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My Guardian Angel
By Robert D. Lawrence
Copyright © 1991 by Lawrence Publishing Wichita, Kansas U. S. A. Originally published as a paperback book of short stories and republished here by permission.
Dedicated to: Byron Dennis Lawrence
Driving my Dad Home from the Races
Eighteen Miles in Nine Minutes
Over a Wheel and Through the Air
EpilogueBack to the Top of the Page |
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ForwardFrom time to time I have become involved in conversations that have turned to some of the close calls with serious injury and even death that most of us have experienced in our life times. When all have taken their turns and told their own stories, it always seems that I still have several more instances left that I could relate. More than once, listeners have marveled at the fact that I appear to have had a charmed life and have suggested that I should write a book about those experiences.On August 12, 1990, I was giving a visiting cousin a driving tour of Wichita, Kansas when we passed by a large church. I mentioned to him that my family and I attended there and he replied that was all right but that no one could make him go to church. I replied that was not the way it worked and that no one made me attend church either, that it was something I wanted to do, but I could not help but feel that my response had been lacking and that I was failing to seize an opportunity to witness my faith. As I searched for a way to better explain my feelings, my cousin changed the subject and I never found another opening with which I felt comfortable returning to it.Early the next morning, I awakened wondering if my cousin’s impression might have been different had he only known of my many close calls with tragedy and how sure I was that nothing I had done myself had saved me from certain harm. It would probably have been too much to have tone into in casual conversation anyway but what if I did write a book as so many had suggested? Could I even remember enough of those instances to write a book about them? As I lay in bed thinking of these things that morning, my head just seemed to fill with memories. There were so many that I got up out of bed, found a pencil and paper, and started writing them down. Before I stopped, I had jotted down the titles to about three-quarters of the chapters in this book. The rest came back to me over the next few days so I have undertaken writing this book as a means of relating to others some of my experiences which have convinced me that my life and well-being have been preserved for some grand purpose. My daily challenge has become to strive to fulfill that purpose. We know from reading the scriptures that we are very important to God and that He cares very much about what happens to each of us in our daily living. Since He knows far more about us than we even know about ourselves, it is obvious that He is also keenly aware of the many pitfalls that constantly confront us throughout our lives. Because of that concern, I like to believe (and feel that the scriptures concur) that He has assigned a guardian angel to each of us, whose primary responsibility is to look after our individual well-being. I also think that, like people, some of these guardian angels must be better at their jobs than others and that the Lord must have assigned one of his most proficient to protect me. As you will see, my guardian angel has certainly done a marvelous job and I believe that, someday when my life here is finished, he will complete his job by ushering me triumphantly into the presence of my Heavenly Father. I am sure that my guardian angel will not be hard to recognize what with the full head of bright gray hair that I have most certainly given him. Thanks be to my Lord who chose me to share in His glory and to His angel whose mission it has been to see that I navigate through this life as safely as possible. Each of the accounts that follow is true and I have tried to record each here as accurately as possible.
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Chasing a ChickenWhen I was three years old, my family lived on a rented farm southwest of Burden, Kansas. I liked to play with the various farm animals but was constantly admonished by my parents not to do so lest one of us might injure the other. Not being one to always do as I was told, I was chasing a chicken in front of the chicken house on Thursday evening, October 26, 1950, when I stumbled and fell onto some weed stubble. A large piece of a dead weed’s woody stock penetrated the upper portion of my right eyelid, traveled upward between my eye and my skull, and lodged inside the frontal lobe of my skull. As one might imagine, I jumped up and ran screaming to the house. My mother cleaned the wound and removed some large pieces of the stock that had splintered on impact. I spent a restless night and my head was quite swollen the next morning. Our family car was not in running order at the time so my mother called her mother to take us to the doctor. Grandma lived fifteen miles away in Winfield, Kansas, and that was where the doctor’s office was as well. The doctor cleaned the wound, removed more wood from my head, gave me a tetanus shot and a large shot of penicillin, put an ointment on the wound, and bandaged the eye with pads. On a follow up visit, it was determined that surgery was needed to remove more stubble and I was admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Winfield on the morning of November 2, 1950, one week, to the day, after my accident. Surgery was performed at four o’clock that afternoon and two more splinters, each about a quarter inch in diameter and three quarters of an inch long, were removed from inside my skull. The doctor said that he was sure that he had gotten it all and I was dismissed from the hospital the next day. An extra thick scab formed over the injury and when it came off on December 15, 1950, my father pulled one more splinter from my eyelid. My mother wrapped the splinters in gauze, placed them in an envelope, glued the envelope into my baby book, and I have them to this day. I had been born extremely nearsighted and there was some concern as to how this injury might further affect my eyesight but time has proved that it did not and all that remains of the injury today is a small scar on my eyelid.
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We moved to Winfield in 1951 and I attended grade school at Webster Elementary. One day, while walking home from school with several friends, I stooped over to pick up a rock from a gravel driveway. Just as I touched the rock, I felt a firm nudge to my side but just thought that one of my friends had happened to lean against me. As I picked up the rock, I turned to see who it was and found it was the bumper of a car pressing against me. I stood up and walked to the driver’s window expecting to find an irate adult with no time to be waiting on a kid to pick up his rock. Instead, there was just an elderly lady sitting in the car sobbing. She told me that all the other kids had scampered away when she turned into the driveway but I had gone down and out of her sight just as her car had reached me and she was afraid that she had run over me with her car. I assured her that was not the case, that I had bent down on my own, and that I was perfectly all right. Relieved that she was not angry, I walked on home but I noticed that she did not move her car, at least, until after I was out of sight.
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A Brush With FireOur family lived in a brick house in Winfield where severe summer storms were commonplace. My mother was at her parent’s house across town during one of these storms that occurred one afternoon in the mid 1950’s. Our electricity had gone off and, when the storm let up, my father told my brother and me to get into the car, as we needed to pick up mother at Grandma’s. As young boys are wont to do at the last minute, I decided that I needed a drink of water and went into the kitchen to get it. I filled my glass from the faucet and turned around from the sink to drink it. As I turned, I noticed large flames shooting up the wall behind the cook stove. I yelled to Dad, who was standing impatiently in the front doorway, that the house was on fire and he came running to see what I was shouting about. I just stood there pointing at the flames. Dad took one look at the fire, told me to call the fire department, and ran out the back door on his way to the basement to which there was only an outside entrance. I tried the telephone but it was dead so my brother and I ran to a neighbor’s house and told the lady there to call the fire department as our house was on fire. She was reluctant to place the call at first and told the firemen when she did call that “the little boys from next door” were there saying that their house was on fire. She did not know but they might want to check on it. By the time we got back home, Dad had the fire out but said that he still wanted the firemen to come out and inspect the kitchen wall. It was over half an hour before a fire truck pulled up in front of the house. It seems the first truck they had dispatched had drowned out its engine in some high water on the way so they were happy to hear that Dad had gotten the fire put out by himself. Their investigation revealed that the telephone installer had grounded our telephone line to a natural gas pipe behind the cook stove and, when lightning had struck the telephone line, it had traveled down the wire and into the house, knocked a hole in the gas pipe, and ignited the escaping gas. They said that the installation of the telephone line was in violation of the city’s safety codes and that we would need to have the telephone company come out and repair the damage. Dad had shut the gas off at the meter in the basement and the rest of the fire had just gone out by the time he had gotten back up to the kitchen. Everyone told me that they were just glad that I had gone back to get that drink of water as that had undoubtedly saved our home from major fire damage.
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Driving my Dad Home from the Races Automobile races have fascinated me ever since my father took me to see my first stock car race at Winfield, Kansas on Memorial Day, 1952. From that day on, I begged to go to every race I could. The rest of my family was not so impressed with them but I usually did manage to cajole Dad into taking me to a couple of races each year. There were only three races held on various holidays in Winfield each year but the stock cars ran every Sunday night in Wichita throughout the summer months. My biggest problem was that the race track at Wichita was 60 miles away from where we lived in Winfield and my Dad would not take me that far as long as the cars continued to run closer to home. When racing ceased in Winfield in the late 1950’s, we did make the occasional trip to see them in Wichita. Dad would always make a big deal about how, after returning home after the races, he only had time to “pitch his pants under the bed and catch them again when they came out the other side” as he always had to get up early the next morning to go to work. I could not wait to turn 16 years old so that I get my own car and drive it to Wichita myself EVERY week to see the races. I now believe that Dad was as anxious for that time to arrive as I was so that he would no longer have to accompany me. In the spring of 1962, I got a restricted driver’s license that allowed me to drive as long as a parent was in the front seat next to me. One Sunday that summer, Dad finally agreed to accompany me to Wichita to the races saying that this trip should not be as bad as in years past since he should now be able to get some sleep on the way home. Sure enough, Dad fell asleep shortly after we left the race track but I soon found myself in a dilemma. I had become sleepy myself but I was afraid to wake my Dad and tell him so for fear he would become angry at the possibility of having to drive the rest of the way home himself. On the other hand, I was afraid that, if I pulled off the road to rest, that might wake him up too and, feeling that I could not handle such long drives late at night, he might now allow me to drive to the races by myself in the future. As I got sleepier, I noticed that the lights of the oncoming cars seemed to be hurting my eyes. Three was not much traffic at that late hour but, when I did meet a car, I found myself shutting my eyes until each car had passed. Finally, just a few miles from home and after a car had passed by, I opened my eyes to find that I had crossed the centerline and was driving on the wrong side of the road. At what point I had crossed over, or how the oncoming car had missed me, I have no idea, but the incident was sufficient to keep both of my eyes wide open for the rest of the trip home. I did not mention the incident to my father for many years.
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I turned 16 years old in January of 1963 and bought my first car just two weeks after that. It was a black and white 1957 Chevrolet four-door sedan that had literally been owned by a “little old lady” in our community. The first day I had it, I took it to a straight stretch of highway east of Winfield to see how fast it would run. I was disappointed to find it was a struggle to get it up to 95 miles per hour. Friends told me that, since the car had seldom been driven over 50 miles per hour, I would find that it would run faster after I had driven it a little harder for some time than the previous owner had driven it. One night a couple of months later, I was sitting at a local drive-in restaurant when I noticed that it was about five minutes past eleven o’clock and just past the time I had told me parents I would be home for the evening. Now, they had often told me that they would rather I be a little late getting home than to speed trying to get there on time so I was really looking more for an excuse than feel a necessity to get right home. At any rate, I sped east on Nineteenth Street and turned north onto Bliss Street which would take me to within a half a block from home, about one mile away. I had turned the corner onto Bliss just as fast as I thought I could, having practiced it a few times in days gone by, but this time, I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and just held it there. Bliss was a very narrow street in those days and it had very high curbs but it was one of the few relatively smooth streets in Winfield. By the time I had gone six blocks, I had accelerated up to 105 miles per hour. At that point, I started braking hard and just did get slowed down enough to turn the corner onto Tenth Street and come to a stop in front of the house. I just sat there shaking in my car as I thought about how fast the street lights had flashed by at each intersection and that I would have had no chance to slow down at all, let along stop, if someone had pulled out in front of me at one of those intersections. Years later, and after my younger brother had gotten a car of his own, Dad would often go out on the front porch at the appointed time that we were to be home. As often as not, he could hear the engines of both of our cars as we raced for home, though usually from different directions. He always tried to discourage us from doing so but I knew that he felt his admonitions fell on deaf ears. I suppose that he was right.
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All the teenagers around Winfield knew about Thrill Hill. It was some place exciting to go when a carload of them decided that excitement was what they wanted. To get there, one would drive a mile east of town on U.S. Highway 160 to the Sinclair service station, turn north, and proceed along the gravel road for a mile and a half. It was on this flat stretch of road that the driver would set his pace for “the hill”. I usually chose about 60 miles per hour. All of a sudden, it seemed that the road just dropped out from under the car and, at 60 miles an hour anyway, all four wheels of the car would leave the ground as we plunged down the hill several yards, landing on the road again in the valley below. The ride was even more exciting at night as the headlights found only dark sky from the top of the hill until the car slammed back to the road near the bottom. One night in particular stands out in my mind. It was in May of 1963. I had taken a carload of friends riding that evening but, it being a school night, all but one girl had to be home early. This girl had just moved to Winfield and, though I had seen her in school, I really did not know her well. She had come along this evening with another girl who had to be home early. After dropping off the other riders, I asked this girl what she wanted to do and she answered that she did not care. She said that I was the one who knew the town so I should suggest something. I asked her if she had been to Thrill Hill and she said she had not but, if I wanted to go, she would ride along. As I turned onto the gravel road and sped up to 60 miles per hour, I noticed that, rather than bracing herself and finding something to hold onto like most, this girl seemed to be more relaxed. I thought that if that was the way she wanted to go over the hill, I guessed that was up to her but I had never seen anyone do it that way before. As we plunged down the hill, her head hit the roof of the car, she let out a scream, bounced off of the seat and landed on the floor up under the dashboard. I continued on driving back to town as she crawled back up onto the seat muttering something I could not understand under her breath. I remember thinking, “What did she expect? If you are going over Thrill Hill no better braced that that, that is the way you are going to land.” It was several weeks later when a friend told me that this girl had confided in her that she had a totally different concept in mind when I had mentioned “Thrill Hill” and that she was not at all expecting what it turned out to be. I probably went over Thrill Hill at speed at least 30 times between the time I got my first car in January of 1963 and when I moved to Arkansas City, Kansas in February of 1966. Each of those times, my car always came down straight on the road though often landing on one or two wheels first before the others would come crashing down. I have been over the hill since, though at a much slower speed, but the hill has been cut down to a gentle slope now and is but a shadow of the steep grade that every teenager in town once knew so well.
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One morning in the summer of 1963, some friends called and invited me to go swimming with them at Maggie’s and Johnny’s, a popular swimming hole on the Arkansas River several miles west of Winfield. The weather had been hot and they were planning to spend the whole day out there. I wanted to go but I had to go to work at noon and would not get off until six o’clock that evening. They told me that I could go ahead and come out then if I wanted as they would probably still be there that late. The afternoon passed slowly but six o’clock finally came. I ran to my car and, not having air conditioning, rolled down all the windows. All that I could think about was that it would just be a matter of minutes until I would be with my friends and it would be even sooner if I stepped on it. Just west of Winfield, the highway goes up a gently sloped hill past the community sale barn. It is about a half mile to the top of the hill but the speed limit was 70 miles per hour at that time. Just as I started up the hill, I came up behind an old car going no more than 30 miles per hour. At that rate, I was sure it would take me forever to get up that hill. I knew that I was in a “no passing” zone and would be until the top of the hill but I peered around that car to see if I could see anything coming. The summer evening sun could not have been in a worse position. Looking into it, I could not see a thing past the car in front of me. I started weighing my options. I could stay behind this slow moving dinosaur and be even later than I was now or I could take just a little chance and pass him now. It would only take a few seconds to get around him as slowly as he was going and I had not seen a single car since I had come up behind this one. Traffic was light so what were the chances that anyone would come along in those few seconds that I would be out in the oncoming lane? The choice seemed obvious at that instant so I pressed on the gas and my car lunged across the centerline. Just as I pulled even with the car I was passing, I heard a loud “SWISH” sound go by my driver’s window. It had sounded very close but I did not see anything until I looked in my rearview mirror. There, bouncing down the ditch in the other direction was a car that had obviously gone into the ditch to keep from colliding with mine head on! A tingle passed through my body as I completed my pass and pulled back into my own lane of traffic. It dawned on me that I had really misjudged this one and at what cost to someone else? I thought about what would be the right thing to do then. Should I stop and go back? Would they still be there? Would they be angry? They certainly had every right to be. I looked down at my speedometer and saw that I was doing nearly 100 miles per hour and, by now, all of that was over a mile behind me so I continued on my way. Most of my friends had gone home by the time I got to Maggie’s and Johnny’s and I remember thinking that it was not worth it to have seriously risked my life, and that of those in that oncoming car, for what turned out to be a brief visit with a few tired friends who were just wanting to go home.
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A cousin of mine got married at the Tisdale Methodist Church east of Winfield on Thursday night, May 28, 1964. As friends and family gathered for the ceremony, a crowd assembled around the groom’s car and the discussion soon turned to what we saw as our common problem. How were we ever going to slow this car down enough that the rest of use cold keep up with it during the customary chase after the reception? It was a white 1964 Chevrolet Impala that was known far and wide as being almost untouchable when it came to “top end” speed. The groom had anticipated our concern and had secured the hood latch with a large chain and padlock. One young man present though had done some anticipating of his own and produced a large bolt cutter from the trunk of his car. In short order, he had the hood open and a spark plug wire disconnected. Appropriate decorations were added and a large chunk of iron was fastened to the rear of the frame with a length of chain. Confident that we had solved our problem, we all went into the church for the ceremony. At the conclusion of the reception, those of us who would give chase assembled with our cars in the parking lot. Several people also wanted to ride along just to see who would be able to keep up. My brother rode with me in the front seat of my 1960 Chevrolet while the sister of the groom and a bridesmaid rode in the back seat. I did not get as far up in the line of cars as I would have liked and got away from the church third among the chase cars as we headed east on U.S. Highway 160. In front of me was a 1957 Ford and he was following a brand new Dodge. It did not take the groom long to realize that his car was not performing up to par and that he would not be able to outrun his pursuers so he made a sharp right turn onto the first gravel road that he came to. The move completely fooled the driver of the Dodge who continued on east down the highway. The rest of us made the corner and that put my car second in line with only the Ford between us and the Impala. The problem here was that the Ford had been lowered and kept dragging bottom on the gravel road that greatly hindered its ability to pick up much speed. We knew that the groom was familiar with the roads in the area and the rest of us did not know them well but that part of Cowley County, Kansas is laid out in one-mile-square sections and one can almost depend on there being a crossroad every mile on the section line. By the time we reached the first crossroad, the Impala had pulled away from the rest of us so far that most of the dust had even settled. The Ford slowed as he went straight through the intersection and I saw a number of arms come out the windows pointing to the left. I turned left at the intersection and could see a little dust off in the distance. With that much ground to make up, I knew I was going to have to hurry or he would lose me for sure. At the next section road, I had closed enough to see the Impala’s lights as they again turned left. He had just driven around the section and was now headed back to the highway. I followed, my confidence building, as it was clear that I was gaining ground. I was now the first car back and was sure that he could not get away from me until I was ready to let him do so. I did notice that the dodge, which had missed the first corner of the chase, was stopped along side the road facing south with its lights off as we raced north but my mind was on the pursuit and I did not give it a second thought. I was still some distance behind but was gaining quickly and then I saw the reason why. The Impala had slowed to a crawl as he went over a very steep railroad crossing. I was just going too fast. There was nothing to do at that point but hang on. Next came a hard thud as my car bottomed out on the incline and then smooth sailing as my headlights literally shown out across the tops of the hedgerows that lined the roadway on both sides. When we came down, the left side tires landed first and for an awful moment, we bounced and sort of teetered along out of control all over the road on those two wheels. I really had given up trying to drive it at that point and was just holding on to the steering wheel. Finally, the other two wheels came down, I regained my composure, and the chase continued. My three passengers had all bounced off the roof of the car during the flight, my brother landing on the floor in front of his seat while I am told that the two girls in the back actually came down on the opposite sides of the back seat from which they began. Once back on the highway, the chase turned west toward Winfield with the chunk of iron showering sparks from the back of the Impala the whole way. After the obligatory horn blowing through Winfield and again as we followed them through Arkansas City, those of us still participating in the chase gave it up and returned to Winfield. I guess it had been a successful venture. At least they did not get away until we were ready to let them do so. Some time later, my cousin told me that the Dodge, that I had last seen parked alongside the road, had proceeded on to the next mile road after missing that first corner, had turned right and had hit that same railroad crossing (though going the other direction) at a high rate of speed and had knocked a large hold in its oil pan. That is why it was sitting beside the road when we passed by. He also told me that, after he had crossed the railroad tracks, he looked in his rearview mirror and saw the headlights of my car closing in on him fast but then go up and then there was nothing but darkness for what seemed like a long time before he saw them come bouncing down again. He could not believe that I continued the chase. He said that he felt fortunate himself that the big chunk of iron dragging from the back of his car had not hung up on that railroad track, or anything else for that matter, and ripped the frame right out from under his car.
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Eighteen Miles in Nine Minutes Later that summer, a friend and I found ourselves in Dexter, Kansas one night. It was 18 miles home to Winfield so I decided to see just how fast I could make the trip. I still had the 1960 Chevrolet which would run pretty fast once it got wound up but it seemed to me to take forever to get up to top speed. The route was fairly straight with one major curve after a couple of minor ones right at the start. I did not even tell my friend what I had in mind, I just lit out. We did not talk much during the trip and he never even asked me what I was doing. The major curve, I mentioned, was a 90° one that was tricky to maneuver as the road went up hill for the first half of the curve, crested the hill in the middle of the curve, and then descended through the rest of the curve. It was tricky because I would get into the curve faster, on the uphill part, than I could come out of it on the downhill part. I did slow down enough to make it and remembered that an acquaintance of mine had been killed there just a few months earlier. Once through that curve, it was a straight shot to Winfield with only two railroads to slow me down. I slowed only slightly for each and remembered that a race car driver, that I had looked up to as a youngster, had been killed at the second crossing several years earlier after having skidded his Pontiac several hundred feet into the side of a train. After the second railroad crossing, it was wide open to the city limits. The traffic had been light and we had covered the 18 miles in nine minutes. I was proud of myself until I got to thinking about how poorly I maintained my car. I never fixed anything until it broke. I would not buy a tire until the ones I had got so bad that the service station finally refused to repair them any longer. The more I thought about it, the more stupid it made me feel. I did not have to be anywhere at any particular time, I had just done it for a lark. I had taken a mighty chance with my life, that of my friend, and of anyone else who might have been on the highway that night.
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Even later that same summer, a friend and I had gone to Arkansas City in my car to see a girl we barely knew. After riding around town for a while, the girl asked me if I would let her drive. She told me that, thought she was only 15 years old and did not have a driver’s license, she had driven a car before and did know how to do so. We talked about it for a while and I finally agreed t let her, though not in town. It was just after dark as we drove several miles west of Arkansas City and then tu rned left onto a gravel road. At that point, I stopped and we changed places which put me in the middle of the front seat with my other friend on my right. The girl drove a few miles south and the road suddenly curved sharply to the right. (I later noticed that trees along the side of the road had obscured the sign warning of the curve.) At the last second, I noticed that she was not going to get the car turned so I grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it hard to the right. The car skidded around the curve and across a small bridge. At the end of the bridge, the road turned back to the left. The girl had turned loose of the steering wheel by then so I spun the wheel back to the left but I was too late. The car turned left but slipped off the right side of the road into a steep ditch where it laid over on its right side and slid straight into a tree. The car only had one seat belt and no one had been wearing it. While no one was hurt, we did all wind up in a pile of bodies lying on the right side door. We decided to try to get out of the driver’s side window above us. The girl and I were almost there when the other guy got the passenger side door open. I asked how he had done that, since the car was laying on that side, and he said that he did not know. He had just pulled the handle and it had swung down and open. It was pitch dark below us and, though the door was open and the dome light was on, we could not see any ground below. My friend held onto the door and lowered himself down until all we could see were just his hands and arms. He said he was just hanging in mid air, his feet not touching anything. We decided that was a bit too risky and pulled him back up into the car and we all climbed out the driver’s side window. A quick inspection showed that the car was badly damaged and was lying across the grader ditch along side the road. The ditch was about ten feet deep at that point as it emptied into the creek we had just crossed over. I asked the girl why she had not turned the steering wheel and she said that she had tried but it would not turn. I told her that I had no trouble turning it and she replied that it must not have had power steering then, like the other car she had driven. She was right. It did not. I left the two of them there and started walking south along the road to find help. I knocked at a couple of farmhouses but only one woman came to a closed door and she told me to go away. It was dark and she was afraid. Finally, as I was again walking along the road, a farmer in a wheat truck stopped, picked me up, and took me to another farmhouse where I called a wrecker and my Dad to come get us. The farmer then took me the almost three miles back to the car where the others were waiting. He told me that, though the wreck had happened in Kansas, the point where he had picked me up was in Oklahoma.
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They opened Ark-Valley Drag Raceway west of Arkansas City in June of 1964 and I could be found racing there every Sunday afternoon that summer. I even entered the American Hot Rod Association’s “Summer Nationals” at Green Valley Raceway near Smithfield, Texas over Labor Day weekend that year. I did not do well there and, being short of money, decided to head for home after being eliminated from competition about ten-thirty on Saturday night. My brother and another friend were with me but they soon fell asleep so I drove home without much company. I did wake them up when I stopped at a diner in the Arbuckle Mountains of southern Oklahoma about two o’clock on Sunday morning but they went right back to sleep and, from there on in, I drove straight through. The highway was just a two-lane road, in those days, until we got to Oklahoma City where we picked up Interstate Highway 35. From there on, the road was straight and I knew that the driving would be easy. The speed limit was 70 miles per hour and it seemed that the farther I went, the faster I found myself going. Before long, I was driving over 100 miles per hour but it appeared to me as though I was just poking along. I remembered from Driver’s education class that the condition is known as being velocitized and that I needed to stop and walk around for a while. The sun was just coming up over northern Oklahoma when I saw a sign announcing a “Parking Area” at mile marker 210. A parking area is similar to a rest area but with no facilities. In fact, it is no more than just a paved loop off of the highway and right back on again a few hundred feet on down the road. Knowing that I needed to stop some place badly, I decided to do so here and started braking as I pulled off onto the exit ramp. I kept braking and it seemed to me as though I was almost stopped as I went right through the parking area at about 60 miles per hour and down the entrance ramp back out onto the interstate again! That woke me right up and I went ahead and stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. No one else in the car woke up but I got out and walked a short distance back down the road and then back to the car again. It was a pretty morning and I felt much better when I got back in the car. I was wide-awake for the rest of the trip home and arrived there about seven o’clock, just as my parents were getting up for the day.
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I graduated from Winfield High School in May of 1965 and got a job as a “gofer” in the bindery at McCormick-Armstrong Printing Company in Wichita. It did not pay much so I thought I would save money by living with my parents in Winfield and commuting the 40 miles to work each day. The job was all right but I soon found myself hating the daily drive. I got to where I would turn south onto a narrow, paved county road at Udall, Kansas each day, and then just put my foot down and drive flat out for the next ten straight miles before there was a stop sign. Traffic was usually light and I had little trouble maintaining my speed at 100-110 miles per hour. On one such day in the fall of 1965, I found myself quickly overtaking a car that was going the same direction that I was. It appeared to be going quite slowly so, as I could not see any other cars coming, I pulled over into the oncoming traffic lane to pass and maintained my speed. Just before I got to the car, and with no apparent signal at all, the car made a left turn in front of me onto a gravel country road. There was no time to stop and little to even react but I yanked the steering wheel to the right and shot back across the road narrowly missing the right side of the turning car. My car had responded quickly but I had overdone it a little and found myself flying off into the ditch on the right hand side of the road. At that point, I yanked the wheel hard again and went back up across the road and down into the ditch on the other side. Fortunately, both ditches were smooth and shallow and I was able to slow my car sufficiently in that ditch to get it back under control and then drive back up onto the road again. I do not believe that the driver of the other car ever saw me or even knew that I was there. If he did, then I am sure that was one turn that he will remember for a long time to come.
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In the Fall of 1965, I was driving a 1965 Oldsmobile 442 which was one of those cars of which it was said could “pass anything but a gas station”. Since I was still commuting daily to Wichita, I made it a practice to stop each afternoon at the same service station in Derby, Kansas to fill the gas tank. It was during one of those stops that an elderly man walked up with an automobile license plate in his hand and asked me if I were going to Winfield by chance. I told him that I was and he told me that he had driven his car to Derby that day, had sold it, and now needed a ride back home. He had noticed that my own license plate indicated that I was from Cowley County and he had hoped that I was going to Winfield. I asked where he lived in Winfield and he told me but said that if I could just get him to town, that he could get home by himself. I told him that there was no need, that it would not be far out of my way, and that I would be glad to take him home so he got in the front seat beside me. We visited a little at first and determined that I was acquainted with the man’s son but he soon stopped talking and I wondered if the fact that we were doing around 100 miles an hour had anything to do with that. Since I was taking him home, I stayed on Kansas Highway 15 and about a mile north of Akron, Kansas, we met a long string of cars coming from the other direction. The road was flat and straight there and I was up to about 110 miles per hour when I noticed the last car in the string pulled over into my lane to pass the others. If I had been traveling nearer the speed limit, he may have had room to make it. I do not know. It would have been close. As it was, it soon became apparent to me that he would not have room enough to make it so I slammed on the brakes and started sliding down the highway toward him. My passenger did not say a word but I noticed that he did put his hands on the dashboard to brace himself. As the distance between our cars evaporated, I could see that I was not going to get stopped in time to avoid a collision. My car had rotated facing a little toward the right side of the road, though it was still sliding straight ahead, so I just took my foot off of the brake and it shot down into the ditch along side the road just as the other car whizzed by in my lane. I do not know if he was on the brakes or not. I was able to pull back upon the road without any damage and we continued on to Winfield. The man with me still had not said a word about the incident when I let him out at his home but I have often wondered if he had expected the ride that he had gotten by just asking a stranger for a simple ride home from Derby.
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I have already mentioned my fascination with stock car racing and by the spring of 1966, I had talked several friends into helping me build one. We pooled our money and purchased a 1955 Ford street car. It took us about two months to convert it into a race car and I drove my first race in it on Friday night, May 13th of that year, on the half-mile dirt Air Capital Speedway, west of Wichita. It was customary to start all new drivers at the back of each race but I did manage to place in the “B” feature that night though I dropped out of the main event when the right front spindle broke causing that wheel to fall off. Two weeks later, on June 3rd, I was scheduled to start from the pole position of the “B” feature as I had the fewest points of any now “experienced” driver who had qualified for that race on that night. I did not tell anyone of my plans but I had decided that I was going to try to run my car flat out, wide open that entire race. I figured that I would either win the race or crash trying to do so. Somehow, I made it through the number one and two turns flat out on the first lap and found myself leading the race going down the back straightaway. Unbeknownst to me, another driver from Winfield, who had helped us a lot in building my car, was in second place. He was sure that he could outrun my car and his plan was to pass me on the outside for the lead when I let off the gas to enter the third turn. Since he did not know that I was not going to let off, we both raced side-by-side, full throttle into the number three turn. The other driver realized, before I did, that we had both entered the turn too fast and, rather than fly off the end of the race track at that speed, he tried to spin his car out. As he did so, his car slid sideways down across the track in front of mine. Suddenly, one of his tires caught in a rut in the track and his car upset beginning a vicious series of barrel rolls. I remember seeing the bottom of his car in front of me as he turned over the first time and thinking to myself. “Something’s gone wrong! He’s not supposed to do that!” At that instant, my car struck his and shot upward. It was a violent ride after that and all I could see was the black of night with an occasional flash of light. I held on tightly to the steering wheel but my legs flopped around wildly until I managed to hook them under a steel brace that had been installed beneath the windshield. I later learned that my car bounded up and down on top of the other car as his rolled over and over underneath mine. The next think I knew, my car was balanced on its front end and I could see the surface of the race track in front of me. The car then fell to the ground on its right side and there was silence. Still strapped in the seat, I looked first to the right but could only see the ground out the right window. I reasoned that, if right was the ground, then left must be up so I hung onto the steering wheel and released my seatbelts and shoulder harness. Sure enough, my feet fell to the right and I stood up. I climbed out the topside window to see people and emergency vehicles racing to the scene and then I noticed why I had not heard anything at the conclusion of the crash. Our two cars had been in front of all the others and our wreckage had completely blocked the race track. All of the other cars had no choice but to come to a stop on the track behind us. The driver of the other car had been wearing his safety belts adjusted too loosely and was suffering from neck and back injuries so he was transported to the hospital. He stayed overnight for observation but was released the next day with just some bumps, bruises, and a stiff neck. My only injury was a scraped elbow that I had bumped on a door. Both racecars were a total loss. After the wreckage was cleared away, the race was restarted but with only seven cars. Since the purse was to be spread over eight positions that night, the race promoter paid me for eighth place since my car had bounced down the track just a little farther than the other driver’s car had rolled. Click your mouse HERE to see a couple of photographs of this wreck.
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