My award winning piece:
Streetcar Named Disaster
The Golden Gate Bar was less then spitting distance from base, which meant despite its obvious short-comings it was always busy. One could never quite tell if the walls were supposed to be that putrid color of yellowish-orange or if many years of cigarette smoke turned the white walls into it. The tables and chairs appeared to be stolen from a school cafeteria and I'm positive the bar was made from plywood with cheap orange Formica over the top. The beer was cheap, the women less than reputable and it was within walking distance of the base.
Another night of hard drinking and dart playing were ahead for the boys of the mighty submarine Augusta. Johnny Beggs and Joe Williamson were busy at the dart board most of the evening and as usual Scott and I were left to ourselves at a table adjacent to the dart board. The conversation was usual for the two of us; how much we hated the Navy and couldn't wait to get out and head to college. Scott was from New Mexico and couldn't wait to get back and practice his "swooping" skills on the girls of the reservation he lived on. He was husky, but not fat and always knew how to dress to impress. His dark Native American skin made him quite attractive to the ladies of New England and he took advantage of that every chance he could. Joe was a laid back southern boy and our supervisor on the boat. All he cared about was finishing the five years or so he had left in the Navy and getting back to West Virginia to be with his wife. By two in the afternoon it always appeared as if he hadn't shaved in a week and quite possibly he held the world record for owning the most flannel shirts. At around thirty-eight years old he was the oldest of the group and that afforded him the title of, "Old Man." Always with a Pabst in his hand and a quick witted thing to say, he easily earned our respect. Johnny Beggs was the leader of our rag-tag band of merry drunks. Having married at eighteen and never quite known the care-free life of an early twenty-something, he always had the greatest ideas for trouble after his divorce. His tattered Redskins cap covered his thinning hair and he was rarely without a Marlboro in his mouth and a Heineken in his hand. Being my "Sea Dad" he was also responsible for my professional development; that just meant he taught me all of the scams he knew.
After we closed down the bar for the night, or morning might be more appropriate, I came to the conclusion we should definitely find an adventure in my new Beamer. In actuality, I owned the car about nine months by then, but with the amount of time we spent at sea it was more like a month or so. She technically wasn't a new BMW, but seeing that I bought her coming off a lease she was new enough to me. At the measly twenty grand a year I made, it was amazing that I could afford the six hundred dollars a month it took to own her. It was definitely worth every penny, though. I was young and cool and that car matched my personality perfectly. Stella wasn't just white, she was Alpine White like the mountains of Bavaria she came from. The engine only put out two hundred and forty horses, but weighing in at around two thousand pounds, those horses went a long way. It had everything a twenty one year-old kid could want in a car: Tan leather bucket seats that held you as a mother would hold her newborn, a wicked five-speed transmission and always a feeling that she was just an entrance fee short of racing the Paris Grand Prix. Stella's purpose in life was to be driven and just like BMW's motto, this car was truly the Ultimate Driving Machine.
We tore out of the parking lot of the bar at close to forty miles an hour. Any other car would have let loose its back end doing that, but my Stella held to the tarmac. She knew me and I knew her. We had bonded in the time that we had been together. We were meant for each other and nothing could separate us. She was up to sixty miles an hour in no time and I could feel that she wanted more. Scott, having formerly owned, and wrecked, a Mustang, knew exactly where to go. After about three minutes of driving down the main road we hit the location Scott had told us of. The back road of choice was close to ten miles long, curved like a snake and most importantly, no one ever drove it at three o'clock in the morning. Typical Connecticut road that I had learned to love since buying Stella. It took only about five seconds to hit sixty miles an hour from the point we turned the corner and by the time she rounded the first curve the speedometer read well over one hundred miles an hour. No one had any idea that a car was capable of taking corners at such speeds. Two miles down the ever-winding road I spotted lights over the crest of a hill. Ever paranoid of the police, and receiving yet another speeding ticket, I slammed on the brakes. White smoke poured from the wheel wells and the car went from a hundred twenty miles an hour to sixty in the flash of an instant. For once in my life the paranoia rang true and the local sheriff trudged on by. Everyone was positive that our trip was over. He must have seen me and was ready to turn around to haul me off to jail or give me yet one more speeding ticket for my ever growing library of violations. If only he would have put a stop to our adventure right there.
After a few minutes doing the speed limit of thirty-five, the time came to get back to business. Stella catapulted from the speed limit up to one hundred forty miles an hour in the bat of an eye. It was a sort of Zen masterpiece: I was one with the car and the car was one with the road. Nothing could defeat us as long as we were together. Nothing, except for the S-Curve that I didn't quite notice we were going through. Assuming it to be just another curve on the road, I straightened her front end after coming out. That was the fatal mistake that ended Stella's short existence. After shooting through the curve and straightening her out she went right on to an embankment of rocks and launched herself in the air. The speedometer still read over one hundred miles an hour and the car must have appeared like a fighter plane with no wings getting ready to make a landing. A landing that just happened to be on the roof.
The next couple of minutes were kind of blurry to all of us. I had hit my head on the pavement through the car's sunroof and Scott passed out for two seconds that seemed an eternity for everyone in the vehicle. Everyone dragged themselves out of the upside down BMW and commenced staring at the mangled debacle of what was formerly my car; my one true love, my soul mate. Joe started feeding me gum and John commenced forcing Marlboro's into my mouth. They knew the police would soon be on their way and it was important that, although I only had one or two beers, I appear as sober as possible.
When the police finally did arrive, it just happened to be the same cop that passed us not half an hour beforehand. The irony was felt by all. He definitely remembered us and most definitely remembered we were driving way over the speed limit. Even though the group had been obviously drunk, he asked no questions regarding our sobriety.
Close to half an hour after the police officer arrived the tow truck crept onto the scene and after looking at the vehicle for less than thirty seconds the tow truck driver shuffled over to speak with me. "Could you come over to the vehicle and turn the engine off," the burly old mechanic asked of me. A last moment of pride swelled up inside for my Stella. After half an hour of being upside down, her engine was still running. Her essence still remained.
I bought another BMW after that, but it's never been the same as my Alpine White 3 series everyone knew as Stella.
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tired
chipper
anxious
cynical