HEADING FOR SUMMER... and whatever it brings (Part 160k)

HEADING FOR SUMMER… and whatever it brings (Part 160k)

It turned out to be a fun time even though it meant I was late getting to the shop to work on the car. I got caught up on the progress (or lack thereof) on the new house they were having built. Bill said he’d been assured they would be in the house by the 10th of the month. As principal of the school, he commanded some respect from the community and it had come to his (and Phyllis’) aid in cutting through some bureaucratic red tape. However, with them having to be out of the rented house by July 1, they still had some juggling to do with family members. He, himself, was going to be staying with a school board member while Phyllis and the three younger children would be going back to Pennsylvania to stay with her relatives and the twins. Phyllis commented that it “would be cozy”. Mo, who would also be starting college, was enrolled in a Summer program at Temple University and would be living on campus. That left Barbara.

Being as busy and involved as I’d been recently, I’d kind of lost track of her. Even though still a high school student she’d been working more and more hours at the downtown store owned by an elderly German couple. Once cheerleading was over she was able to devote more time to working and the owners had come to rely on her more and more. So, she was the ‘orphan’ when it came time for the transition from the rental house to their own house.

Even though it’s now almost 50 years since that time, I’ve never been able to figure out if Elle and I weren’t being manipulated into offering to have her stay with us. Elle didn’t think so but I saw too many indications that the whole party thing was to induce us to take her in. Don’t get me wrong… I really liked Barbara and I immediately recognized there could be ‘benefits’ for me. Besides that we were to get paid for having her stay. But, to me. there were other choices that could’ve been pursued. Bottom line… it was a ‘done deal’ by the time Elle left to go back home. (I’d departed earlier). I didn’t find out about it until the next morning but that gets me ahead of the story.

As I mentioned, I was late getting to the shop. The other guys were just about to wheel the rear end under the car. I’m sure it was ‘payback’ but I ended up being one of the guys to have to get under the car and connect all the trailing arms, shock absorbers and springs. I was on a creeper which is a four wheeled platform that can be easily moved about with a person lying on it while under a car. Buster, who was usually in Cliffy’s ‘dog house’, was my partner. Alan was the guy who made all the adjustment calls and he stayed on the outside with a tape measure giving us instructions on which bolt to turn and how much to turn it. Let me say this… it’s pretty boring work.

Being a Friday night and with the races the next day, it brought out some ’spectators’ to see what we were doing. One of them was Davo (the tall basketball player from the now defunct town basketball team that I’d been on) along with his girlfriend, Leigh. I think I’ve described her in a prior post (or two) but she was as close to a ‘hippie” as we had in our circle of friends. An unbelievable personality, she defied customary mores when it came to dress and, to a leaser extent, modesty. Her attitude was along the lines of ‘here I am and you can like me or not but I’m not changing for you’. I loved it!
Her mother was one of the school nurses and Leigh had made a half hearted attempt to follow in her mother’s footsteps. But life was too much fun to be tied down to customary things for her. Now approaching 30, and with two years of nursing school behind her, she’d gotten a part time job as a medical records clerk at the smaller of the two hospitals that served our area. On this day she’d been called in for some work that had kept her too late for the last bus. Davo had gone to pick her up and had stopped on the way back to see what we were doing.

Davo, in spite of his love of racing, didn’t want to have anything to do with working on a race car. He liked to stand around and shoot ‘zingers’ at the guys who worked on the car, especially Cliffy. It was all in good fun and no one took any of his barbs seriously. For reasons never understood, Leigh was happy just being around him, Seldom did she speak and, on this particular evening, sat on a small three step step stool. I’d seen her come in wearing a short Summer skirt but didn’t focus on her at all. However, once on the creeper and under the car I found myself in an unbelievable position… able to look right at her pantied crotch. In sitting here typing this I can almost see the scene unfolding once again.

As I said, modesty was not her forte. When she plopped herself down on the  stool she chose to pull the hem of her skirt up to the point of almost exposing her panties. That wasn’t the end of it… she spread her legs so that her feet were out to the bottom of the legs of the stool. A casual guess was that there was at least 12 if not 14 inches between her knee caps. I was under the car where she couldn’t see me but I sure could see her. Oh my heart! I definitely remember Alan yelling at me to make some adjustment but, with my concentration on Leigh’s crotch, I didn’t hear him. A guess would be about a five minute, unobstructed view.

By the time we all left for the night the car was ready to go and the mood of the guys was upbeat. We were ready for things to start going our way. I could only hope so. We’d been lucky that Fairlane John had stepped up with the cash for the rear end but the reality was there that we, the partners, were going to have to come up with some cash if we were going to be able to continue racing. If nothing else went wrong we had enough money for one more set of tires. What we needed was a good finish, at least third place, to give us a ‘cushion’. The reality of it was there were at least thirty cars at the track aiming for the same thing. In 24 hours we’d know.

To be continued…