“How fast do you think it will go?”
It’s impossible to know how many teenage boys have asked that question. Sometimes it is heard as a challenge, perhaps even a taunt. But when I said it to my friend Randy back in the mid-70’s, it was a genuinely honest question. I really wanted to know how fast his car would go.
The question started an adventure that I was sworn to keep secret. Randy was afraid his parents would explode if they found out what we did. I was sure my parents would. And since our friends would talk about it, and their parents were friends with our parents, it made no sense to let it go beyond just the two of us. Besides, nobody would believe us. It’s quite alright with me if you still don’t believe it.
Randy, circa 1977, probably shaking his fist at me not to tell anybody about our adventure.
Sadly, I can tell the story now because Randy was taken by cancer last weekend. It was a tough battle, and it came on so suddenly. He was brave to the end, and filled with that inner peace that I always admired in him. Even when we were 16-years old, you could sense the gentle strength that was core to who Randy was. He was a gracious mix of intelligent, fun loving, hard working, and loyal. Coaches would call him the ultimate team player. Back when we were changing from boys into men, he was a good friend who I could always trust. I will miss him.
So as my way of honoring Randy, and perhaps sharing something his family has never heard, I’ll tell the untold story.
We both loved cars. Randy had a vintage 60’s muscle car — a ’67 Camaro if I remember correctly, though time has dulled the details in my memory. My question, “How fast do you think it will go?” set off a conversation about where it could be safely driven to find out. Safe, in this conversation, was mostly about avoiding police.
I had an idea. Randy always rolled his eyes when I had an idea because it meant doing something dangerous, stupid, or ridiculous. Or all three. But he had a love for excitement that belied his gentle demeanor. Randy wanted adventure, he just didn’t want stupidity.
“You know what we could do,” I began, “is take this over to the unopened lane of 680 between Fremont and Milpitas. Lots of room, no cars, and at night nobody will be out there.”
Such was the logic of a teenage boy smitten by the sound of a Chevy V-8 engine.
It took some doing, but eventually Randy agreed. So one night — morning, really, probably about 1:30 AM — we headed south on 680 until we got to the new lanes that hadn’t opened. We found a way onto the closed lane and drove slowly along the stretch to make sure there were no piles of rock, parked tractors, or huge holes in the ground. Once we saw that it was safe, we went back to where we started.
And that’s when it got scary. Randy said something like “I can’t believe we’re doing this” and then gunned the motor. I had a big smile on my face; Randy was completely serious and focused. I remember screaming “Holy ___” at one point as the speedometer maxed out. Everything seemed like a blur as we flew down that road, and a couple of times I turned around fully expecting to see flashing lights.
We never saw any. Sensing the car had topped out and asking it to do anything more would just run the risk of breakdown, Randy slowed the car quickly and, at a spot we had scouted before, got the car back onto the open lanes. At the first exit we got off the freeway and turned around to make our way home to Pleasanton.
I was laughing and talking too much. Randy was chuckling and smiling. His hands were shaking a bit, but not much — surely not as much as mine would’ve been. It wasn’t the speed that made us nervous … it was the flaunting of the law in so many ways. We were good kids, not ones who were prone to getting into trouble, and this exploit was a stretch for us.
The question about how fast the car would go was never answered. Fast to be sure, but the wheels Randy put on the car distorted the true reading of the speedometer. We both think it was faster than what the speedometer read.
Randy and I had more adventures after that. Our biggest — which generated a dozen or more stories — was after high school graduation when we got into my old Datsun pickup and drove to Alaska. Randy was the kind of friend that I could trust to be dangerous with. He wasn’t crazy dangerous the way some teenagers are. He was willing to take a risk, but only a calculated one, and he never took a risk just for the attention. In this way he was much like me, and we enjoyed our friendship.
Eventually we both settled down. He married Sandy, another of our high school friends, and of course I married D’Aun. Randy was a groomsman in our wedding. We drifted apart over the years as friends will do, but each time we reconnected we’d find ourselves laughing as if no time at all had passed.
I’ll miss him. Love you, my friend. Find an unopened lane in Heaven for when I join you.
