On Bandini with Dumb-Ass Joe

 

    One of the few positives that came out of the painful departure of Tim's father was a small amount of money that was left after Tino wasted away from cancer. They never had a lot of cash in reserve at the time.  The house on Oklahoma street was probably the life's work of Faustino who boxed and then did a series of jobs around SoCal including bartending, supervising newspaper vending and teaching a few lessons about the sport of kings. Tim adored his Dad and when he had to watch him fade away it left a scar that never healed. The Old Man was larger than life and had lots of gritty life experience. There is much more to say about the Balderamas but that is for another story. This is about 1966, the year after we graduated from Pius and Timo and I were playing on a church league team over at South Gate High School.  He was the best player while I tried to keep from getting in his way. However, Tim, Paul and I made for a formidable 3-on 3 team and we were not bad in the league under the banner of St. Helen's. It was close to game time when he had not appeared at the gym so I called him on a pay-phone and barked at him as he answered "where are you man?" He calmly let me know his father had died that afternoon and that was the beginning of a struggle he had to become a man when we were really just kids. Both of us had no idea of what to do with ourselves after high school and the spector of Vietnam was looming in our futures. I wasted a year knocking around Cerritos College and Time took his little inheritence and let some slick car salesman talk him into buying a boss car with a big engine and four on the floor Hurst transmission. We are talking a 426-cubic-inch V-8. Dodge Coronet. I was driving a Volkwagen Beetle so riding in the big muscle car was to become a cool dude just by hanging in the shotgun seat. I had the great fortune of working at the South Gate Park North Playground that Summer and Timo would come over to visit when he arose in the morning around 11:30, rolling up with a bag of weinerschnitzel chili dogs and a large coke in his hand. We were both lost in the new society and just searching for our place in this changing culture.

     So, Timo had this bitchen' ride and the big engine begged to take on the posers over on Bandini road where street racing was highly competitive. Truthfully, it was too much car for novices like us but Tim had some groovy rides up and down Tweedy or over to McDonalds on Florence where kids stared with envy at the boss ride. I went to Bandini a couple of times but in a VW Bug I was never a participant and it made me uncomfortable because there was no supervision and the cops very rarely came by to put a stop to drunken teens driving big cars at top speed. What could go wrong? At that time I hung around with a bunch of losers who were more pose than possibilities except for Paul Knowlton. One of these guys was the somewhat tragic Dan Bresnahan who went to Vietnam and came back with a serious drug habit. He had a buddy named Joe who was a genuine dipshit with no sense or money. Somehow, Tim allowed him to drive his bad-ass Dodge and this bad idea became a disaster. Joe jumped in the car and started heading down the street where races were held without any idea of the course or obstacles. He just jumped in shoved the Hurst transmission into gear and stood on the accelerator. He may have reached 100 mph but there was a bump way past where the cars slowed up after the finish line. Joe just sailed by the point of no return and hit the bump at full-speed, thus sending the huge car airborne for quite a distance whereupon it crashed to the asphalt spinning sideways with tires whining and smoke pouring from different parts of the car. The shocks held the car upright but there was an end to racing for  the Coronet. Tim was normally calm but he had some words for the  idiot Joe who begged forgiveness but it was miraculous that the car and the stupid-ass were not demolished. When Tim saw the bump of danger in his own meandering life he managed to take the big Dodge back and by the end of the month he was enrolled in the Air Force and on his way to March AFB where muscle cars did not exist but dumb kids were plentiful.