It's the worst day of the worst job of the worst summer of my teenage years.

 Let's go back a month or so.

 I was 16.  It was the Bicentennial 1976.   I had a great, easypeasy job as a lifeguard at a private pool at a housing development at the lake.  I worked the morning shift (8-2), and would drive my folks' '67 Dodge Polara (great engine in that one, I once blew the doors off a Mach II on Hiway 92, it was awesome) the 3.7 miles to the lake on those dirt roads, spewing up a plume of dust, radio channeling Blinded by the Light (I love ya, Bruce, but Manfred was the Mann on that one) or Afternoon Delight, me gustily singing along at the top of my voice.

My folks, who had recently eschewed the Catholic church I grew up in, were going to Florida for a convention related to their new religion.  My little sister was going along with them.  Me, with a real job, of course could not go.  I was to be trusted to stay at home alone, not have any big parties, and not get into trouble.

I was a dancing fool in the mid 70's.  Disco was all the thing, and though I loved my rock and roll, I also loved to dance.  The place to go in Topeka, Kansas was Chequers, an ubiquitous disco joint, complete with the light-up, neon flashing dance floor.  

Man, could I Hustle! 

Well, Topeka was about as big city as it got for me and my peers.  It was 14 - 20 miles away, depending on where you lived, and it was Mecca to the country folk if you were a teen.

 Kansas City, an hour's drive away, seemed Big and Scary.  All those highways!  We could get lost!  There were... lots of black people!

My disco partner, Herkie, said he was going to this 24-hour danceathon in Kansas City.  Now, you got to understand:  Herkie was The Disco Dancer.  He was awesome.  He grew up in our county, was about four or five years older than me, but we became great dance buddies.  I even asked him to be my escort to the Jr-Sr Prom the previous May, which I was the head of putting on, and he accepted!  Much to the bemusement, if not dismay, of his live-in amour.  He was a flower child and she was an early goth, so she took it in stride.  We had no romance (small wonder, he came out of the closet a couple of years later, and gay guys always loved me) but we both adored dancing. 

Herkie said we Had to Go!  It was the Event of the Year! 

It was the 4th of July weekend, Bicentennial, etc.  The 4th was a Sunday, and the dance party started Saturday night.  Of course, Herkie had no car he could use, so we would take the trusty Polara.  We're heading east on I-70, when all of a sudden I have a blow-out!  I shakily steer the car to the shoulder (it was my first blow-out), and look down and all the gages are red!  What the f!  I get out to get the jack, etc., then I want to move the car a bit over into the shoulder, but the car won't restart.  It's like 102 degrees out, Kansas humidity, and we start pushing the car.  There's an off-ramp ahead a couple hundred yards.  We jump in, and I frantically arm-wrestle her into a service station (no power steering with no power).  Once inside, sucking down a sweaty bottle of coke, I choke when the man says, " Oh, shit, didn't you know you overheated?  Shit, girl, it must have got up to 5,000, 6,000 degrees!  Didn't you see the idiot lights?  (I thought he called me an idiot there, was lookin for the comma; forgave him grammatical errors)  Didn't you Hear anything?"

 Of course I didn't.  Me and Herkie were smoking a doobie (that's what we called it then) and the radio was definitely blaring out something significant.  Probably by the Doobie Bros.  (but more likely Lynard Skynard or ELO.  Man, the memories!)

 Shit.  And that ain't the worst day.   Not yet.  That don't come till August.

   - more -

K, August.  First things first.  Herkie and I hang around the service station, listening to the ding-ding of the drive-over station  signal and smoking cigarettes till we think we're going to go nuts.  Final final:  The car is dead.  It can't be resuscitated.   I cannot believe this, refuse to believe this.  

This is before cell phones.  And the only people I could call were people that would tell my folks.  So (a great day to try new things!) we hitchhike back to Topeka.  We catch a ride to the exit near the mall, walk (still broiling heat) to the White Lakes mall, and basically hang around until we see someone from up north to give us a ride home.

A friend of the family that's a mechanic goes the next day up to Bonner Springs, the scene of the crime, along with my best friend's dad, and they tow the car to his house.  When he calls, he says it's all melted inside.  I killed the car.

I get through Sunday feeling sorry for myself, then Monday morning, 7 something a.m., get on my trusty single-gear bicycle and ride it to the lifeguarding job.  On gravel roads.  I'm strangely proud of myself for this fact, this sacrifice.   Then my afternoon relief (a nemesis from grade school) comes at noon and says she's sorry to have to tell me this, but that the housing development is trying to save money, and since she has seniority, they're keeping her on and letting me go.

I look up at the sun.  Then I get back on the bike and go on home.  I am definitely a bad person.  I kill my parents' only car.  Then I get fired.  I am in agony.  No amount of  Desperado or Dust in the Wind or Bohemian Rhapsody will make it go away.

My parents return late in the week.  And a strange thing happens.  They listen to the whole story.  They talk to the best friend's dad.  They talk to the mechanic, agree to let him keep the car for scrap.  

They don't ground me.  They lecture me that if I hadn't been running off to Kansas City with that Herkie guy, probably running the engine hard, AC on high, if I knew how to look at the dashboard lights, if if if - then I wouldn't have killed the car.  But... they see how miserable I am.  Unlike the standard teenager I had become, I wasn't making excuses.  I was repentant and guilty and remorseful.  AND, I had lost my job.  So they felt I'd been punished enough.

Thus:  No punishment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August.

My Great Aunt Grace (a wonderful woman who smelled of talc and had gorgeous red nails and beautiful costume jewelry) always came for a visit in August.  She'd drive up from the hinterlands (see: Wheat and pheasant) to our place, then fly to Detroit where she had distant cousins she visited every August.  She always left her car with us.  We'd take her to the airport.  

This visit, Aunt Grace had a Brand New Chrysler.  I don't remember the make, might have been a Cordoba,  but it was ice blue in color and smelled like it just drove off the lot.  

My best friend, Cindy, and I were planning a trip to Topeka, clandestinely.  We were underage (but I'd altered our driver's licenses - remember when they were paper?  And I worked on the newpaper, and we had those clear sheets where you rub off the type....) but it was just so Cool to go dancing at Checquers!  And drink beer!    (You only had to be 18 at the time; we were nearly 17 - close enough!)  And Cindy was going to wear her Halter Top!  I swear, if we were caught, she'd be more in trouble for the halter top; I'd be in more trouble for the lying.

End coming up quickly now. 

We went to the disco.  We danced and danced and smoked and danced some more.  Cindy got a little tipsy (I never did).  We leave, go out to East 21st Street - or was it East 29th? - cross the eastbound traffic, head west to the boulevard, and the way home.  I'm caught in a nine- or ten-car chain collision.  We're hit so hard from behind, we smack into the car in front of us.  We had to be going 25, 30 at the most.  The fan belt is clipped by the fan, but I don't know why the car won't go at first.  Cindy's hysterical.  Her mom's going to kill her.  I call around and find an all-night station, get some guy to come over.  He diagnoses it but says he can't fix it till the morrow.  Cindy's more hysterical. 

I'm now resigned.  I am dead as it is.  It's my Great Aunt Grace's New Car!

I take up an offer from some older kids to go party at a house in the city.  Cindy's furious with me.  I'm like, What do you want to do?  Call your Dad?   No, never an option.

Finally, I call my mom.  She is So angry with us.  She comes and gets us.  I tell her the guy will fix the belt the next day.  She doesn't speak to me.  

The deal was, Cindy was supposed to spend the night.  We were supposed to go out dancing, come quietly into my folks' house, sleep in the living room on the foldout.  Never let on to a soul where we'd been.  If we looked hungover, just chalk it up to being insolent teenagers.  That was a role we knew well.

Instead, my mom says she'll see us in the morning.  We are both working a short-term job at the same place and have to be there at 9:00 a.m.  

My mom wakes us up at 8:00.  She has to take my sister somewhere - swim lessons or something.  We of course fall back into sleep.

It's 9:15, and all I know is I'm being hit, yanked, smacked, and screamed at.  My mom hasn't really yelled at me yet.  She was waiting till later in the day - no audience.  She scares us both out of the bed and out the door into Cindy's old truck.  We race off, grinding gears (three on the column) all they way down the road.

 The job was a POS.  We were stuffing envelopes for a Different housing development.  It was bad on a good day.  This day, hungover, scared shitless, crappy POS window air conditioner spitting brown fluid on the floor, paper cuts galore.  The pièce de résistance was when Cindy, saying it was all my fault, and she just couldn't be there anymore, stormed out of the room, roared out of the lot.  Once again, I'm stranded, this time at the lake.  With no bicycle.  And I got another 300 envelopes to stuff.

I'm nearly 17 years old.  Aware that I'm almost, legally,  an adult.  Scared shitless, likely, by the prospect.  And I get grounded.  I don't mean I'm grounded in my present reality.  I mean, my parents, who probably couldn't believe it either, Grounded me.  I spend a month writing poetry and playing my flute out on the (literally) back 40, sneaking into town to smoke or hang out, cutting back through the pasture by bedtime.  I milk the desperate, sad, lonely poetess thing a lot.  Cindy gets grounded From me.  We could really care less - this was a last chance at being best friends, and I fucked it up.

My aunt's insurance paid for the damage to the car in front of me.  The guy's behind me pays for the damage to my aunt's rear end.  It's all fixed by the time she returns, and she doesn't say much, but I know she's hurt, and will never trust me again.  The big question is, Can I trust me ever again?

And today, no matter the traffic, no matter the speed, I never tailgate.  Never.