Diego, California, 20 years ago. I started out in life as a Honda
motorcycle mechanic, but when the cars came out I saw the car mechanics
were making more money so I switched over to them. At one point I was
out of work and while I normally worked at new car dealerships, none of
them was hiring at the time so I took a job in a small independent shop
in El Cajon that worked on all Japanese cars but specialized mainly in
Datsun. The owner there was a kind of 240Z guru. He built a SCCA
B-Production 240Z race car for a local hot-shoe and they raced at
Riverside all the time. I always liked that track. Well after a while
there was an opening at a Honda dealership so I gave my notice and at
closing time on my last Friday at the Datsun place while we were all
sitting around saying our good-byes and having a few beers, the owner
asked me if I'd like to take the race car out for a spin around the
block. Not one to pass up an opportunity, they fired it up, I hop'd in
and took off down Main Street in downtown El Cajon. Race cars didn't
have mufflers in those days. They didn't have speedometers either, but
it would probably be safe to say I hit at least a hundred (mph). Now
the streets of this block actually made a triangle, each leg may have
been about a half mile long, I was heading for the apex of the triangle,
and there was a signal light there. At the proper time I applied the
brakes - but nothing happened. The pedal was firm, but the car didn't
slow down. I had like this fraction of a second to decide what to do.
The thing that was in my mind was that these guys trusted me with their
car, told me to go around the block, and I wanted to do what they said.
But this turn was way sharper than 90 degrees, the car didn't have its
normal wide racing slicks on, and I was going WAY too fast anyway.
Fortunately for me (there is a God) the signal light was green so I
decided to go straight and cut over on the next street. This I did, at
a rather high rate of speed because I knew I was late getting back now,
so I pitched it sideways and proceeded down the street. In this part of
El Cajon, the commercial district was right up against a residential
district and as luck would have it, this was a nice quiet neighborhood
street. People were outside watering their lawns, Bar-B-Q'ing, etc. I
looked at them. They looked at me. I smiled. They just sort of stood
there with their mouths wide open. I made it back OK. You know, up
until that evening, I had NO IDEA how many police cars the city of El
Cajon had! Wow, they had a lot of them. Really nice officers, too.
They promised they wouldn't take us to jail if we promised we would
NEVER do that again. You know, sometimes I really miss working there...
-Tony-