The Thunderbird

My mother did everything for me.  As a result, by the time I was 17, I was depressed and useless.    This lasted until after I grieved her death.  I don’t remember ever wanting to be dead, but I was self destructive.  Sometimes I didn’t even know when I was being stupid and risking my life.  It took me years to recognize one of my antics as self destructive. 

I was 16 years old when my father had his first heart attack.  He had a second one the following year, and his heart finally quit on him when I was 19 years old.  After the second heart attack, he was out of work for almost 6 months.  During his recovery, I was allowed to drive his car to school every day.  My High School was on the east side of Rochester, a good half hour hike.  At 17 years old I had a car.  

It wasn’t just any car.  My father had a 1967 baby-blue Thunderbird, with 390 horsepower under the hood.  It was a beauty.  I loved it and so did everyone that knew me.   Driving that car was the first time I ever felt ‘cool’ in my life.  I was too immature to respect what I had.

Our farm was on the corner of Manitou Road, which went North and South from Lake Ontario, to the rural areas below Rochester, N.Y.    I lived only 3 miles from the famous Erie Canal.  I am proud to say my Great-Grandfather was a Captain on the Eric Canal.  I used to ride over that canal at least once a day.  The bridge over the canal was probably a smooth quarter mile long and on the South side, the road dipped down and went under a railroad tressel.  In the early hours of the morning, there was rarely any traffic on the bridge.  

On three different occasions, I challenged that bridge.  I would floor the Thunderbird as it went up the bridge.  It would gain speed all the way up.  Then coming down the other side of the bridge, the car would hit 120 mph.  At that speed, you are aiming the car more then you are driving it.  The car would zip under the railroad tressel and as it came up the other side, it would do a Dukes of Hazzard.  My Thunderbird would leave the road and literally fly through the air.  I have no idea how far I went in the air.  But it lasted several seconds.  I thought this was the coolest thing.  I never told anyone about it.  It was my secret.  

It took me years to realize that this was crazy.  Here I was flying through the air with 2 tons of metal around me, totally out of control.  When I think about it now, I can see that if I had landed even the slightest bit cockeyed, I could easily have rolled the car and been a goner.  

Sometimes when I’m working with adolescents and they tell me some crazy thing they did that is incredibly dangerous, rather than being an obnoxious adult who tells them they shouldn’t take risks;  I tell them about driving the Thunderbird through the air and how I thought I was cool.  Now I can see it as totally self destructive.  When I tell them the story, they can see the risk I was taking.  When they look at risky behaviors through someone else’s eyes, it becomes real.  

I drove that Thunderbird 106,000 miles.  On a Sunday night in Bath, New York, while I was coming into town, I heard a big clunk from under the car.  Then, the car lost power.  The motor was running fine, but there was no response from the gas pedal.  As the car slowed, I looked in the rear view mirror.  Lying in the road was the drive shaft of the car.  It died heroically.  I will always love that car.