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No Capes! [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-26
A few years ago, I was at a local car show where people brought their actual cars to show off. I can’t say “daily drivers” because only two types of vehicles were allowed - 911s and Corvettes. Partway through the tour of pristine paint, horsepower, and wide tires, I remembered something. I remembered the first time I’d ever seen a Porsche 911 and a Corvette together.
I’m trying to remember how old I was when it happened. Pretty young, I’ll say that. I easily fit in a Volkswagen Beetle's “rumble seat” back then. But now my father had recently gotten a new car. It was a bright yellow, Opel…something or other. It was two-door, and while sporty looking, it wasn’t exactly a high-performance machine.
My father drove me and my two brothers to see relatives in northern New Jersey. We were on the highway, so I presume we were doing fifty or sixty miles an hour, although I’m not sure about the top speed of that little Opel with passengers. As we approached the Nabisco Fair Lawn factory, I stood between the seats and smelled the air. Yes, I stood up. Child seats weren’t a thing yet. In a moment, the anticipated fragrance arrived - chocolate chip cookies. Every day or night, you could smell the cookies they made there. It was awesome.
Since I was standing up between the seats, I had a clear view directly out of the windshield and onto the surrounding five-lane wide highway. I also had a clear view of the stake truck ahead of us, a lane to our right. It was one of those big trucks with metal walls you could see through for carrying livestock, hay, or whatever. This one had flat plywood sheets filling about half of the bed. I didn’t know what plywood was beyond being a flat piece of wood. But I’m pretty sure my father knew how big, heavy, and durable they were.
We approached the overpass near the factory and started up its long, smooth incline. The truck slowed as it climbed the hill, as did my father’s Opel. I remember seeing one sheet of plywood move inside the truck’s bed. It flopped around a little, like a weak breeze disturbing a newspaper. The stake truck crested the rise, and that sheet of plywood caught air.
The plywood launched into the air, more than twice the truck’s cab height, and it wasn’t alone. Apparently, a strong crosswind on the far side of the overpass hit the side of the truck, deflected toward the wood, and blasted through the open walls of the stake truck’s bed.
Sheet after sheet of four-foot by eight-foot, fifty-pound wood flew, tumbled, and spun in every direction across the highway. Tires screeched everywhere as the multitude of cars desperately dodged the attacking wood. I was jostled between the front seats as my father did the same. One sheet flew up, did a full rotation, and landed vertically in the lane directly before us. It tilted toward our windshield. I remember my father going right, then throwing his body and the wheel back left, but it didn’t work. The sheet of wood fell towards us like a drawbridge with its chains cut. No doubt my father thought we were all dead. But physics intervened. As sporty looking as my father’s Opel was, it was not very aerodynamic. So at speed, it pushed lots of air out and up. The plywood caught that air. I remember distinctly seeing the sheet fall about halfway down. It blocked out the entire windshield, aimed at our heads, but slid over the top of our car without touching us. The split-second danger was gone, but the threat remained. There were too many cars to stop, and the sheets of plywood kept coming.
Then I heard a metallic scream. That’s the only way I can describe the memory of the sound. I looked back towards the left. A silver Porsche 911 came up the shoulder at what had to be near its top speed. Directly behind it was a bright yellow Corvette. The cars flew past everyone and dodged through the mix to get in front of the stake truck. The 911 got in front of him, and the Corvette got right on the driver’s side door. I swear it took less than ten seconds. Once he was boxed in, they forced the truck off the highway.
Of course, I didn’t know what kind of cars I’d seen, but I remembered what they looked like and later learned what they were. My father kept driving without saying anything, and I never heard him talk about our near-death experience. To this day, I still don’t know how he kept that little car under control and kept us safe. It was a genuinely heroic test of his driving skills and demeanor.
Decades later, long after my father had stopped driving, I realized that pretty much everything I knew about driving came from my father. And while looking at the incredible cars around me, I realized that the drivers of that 911 and Corvette had, without a doubt, saved a lot of lives that day, including mine.
Not all heroes wear capes, but some really do drive sports cars.
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