Look What I Went And Started

After posting a Happy Birthday wish to my sister Leta, I figured that I’d better do the same for the rest of my siblings lest I be left without a phone call on my birthday.  With that in mind, I can hear sister Stacey saying; “Why didn’t you think of this back in August when it was my birthday?  Why?  I’ll tell you why!  Because I’m the baby in the family, that’s why!  I never get crap!  I’m ALWAYS left out!  STOP THE PERSECUTION!!!!!”  Just kiddin’, Stace; I know you’re cool with it, and I’m sorry you have to wait 10 more months for yours.  Laura, I’ll see you in December. 

This birthday wish goes out to my brother, Steve.  Steve is the reason I didn’t have to ride the bus my Freshman year in High School; Whoo Hoo!  He’s also the reason I had to ride the bus my Sophomore year in High School; jerk.  Just kidding.  He was able to skip 1st and 2nd period his Senior year, so I had to ride the bus.  Getting rides home were more of a challenge.  See, his 240Z was a lot faster than I was.  I had to be at the car by the time he got there or I was out of luck.  The car was loud, so if he had already left the parking lot, I’d usually hear the evidence before I got to the parking lot to confirm my suspicions.  I posted the closest picture I could find to what his car looked like.  It was jet black with front and rear spoilers and those old 150lb metal louvers they used to put on the back windows back in the 70’s.  That car could tell you some stories, if it were still alive, but that part’s coming up.  I’ll tell you a story about it, though.  It involves two young gentlemen (Steve and I), the 240Z, a rabbit and a drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico to El Paso, Texas. 

Sibling alert: This is the part where Mom needs to quit reading.  Is she gone?  Good.  OK, so one night we left work at the racetrack and headed for El Paso.  Expedia says the trip is 310 miles from racetrack parking lot to Mom’s driveway.  It also says the trip will take about 4 hours and 28 minutes.  That’s assuming you are averaging 70 mph.  We weren’t averaging 70 mph that night.  Or any night, come to think of it; but on THIS particular night, we weren’t even close to 70 mph.  Which would explain why we made the trip in 2 hours and 34 minutes.  I did the math.  That’s an average of 121 mph, and it doesn’t count the gas stop we made in Socorro.  Scary.  The speedometers in those days still went pretty high; I think the Z’s speedometer went to 130 mph.  I remember looking over at one point and the needle was pegged.  It couldn’t move any further, so I knew we had to be doing between 135 and 140.  That would explain the pee stain in my shorts.  And that was when we saw the rabbit.

Jackrabbits aren’t nearly as cute in person as they are on those postcards you can buy throughout the Southwest.  You know the ones; the Jackrabbit has antlers and it says; “Greetings From New Mexico”, or Texas, or Arizona or wherever.  On the back it says; “The Jackalope is native to the desert…….blah, blah, blah”.  Do you know how many times I’ve had to explain to people that Jackalope’s don’t actually exist?  Ever since that guy made the postcard of himself riding a Jackrabbit, the legend has lived on in perpetuity.  The original PhotoShop.  Thanks, pal.  Jackrabbits don’t get that big anyway.  The largest I ever saw was no larger than a pony.  Anyway, back to the story.  Jane by Jefferson Starship had just ended and the piano/acoustic guitar opening of Lightning Rose had just started.  “Shut down the city lights, I wanna be with my lady!  Build up the watchfires, turn down the sun!”, I sang.  Mickey Thomas had nothing on me.  Right then Steve yelled; “Hang On!”  I looked up and saw a jackrabbit coming into view of the headlights from the drivers side.  Everything kind of went in slow motion then; like The Six Million Dollar Man jumping a fence.  Steve didn’t have time to swerve, thank God for that, so we just kind of held on for dear life.  You know the sound your tires make when you drive over a crack or small bump when you’re going fast?  That real quick “Buh-bump”?  Two distinct sounds: front tire, back tire.  Well, all we got was the “Buh”.  We were going so fast that the rabbit hit the front and back tires at almost the same time.  The death of the rabbit wasn’t the issue, the possibility of a blow-out at 130 mph was.  Which would explain the now much larger pee stain in my shorts.  Thankfully Mr. Pirelli had done a fine job on his product and we continued our trip.  But Steve slowed down to a more reasonable 115 mph; just in case we saw anymore rabbits.  We made many more trips that summer on that long stretch of I-25.  A couple of years later Steve sold the Z to a kid who had no business buying it.  That’s what the kid’s father kept telling him when he was looking at it; “You got no business being in a car like that, son.”  A week later his suspicions were confirmed when his son wrapped it around a telephone pole.  Thankfully, the kid escaped with minor injuries and a higher insurance premium.  Steve moved to Dallas soon thereafter, and has lived there ever since.  Well, until a couple of months ago when he took a job with Boeing that took him to Seattle; a city he had visited many times on business and fell in love with.  We used to get 7 inches of rain a year in El Paso, now he gets it in about 20 minutes.  We don’t talk as much as we should, but then, we’ve both been doing a better job of it lately.  We’ve talked to each other 3 time in the last 2 weeks.  No animosity, or anything, just busy schedules on both ends. 

As we get older, the memories I have of my brother and I only grow sweeter.  He was the consummate big brother.  He let me tag along with him more often than not.  He never seemed to mind, either; in fact, he welcomed it.  Football games at the park, exploring the bosques, pool hopping at Apartment complexes in the summer, ski pole bottle rocket launchers, keg parties at the river and the Great River Raft Race of 1982.  He taught me to ”tough it out” when I was still a little runt when we were both terrors of the neighborhood.  Terrors in a good way, though.  He kept me safe when I was a little too eager to prove how brave (stupid) I was.  That came in handy that day on the rope swing by the ditch.  He’s the reason I learned how to do a gainer off of the high dive.  Granted, I stood up there for 10 minutes, but I finally did it.  He told me he’d buy me lunch if I did it.  I had a chili-cheeseburger.  And a throbbing red welt on the small of my back; it was a little higher than I thought.  OH! I almost forgot; I also have 2 scars on my forehead to thank him for.  One was from the coffee table (I scored), the other from the fireplace (He stopped me at the 1 yard line).  Here’s hoping you have a fantastic birthday, my brother.  I Love You.