Even little adventures count for something

I never climbed Mount Everest, jumped out of an airplane, played music in Carnegie Hall or backpacked through Europe. My adventures were smaller than that. Much smaller. But they were adventures all the same, so before I get too old and stupid to remember, here’s the true story of one of them:

In March of 1971, Fairmont State’s men’s basketball team won the West Virginia Conference Tournament and a trip to the NAIA Championships in Kansas City, Mo. On the night of the first round game, against Texas Southern, I was in Fluharty’s Bar (now long gone) with a crowd of fraternity brothers listening to the game on the radio and getting somewhat drunk.

“If we win this game,” one of the inebriated brothers declared, “we’re all going to Kansas City.” Everyone agreed, and we all ordered another round.

As luck would have it, Fairmont won the game on a last-second tip-in by Ed Lemon to advance to the second round, but when the time came for all of us to leave for Missouri, everyone found an excuse not to go. Everyone, that is, except for me and two other guys. “I’ll drive,” I said, being the only one with a car, and off we went to pack for the trip.

I should mention that my car at the time was a 1955 Buick Special that had previously been involved in a head-on collision. It had a crumpled fender on the driver’s side, a dented door and a headlight tied on with speaker wire. When I went home to pack my clothes, my father told me I couldn’t go, but later gave in when I reminded him I was 21 years old. “You’ll never make it in that car,” he told me. “You'll get as far as Columbus, Ohio, if you’re lucky. Then sell the car for the price of a bus ticket and come on back home.”

There was also a problem that none of us had enough spending money for a trip out of town. I had only a few dollars in the bank. There were no ATMs in 1971, so around midnight, we woke up a fraternity brother who managed a restaurant and talked him into opening the place to cash our checks. And off into the darkness we flew.

In Ohio, we encountered a blizzard. My windshield wipers collected so much snow they stopped working, so we had to pound on the glass to make them move. We hit better weather around Indianapolis, I think, and cruised on down I-70, reaching St. Louis in the middle of the lunch rush. Choosing to drive through the city instead of around it (big mistake), we were trapped in the middle of five or six lanes of cars traveling faster than my Buick wanted to go, but we had to keep up or be trampled by the vehicles behind us. It scared the you-know-what out of me.

We made it out alive and 16 hours after leaving home, we pulled into Kansas City. It was 4:00 in the afternoon and we had only a few hours to find a hotel. Being short on funds, we found a single room to share and an all-you-can-eat buffet nearby, saving our money for basketball tickets.

One of the guys with me was an all-conference football player at Fairmont State. One afternoon his football coach saw us getting out of my battered Buick in a parking lot and nearly lost his mind. “You’re not going back to Fairmont in that,” he told his star player. I’ll put you on a plane.” My friend thanked him but declined the offer.

So anyhow, we stayed in Kansas City for four days. Lots of other stuff happened, but I’ll cut to the reason we were there. We watched Fairmont win two games to make the Final Four before losing in the semi-final round and the consolation game. Late Saturday night, we piled back into the crippled black car and headed for home.

Not long into the trip, on U.S. 40 – one of those straight, long and flat Midwestern highways – I fell asleep in the eastbound lanes and woke up headed the wrong way on the westbound side. I have no idea how long I was asleep. Could have been five seconds or five minutes – I’ll never know. Fortunately, we were going straight and no one was coming the other way.

A little while later, police stopped us in Fairmont, Illinois, of all places, but let us go after checking out the car. We weren’t the droids they were looking for.

Hours later, somewhere around Wheeling, I saw a white light flash past my window. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the headlight, which finally came loose after 1,700 miles and 34 hours on the road. We eventually pulled into Fairmont and went straight to a bar. (Of course we did.) I believe I had $1 left in my pocket – just enough for a couple of beers to celebrate our safe return.

We were greeted as conquering heroes by all of the guys who were going to Kansas City until they weren’t, and they all gathered around to hear the story I have just told to you. Weeks later, I bought a mismatched fender and a headlight frame at a junkyard, painted the fender with a spray can and drove that car for several more years.

Why, you must be wondering, am I telling this story today? Well, I heard the Eagles song “Ol’ 55” a little while ago and it brought back memories of this great adventure. Well, maybe it wasn’t a great adventure or even a pretty good one, but it was my adventure and I haven’t had that many. This is one I can remember in great detail.

So thanks for reading this far. I'll leave you with these words:

Well my time went so quickly
I went lickety-splitly out to my old '55
As I drove away slowly, feeling so holy
God knows, I was feeling alive
And now the sun's coming up
I'm riding with Lady Luck, freeway cars and trucks
Stars beginning to fade – Tom Waits / Eagles