John Bott:  

bers started bouncing up and down in the water. We had found a large number of Crappie just ten feet off the shore, in five feet of water. Cast after cast we were knocking um dead. All of the fish we caught that day were returned to the reservoir, to be caught another day. We walked back up to the road and found Kyle¿s car, an old white Rambler. Jerry and Ken jumped in the back seat, as I had already called shotgun. We drove almost all the way home without incident, then, all of the sudden, Kyle slumps over toward the passenger side of the front seat where I was sitting. It surprised and scared me at the same time. Instinctively I grabbed the steering wheel with my right hand, leaving my left hand free to try and push Kyle back over toward the driver¿s side. With him propped up against the door, I moved my right foot over to the driver¿s side and applied the brakes. I was able to maintain a straight line while steering with my right hand, and then came to a stop in the middle of the street. Meanwhile, in the back seat, Jerry and Ken, too, were shocked by the actions of our driver. Once I had the car safely at a stop, I slid the shift lever into park and sat back utterly stunned. I looked back into the back seat and saw Ken shaking his in a way that said he didn't believe anything was wrong with Kyle and that he was basically putting on some kind of insane show. I then looked over at Jerry and all he said was, ¿Lets just take him home.¿ I opened the passenger side door and got out, then, walked to the driver¿s side and told Kyle to move over so I could take him home. I pulled up to the parking strip at his house, the whole while he was just sitting there with his eyes closed, seemingly unconscious. Jerry and Ken got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk in front of his house while I walked Kyle up to his front door. I put my right arm over his shoulder to steady him while he walked hunched over with his arms hanging straight down in front of him. I rang the doorbell and his brother, Gary, answered ( Kyle and Gary are both grand son¿s of Orville Redenbacher, the popcorn magnet). When he opened the door I explained that Kyle had passed out at the wheel, while we were driving down the street. He didn¿t appear the least bit surprised by what he saw or heard, and simply said, ¿Come on, Kyle.¿ As soon as Kyle entered the house they shut the door. I had way too many questions and concerns just walk away, so, I rang the bell again and waited for somebody to answer it. A few moments later Gary answered the door again and I asked if Kyle was all right and if there was anything I could do. He looked at me for a second and said, ¿Kyle is fine, he just does that sometimes.¿ I walked back down to the sidewalk where Jerry and Ken were still standing and told them what Gary had said. They sent a few oaths in Kyle¿s direction and we walked to our house just around the corner. From what we were able to understand, Kyle was faking the episode though we never new exactly why. Fire in the Street Later that evening I told my older brother, Howie that I still had Kyle¿s car keys. I mentioned the same thing to my younger brother, Jerry, thinking he may want to take Kyle's car out with me on a joy ride. Jerry always seemed to follow a somewhat more straight and narrow path and so I wasn't too surprised when he said, ¿Give him back his f n¿ keys!¿ So I replied to Jerry, ¿Yeah, okay!¿ Knowing full well I had no intention of giving back his keys, at least, not yet anyway. Before long I walked back over to Kyle¿s house and jumped in his car, started it up and drove around the block to pick up Howie. The first thing we did once we had the car was to go pick up my two friends, Mike Williams and John Hienricks. That done we went to see about ¿scoring¿ some beer. That task was never difficult back then, for all you had to do was stand in front of the liquor store and ¿tap shoulders.¿ Here is how we used to do it, whether together or individually, though I always had better luck alone, we would ask somebody who ¿looked cool¿ to get us whatever amount we happen to need at the time, and offer them a couple of bucks extra. You always had to be careful whom you asked because some people simply couldn¿t be trusted. We had one guy who seemed perfectly willing to score for us, tell us to walk around the corner of the building and he would drive around and hand it to us where nobody could see, lest he be caught buying for minors. So we walked around the building as directed, then waited for the dude to come out of the store. Shortly, he walked out of the store with the case of beer we ordered, got in his car, and as we watched and waited for him, he just drove off with our beer. After that we were much more diligent about whom we gave our money to, and where we waited for the delivery. So we got a case of beer and cruised around for a while. It was now Howie¿s turn to drive and he took us to Wonderlich Park, which was about a mile from our house. We grabbed a couple of beers each and went to sit down on one of the picnic benches there. It was eight or nine o¿clock by this time and we were all feeling the effects of the beer. Looking around at the large lawn area, we noticed how wet from the sprinklers it was, and pristine from want of use. We jumped back in the car and determined to use the wet grass for our own pleasure. I got in the drivers seat as the rest of the guys piled in. I drove the car up over the curb and hit the gas, hauling ass toward the opposite side of the park. When we were at once upon the far side of the park, I hit the brakes and cranked the wheel hard to the left. The entire rear end lost traction and it slid around at one hundred and eighty degrees. After I did a couple of donuts, everyone else took a turn. With the engine revving high and houses everywhere on each side of the park, we could only keep this up for a very short period of time. Soon, we were out of there, tearing down the street and into something else. We then headed back to our own neighborhood where we just drove around Craig and Lancer Drives. At the far end of Lancer, near Kenny¿s house, I was trying to turn the car around, so I drove up into a driveway and began backing out so I could point the car in the opposite direction. As I backed it up, I apparently didn¿t turn the wheel far enough to keep the rear end of the car in the street and instead struck a car that was parked on the other side of the street. The man whose car I hit, Mr. Johnson, was a well know long distance runner. He happen to be outside, or somewhere within earshot of the collision I just made and came running up towards our car. I spotted him when he was only ten or twenty feet from the back of the vehicle and jammed the car into drive and punched the gas. His speed and endurance were amazing, and frightening. When the car was going five mph then ten mph he was still gaining on us, so I floored it and at twenty mph he was still trailing us but to no avail. At length, he slowly fell far behind and was soon left in the dust. At first we could hear him cuss us out and see his rage, but we had to leave the seen, for no good could ever have come from us stopping. After a couple of hours of driving around we noticed that the car was about out of gas. It had to be midnight or 1am by this time and it had begun to rain. We had to leave our neighborhood because of the incident with Mr. Johnson, so we went to somebody else¿s neighborhood where we would try to find some gas. It didn¿t take long before we spotted an older model car that we assumed would not have a locking gas cap. We didn¿t have a gas can, rather, all we had were empty beer cans. That being the first time I ever tried to siphon gas; I took more in my mouth than I ever cared to. We probably filled five or six empty beer cans with gas then attempted to transfer the contents into our car, which was no easy task. We ended up pouring it down the same hose we used to siphon it with. Now we had a little bit of gas, so we went cruising around some more. The beer seemed to be holding up just fine, but the gas was soon dangerously low again. It was raining pretty hard by this time and only served to make the roads more slippery and fun. The time came where we absolutely had to find more fuel so we selected another older model vehicle to borrow some gas from. When Howie and I exited the car to start transferring more gas, we noticed how full of rainwater the gutters had become. It was rushing in torrents next to the car we were siphoning from. It was much later and quieter now so we could pretty much take our time getting the gas. With eight or ten cans now in our car, and just as many spilled into the gutter, it was time to go. I cannot recollect how it came about, but with our car on the high side of the rushing mix of water and gas we decided to throw a match into it. I reached into my pocket and produced a full book of matches. I took two out and struck them together upon the striker and tossed them down into the running mixture of water and gasoline. Before the match even hit the ground, the gutter burst into flames with a roar. As the combination of rain water and gas ran down the gutter so too did the flames. In only a few seconds the entire gutter, for a distance of a hundred feet, was ablaze with a bright light shown on everything at hand, where daylight had come in the middle of the night. It was a surreal scene and reminded me of a war zone. As the fire continued to travel down the street, and was getting more and more out of hand, we panicked and fled the scene. With the disgusting taste of petrol still in our mouths, we called it a night.