You Know I Was Winning

Randy bought a Red Chevy pickup with a V-8 engine that he was so proud of, after driving a GMC Sonoma with a four cylinder for a while the V-8 I know just got to him a bit, he “accidentally” spun the tires at the stop sign on the end of our street a number of times and I had mentioned this to him more than once but just got that grin when he promised to be more careful next time.

Randy worked at a local grocery store in produce and Scott one of my other sons was working there also as a stocker, actually all four of our boys had bagged groceries at S and S one time or another. Randy and Scott were always poking fun at one another about whose vehicle was faster, Scott was driving a Camaro at the time and while shopping Cindy had witnessed the insults being thrown at Randy from Scott about how slow his truck must be only to hear the reply of how that truck could “Smoke” Scott’s Camaro anytime. There were a lot of laughs, and from what I have been told this went on all the time.

The store closes at 9pm and both boys were to get off at closing time this particular night, at 9:05pm Randy’s name comes across the scanner in a BOLO (be on the lookout for) with the description of his truck, our good friend Nancy called to say she had heard this information on the scanner, Cindy called Randy immediately and when he finally answered all he said was:

Randy: Mom can’t talk right now.

Cindy: And Why Not?

Randy: I got pulled over, talking to the police.

Cindy: What did you do?

Randy: Racing, Gotta go Mom I will be right there.

Cindy turns to me and says he got pulled over for racing. I am thinking to myself that in the town we lived, and in between our house and where he worked there was no place for him to be racing other than residential streets, Cindy says I bet it was Scotty!! I said Scotty how in the world did Scotty get in this? Cindy tells me I bet he was racing with Scotty, I argued the point that I really didn’t think so, because at this time I didn’t know about all the challenges being thrown between Randy and Scott, Cindy was yelling the details of what she had heard the boys saying to each other at the store from her path of pacing on the sidewalk when we see the headlights of Randy’s truck coming slowly down the street, right on his bumper is one of the City Police cars, Randy pulls to a stop in front of the house and the Police Officer waves to us and drives away knowing that no explanation from him was needed, Randy steps out of the truck and commences to tell us how he would pay for everything and it wouldn’t cost us a dime. To make a long story short he had in his hand “Defective Equipment” “Reckless Driving” and “Drag Racing” tickets and Scott had exactly the same tickets in his possession minus the defective equipment ticket we found out later on.

Picture this, S and S Grocery sits on one end of the parking lot and on the complete other end is a small movie theatre, it’s closing time and the parking lot is empty, these two have been ragging one another all day about who had the fastest vehicle, so like any other red blooded American boy would do, rather than go to the country for a race they lined up right then and there, from what I hear the burnout was rather impressive and they were side by side when they passed the police officer sitting beside the theater watching them from the other end of the parking lot, the light bar came on and Randy stopped with the police car right behind him, rather than stopping Scott made a left turn since the police were not behind him and continued down the road, the police officer pulled around Randy and went after Scott with lights and siren blaring, Randy must have thought he got a pass so he made a right and headed toward the house, he noticed the dash lights were not working so he pulled into the church parking lot about halfway home to check to see if the fuse was blown since this also controlled the taillights, while squatted down looking at the fuse box with a flashlight he hears a voice behind him saying “You really didn’t think you were going to get away with this did you?”, he said he dropped his head and said “No Sir” turned around to see a large police officer silhouetted by the flashing lights of five police cars sitting behind him, he climbed onto the seat of his truck and that’s when Cindy had called.

Now as far as stepping out of the truck and saying, “ I will pay for everything, this won’t cost you a dime” was not exactly the right way to start explaining this to us. Cindy answered something like “Your #*%& right you will be the one paying for it, now who were you racing with?” when he replied “Scotty” and Cindy gave me that I told you so look and right then and there I knew it was going to be a long evening.

Both boys went to court and paid their debt to society so to say and still to this day look at each other and say, “You know I was winning”

My thanks to a few of the Cars characters for coming by today to help illustrate this little story about one of Randy and Scott’s most expensive racing experiences, it wasn’t as expensive as the profits from the movie but was pretty costly both financially and points wise for the both of them, my advise is that if you are going to drag race take it out into the country or to a sanctioned drag strip, if you choose to line up in a parking lot then make sure you look around to see exactly who is in the audience and be prepared to pay the price.