Hank walked into the Club looking disheveled, like he’d been through something. Dirt on his uniform.
“Oh hi, Boss, what’s up? Where ya been?”
He looked right at me and sorta shouted, “You didn’t tell me about that car.”
I avoided the obvious wise-ass response (You didn’t ask me) and just waited for him to continue.
How did we get here. Let me back up a few hours…
It’s Friday afternoon at the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center in Denver, Colorado. Circa 1972.
I’m a newly promoted major. I administered the pay accounts of around 300 wives of Air Force POW/MIA during the Vietnam conflict. The most rewarding, entangling job of my 30-year Air Force career.
Col Hank Roth, my boss, came into my office while I was on the phone with one of my clients. He had somewhere to be and didn’t want to interrupt, so he kept it quick. “Don, I need to borrow your car. Mine’s in the shop, and I need to go get something.”
I reached in my pocket and tossed him the keys. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you at the Club.” That meant Happy Hour at the Lowry AFB Officers’ Club, around 5PM. The usual camaraderie gathering for about 4-6 of us younger officers with our elder leader. Hell, he was almost 40. We were all 30-ish.
It was about 5:30, and neither Hank nor my car was at the Club yet. We weren’t really watching for him. We were enjoying each other’s company and the cheap Happy Hour booze.
That’s when Hank showed up. Late, dirty, and pissed.
“Why are you dirty, Hank?”
“Well, it was kinda warm, so I turned the AC on.”
Uh oh, I thought. The AC hadn’t worked in months. The compressor was dead.
“It blew dirt on me.”
Of course it did. Flip the switch, and all that fan does is stir up whatever’s been sitting on the floor.
“When I went to park, there’s no ‘Park’ gear and that damn parking brake wouldn’t hold on the hill I was on. So I had to find a pole and back up to it just to keep the thing from rolling.”
It was a ’61 Plymouth Fury. Not my typical car. I was an “Oldsmobile man” for most of my Air Force and family life. Needed a second car for my longer commute to the new job, and a friend of a friend had one to sell. I’m about as trusting a shopper as they come, and this car was a “good deal.” Yeah, the oddities I learned after I already owned it. The kids loved the car, though. It was peach and had power windows, which back then was something. Up and down, up and down. The kids couldn’t get enough of them. Now, the manual crank is the novelty, as my granddaughter used to refer to them, “Ooh, your car has those rolly-downy thingies.”
Hank’s epic return continues…
“Then on the way back, I’m at a light, and the car just cuts off.”
Of course it did. That transmission again, I thought.
The Fury had a push-button transmission, a Chrysler novelty already fading out by ’72. If you weren’t around back then, you’ve probably never seen one, and that’s alright.
“I restart it, hit ‘Drive.’ Button just goes in. Doesn’t do a damn thing.”
That’s when he saw the screwdriver and put 2 and 2 together. I kept a Phillips in the compartment between the seats for exactly this.
“So there I am, horns blowing, and I calmly” (yeah, I bet) “unscrew the plate, pop the Drive button back out, and get the thing in gear.”
Then he drove to the Club. Not in a great mood.
By the time he got to the part about the screwdriver, he wasn’t mad anymore. He was laughing. So was I.
Enuf.
