I was winning

After driving a four cylinder GMC Sonoma truck for a while, our son Randy bought himself a full size Chevy pickup with a V-8 engine. This was a pretty fast truck and the power behind that V-8 engine was the reason he always “accidentally” spun his tires when taking off from the stop sign at the end of our street. I had a talk with Randy about the black marks at the stop sign, and he just gave me a little grin while he promised to be more careful.

Randy with his red Chevy sitting behind him

There was a local Mom and Pop grocery store a couple of miles away from our house where all four of our boys had bagged groceries, S&S actually was an excellent store to shop in. At the time Randy was working in the Produce department and my son Scotty from my first marriage was a stocker, he and Randy worked a lot of hours together.

Scott was driving a black Chevy Camaro at the time and after Randy bought his truck the games began. Randy and Scott were prone to giving each other a hard time anyway, but throw in a couple of fast vehicles and the challenges between them were inevitable.

Cindy overheard the boys once while she was shopping for groceries at S&S. Scotty was insulting Randy’s truck talking about how slow it had to be, and Randy was throwing back statements like “My truck can "Smoke" that Camaro any time and anyplace” everyone knew the boys and laughed at these ongoing comments, thinking them as just good fun between siblings.

S&S closed at 9 pm every night, and this particular night both Randy and Scott were scheduled to work until closing time. At 9:05 pm we got a phone call from a neighbor saying that she had just heard Randy’s name on the police scanner, it came across in a BOLO (Be on the look out for) along with the description of his truck, Cindy immediately picked up the phone and called Randy’s cell phone.

When he finally answered the conversation was short like this:

Randy: Mom can’t talk now.

Cindy: Why Not?

Randy: Got pulled over, talking to cops.

Cindy: What did you do?

Randy: Racing, Gotta go, be right there.

Cindy hangs up the phone and says He got pulled over for racing! Really, I replied, there isn’t anywhere he could have been racing between here and S&S. Cindy just glared at me and said I bet it was Scotty!

Scotty? How in the world did Scotty get involved in this? I asked her. Cindy tells me, I just know he was racing with Scotty! I argued that I really didn’t think so. But at the time I hadn’t heard about all the challenges between the boys.

Cindy was filling me in on all the details of the boys’ challenges to each other at work, while she was pacing up and down the sidewalk. A set of headlights flashed around the curve and we see Randy’s truck coming slowly down the street followed closely by a City Police car, Randy stops in front of our house, and the Police Officer following him waves to us as he drives by, I suppose he knew that we already had Randy’s number.

Randy jumps out of his truck and immediately says. Don’t worry Mom, I’ll pay for everything, this won’t cost you a dime. He had gotten himself three tickets, one for Defective Equipment, another for Reckless Driving, and the biggie that cost him the most Drag Racing, we later found out that Scotty got the same tickets minus the Defective Equipment.

Now for the details of the incident:

S & S Grocery sits on one end of a strip mall type parking lot, and on the complete opposite end there is a small movie theater. At closing time the parking lot is completely empty, Randy and Scott have been harassing one another all day long about who has the fastest vehicle. So like any red blooded American boy would do, rather than use his brain and go to the country for a quick race, they simply lined up right then and there.

An impressive burnout I was told.

They say the burnout was pretty impressive, and that the boys were evenly matched, running door to door when the lights lit up on top of the police car they passed that was sitting next to the movie theater watching them.

Randy slid to a stop and the police car pulled up behind him; Scotty made a left hand turn onto the street and continued down the road. Because Scotty didn’t stop the police car pulled around Randy and went after Scott, and rather than sit and wait like he should have, Randy thought he had a free pass and made a right hand turn and headed for home.

About half way home Randy noticed that the dash lights on his truck were not working, this meant that his taillights were out also. Rather than break the law and drive with no taillights he pulled into a church parking lot about two blocks from home to check the fuse.

While he was squatted down looking into the fuse box with a flashlight, he heard a voice behind him. You really didn’t think you were going to get away with it did you son.

Randy said he dropped his head, and said No Sir. Then he turned around to see a large police officer silhouetted by the flashing lights of several police cars sitting behind him, and that’s when Cindy had called him.

Jumping out of his truck and saying, I will pay for everything, this won’t cost you a dime, was not the smartest way to begin explaining this to his mom. Cindy answered something like, You are #*%& right you will be paying for it, just who were you racing with? When he gave the name of the other offender as “Scotty” Cindy turned and gave me that old I told you so look, right then and there I knew it was going to be a long night.

Both Randy and Scotty had their day in court, they both received a serious tongue lashing from the judge, had hefty fines levied against them, lost points on their licenses and paid their debt to society so to say. And still to this day when they see one another they smile and say, “You know I was winning”

My advice is that if you think you are going to drag race in a parking lot, it’s not really a good idea. If you are just hell bent to do it, then you either need to take it out into the country or better yet to a sanctioned drag strip instead.

And if you decide to line up in that parking lot anyway, make sure you look around to see exactly who is in the audience and be prepared to pay the price.