a flatbed truck to Fitchburg, MA. I’m not sure if it’s the neon green of tiny leaves on trees, the first scent of lilac in the garden, or noticing diesel smoke on the wind now that windows are rolled down. Whatever it is, I return to this memory year after year.
Our mission was to either pick up or deliver a car – I can’t remember which – for a couple of guys that owned a junkyard my friend worked at. She’d only been there for two weeks and her job involved answering the phone and waiting on customers, not driving flatbed trucks to Fitchburg. She held no special commercial license of any kind, and was already on her third or fourth car as a young driver, her first being totaled almost immediately after receiving her driver’s license. It was a Volkswagen Rabbit and its life ended abruptly due to a combination of speed, sharp turns, steep hills, and probably the too loud Judas Priest on the tape deck. The car left the road and rolled over into the woods, landing on its roof. My friend was okay. The music never stopped playing and she sat, suspended upside down while listening to Judas Priest, wondering when someone might find her.
The flatbed was big, could’ve held at least two cars if not three. We had no business driving that thing. I remember heading to the junkyard to pick up the truck and embark on our trip when my friend realized her bosses might not appreciate a friend tagging along, so she dropped me off at a random front yard to wait. Said she’d pick me up on the way. There I waited on a stranger’s property, thinking the real absurdity was not me tagging along, but that we thought waiting on a random lawn was somehow better than me showing up at the junkyard. Especially because she hadn’t dropped me by the street, but drove up the driveway and dropped me close to the house; I waited near a walkway that lead to a stranger’s front door. The second point of absurdity was that she was ever asked to drive a flatbed in the first place, with no relevant experience, in evening rush hour on busy interstates. We might have been a couple of crazy kids, but there were a couple of crazy adults in the mix, too.
My friend was beautiful. Voluptuous beyond her eighteen years. We used to do this thing when we were bored where she’d go into various package stores and see how many would allow her underaged self to buy Haffenreffer. Its low cost allowed us to try out a few stores whenever the mood struck to dupe the packy. Those forty-ouncers were eventually consumed, but our true motivation was "beating the system." That was the real thrill. Although looking back, I’m not sure if our rebel ways tested her ability to appear of legal age, or man’s ability to decline a beautiful woman. Either way, she usually came out with a bottle in hand.
Crazy as that flatbed trip was, we made it to Fitchburg and back without much issue. I can still smell the diesel exhaust, hear the now defunct Rock 102 on the radio, and see my friend wrestling with the temperamental clutch most of the way. It’s funny how the change of season triggers memories. I hope it never ends.
(An unusual story to share, but nostalgia is a peculiar thing.)