Traveling in a fried up combi.
It sounds like a “Men at Work” song from the eighties. Actual y, it was. But I was there back then and a few of us guys decided to drive to Melbourne from Sidney.
I need to set the stage here.
The guys were mates I met at the “Stil on the Hil .” Pretty famous out of Sydney, Australia. A large pub with many pool tables and dart boards. Good ole guys that worked hard and played hard. They took me under their wing to do construction. Most of it was concreting driveways, back then it was a gold mine. Construction was priceless. A few hours and you made $100. So it was a good business.
So we were driving down south and the driver had an accident at work a couple years earlier. He was bril iant. He could recal what was in Bin 17 in the warehouse, and give you an accurate count of everything in the whole warehouse. He got into an accident at work where a forklift made a bad turn. He was awarded $88,000 in damages. He went off the edge thinking he would die off in a few years so he bought the VW bus that we were traveling in. No matter what I said to him he wanted to go.
He had no more wil to go on.
I let it go; he had made up his mind. Previously I spoke with his mother. I thought she was okay but when she talked about him some thoughts were difficult for me to understand. She felt comfortable talking to me and she told me when the boy was little he cried a lot. So she would spike his milk with vodka. The problem was she laughed about it like it was a normal thing! She tanked her son up before he knew what was going on. What could you expect raising an alcoholic as a toddler?
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To this day I wil never forget that. A child who doesn’t know what is going on, and born into a world, and this is what he gets from his from his mother to enter the world? At that time, I had no children. My parents were not perfect and I can’t remember everything, but pretty sure my milk bottle was not spiked. Of course dad had a walk in liquor cabinet. As a teenager I would make a mark on the bottle, drink it then refil with water to the level. My friends and I were pretty smart. I remember a day when my dad complained about the vodka that tasted watered down. I had to come up with a new plan.
The next day I went out with a few friends. They were always younger by a year so I was always the driver. We partied out and they got me to smoke weed. It made me so paranoid the whole time I was thinking how to get the guys home.
Some people have no problem. I had to concentrate with everything in me. Luck was on my side in the shape of my grandfather’s cabin on the river on the other side of the road. He boarded up al the windows but I had the key. We staggered in and passed out til early morning.
My dad showed up about 10am. Of course he had a key and woke us al up. It was bad timing since we al needed a few more hours sleep. Feeling hungover and needing a few more hours of sleep was in the back of the head. My friends took off with my car to bring it back later when things cooled down.
It was maybe 80 degrees Fahrenheit or so that day. Dad put up a ladder to the roof. It was a cedar shake roof; I helped put it up years ago but I had to sweep al the nooks and crannies of that cedar roof without a drink of water. I think it was three or so hours. With water it would stil be hard. But no water in the blazing sun? It made me think. Would I do this to my son? Of course not! So why did this happen? The only thing comes to me is learned behavior. His brother was nine years older and was fol owing in his father’s footsteps. He got divorced to be alone. Wel it didn’t work like he wanted.
There was this lady that was real y strong that met him. I heard about her and was always kind of skeptical, I was told she was overbearing.
As time went by I knew what my gut instincts were. So I would cal her al the time. Actual y stil do to this day. But the bottom line is that they needed each other. I think he needed her more but he has made more progress with his family through her than I thought was possible. It was one of those things that always happened. You wanted to change it but you were only a kid. It was impossible for me since I would be born twenty-three years later. My father talked about him. We inherited my uncles boxing gloves only to let my brother bruise me up. It was just fun but somebody had to win.
My brother always did. Years later my brother took up karate classes. I was in trouble. I took the round-house kicks and the punches. I was a punching bag but I loved my brother. What we went through. It was worth it, I could stil hit a golf bal twenty meters away with a bow and arrow. We were just different but fil ed in the gaps of each other.
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Years later, driving down the eastern coast of Australia I started hearing a strange noise from the engine. I turned to Wing Nut and he heard it to. Wing Nut was his nick name because he had a smal head and big ears. He did look like a wing nut.
But when I met him he told me that was his name. Not John or Bob but Wing Nut. There was a certain relaxation about who you were and how you felt about things. If I cal ed someone in America Wing Nut I would get into a fight. You don’t say this but I had to get used to this. He introduced me as that name. We had a few at the bar that lost me til the next day.
So the VW combi ground to a halt. It didn’t give up right away until I felt the final shudder. It was toast and how to deal with it on a highway with little traffic and a bunch of guys that had a hard time climbing up from the parking place a little on an incline. It was obvious to anyone driving by it was best to leave us alone. It wasn’t common on that lone road but with four inebriated guys sitting on the side of the road does not put up a good flag to save us. But luck was on someone’s side. A bus pul ed up and opened the doors. After the driver got a good look of us he kept going south.
After a while this guy drove by in an SUV heading north. We al clambered in and accepted his Tooheys ale. Everybody here had beer. It was Tooheys light but it was okay. I was a Tooheys dark kind of guy.