I was really reluctant to start the engine in the old car.   You see, I had a big problem.  Actually it was a two-part problem I faced as I sat there next to the gas pump of a C-Store in Tucson.  The first part I couldn’t do anything about because somewhere in the car’s long life someone had removed the entire exhaust system.  The key word being ENTIRE.  It had no exhaust pipe, no muffler, no tailpipe. . .   Nothing.  Whatever noise, hot and noxious gases the engine made spewed out directly from the exhaust manifold through the floorboards and onto the driver’s feet where they billowed upward and escaped through the windows.  The engine noise wasn’t too bad out on the highway but the racket it made when I turned the key in the ignition and those 8 cylinders began firing was stupefying.  Imagine the main street of Sturgis SD when Hell’s Angels arrive and you will have an idea of the noise I’m trying to describe.  There was nothing I could do to make that engine start quietly. 

That by itself was more attention-getting than problem until a Tucson Police Cruiser pulled into the driveway while I was refueling.  I don’t know of any place in our country where such ear-battering noise and noxious pollution as made by that car is legally tolerated.  And there was my problem.  If I waited for the cops to drive away and they chose to dawdle in the store I might attract attention for loitering.  But if I brought that huge engine to life while they were there I would likely earn a ticket and maybe even have the car impounded for both noise and gaseous contamination of the environment.  I decided to take my chances with loitering – I meticulously checked the oil and anything else that could be checked under the hood.  I kicked the tires.  It was the right choice.  The cops got into their car and left.  But not without giving both me and that vile looking vehicle a suspiciously appraising look. 

We both deserved their scrutiny.  The Olds looked as if it had been exhumed from a junk yard.  Its paint was faded down to the metal in some places.  Its upholstery was torn or missing and all its tires were almost bald.  On the passenger side door the chrome strip had been partially ripped away from the door and now stuck out far enough so that when I made a hard right turn it drug on the pavement.  (All its shock absorbers were long gone.  On turns it heeled over like a sailboat turning into a cross wind.)  It was a “poster child” for a kind of car that pilots call an “airport car.”  A vehicle they use mostly to drive from their home to the airport, where they leave it while they go off into the blue.  “Beauty” is the lowest priority in what makes a good “airport car.”  “Function” is all that matters.   As for me, I wore a nondescript tee shirt, a pair of shorts, sandals on my feet, an old baseball cap and a pair of Polaroid glasses.

But the engine in the car I was driving was a gem – in fact the condition of the engine is why our youngest son wanted the beat-up, weather-worn 1967 Olds to be “ferried” from Miami to El Cajon CA.  He wanted to put that gas-sucking but enviably powerful engine into an older Buick convertible he was restoring.  And displacing 455 cubic inches, it was a giant among engines; born in the day when “muscle cars” dominated the streets and highways of America carrying such names as “Wildcat,” “Barracuda,” “Mustang,” “Cougar,” “Cyclone,” “Gran Sport,” “Rebel,” “Thunderbolt,” and other names suggesting power and willingness to use it. 

Our son, an American Airlines pilot, had bought it in Miami FL and driven it to Ft. Worth.  I, retired and ever ready for an adventure, had volunteered to take it on to El Cajon.  Among my faults or endearing qualities, depending upon who makes the call, is a penchant for impersonating “Walter Mitty,” or, depending on the situation, “Don Quixote.”  When I volunteered I hadn’t really thought of anything except an opportunity to take a long, solo, cross-country drive but the moment I saw and heard that car. . .  “Walter Mitty” took over.  In my mind there was no place in that car for a respectable, late middle-aged, retired Ph.D., former school superintendent, responsible father of five kids.  Oh no!  It cried out for me to become a down-on-his-luck transient going from one place to another for one reason or another as he had done many times in his life. 

My son assured me that it had performed beautifully all the way from Miami to Ft. Worth.  But, he said, “If anything serious goes wrong with it, just sell it to the nearest junk yard.  Stop when you want to, keep your receipts and I’ll reimburse you when you get back home.”   Being the dad of one of their pilots I would be able to fly home free as a standby passenger.  Who but the most timid, regimented, conventional person could refuse such an offer? 

I left Ft. Worth just in time for its late afternoon rush hour.  Since it was late summer the heat index must have been in the high 90’s or higher.   Air-conditioning?  In that car?   Out on the highway the engine noise settled down to a low-frequency roar similar to, but inestimably louder, than the purring of a cat.  Driving in that late, hot, Texas afternoon I learned quickly that exhaust gas is very, very, hot.  It easily overcame the floorboards and turned the car’s interior into a traveling sweat lodge.

During the next day’s travel the Olds and I became well-acquainted.  I learned that it would rather wander between the centerline and the edge of the pavement than hold a true course, and it taught me the value of keeping good shock absorbers on one’s car.  But that engine!  Royalty in a slum.  As for me I was pouring water down my throat and sweating it out through my skin it seemed in equal amounts.  As I drove through the heat of West Texas I knew I was going to have to do something to cope wth that heat. 

My solution was to buy a Styrofoam cooler, a bag of ice, some bottled water and two Turkish face towels.  After some of the ice melted I dunked the towels in the icy water, wrung one of them out a bit, wrapped it around my head and tucked it in the way our Arab friends do.  When that towel lost its cooling ability I swapped it for the one that was soaking in the ice water.  That was my air-conditioning as I drove across AZ and into California.   If I needed anything to complete the impression I was giving of a down-and-outer that “turban” surely did the trick.  As cars passed me I got some of the most interesting looks I’ve ever gotten. This was before 9/11 so my Middle-Eastern headgear didn’t arouse any fear; just “wonder.”  I was enjoying the play-acting to the hilt.   

By the time we arrived in Tucson the car had earned my cautious trust.  The only misfortune I’d had was a blowout on the right front tire.  That would’ve been no problem except that not only was the bumper jack not made for this car, it had no foot plate. Applying a little “Ozark Engineering” I managed to change the tire with the car falling off the jack only once.  So, the trip was becoming a little routine. 

I decided to up the ante.  In Tucson, the “in a hurry” traveler would take I10; turn left at I8 and go on to Yuma.  However I was in no hurry, and in my state of mind and after studying my map, I was drawn to AZ State Highway 86.  It would take me to I8 eventually, but not before traveling though what appeared on the map to be some exceptionally desolate country.  It bisected an Indian Reservation and passed through a little place with the curious name of “Why.”  Being from a state where we have towns with such names as “Peculiar,” “Clever,” and “Competition;” with “Success” just down the road, I wasn’t about to bypass a town called “Why?”  Desolate country . . . Indian Reservation?  Well, hadn’t my son said that if the car died I could just leave it?  

Arizona Highway 86 was exactly as the map suggested:  Barren.  No homes, no sign of life, an occasional dirt road that, a crude sign promised, led to an Indian settlement.  I was tempted to turn off onto one of those but I wasn’t at all sure that a “White Man” driving an outrageously decrepit, noisy old car would be received enthusiastically.  Then I came upon a white cross about three feet tall standing alongside the highway.  Now back in the Ozarks a small homemade cross alongside the highway means that some poor soul died in a car crash at that spot.  Missourians usually put that person’s name on those crosses and decorate them with flowers.  Curiously this Arizona cross had no name, no memorial flowers, just a cross.  Odd, I thought.  Then the trip became even stranger.  A few miles on down the road there stood another white cross with no name and no decoration.  As I continued on AZ Highway 86 there seemed to be a white cross alongside the highway every few miles.  Very odd, I thought.  This road can’t be that dangerous.  Running off the road wouldn’t be very risky and collisions?  I had met less than half a dozen cars since leaving Tucson.  Why are there so many people dying along this highway, I asked myself.  I began to count the crosses.  A half hour or so later I had counted 29 crosses.  I have never learned why those crosses were there or what they symbolized, but soon after the 29^th cross I came upon a dead cow lying alongside the road.  Maybe it was the long hours being alone; maybe it was the isolation of being by myself out in this desolate landscape.   Whatever, my sense of bizarre comedy kicked in.  I began laughing and repeating to myself, “Twenty nine crosses and one dead cow.”  I was truly in a strange land.

As I arrived in California I became a little concerned about getting the old car over the “Coastal Range,” but that big brute engine didn’t even notice it was climbing.  Part way up the range, however, I came upon a California “Fruit Inspection” station. The sign said I had to stop.  Oh, oh.  “Inspectors,” “Law Enforcement.”  I was going to have to stop this car and start it moving again on an upgrade.  I knew the noise of the engine would be shattering when I did that, and everyone knows that California is paranoid strict about noise and environmental pollution.  How ironic and disappointing it would be to have the old girl impounded so close to our goal.  My luck held.  After telling the inspector I was fruitless he waved me on through.  I watched the rear view mirror for several hundred yards and saw no flashing blue lights coming after me.