John R. Riggs - Me, Darst, and Alley Oop

ME, DARST, AND ALLEY OOP

JOHN R. RIGGS

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2016 John R. Riggs. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 8/8/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1955-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1954-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911954

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Contents

We sang in the sunshine
You know we laughed every day.
We sang in the sunshine
Then I went on my way.

From the song, Well Sing in the Sunshine

To the Wayfarer in all of us,
And, as always, to Carole

A ctually, it began with a trip to the dentistthe chain of events that would lead to Darst and I driving a 1946 Dodge with a 1954 Dodge engine on the wrong motor mounts with the fan blades cut in half and no emergency brake through the Badlands, Black Hills, Rocky Mountains, and all points west on our way to California. It was Saturday, February 8, 1964, the day before the Beetles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I was running late, and as I left Mulberry on my way to Frankfort and the dentist, I noticed that Alley Oop had no oil pressure.

Mulberry is a town of about 1,000 in Clinton County, Indiana and ten miles east of Lafayette on Indiana State Highway 38. Frankfort is the Clinton County seat and ten miles southeast of Mulberry. Alley Oop, so named by my mother for the comic caveman riding the crest of a number one song, was a 1946 Dodge that my brother, Carl, had bought in the spring of 1959 for a hundred dollars from a local farmer and that Carl and I had then brush painted a dark blue with red wheel rims. Carl drove Alley Oop to and from his summer job at a Lafayette A and P and throughout his senior year in high school, then turned Alley Oop over to me when he left for Miami University in the fall of 1960. I in turn drove Alley Oop on my Indianapolis Star paper route, and to and from Clinton Prairie High School August 1961 to May 1963. I also drove Alley Oop all over the back roads of Clinton County as I ferried teammates home from basketball practice and friends to places we ought not have been, but that is another story. Alley Oop rode like a log wagon and drove like a tank with a top speed of eighty, downhill and downwind, but he had a good heater and a big back seat and usually got me where I wanted to go. There was the added bonus of knowing that whoever dated me did not do so for my car alone, since Alley Oop was not a chick magnet in any sense of the word.

The plan that Saturday in February 1964 was for me to drive Alley Oop to Frankfort to the dentist and leave him in front of the dentists office while I finished my appointment. I would then catch my ride back to Indiana University in Bloomington. Meanwhile my father, who worked at P.R. Mallory in Frankfort and who had ridden to work with someone else, would drive Alley Oop home.

The fact that Alley Oop now had no oil pressure might complicate matters. But ten miles? Surely I could make that, oil pressure or not. Besides, I was running late and Alley Oops gauges had never worked all that well anyway. How did I know that he wasnt lying to me as he had so many times in the past?

That, at least, was my rationale, which always has deluded itself in favor of forward, when confronted with the choice of going forward or back. Honest reflection would have told me that Alley Oops gauges had never lied to me. Not once, ever. I, on the other hand, had routinely ignored themwhich explained why I had once driven to Clinton Prairie and back, twenty miles in all, in sub-zero temperatures, with no heat and a frozen radiator.

The first five miles of my trip to the dentist, while not worry free, went without incident. So far so good, I thought. If it aint broke, dont fix it. But shortly after I turned south at US 421, Alley Oop developed a knock that became a clamor by the time I reached the outskirts of Frankfort. From then on I was a one man band, as people along the way stopped whatever they were doing to stand and stare, dogs ran for cover, and mothers with small children chased them indoors.

When I called Pop a few days later to learn what had happened next (I had kept my dentist appointment and then gone on to Bloomington with Mike Timmons and his family), he said that no indeed, he hadnt driven Alley Oop home. He had ridden in the wrecker that towed Alley Oop home. Alley Oop had dropped a bearing and scarred his crankshaft. Nobody would be driving Alley Oop again soon, if ever.

No matter, I thought. Like Scarlett OHara, Id worry about it tomorrow.

W hy California? Why in May of 1964 did I suddenly decide that I would work my way to California and back that summer? One of the reasons was (no surprise here) a woman. I thought I loved her with all of my heart. She loved me like a brother. To complicate matters, she had a twin sister who loved me better than she did. Or at least her twin gave every indication that she did. But that all changed when her twin and I began to date. I was back to being a brother again. If youve ever been there, on either the brother or the sister side of the equation, you know how it feelslike your heart has been ripped out and hung on the line to dry. To be later eaten by crows.

Then there was the Little 500, the fifty mile bicycle race, made famous in the 1979 movie, Breaking Away . While in junior high and high school, I had gone three and a half years without losing a distance race. In the middle of a cross country race, while running stride for stride with Bob Burris from Dayton, Indiana, with my legs gone to wood, my lungs begging for air, my mind screaming, Why? Why? Why?, I stopped. Walked the rest of the way in and finished fourth.

In the next year and a half I would win only one more race. Not because I didnt try. Not because I didnt run myself to cramps, fall on the track, and rise on dead legs to black gnats and dry heaves. But because while in training I wouldnt push myself beyond pain, which is required of champions.

Little 500 would give me a chance to redeem myself, to erase all of those doubts that had crept in of late as to my worth as a man and an athlete. We started training in February for the race in May, rode outside in all kinds of weather, including one memorable trip to Morgan Monroe state forest on hills from hell in a freezing rain, which coated my glasses and froze my gloves to the handlebars; rode the rollers in the basement of the fraternity house when the snow was too deep to ride outside, and spent our spring break riding the roads around Monon, Indiana, which (trust me on this) is not Clearwater Beach, Florida. I had no idea where our team, Lambda Chi Alpha, would finish the race. I only knew I had to train as hard as I possibly could and earn back my self respect.

We qualified twelfth, finished fourteenth. We would have done better had I not panicked when I came flying in for my first exchange, lost sight of our pits, froze at the handlebars, and slammed into the Beta Theta Pi catcher, who was still out on the track following an exchange of their riders. We lost the pack and essentially the race at that moment, then had to scramble to get another bike and rider on the track.