Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story Page 18

  Though my birthday was in January, the soonest I could take the mandatory driver’s education course was in the spring. During occasional visits home from college, Connie gave me driving lessons and I managed to get my driver’s license two days before flying to Wichita, Kansas, to start another summer with Dad.

  “Do you have your license yet?” he asked as soon as I met him at the airport gate.

  “Yup, just got it,” I answered, proudly taking it out of my wallet.

  “Well, that’s great news! How would you like to drive a car to Iowa tomorrow?”

  “Really?”

  Dad laughed. “Really. You remember my buddy, Harold, don’t you? He needs the car and this would be the easiest way to get it to him.

  “By the way, I’ve got a car surprise waiting for you too,” he added, a grin breaking across his face. “You don’t think I forgot about you, did you?”

  I thought I was going to crawl of my skin with excitement.

  “Are you serious? Thank you, Dad! What is it?”

  “You want to be surprised, don’t you?”

  I looked at Dad with an excited, pleading look.

  “Okay. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle and it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. But it’s got a faulty motor at the moment. I’ve got it sitting in a parking lot in Fort Worth. But I’ll promise you something right now, Ingrid. Before the summer’s over, I’m going to have it fixed so we can drive it back home. What do you think of that?”

  I was on such a sudden high, I thought I might float away. “Are you kidding? I love Volkswagen Bugs!” I nearly shouted, throwing my arms around him for a hug. “Thank you, Dad. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “I figured that would put you in a good mood.” Dad chuckled and shook his head. “The next time we’re in Texas stocking up on tools, I’ll take you to see it. But right now we’ve got to get Harold the car I owe him. Are you ready to get to it?”

  “Definitely!” I replied, my thoughts still on the VW bug waiting for me in Texas. I couldn’t wait to see it. And I couldn’t wait to get it home. It meant Heather and I would finally have our own transportation instead of depending on her parents to give us rides.

  We climbed into Dad’s van and drove from the airport directly to a warehouse parking lot where a rusty, mustard-colored Ford Pinto sat waiting. I grabbed the keys from him, opened the door, and climbed in.

  That’s when I spied the stick shift.

  My heart sank. I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. I barely knew how to drive an automatic.

  I explained this deal-breaking news to Dad, but he wasn’t even slightly deterred.

  “Oh, Ingrid, driving a stick shift isn’t that hard. You can think, right? It’s really pretty simple. I’ll just teach you.”

  Dad climbed into the passenger seat beside me while I adjusted the seat so I could reach the pedals.

  He immediately began instructing me.

  “Now, you see that pedal next to the brake?” he said, pointing to a pad on the floor.

  I nodded my head.

  “That’s called the clutch. Just remember that if you don’t push that in when you try to shift, nothing is going to happen.”

  I spent the next hour driving the car around the parking lot, with Dad coaching me on when to push in the clutch, shift the gear, and hit the gas pedal.

  “See, there’s nothing to it,” he said as I made my practice loops around the lot. “I knew you would be fine. Now that you’ve got the hang of it here, let’s try the highway.”

  “Are you sure I’m ready for that?” I asked, looking at the cars whizzing by on the four-lane freeway that sat adjacent to the parking lot.

  “Of course you’re ready,” Dad replied. “You’re my Hippie Boy, aren’t you? Besides, I’m going to be right there with you, coaching you all the way through it.”

  Somehow I managed to make it through the ten-mile highway loop without stalling the car or crashing into another vehicle. But that was with Dad sitting next to me, yelling out instructions every five seconds. The idea of navigating the car on my own through two states worth of freeways sounded like suicide.

  “I’m really not sure this is such a good idea, Dad,” I said when we were finally back safe in the parking lot. “I mean, I did just get my driver’s license. Maybe we should spend a few more days practicing.”

  Dad looked at me like I had a screw loose.

  “That’s nonsense. You just have to remember what I’m teaching you and use your head a little. We’ll leave early, before any traffic is on the road. Once you get going on the freeway, you’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with his assessment. In fact, I was pretty certain I was going to get into a wreck the following day. But I didn’t say any more because I didn’t want Dad to think I was a wimp.

  At four the next morning, we checked out of our motel and climbed into our separate vehicles. Dad told me to follow close behind his van and to pull over to the side of the road if I saw him flash his tail lights.

  “Ready for an adventure, Ingrid?” he asked through my open car window.

  “Sure,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound confident.

  “All right. Let’s get to it then. We’ve got a lot of miles to cover.”

  Dad walked back to his van and hopped into the driver’s seat. A minute later his lights went on and he pulled out of the dark motel parking lot. I followed him through several sets of traffic lights without problems. But then we hit the highway on-ramp.

  Somewhere between remembering to accelerate on the gas, push in the clutch, and shift gears, all while trying to keep my eyes on the road in front of me, I forgot about the need to get the car up to speed before merging into traffic. As a result, I pulled onto the highway going about twenty miles an hour, causing the car behind me to swerve over into the left lane to avoid hitting me. Luckily, there were no other vehicles on the road and the car sped off into the darkness.

  Dad immediately flashed his tail lights. I followed his van to the apron on the highway and turned off the ignition.

  He came running toward me, his face the reddish purple color it always turned before he exploded.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” he screamed. “Push on the gas! You’ve got to keep accelerating! We’re on the highway now. What are you trying to do? Get yourself killed?”

  “Sorry, Dad,” I mumbled, feeling my own anger creeping through me. “I’m doing my best.”

  “Well your best needs to get a whole lot better than that or we’re not going to make it.”

  Dad stood by my car window for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I was so freaked out about the idea of driving another five hundred miles on the freeway that I hoped he would say he’d changed his mind.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Ingrid,” he said finally, his voice back to being calm. “You just need to pay attention and think and you’ll be okay.”

  With that, he turned and walked back to his van.

  I took a deep breath, turned on the ignition, and waited for Dad’s van to move in front of me. “Clutch, shift, gas. Clutch, shift, gas,” I repeated as I picked up speed and made my way back onto the road.

  It wasn’t the smoothest ride, but I managed to shift at the appropriate times and get the car up to sixty miles an hour and in fourth gear―what Dad called “cruising speed.” Once the first hour was behind me, I relaxed a little and started to enjoy the ride. I turned the radio knob to an oldies station and sang along to Beatles songs as I drove.

  I had always felt free driving in the passenger’s seat with Dad. But that was nothing compared to the freedom I was now experiencing. My thoughts drifted to my Volkswagen Beetle waiting for me in Fort Worth. I couldn’t believe I was going to have a car of my own. I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel and go.

  By the time Dad flashed his turn signal four hours later and waved his hand out the window, motioning me
to get into the far right lane and exit the freeway, I felt like I had been driving a stick shift for years.

  We pulled into a McDonald’s and headed inside for a bite to eat.

  “See, Ingrid, I told you it’s a piece of cake,” Dad said as we bit into our sausage egg McMuffins. “You just have to believe in yourself.”

  We finished eating, filled up our gas tanks, and hit the road again. By mid-afternoon we made it to Des Moines and headed straight for Harold’s house, a small, white, wood-framed house located in a city neighborhood.

  Harold was a big, jolly guy and I always thought he would play a great Santa Claus. He was self-employed like Dad, and over the years the two of them had worked several business deals together. Mostly, though, they were just good friends. Dad used Harold’s house as a base to receive mail and messages, and he sometimes crashed there when he was passing through town.

  Harold waddled out to greet us as soon as we pulled up in front of his house.

  “Well, look at you,” he said, his eyes scanning over me as I climbed out of the Pinto and handed him the car keys. “How did you get to be driving age?”

  I felt myself blushing. “Just happened, I guess.”

  We spent the evening visiting with Harold and crashed in our van overnight. The next day, Dad told Harold the van had been giving him mechanical problems so the three of us went to a used car lot and traded it in for a forest-green, wood-paneled Plymouth station wagon. Then Dad and I were on our way.

  “So where are your sales guys working?” I asked as soon we were back on the highway. “Are we planning to hook up with them like last year?”

  Just the mention of them made Dad’s face turn red.

  “Let me tell you something about those guys, Ingrid. They were all a bunch of worthless crooks who used me and stole from me. I left one of them in charge at the office in Texas and let me tell you, what a mistake that was. I had signed some blank checks before I left and told him he could cash them once I had money in the bank. You know what he did? He filled them out for a total of $10,000, cashed them at a bank, and took off. And now, because it was my signature on the checks, there’s a warrant out for my arrest.”

  I spun around to face him, my heart suddenly pounding a million beats a minute.

  “A warrant for your arrest? Seriously? Dad, what are you going to do?”

  My concern snapped Dad out of his bad mood.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said, laughing as he spoke. “You know I got the golden tongue, Ingrid. Nobody’s going to do nothing to me. Plus, I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just telling you the story so you know what a bunch of crooks I was dealing with. But they’re gone. And now that I’ve got my real sales partner back, we’re going to be back on top in no time.”

  I had to bite my tongue. If Dad had just listened to me a year ago, I could have saved him a lot of trouble.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re rid of them,” I said, trying to force myself to sound positive. “And you’re right, I’m the only sales crew you need.”

  Dad and I spent the next few weeks working throughout Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa. We still had a few wrenches, screwdrivers, and metric socket sets we were pushing, but most of our inventory consisted of hydraulic jacks.

  Dad told me that he had hooked up with the hydraulic jack supplier in the spring and at first thought it was going to become his ticket to success. The jacks were compact and sold for only fifty dollars, but were supposed to be strong enough to prop up a semi-truck. Dad knew this was a lie, though, because he’d tried out one of the jacks on his van and it had busted.

  “I’ve got to decide what I’m going to do,” he said as we drove along looking for prospects. “If a guy buys one of these jacks and it breaks on him, he could get hurt and I don’t want that on my conscience. But I’ve got a lot of money tied up in these jacks so I’ve got to figure out how to get rid of them.”

  After discussing it, Dad concluded that the thing to do was liquidate the jacks we had, then head up to a sales meeting that Joe, the hydraulic jack supplier, was holding in Madison, Wisconsin, in a week or so to discuss the situation with him. Maybe he had better quality jacks he could sell to Dad.

  We decided to map out a work route that would land us in Madison in time for the meeting. Since joining up with Dad the month before, we had been alternating nights between rest areas and Motel 6s to save money, but a couple of days into our work trip to Wisconsin, Dad decided we deserved to splurge a little.

  “How about you and me get a room at a Holiday Inn and just relax for the evening,” he said mid-afternoon as we pulled into Davenport, Iowa. “We can kick back and order room service. What do you think about that?”

  “Sounds great to me,” I replied with a smile. Better eight years late than never, I was tempted to say.

  We checked into the Holiday Inn around 4 p.m., carried our boxes of tools into the room, and kicked back on our beds to relax. Just because I could, I made sure to order a cheeseburger and French fries from the room service menu.

  Around seven that evening, the phone rang. Dad and I looked at each other in surprise. No one knew we were staying at the motel. Who could possibly be calling us?

  “It’s probably just the wrong room number,” Dad said as he picked up the phone.

  Within seconds of saying hello, a smile broke across his face.

  “Well, this is a surprise. How in the world did you find me here?”

  I watched Dad as he talked, curious about the person on the other end. Whoever it was, he was clearly enjoying the conversation, and I could tell by the way he cooed into the phone that it was a woman.

  Dad asked how the person on the other end of the phone line was doing and spent a lot of the conversation smiling and listening.

  “Well, we’ve got to get to Wisconsin in a couple of days for a meeting, but maybe after that we’ll come out that way and see you,” Dad said as he wrapped up the phone conversation. “It’d be great for you to meet my daughter. I think you two would really hit it off.”

  “Who was that?” I asked as soon as he hung up the phone.

  Dad smiled and shook his head.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said finally, a goofy smile plastered on his face. “That was Debbie, a woman I met a few months ago in Amarillo. She asked me at the time where I lived and I told her Holiday Inn USA.”

  “But how did she know where we were staying? I mean, we never stay at a Holiday Inn. And there must be hundreds of them across the country.”

  “That’s what’s so remarkable,” Dad said, still wearing the same goofy grin. “She told me she just kept calling all of the Holiday Inns throughout the Midwest every night until she found me.”

  “Wow, that’s some serious determination.” And a little creepy and desperate, I thought to myself. Who would spend hours every night for months trying to track down a man she had met a couple of times?

  Dad filled in the story for me. He explained that back in April, he’d been selling tools near Amarillo, Texas, with a member of his now-disbanded sales crew. As a reward for a great sales day, Dad had taken the guy out to a country western bar in town. When Dad walked into the bar, he noticed a table full of women laughing and decided to join in the fun.

  “I started asking them one by one to dance,” Dad said. “When I started dancing with Debbie, we began talking and I thought she was really pleasant and enjoyable. She told me she works as a telephone operator for AT&T, so I thought I would mess with her mind a little.”

  “So what did you do?” I asked, seeing the mischievous spark in Dad’s eye.

  “I looked at her and said, ‘You want me to let you in on a little secret? I get my long distance for free.’ She looked at me like she didn’t believe me. She said, ‘And just how do you do that?’ So I told her how I sometimes make long distance calls at pay phones and then tell the operator to bill the call to some business I pick out of the phonebook.”

  Dad chuckled at the memory. “She looked at me for
a minute and shook her head. Then she said, ‘Well, that’s not right.’ I could hear the disapproval in her voice, but I think she was also a little impressed and we really hit it off. I danced with her a few more times and even took her to a movie the next day before heading out of town. But that was three months ago, and I didn’t expect to ever see or talk to her again.”

  I could picture some desperate lady, sitting at home, calling one motel after another trying to locate Dad. That had to be expensive. But then again, Dad said she was a telephone operator so maybe she got a discount. Clearly she had too much time on her hands.

  “Wow, Dad, she must really like you,” I teased, amused that he was so happy to hear from her.

  Had it been the year before, I would have been jealous that some woman was trying to cut into my time with Dad. But now that I had dated a few times myself, I thought it was great that someone was interested in him. I often worried about Dad being on the road alone while I was in school. Though he was still married to Rhonda, they hadn’t seen or contacted each other in more than a year, and I knew their relationship was over.

  “Oh, Debbie’s just a friend,” Dad replied, the grin still plastered on his face. “And she’s really young. She’s twenty-two. Think about it, Ingrid. That makes her exactly half my age.”

  There was no wiping the smile off of Dad’s face. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him this giddy.

  “I guess you’re right, Ingrid. It does sound like she has a crush on me.” He chuckled and shook his head again. “Yeah, I would say she’s hooked. But then again, who can resist your daddy?”

  CHAPTER 15

  IT WAS STILL dark when I stumbled into the rest stop bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for the day.

  I splashed cold water on my face and pulled out my Neutrogena face soap that I kept carefully wrapped in a thin, white cotton washcloth I had taken from a Motel 6. The soap was critical when I was traveling with Dad because between the heat and the junk food, my face was prone to breakouts and it was the only thing that kept my skin smooth and clear.