FIX BAYONETS!

These days, driving drunk is more than merely frowned on, and rightly so. Drunks behind the wheel are dangerous. There was a time though, back in the day, when it was somewhat tolerated and nobody thought much of it.

Drunk is bad enough. Drunk and stupid is, well, you decide.

Petty Officer Missing Link, my nemesis at Coast Guard Air Station Mobile, Alabama, drove an American Motors Javelin, that company’s answer to the Mustang. He was one of those people who thought that a fast car made him more important. He also didn’t learn real fast.

In preparation for deployment aboard an icebreaker, we went down to the Mobile Fire Department training location for a refresher in basic firefighting techniques. Those who had cars drove and the rest of us hitched rides.

When the training got done and everyone was leaving, ML thought it would be funny to jackrabbit toward ‘Pappy’ and pretend to try to run him over.

Pappy was a curmudgeon. You did not mess with him, because he always won. “Old age and guile will win over youth and enthusiasm.”

Pappy did not try to do a movie dive off to one side to escape; he simply jumped up and ran, allowing the car to pass underneath him. In passing, he delivered about $300 dollars of body damage to the hood and roof. ML couldn’t understand why Pappy refused to help him pay for repairs…..

So, at some later date, ML went to a party, where he got totally hammered. Of course, in those days, if you were too drunk to walk, you drove, so he climbed into his Javelin and headed back to base.

He pulled up to a stop light, and surprisingly enough, actually heeded it. Then an AMX pulled up next to him. Now, if the Javelin was AMC’s answer to the Mustang, the AMX was their answer to the Shelby Cobra. This one sported a ‘390′ on the front fender, denoting the largest engine available.

ML was pretty proud of his car. Sober, he probably would have not even dreamed of racing an AMX. His car was good but the other, oooooooh. It was built as a muscle car, and touted as capable of up to 130 MPH, straight off of the showroom floor.

ML started revving his engine. The AMX didn’t reply right away but at the second challenge, its engine revved back. The challenge was accepted! More revving by both would be racers and the light finally turned green. They were off! Tires smoking off the line and slamming through all four gears in no time. Then, suddenly,

Red and blue lights right next to ML!

See, at that time, the Alabama Highway Patrol had bought AMXs to use as ‘Interceptors’ for chasing down speeders or other miscreants. ML hadn’t bothered to notice the blue and red lights sitting on his opponent’s roof and had challenged a Highway Patrolman to a race that he was bound to lose.

Could he get any dumber? Oh, yeah. He came to work and bragged about racing an AMX. Not winning, just racing. Then the details came out…..

Pull the curtain……..