The yellow goat was an Arizona car. It was four-years old when we bought it, the shade of yellow was not a Pontiac color, it was a Corvette color. When it was cleaned and polished it looked like a shiny plastic banana. It was pristine when we bought it, it didn't have a speck of rust on it, the only drawback was that it was a three-speed. But it would gooooo like the wind. It was a 1969, black vinyl top, with black vinyl seats, an eight-track tape player, front and rear speakers. We upgraded the wheels and tires after we got it. We kept it for five years and if I had been smarter, we would have kept it much longer. But that's another story.

We lived in Phoenix when we bought it. It was bought to replace the '65 Corvair MC was driving at the time. She drove the Goat and fell in love with it which effectively ended the search for a big block Chevelle I was engaged in. But it was basically the same color as the '67 Nova that I was driving at the time so how could it not be a match?

Phoenix is laid out on a grid with each major street a mile apart, about eight blocks to a mile, Central is the "zero" street, anything west of Central is an Avenue, and east of Central are Streets. I think McDowell is the zero street for north/south. There are a few streets that aren't straight, a very few, that follow a terrain feature or some such. The only exception is Grand Ave. It starts at 7th and Van Buren and travels Northwest across the whole city. This creates some very confusing intersections along the way. To add to the confusion, a working railroad track runs right next to Grand.

Told you all that so I could tell you this: one evening I was busily moving from one meeting to another. It was dark and I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been. I was running behind and my next meeting was in Sun City, out past Peoria. In those days there were open areas out there, now it's city all the way. But since I was behind, and since it was dark and out in the desert, and since I was driving a fine running machine, I cranked it up to about eighty and enjoyed the sound of those sweet pipes thrumming along. As I neared Peoria, things weren't looking exactly as I expected...the up-coming intersection seemed off...then it dawned on me...I wasn't on Grand...I was approaching Grand...with its railroad tracks...which were raised above the level of the street on a berm about two feet high...at eighty miles per hour! Of course, while all this thinking was going on, I was getting closer and closer to the berm. At that point, if I had slammed on the brakes, I may havehad some real control issues when I hit the berm. All I could do was hold on tight and hope for a good landing. This was about 1974. Years later when I saw the Dukes of Hazard for the first time and they jumped the General Lee over a pile of dirt, I thought, "That's nothing...you should have seen me flying over the Arizona desert in my little yellow Goat back in '74!"

I don't know how far I flew that night. I do remember the landing. Sparks flew, I felt like my spine was being collapsed, and there was a little wobble, but the fact that the car weighed almost two tons made it stick tight. It bucked once and I thought it might be taking off again, but then it continued on down the road without losing any momentum at all. The car suffered no ill-effects from its flight, I was a little stiff in the neck for a few days, but we promised each other we wouldn't be flying again anytime soon. Man, what a ride...