Headlights.

My first car was a 1972 Dodge Colt wagon, that was so rusted out my friends nicknamed it “Cancer”.  It had other issues, like the time I went 6 months without a starter motor.  Good thing both home and school were on a hill, so I could compression start it.  But it did limit the places I could go without bringing several friends to push it.

But this story has to do with the headlights. It must have been my junior year, late one weekend when we were just cruising around in the car (just like on “That 70’s Show).  It was well past dark when my headlights decided to just go out on me.  Pfft, they’re gone.

Now, any thinking person would have gone home, parked the car and spent the next day figuring out what went wrong.  But I was 17, with my friends, having a great time, and that just wasn’t an option.  So we just kept driving around.

Until a cop pulled me over for driving without my headlights. 

“I’m sorry sir, they just barely went out, and we’ve got to drive the girls back to their house, and then I’m going straight home.  Promise.”

The cop said OK (it was the 70’s), and told me not to drive the car any more than absolutely necessary.

After another hour or two of cruising around, during which time we actually did drop the girls off, we run into the same cop.

“Yes, sir, I know sir.  See, we went to drop the girls off and then hung out at their house for the last couple of hours, and we were just now heading back to my house.”

“Ok, go straight home.  Drive careful and get those lights fixed right away.”

“Yes, sir, no problem, sir.”

Another undetermined number of hours cruising around and we run into the same cop again. He walks up to the car, I roll down the window, shrug my shoulders and say:

“Sorry, I don’t even have an excuse this time.”

“That’s OK, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

And then he wrote me out a ticket.

Hunting with dad.

For my birthday, my dad gave me this birthday card: which is in reference to my one and only hunting experience.

I can’t remember if my older brother was still in high school at the time, but I know I was.  My father wasn’t a fanatical hunter, but he loves the outdoors and took the opportunity to enjoy it with his buddies every hunting season.  This year, my brother and I were invited to join them.

Now, dad and his friends got up there the first day of the season, spent the week getting up at 4 AM, getting up on the ridge and working hard to stay downwind from the deer.  They had not got a single deer in their crosshairs by the time my brother and I showed up halfway through hunting season, in the middle of the night, relatively unprepared.  The next morning all the adults were up bright and early, scouting for good spots.  We, the teenagers, on the other hand, got up at the crack of noon, had a hearty breakfast and headed out to hunt in the afternoon.   We’d been walking around in the woods for an hour or so, talking the whole time, just kind of wandering around, when we came upon a clearing right on the ridge of a hill.  We sat down at the edge of the woods, at the top of the clearing, to have our mid-afternoon snack.  Joking around, I said to my brother “In about 10 minutes a deer is going to stop right there (pointing out into the clearing at the edge of the ridge), look right up here at us and stand there and let you shoot it.”  About 15 minutes later, with my back to the clearing, I see my brother’s eyes go wide, he stands up, aims the rifle and says “The deer, right there!”  Yeah, right.  I’m not that gullible.  Until the shot goes off right next to me.

So, to recap:

• 
  
  We show up in the middle of the hunting season
• 
  
  We come in in the middle of the night
• 
  
  We get up at noon, start hunting in the afternoon
• 
  
  Spend an hour wandering around the mountain
• 
  
  Get the first deer of the group
• 
  
  Leave, with a deer, before the end of our first day of hunting.

We were never invited again.