I learned a lot in school, but mostly stuff that didn’t really further my cause all that much. Most of my real life lessons have hurt. Usually in fines or repair bills, sometimes both. And sometimes there was physical pain and misery.

I was out with my buddies one night cruising around town in my old man’s 67 Barracuda. It was a pretty nice car, small V-8 with disc brakes up front, air-conditioned, automatic transmission, and even had an AM radio. It was comfortable and had a lot of room inside behind the back seat for stuff…or small people. And I had a car full as we cruised the circuit, all night drinkin’, smokin, jukin’, and jivin.’

Late that night, after almost everyone had departed for other games and parties, I had a couple of people left and we took a left off of Front Beach on lap 26, I think it may have been Jackson Avenue, and I had a teenage boy moment. For me, (and a lot of other teenage boys, maybe even girls), extreme pleasure was defined by spinning tires, a motor roaring, and smoke coming off the melting back tire while doing a power-brake burnout. The smell of the burning rubber was the big catalyst for me. I can smell it now as I write this. So I stopped the car, slammed my foot down on the brake pedal and mashed the gas and got the right rear tire spinning and smoking. I could smell it and it egged me on. I let off a bit on the brake just enough to let the car move but keep the back tire spinning. It was the best burnout ever! And it went on and on until I heard a loud clunk, the motor revved up even higher and we stopped moving.

The car would not go. I tried reverse. It did not move. I tried all the gears. The car was not going to go again.

I got a ride home with someone. My dad was still up when I came in, so I told him the car broke down. He had questions. Like where? And what? I told him uptown and I didn’t know what happened, it just quit moving, it still ran, but it didn’t go. I told him it was a mystery, it had been fine, then it wasn’t.

So we went to check it out. When we pulled up behind his Barracuda, it was easy to see in the headlight lit scene, a black, angry stripe of rubber lining the road for a hundred feet or so leading right up to the back right tire of his car. And there it sat. My dad went and started the car and put it in gear and like me was unable to get the car to move in any direction.

We pushed it out of the street to the side, and he said we would come back in the morning and get a tow to a garage he was working part-time at. He didn’t say much else.

The next morning he woke me up, at zero-dark-thirty. He pushed me and my fuzzy head out the door and we met the tow truck at the car. Then we followed to the shop. It was just coming up light when we got there. Still, the old man hadn’t really said much, which was a really good thing for me, my head did not feel good, my stomach didn’t feel good, I ached all over, and my eyes were swimming, from the spinning world.

We bought parts and we fixed the axle I broke. It took a good part of the day and I learned how to take apart a differential and rebuild it. I paid for the parts which was about three months worth of my meager part-time job salary. I was greasy, I was tired, I was broke and broken. Finally, when we were all done, my dad asked me, “Ya think you’ll be doing that trick again?” I told him I thought not.

Turns out I was right on the money, I never broke another car axle while power-braking the car. I have, however, found other ways to tear shit up. Lessons hurt.