In previous articles I have written about how MamaCharlie and I met.  It was a blind date arranged by her roommate, Cathy.  Cathy was MC's roommate in Arizona Hall, a dorm at the University of Arizona.  I met Cathy one night when I needed a ride.  My little GTO was kept in the shop and there I was, more than 70 miles from Fort Huachuca with no wheels.  I knew that one of my buddies from Huachuca was dating a girl at the U of A and he had mentioned the dorm and the curfews the girls had.  I gambled on being able to meet up with him before he dropped off his girl and headed back to the Fort. 

I was lucky that night in more ways than one.  I was sitting on the retaining wall by the parking lot when Vern pulled up in his '60 Chevy.  When I explained my dilemma, he was more than willing to give me a ride but I think he was a little miffed that I showed up to interfere with his big "good night" routine in the parking lot.  In any case, Cathy was a pretty little blonde girl who decided immediately that I needed to meet a nice girl from the dorm, and she was sure that she could find the right girl for me.  She made me promise to show up on the weekend (providing I got my car back) and she would "fix me up".

The first girl she introduced me to was majoring in German and since I had been to Germany and had studied the language, too, she thought that we would hit it off right away.  The German major was short, chunky, a bit too happy, and she just wasn't a match.  The second girl was one of her roommates, a nice Jewish girl from back east somewhere.  She was a fairly attractive, nice enough lady.  She had a good sense of humor and I remember we spent a lot of the evening laughing loudly, mostly rehashing Bill Cosby's latest album,  but at the end of the evening it was a friendly "so long" and I think she was as sure as I was that no matter how much we laughed and talked, we really weren't going to be anything together.  I told Cathy that I thought that it was probably a better idea if I did my own fishing.  She insisted that she could find me someone special.  On the third time out she introduced me to her other roommate:  MamaCharlie, and that was that. (Wrote about that night in an article called "Somebody to Love"). 

I figured out one time that it is 71 miles from the parking lot at the Arizona Hall dorm to the parking lot at the barracks where I lived at Fort Huachuca.  I was making that drive  two or three times a week and every weekend.  Vern and I could have saved a bunch if we had car pooled.  We didn't and I shouldn't have to explain why.   We did convoy up together, though.  Sometimes we would have as many as five cars convoying up together.  We would look out for each other in case of breakdowns or such...it is a pretty empty chunk of desert out there...and we got to be able to recognize each other from a distance and even in the dark.  Again, I told you all that so I could tell ya this: 

One evening after dropping the ladies at the dorm,  we stopped at a little convenience store and picked up a six-pack, three for me and three for Vern, and got ready to start out for Huachuca.  As we got into our cars, Vern told me that he had a spongy front tire and asked me to keep an eye open in case he had a problem.  I guess I should have followed him but I didn't like following and besides, Vern's 60 Chevy had a headlight that pointed up and across the car, very distinctive, so I could keep track of him faily easily...there were very few cars out at 1230 in the morning anyway.  Halfway through the second Bud, I realized there wasn't anyone behind me, wonky headlight or no.  I got off at the next exit.  At the top of the ramp I had a decision to make:  if I went back up the freeway, I would be on the northbound lane when I got to where Vern was.  I opted to go back along the frontage road...then I would be closer to Vern when I found him.  Two hard rights and I was going back the  way I came on the frontage road doing about 80 mph, looking for my buddy and feeling guilty for not watching out for him better. 

I was a California boy and in California most freeways have frontage roads that run parallel to the freeway but allow access to driveways,  businesses, cross streets, etc.  The mistake I made was that I wasn't in California,  I was in the Southwest Arizona Desert and the road I was on was not a frontage road at all.  This is a fact I discovered when I came over a slight rise and the road turned left...almost 180...with nothing but a skinny little arrow pointing the way.  I slammed on the breaks, trying desperately trying to remember what my brother had told me about doing a four-wheel drift, turned the wheel when I thought it was the right time, let off the brake, downshifted, and punched the gas.  The Goat broke loose, slid almost sideways, and then when the power came back on, the rear end swept around and we were making smoke back the way we had come.  I came to a stop as soon as I could;  there were more turns and curves ahead.  I got turned around and decided to go back to the exit ramp where this whole thing got wrong.  I was tootling along at less than 50 mph when out on the freeway, Vern blew by honking and waving and flashing his wonky lights.  While I was having my little adventure on the not-a-frontage-road, Vern had stopped to check the tire, which was still holding air, then started back out again...he fell just far enough behind to  be out of sight for a while. 

I loved my little GTO.  I loved the sound it made when you pushed the gas, and especially when you tripped the tri-power and it set you back in the seat.  I loved the way it would burn rubber in all four gears, the way it seemed to rise up when you shifted gears, and I loved the look and smell and feel of it.  But starting that night, I loved Pontiac engineers who had put that little beast together and every suspension trick that had been done to it and how sturdy and solid and stable it was.  I loved the fact that it handled all the stresses of that high speed slide-around and didn't kill me. 

We had lots of adventures on that freeway;  I'll tell ya a couple others later, but not too many of them were quite so intense.   I was wide awake all the way to the Fort and well into the morning.