Thursday, November 21, 2019

AND THE HEAT GOES ON... & on (Part 175q)

AND THE HEAT GOES ON… & on (Part 175q)

My father had a Navy surplus spy glass for which he’d had a tripod made and, before leaving, had set it up for us to use. Trey was ‘taken’ by it and after I showed him how to adjust it he was finally settled which allowed the rest of us to visit. Elle and June got to talking but when Elle asked if she wanted to go for a swim I overheard her say she didn’t swim and was satisfied to just wade into the water and to keep an eye on Trey when he was in. I didn’t dwell on it and concentrated on trying to get more information about Trey’s affliction from Dan. We’d walked away from Trey and the spyglass and I wasn’t paying attention to him. All of a sudden Dan darted past me and over to the spyglass. Trey had decided to move it and when he tried to fold the legs of the tripod it collapsed and fell on him. As it turned out neither the boy nor spyglass was hurt but the incident triggered Dan to tell Trey it was time to go in the water. As they started down the stairs to the beach June rushed up and took control of the situation. The whole scene was a bit bizarre. It left Elle and I up on the grass watching as June took Trey by the hand and led him out into the water while Dan stopped at the water’s edge. I couldn’t tell if there was any trepidation on the part of Trey as he walked on out to be about waist deep. As I’d mentioned earlier, June was wearing an oversized T shirt and she only waded in to just above her knees. I didn’t want to interfere in a situation that I didn’t understand so just stood there with Elle,  observing… and wondering… about a lot of things that seemed a bit strange.

After a few minutes Dan returned to where Elle and I were standing on the lawn. With June and Trey out in the water I decided to ask Dan, straight away, why he hadn’t told me about Trey. He apologized and said he wasn’t supposed to come. His mother was to look after him but Trey got upset with her and then she said she didn’t want to do it. His daughter was the one who was to come along to but when it turned out Trey was going she said she didn’t want to be with him. After explaining, Dan apologized again. There wasn’t much either Elle or I could say. It was pretty awkward. It was another example of how little we really know about other peoples lives and the trials they have to go through.

By then it was a little after 11am. My parents didn’t have a hibachi and only a charcoal grill. Remembering how long it took for the coals to get hot enough to cook on I suggested that Dan give me a hand setting it up and getting the fire ready. The East side of the house had a couple of small shade trees and we got started there. Elle had excused our girls to go over to her  mother’s house so she went about getting the salads and drinks ready in the kitchen. I hadn’t yet put a match to the charcoal when we heard a scream from out on the water. From where we were standing we could see June but there was no sign of Trey. We both started running towards the beach and then I saw June holding Trey up under his arm pits. He was yelling and swinging his legs wildly, splashing the water all around. As we approached them June fell over backwards with the two of them briefly going under water. Dan got to them first and picked up Trey. He was still screaming and kicking. I helped June stand up and tried ask her what happened. She’d swallowed some water and took a few seconds to get her breath back. Dan had started towards the shore with Trey in his arms and all she wanted to know was if he was OK. We followed right behind them and when Dan put Trey down on the dock he stopped crying. June ran over to him and gave him a big hug. By then I knew both of them were OK and focused on the now soaking wet T shirt clinging to June.

I’d earlier caught a glimpse of something blue between June’s legs when she'd been sitting on the dock. Now I was able to confirm the blue that I’d seen. I still thought it was her bathing suit but the wet T shirt clinging to her bra top was white. That didn’t make much sense to me but all I could do was look. After a few minutes Trey had stopped crying and Dan was sitting next to him talking quietly. I was still curious as to what had caused Trey to panic but kept it to myself. Elle broke the ’stand-off’ by coming out to ask if everyone was ready for lunch. In the end the best I could come up with was that Trey had either been bitten by a sand crab or a blowfish even though there were no marks on his toes.

From the beach to the lawn was a five step stairs. Dan guided Trey upwards with June following right behind. I, now focusing on June’s backside, followed her but had hung back a bit. I remember seeing a couple of inches of blue on her left hip and butt cheek and this time convinced myself they might just be panties. The leg elastic wasn't finished like would normally be seen on a bathing suit. The elastic, although light blue, was more like what one would see on a pair of panties. Now the curious part of my brain started trying to come up with a reason for that being a possibility. Once on the lawn and with Trey now seated in a folding lawn chair, June methodically started pulling the wet T shirt from against her body. She was standing at an angle to me that allowed me to see her left breast and her whole left side. When she pulled the bottom of the T shirt up to let air get underneath it I became even more convinced she was wearing panties. I didn’t have much time to contemplate it as Elle had brought the hamburger patties and hot dogs out for me to begin cooking. I’ll admit I spent more time watching June than what I was cooking. At one point Elle even came up and told me to stop staring at her.

During the lunch and for a while afterwards I only got a few split second crotch peeks before Dan decided it was probably best to be on their way. I was embarrassed that our girls never returned choosing to stay with Elle’s mother.While the three of them changed their clothes in the changing rooms located just off the porch my parents returned. I’d asked my mother to stay away until after 4pm because I knew how nosy she could be and I didn’t want Dan to have to go through a ‘grilling’. But earlier, before my parents had left, my mother managed to get a few questions in with one of them being to ask Dan where he'd grown up. He told her it was in the city and then made the mistake of mentioning the name of the neighborhood. It happened to be the one my mother’s cousins grew up in and she knew it well. Her early return was deliberate so that she could play the “do you know” game. Dan politely accommodated her questions with nothing positive coming from the effort. But the delay in their leaving had agitated Trey again so June broke it off saying that they really had to be going and pushed him towards their car. As they drove away I felt really bad for all of them and hoped their experience with all of us wouldn’t turn Dan away from me.

We, of course, explained the situation with Trey to my parents. It, like for the rest of us, was a first time experience and made us feel lucky that we had three normal kids. After picking up from the cook-out we’d had for lunch we collected the girls and headed for home. Elle wanted to know what she should do with the left-overs. It was still relatively early which  gave me the idea of possibly going for an evening sail. Anne thought it was a great idea and Elle thought so too. At home she salvaged what she could of the food from lunch and added some things from our cupboard. By the time she was ready so was I with all the gear loaded into the station wagon. I thought that the sail might put a positive ending on what had turned out to be a ‘trying’ day.

To be continued…

Friday, November 15, 2019

AND THE HEAT GOES ON... & on (Part 175p)

AND THE HEAT GOES ON… & on (Part 175p)

When I walked into the kitchen Elle spied the box and made a ‘face’ as if to disapprove. Before I could rect to it she stated that she’d told Martha that it wasn’t necessary to replace the radio. She then went on that she was going to miss them when school started. I asked if she knew of their plans for any weekends during the Fall and she just shrugged. But the question triggered a statement that Geemaw, Mattie and Junior’s mother, would be there over Labor Day weekend. It had been over a month since Junior had taken her back to the city. I had to ask what Mattie and Martha’s thoughts had been on that. I was surprised when the answer was they were looking forward to it as my memory of what it was like when she was there with them was somewhat contentious.

The decision was that we’d both go to the sailing club and race that afternoon. It appeared I’d unleashed a ‘monster’ by taking Anne as crew with me the previous Sunday. She was pleading for me to take her again. The problem was our older daughter, Jean. She’d not been upset when I’d taken Anne with me but, after hearing about it all week now she wanted to race. Even though Elle was a trained teacher she really wasn’t that knowledgeable about racing so it was agreed that And would go with Elle and Jean with me. As I stated in the previous post, having the added weight of a crew in a Sunfish makes it less competitive. Neither Elle nor I was in contention for trophies so it didn’t really matter. So, we pretty much raced each other. The one thing that stands out from that was how animated Anne had become while Elle was trying to catch up with Jean and I.

It turned out that I wasn’t fully ‘fudging’ my sick day when I called in on Tuesday. When we unloaded the race car on Monday night I tripped and the car rolled over my foot. There’s no doubt I could’ve gone in to work even though it really hurt. Not having to wear a shoe certainly made it feel better though. By having my friend, Dan, over to visit at my parents house meant I could go without shoes. I’d touched ‘base’ with him and we agreed that 10am would be a good time for he and his family to arrive. We’d not ever talked much about his wife and kids… a pre teen boy and a freshly minted teen age girl. His wife’s name was June and she was a stay-at-home mom. It had puzzled me a bit in that Elle was ‘chomping at the bit’ to be able to work full time once Kaye was in school full time. But, I’d never asked about it.

Our kids didn’t have sailing lessons so we loaded up our beach stuff and all the ‘fixins’ for a cook-out and got to my parents around 8:30am and my mother got her desired ‘private time’ with the girls. She’d told me she’d be gone by the time my friend arrived but I took that with ‘a grain of salt. My mother was very social and into that you can read… nosey. My father had been pressing her to leave but she found ways to delay it. Dan was on time and as he and his family were exiting their car my mother made her exit from the house. She reached the driveway just after Elle and I did and was her usual ‘social’ self, falling all over herself to welcome them to ‘her’ house. I just stood there cringing. While she was doing this I noticed that there were only two other people other than Dan who had gotten out of the car. It was their son and my first impression was a bit negative. It was clear that he didn’t want to be there. Dan made the introductions with June being his wife’s name and Trey the name he gave for the boy. June explained that his given name was Daniel III but had been dubbed Trey at a very young age. Elle proceeded to do the same for our side and then motioned for them to follow her to the front of the house where they could all view the water. As we walked Dan took me aside and proceeded to explain that his son was a bit “different”. He described him as having a condition called autism. I’d never even heard the term before. The simple description Dan gave me was that “he walked to a different drummer” and was sometimes a problem to control. However, he quickly assured me he was not a threat to any of us as long as he and his wife were around. That statement was far from reassuring because I knew nothing about the traits of someone with that condition.

We were standing by the kitchen porch and could not only see Elle, June and Trey but also the water. Dan changed the subject saying that he couldn’t believe what a great location the place was. He then told me his brother’s cottage was “buried in the woods” with no water rights and commented on how lucky I was too have lived there as a boy. That triggered me to ask about his daughter and why she wasn’t with them. He kind of shook his head and nodded towards his wife and son when answering that it was “a long story” and didn’t go into it. We then joined all the others out by the beach. Trey was out on it and running wildly about. Dan shouted out to him and he immediately stopped. I looked at Elle and my girls and from the looks on their face they didn’t know what to make of him. As for me I was upset that I hadn’t been forewarned about his affliction. But, there was nothing I could do about it then.

It was almost like a bribe when Dan told Trey to calm down if he wanted to go in the water. He immediately went into a squat there on the sand with a fierce look on his face. I wasn’t liking what I was seeing. June, his mother had retreated to the back yard with Elle while my girls stayed on the upper level of the dock as far away from him as they could get. I’d not had the time to look June over but when she and Elle returned I noticed that she’d changed her clothes. She was now wearing an oversized T shirt. Only about 5’5” tall, she was dwarfed by Dan but the boy was almost as big as she was. That concerned me a bit in that if he was to get violent it seemed to me the she was vulnerable… but it wasn’t for me to worry about. Dan was now crouched down next to Trey and he seemed much calmer. Dan asked me where they could change into bathing suits and I told him to follow me.

I’ve written about this house in posts from when I was young and how it was designed. What I called the “back porch” was actually built into the body of the house. Off to one side of it were two small “changing rooms”. Back when the house was built it was felt it would be a way to keep wet, sandy feet and dripping wet bathing suits from going into the house. I led them to the rooms and then told them to come back out to the water and returned there myself. June was sitting on the edge of the dock and as I approached I could see something pale blue between her legs. I had to assume it was a bathing suit but wanted to believe what I was looking at were panties but there was no way to know until they went swimming. When Dan and Trey reappeared I had to do a ‘double take when I saw Dan in what I now know is a speedo type bathing suit. I’d never seen one before and… it was interesting.
         
Dan & family
To be continued…


Wednesday, November 13, 2019

AND THE HEAT GOES ON... & on (Part 175o)

AND THE HEAT GOES ON… & on (Part 175o)

Having about 50 extra pounds on board certainly didn’t help us competitively. However, it was Anne’s first experience in actual competition. Although she was not even nine years old she’d shown a definite ’shine’ to sailing and understanding the basic concept of how the wind propels a boat with sails. Taking advantage of our time together I tried to explain, as simply as I could, why I did the things I did during the races. There was no way to test how much of it she understood or retained but it was a definite step forward. It turned out that my decision to take Anne racing was beneficial in an unexpected way. breaking down Elle’s being upset with me. Anne’s excitement and enthusiasm after we returned home impressed Elle and was the focus of our dinner conversation. By the time we finished up Elle was treating me almost normally but I knew I still had to wait a little longer and to be patient.

The week at work was a forewarning that Summer was coming to an end. I was contacted by three of the organizations where I was the bank’s representative. They were announcing their schedule of meetings starting in September. I actually enjoyed some of them but others were a ‘pain’ and I definitely could do without them. But, it wasn’t up to me to pick and choose. The one I was really interested in was the one run by the Association of banks headquartered in the city. The focus of the group was then called Personnel and now called Human Resources. I’d made a friend who had taken on the job of being my mentor as far a dealing with others on the committee. All of them were working for banks larger than the one I worked for and the egos of some of them had a tendency to be intimidating. Dan had seen fit to get me on the subcommittee that was developing a program for “up and comers”, junior officers who had shown potential for promotion. The subcommittee had run into logistical problems in trying to get the whole thing started so it was put off with a new target of the Spring. Having learned the lesson of waiting too long to get a commitment from the venue the Association wanted to use and to have the lecturers they wanted available at the same time they scheduled the first meeting the Wednesday after Labor Day. It was Dan who contacted me and as he was about to hang up he remedied me that we’d promised to get together during the Summer and that we hadn’t done it. The Bermuda trip for Elle and I was also “on the horizon” so it was obvious that my free time was going to get limited… and soon.

Dan’s brother was a minister and he owned a Summer bungalow in the village just to the East of where Elle and I lived. Being that Sunday is the ‘prime’ workday for a minister, his cottage was free most weekends and Dan had taken advantage of it a few times but we’d not been able to connect. There was just no way for me to do it with the race car and the sailboat races and I apologized when we chatted. So, when Dan called me back to say that he was going to have the use of the cottage for not only the upcoming weekend but also for a few days into the week he suggested I take a day off while he was there. I’ve always coveted my vacation days and usually had them planned out a year in advance. There was no way I was going to be able to change on short notice because others depended on my schedule to schedule their own. When I explained it he, being the personnel officer for his bank, certainly knew what I was talking about. When he suggested that I take a sick day I was a bit shocked.(38) I’d only done that once… when Elle and I went sailing in the boat I’d bought from my friend, “Big B”. I was uncomfortable doing it then and to come back and do it again, so soon, wasn’t working for me so I told him I’d let him know.

By Wednesday Elle was pretty much her old self around me. Staying home both Monday and Tuesday nights was what really helped that situation. When I left for the garage that night I didn’t get any ‘grief’ which was a very good sign. We unloaded the car and checked it over. The only question was should we change the rod bearings. When I drained the oil I ran it through a spray paint filter to see if there was any babbit showing and when none showed up it made for an early night. In fact it was so early that Elle was still up when I walked in the house. Following up on Elle’s demeanor at the supper table I brought up the idea of entertaining my friend Dan and his family the following week by taking a sick day. She’d heard me talk about Dan any number of times and how he’d been mentoring me so the idea wasn’t unreasonable. With that as a basis I decided I’d go ahead and tell Dan “OK”. What surprised me was that she suggested I contact my parents to see if we could take them there in place of the sailing club beach. I started to question her reason but decided to let it pass. As we walked up the stairs I had visions of a little “amour’ but that thought was quickly quashed as she informed me her period had started on Monday.

My mother seemed pleased to let us entertain my friend and his family. It was probably because she’d not seen much of the kids during the Summer because of their busy schedule. She suggested it be the following Tuesday as she was going to lunch with a friend and then spending the afternoon. Her only requirement was that we bring the kids over about an hour prior to our friends arrival so she could spend it with them. The only problem was coming up with a plausible excuse for missing work.

It was more of a normal race night for us on Saturday. Cliffy got ‘roughed up’ in our qualifying heat so we had to get in through the last chance race. That meant starting from the back in the main event. From a monetary standpoint it wasn’t good as we finished out of the top ten. But, being in the back and mostly trailing the other cars Cliffy avoided the big crash. That was the best part of the night. A quick look over the car when we put it up on the hauler didn’t show any major problems. Two weeks in a row was a rare treat!

Junior and Martha, from next door, met me as I returned from church. He had a box for me as a thank you for my plumbing work a few weeks prior. I’d pretty much forgotten about it. It wasn’t wrapped so I could see it was a portable radio. That choice puzzled me as we already had one. Junior saw the look on my face and quickly explained that the kids had been using it in the new tent he’d bought for his and Mattie’s kids. But, they left it out and the rain did something to it. I was listening to him but was actually looking at Martha. She was wearing a white dress and, from the position I was in, I swore I could see right through it. When she and Junior headed back through the hedge she bent over to duck through it I recognized the Sans Soucie panties I (we) gave her. It was nice to see.

To be continued…

Saturday, November 09, 2019

AND THE HEAT GOES ON... & on (Part 175n)

AND THE HEAT GOES ON… & on (Part 175n)

By the time I got up on the truck bed and could clearly see the woman it appeared that she wasn’t moving. I turned around and started yelling at some of the crew who were working on the race car and pointing into the bin. It took more than a few seconds for any one of them to respond. When I saw one of them headed towards the truck I turned and looked back into the bin. In my first look at her she was on her left side with her right arm above her head. This time she’d moved and was on her back which was a good sign. But I could now see blood on her right thigh and coming through her shorts by her hip. Once the crew got there they took over and I got back on the ground. I hung around until they got her out of the bin. I was curious as to what was actually in it and after they’d moved her to the cab I looked in. It was a large tarpaulin which had cushioned her fall so that was good to know. But I couldn’t figure out the blood. Since there was nothing I could do I headed back to our pit area. On my way I noticed someone from the ambulance crew headed towards where she was located which was a good sign.

Alan was really excited when he found out we’d be starting seventh. Usually, cars qualifying from the third heat didn’t start higher than 11th or 12th. After the race started Cliffy managed to avoid the usual carnage and ended up 4th. The money from that finish would pay for two new tires so we were all pretty happy. As usual, we set up our hibachi’s and waited for the fans to be let into the pits. I was putting the last of the spare parts into the storage cabinets behind the rear wheels of the hauler and felt someone touch me on the shoulder. I looked up and saw the woman who’d fallen standing there. When I stood up I recognized the man standing there with her as her husband, the driver of the new, radical car. She wanted to thank me and after she did the man introduced himself as Paul. When he was introduced to the fans for his qualifying heat I remember the announcer calling him Billy. But, before I could say anything or ask about the difference in names Cliffy walked up and introduced himself. While the two of them chatted the lady gave me her name… Etta. I couldn’t help but notice a bandage on her head. After acknowledging her name I asked how she was doing and she made an attempt to smile. She said her head hurt but the ambulance staff told her to monitor it and if the pain got worse to go to the emergency room at her local hospital. Then, seeing the dried blood on her shorts I asked about that.. I remember her sort of shaking her head a bit from side to side and telling me that when she fell that her leg and hip had scraped the edge of the bin area. I can tell you I certainly wasn’t expecting for her to pull up the cuff of her blood stained shorts to show me. In thinking about it now I’m sure she meant to get the leg elastic of her panties when she did it… but she didn’t. We had our flood lights in our pit area so there was plenty of light and there was no doubt that there was lace around the leg opening of her white (and blood stained) panties. I had a few seconds to take that in before she realized it and then got her finger under the elastic and pulled it up to show a bandage on the point of her hip but also a pretty nasty scrape as well.  She and her husband stayed for a few minutes before leaving. When they were walking away one floodlight was shining right on their backs and I convinced myself that I could see a VPL of her panty crotch. It was a nice way to end the evening.(As an aside… Paul and Cliffy ended up being pretty good friends all because I’d been there to see his wife fall.)

Before leaving that night Cliffy felt that after the tough week we’d put in to get the car ready we all needed some time off. Before loading the car on the hauler we did a cursory check around the car and could see nothing obviously amiss so he told us to show up Wednesday night. All of us were glad to hear that. In talking with Alan in the cab of the truck on the way home we agreed that we all needed some time away from each other.

I decided not to go to church in the morning with hope that I could get back in Elle’s ‘good graces’ by making myself available to do her bidding. But, she wasn’t going to give in still giving me the ’silent treatment’ as she’d done most of the previous week. I'd been through this a time or two in the past and pretty much knew it would take time and probably some sort of present or gift. With the Bermuda trip coming up I was counting on that as a last resort. I made myself busy doing things I thought might be of some help to her but couldn’t get much of a response.

Elle was still taking care of Cliffy and Beth’s young son on race nights. She would come by to pick him up around 11am on Sunday mornings. However, on that Sunday it was Cliffy who came to collect him. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. I was just collecting the stuff to go to the sailing club when he arrived. He wanted to know if I was “in” for having a picnic for some of the teams that had helped us out during the season. Adam, who’d I’d played basketball with, along with Davo, was caretaker for the town’s two parks. There was a private area that could be reserved to hold somewhat private affairs and there had been a cancellation for the following Sunday. He’d heard Cliffy talking about doing something for some of the teams and had proposed the idea of using the park. Cliffy didn’t seem all that excited about it but let it ‘slip’ that Betsy had decided that it was going to happen. I knew her well enough to know that it would. It was to be the following Sunday.

Elle was still not talking with me except where she had to. When I asked if she was going to race that afternoon she said she was going to play tennis. I was tempted to say something caustic along the lines of why did I buy the second Sunfish… but held my tongue. I wondered how long this type of behavior was going to continue. I could accept the ‘cold shoulder’ treatment but not going racing was spiteful. It didn’t create a problem for me with taking care of the older girls because there were enough parents and kids there that they knew from sailing lessons. Elle fed the kids but left me to come up with something on my own. As soon as they were finished eating we were off.

It had been a strange season as far as racing was concerned. For various reasons I’d missed over half the races so wasn’t in position for a trophy. After surveying the adults who were there and asking for a few to keep and eye on the girls I got an idea. Anne was a sailing ‘fiend’ in that she’d rather be on the water and sailing than just about anything else. I asked if she wanted to sail with me as my crew. The reaction was a “Kodak moment”, only without the camera. Jean, the oldest, was OK with it as she had a couple of good friends to play with. Every time Anne was in a sail boat she wanted to steer so when we were headed out to the starting line I told her that she wouldn’t be steering until after the races were over. I expected a negative reaction but didn’t get one. I didn’t expect that or what she had to say… “I’ll wait for my turn…”

To be continued…

Saturday, November 02, 2019

AND THE HEAT GOES ON... & on (Part 175m)

AND THE HEAT GOES ON… & on (Part 175m)

The man in charge of the audit team started talking as soon as I approached. Bert, ever the calm one, politely told him to “back off” and asked me what had happened. I’m the excitable one and I responded as was probably expected. Basically I stated, excitedly, that the time for the counting of the cash had far exceeded reasonable expectations and the customers in the lobby were getting upset. I told them that by the time I told the tellers to go ahead and serve the customers we had upwards of twenty people waiting in the lobby and cars at the drive up were blocking the sidewalk. At that point Bert told the audit person that I was right in releasing the tellers and then had the man follow him to the elevator. Less than fifteen minutes later he was back and calling the people who’d come with him together and told them to gather their things and they would be leaving. The final result was that Bert called the manager of the accounting firm and set up a meeting to have him come to the bank before going forward with another try at the examination. I’d expected to have something said to me by either Bert or my immediate supervisor, Hobie, but nothing was forthcoming… at least at that time. However, I spent the rest of the day waiting… and waiting. It made for a long day. By the time the last of us left for the day nothing had been said. I wasn’t going to ‘push’ the matter but I truly wished I knew what was ahead for me.

The time on the trip home was taken up wondering just what we’d find when the race car was unloaded that night. I won’t go into needless detail except to say the problem was initially caused when Cliffy was pushed into the guard rail at our regular track that Saturday night. Simply put, when he hit the engine shifted forward by about two inches and caused the driveshaft to move as well. That condition caused the oil seal at the back of the transmission to eventually fail. Metal gears without proper lubrication will fail and they did. What we’d all initially thought it would be a simple task to just replace the transmission. It turned out to be a whole lot more. The car had been built by Cliffy’s father and was now four years old. It had been involved in many crashes and subsequently repaired many times. With the motor and transmission out of the chassis a thorough inspection of it was made. Cliffy’s father, who had pretty much stayed out of the race car operation over the Summer, got involved. In so doing  a number of things were discovered. When he finished he made a declaration that the car should be junked and not repaired again as the metal was “soft”. I don’t think any of us were truly shocked by his comment but it was something we didn’t want to hear.

To start with we didn’t have the money. Second, Cliffy wanted to finish out the season at our Saturday night track so we’d get some money from the season long point fund. We’d been in 5th place before we crashed and that was the cut-off point for any ‘real’ money. So, to even think about that we had to fix the car. Upon hearing our decision Cliffy’s father threw up his hands and walked out of the garage. By the time we left that night we had a pretty good idea that there would be late nights leading up to Saturday… and there were. A couple of the local racers showed up to give a helping hand and by Saturday afternoon when we loaded the car on the hauler we had about 95% of the ’to do’ list completed. The cost of this, to me, was in having a wife who hardly spoke to me at all. I wasn’t relegated to the sofa and I rationalized it by continually thinking that the season was almost over. The time I spent at home was minimal. With little sleep and the chores around the house piling up I was not a person anyone wanted to be around.The overriding question for all of us was what would happen when the car went out on the track.

Cliffy had been in contact with C J a couple of times during the week and he’d fully recovered from his crash on Sunday. Surprisingly, other than body damage, repairs to his car took less time than ours. When we pulled into the pits it was hard to believe it was the same car that I’d watched fly over the wall and out of the track  It was all painted up and renumbered. We noticed there was a new car that had shown up. Supposedly, the driver was a former track champion at the track located close to the city. The car was bit ‘radical’ because it was so low and soon the ‘chatter’ around the pits was it was illegal.  But Butch, the track steward, announced over the PA system that it was cleared to race. Aside from the radical nature of the vehicle there was one other interesting feature of the new crew and crew… the driver’s wife. The note in my DayTimer says “WOW” with many exclamation points following it.

Probably close to 50, she still had her ‘looks’ as well as her shape… and she knew it. As the people in the pits went over to look at the car they spent equally as much time looking at her. Still Summer, she was dressed for it. I’m not normally a breast man but my notes read “halter top with cleavage!”… and I can still picture her as I stared at her. Her shorts weren’t particularly short but I was sure that if I was able to stay around that pit area I’d get some kind of a panty peek before the night was over.

Practice was cut short because someone leaked rear end oil on the track. Even after a concerted effort to clean the surface it was deemed too oily for our class of cars to compete. The promotor shuffled the order of classes so that we’d be qualifying last hoping that there would be some ’bite’ to the track for us. Still in the third and strongest heat, we were at least fortunate to start on the ‘pole’, or in  the first position… and Cliffy took advantage of it by leading every lap. The new driver, because of his reputation, also was in it but started last. At the end of the 10 laps he was third. He’d passed ten of the fastest cars at the track in just ten laps. Needles to say the conversation in the pits was all about him. Listening to some the people talking about it got me to thinking it would be a good time to wander down to his pit area to see what I could see… about his wife.

Most of the driver’s wives sat together in one area of the grandstand. But the wife of this driver had decided to stay in the pit area. When I got there she was sitting on the bed of the hauler in a folding chair looking down on the activity around her husband’s car. I couldn’t see much as it was now dark and the lights in the pits were minimal. So, like a few of the other onlookers, I wandered over to get a closer look at the car. This was only my second year working on cars in this division so I really couldn’t discern anything of interest. Because the night’s schedule had been changed the track officials were making announcements over the PA system. The clarity of them was always marginal and someone in the crew called to the woman to take notes of what was being broadcast. I was looking at her when she stood up and took a few steps… and when she fell. Even with the noise of the engines I could hear her scream as she disappeared from my view. I jumped up on the bed of the hauler and saw that she’d fallen into a bin-like area between the tracks for the wheels of the race car to ride on.

To be continued…