CHEVROLET

I had just graduated from high school in eastern Washington and was living alone in a house that my parents had rented. They had moved to another town where my father had just started his crop dusting business. I was allowed to stay in the rental for the last month of the lease and when it came time to move I packed my few belongings and decided to drive my 1969 Opel Kadet to my grandparents farm in western Nebraska. At 18 years old I figured I could drive the 1300 miles straight through, so with a bag of peanut butter sandwiches, a six pack of coke and a box of NoDoze tablets I started driving. I made it to Rock Springs, Wyoming in the middle of the night when the mechanical problem occurred. I had pulled into a truck stop for some cheap fried food and as I merged back onto the freeway I couldn’t get the car out of first gear. As there was no place to pull over I drove along the shoulder with my flashing lights at 15 miles an hour until the yellow hovering sign of a Stuckeys gas station/RV park broke the darkness. I pulled in and paid the camping fee and called my grandfather from a pay phone. He told me to stay put and that he would come and see what he could do to get my car on the road again. It was mid morning when he pulled into the parking area in his 1964 Chevy half ton pickup truck. After a short inspection he made the determination that the car was not going to make it to Nebraska on its own so he removed the driveline and short chained the car to the back bumper of the truck to tow me the 350 miles back to the farm. I had to steer the Opel while he pulled me down the freeway at seventy miles an hour. For hours I steered the car and stared at the large letters CHEVROLET that stretched across the tailgate of the truck. It was frightening. It took all day to safely reach Bayard, Nebraska and I was exhausted. Over the next few days at morning coffee my grandfather would tell his buddies about how he towed me from the middle of Wyoming. It made for a good story. Bayard, Nebraska