The Great American Bombastic Part 4

Whether it be a Stingray Corvette, Pontiac Firebird, or IROC Camaro it was always the same for me. My dad, drunk beyond all reason or logic, driving way too fast and way too angry. A small child should never have to contemplate what it is going to be like to die instantly in a horrible heap of twisted metal, but that was my existence for as far back as I remember. One particular episode will always stick out most vividly in my mind. Dad wanted to go hang out with his buddies at Watauga Lake which rests on the borders of North Carolina and Tennessee nestled in the mountains. I do not remember exactly how old I was, but I know I was still a little feller. Pop was already knee deep into a fifth of Jack Daniels and in normal drunk asshole fashion made me take the ride with him to hang out with his wild and wooly friends. I never wanted to go with him and always ended up having to simply because I was a little boy and not yet capable of whipping his sorry ass. So off we went in a souped up white Firebird at what I always considered the speed of sound. If a passing motorist, or stationary motorist, or anyone doing anything at all on the roadway did anything, my father would cuss them like they had just attempted to cut his wang off with a rusty knife. He particularly enjoyed getting so close up on people's bumpers that he could wipe their kid's asses in the back seat. If he encountered a bicyclist he would always fake like he was jerking the steering wheel in their direction so they would panic and hopefully fall into a ditch as they tried to avoid what was surely a mad man who wanted to kill them. These things were so commonplace, but on the day he wanted to go to the lake that day things went a little further than normal. U.S. Highway 321 is a bendy stretch of road even for those who are used to driving on curvy mountain roads. Looping turns, hairpin curves, hidden benders all riddle the way from Boone to Watauga Lake. So there I was riding shotgun with demons out to kill me and about ten miles from our destination they did what they could to do just that. We found ourselves behind two eighteen wheelers hauling huge logs that were stacked up to the max. Dad tolerated the delay for about five minutes with his GD this and GD that and GD you and GD me. Finally he could take no more and he pegged the gas peddle to the floorboard. I was very accustomed to the feeling of having my head pinned back to the seat as dad would gun it, but this time that feeling was accompanied by the certainty that we would not make it around these two massive trucks. The terror was made much worse by the fact that he began his pass right in the middle of a huge looping blind curve. As we got along side the first truck the driver laid on his horn to try and possibly relay some good sense to the obvious idiot who was passing him. Wow I thought, dying is going to be very weird, but at least it is going to be fast. I remember looking at the speedometer and seeing over ninety miles per hour. The whole time my father was laughing, and cussing, and being a generally worthless lump of shit as he toyed with death for a speedy arrival in hell. By the time we had reached the lead truck, which was pretty fucking fast, both truckers were laying on their horns and hitting their brakes. Just as we had enough room to get back over a pickup truck was directly in front of us. By the skin thickness of pop's balding head we got over and continued on our way. To my father shit like this was no big deal and he never even took one single mental note of such occurrences, but I will cut him some slack on that because he was in fact too drunk to remember anything. I wish it were the same for me, but I suppose it has always been for me to remember so that I never take the moronic steps that my father did.