As some of you may have noticed, most of my stories involve either a great deal of stupidity on my part, or a great deal of pain. Or both. This story is no different.
About twenty years ago, I had a go-kart. It was red, it was beautiful, and it was fast. The kart had a 150cc motorcycle engine on it, which probably tells you a lot about the family that I come from.
Besides the obvious redneck jokes that could be said about my family (and please don’t get me started), my family is also full of mechanics and perpetual tinkerers. We make things that go fast. We make slower things go faster. We make small things that make big booms. We’re a family that gets in to a lot of car accidents and end up dodging shrapnel from exploding engines in car garages. I’ve even had the opportunity to watch a car or two burn to the ground.
These are the same people that have been known to stand behind a jet car at a drag race and wonder why all the hair on their arms was singed off; they think it’s normal to have a car that gets 7mpg, that rocks back and forth at red lights to the point that windows have broken out, and they wonder why they keep getting pulled over every time they accelerate to highway speeds… in 5 seconds.
These are also the same people that I’ve watched set off fireworks near a 100 gallon propane tank, have leaned on flag poles during a lightning storm, and caused explosions in their backyard that was heard several miles away in every direction. I got to meet the fire department from three neighboring towns that day.
Needless to say, I come from some homely and dangerous rural stock. At seven, I felt like I was prepared for anything.
My father, whom I love to death, is a mechanic and has been for my entire life (and most of his). In fact, I’ve built and rebuilt engines, transmissions, and pretty much anything else you can think of because of him. Ever since I was old enough to hang around automotive shops and garages, I’ve been working on cars.
Now, my father, being the consciencious man that he is, decided that he should put a limiter on my go-kart to make sure I wouldn’t drive it too fast. He knew that I was a bit reckless and had no real regard for my own safety. He couldn’t imagine where I got that from.
Without the limiter, my go-kart had a top speed right around 60mph (and probably faster if there wasn’t worry about the wheels flying off). He had throttled it back closer to 20mph, which, to him I’m sure seemed reasonable. To the reckless Attebery that I was… well… not so much.
One hot summer day in July, I had taken my kart over to a friend’s house. He lived on a plot of land out in the middle of nowhere, because honestly, most of the houses in Lebanon were out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a “somewhere” within 50 miles.
Anyway.
He had a huge backyard with plenty of hills and tall grass to drive through. Needless to say, it became a favorite place to take my kart.
As I said, I was seven, but I’d been in automotive garages for a long time. I knew what a limiter was, and how to disable it. I’d watched my dad put it on the engine and he had assumed that I didn’t know what he was doing to my precious throttle.
This is a lesson to parents: Never assume your child’s ignorance. Your kid knows.
After freeing my kart from the shackles of the limiter and poor performance, I decided to start it up. I’m not sure I can say I knew what an adrenaline rush was when I was seven. I know what it is now, but back then, I just remember liking the feeling of starting that engine up. It purred lovingly, and I loved the way it made me feel to just sit there and anticipate taking off.
I sat there a minute, just enjoying the rumble of the little kart. My friend, standing nearby, was starting to get impatient; I could tell by the annoying way he kept asking if I was going to take off. He started to beg me to go. He was breaking up my zen moment.
It was at this point that I started getting upset at him and, in a moment of carelessness and lack of judgement (which was fleeting to begin with), I stomped on the gas as hard as I could.
That, I believe, was my first mistake.
Very few seven year olds are experienced at driving at 60mph, and driving a little kart that low to the ground makes that speed really feel like I was doing Mach 2. I was scared out of my wits and, much to my surprise and my horror, I’d jammed the gas so hard to the floor that the throttle spring was caught.
The engine was completely stuck at full throttle. I was only ten seconds in to my ride and I’d already managed to get myself in trouble. I realized that I was going to have to bail out or figure out some miraculous solution to my problem. There wasn’t any way to drop out of gear, and holding the brake was only going to start a tire fire. I was sure I was going to die.
Then it came to me. My genius seven year old brain, running on pixie sticks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, had formulated a plan. My plan was simple and stupid: turn around and fix the spring. You know, while I was still driving.
I know, I can hear you folks out there shaking your head at me. Believe me, I know. But what seems reasonable at one point, is not always perfectly cromulent ten minutes later.
I straightened out the steering wheel, aimed the kart for what I thought was a reasonable straight plot of land with few obstacles, unbuckled from my harness, and turned around to see if I could unhook the throttle arm on the engine.
I came to find out that looking at an engine and finding a certain part of an engine is much more difficult at what seemed like 700mph.
It was summer, so there were six million bugs flying through the humid Oregon air, and they were slapping me like little exploding insect missiles. My face and shirt were beginning to look like the front grill of a car driving through the rainforest.
I’m not sure if I was holding the wheel with my feet or if I had just assumed that the kart was going to stay in a straight line while I was turned around, but either way, it didn’t work out quite the way I’d hoped.
Mind you, I got that stupid spring unstuck. I did. It was fixed. It had taken all of five seconds, but it had seemed like three eternities, and the kart just starting to slow down. I even managed to feel elation for about a second and a half before the kart went down the embankment, over a hill (which was quite spectacular, might I add… I caught at least a full second or two of air), and in to the river.
My beautiful, wonderful, and red go-kart, was now a wet pile of metal and anguish in the Santiam river. But at least it had stopped, and I, aside from being shaken (not stirred), was fine. Bruised, wet, scratched up, and a bit upset. But fine.
The real fun came a few hours later when I called my mom to explain what had happened. I didn’t lie because, well, let’s face it, she would know better. She was upset at me, I could tell, but she said that she would come and get me. And the kart.
I found that last little bit confusing because it wasn’t like the kart could be driven back, and our little Volkwagen Rabbit wasn’t going to be able fit the kart in the trunk. I’d driven the kart to my friend’s house using all the little backwood dirt roads and side streets that I’d learned living in that little town, and now it was stranded as far as I was concerned.
But to my horror, my mom showed up in the Volkswagen Rabbit, visibly upset and carrying a tow chain. To this day, I’m not sure if she was trying to teach me a lesson, or if she honestly thought that using a tow chain was the best course of action. I knew it was a bad idea. I was seven years old and I knew; but I also wasn’t going to argue with her after all the stupid mistakes I’d made that day.
With tow chain attached firmly to the bumper of the VW Rabbit, and the other end anchored to the front right and front left part of my kart’s chassis, we were off. I was sitting, reluctantly, in the kart as my mom drove the car. I already had a bad feeling about the entire situation, but I didn’t seem to have a choice.
She took the same country roads back to our place, along the dirt paths and hilly uncharted areas that nobody seemed to take any notice of. We were a few minutes in to the ride and I was just beginnging to believe that I was actually going to make it home in one piece. I’m of the opinion now that either life or parents detect hope in kids. And they squash that hope.
The car started to speed up and I, being more than a little uncomfortable with the pace that we were going, began to wave my arms wildly in my mom’s rearview mirror.
She apparently took that as a que to go even faster, because in my mind I could hear Rick Moranis scream, “Ludicrous speed! GO!” and we were off. We’d gone to plaid, as it were. The poor go-kart, an already wet and unrunning heap of metal and discomfort, was shuddering and wobbling all over the dirt road.
I could feel every bump, every rock, and every tiny little hill along the path. I was catching air left and right. I was hitting mud and sticks and bushes and could swear that at some point I ran over a rat or a neutria or something. I was seven years old and I already had my first roadkill.
I tried to keep the kart straightened out as best I could, but after a few minutes I realized the futility of my efforts. It was apparent that I was only along for the ride, and that it was going to be one heck of a ride.
My mom took more than a few sharp corners at about twice the speed recommended; the chain was long enough that I swung out and, just on the edge of being enveloped in blackberry bushes, the kart pulled back toward the middle of the road at the last second.
I began to yell, “Mom! Mom! Slow down!” and flailed my arms frantically in an effort to get her attention. But it only seemed make her more angry.
I’d forgotten that the reason I’d left the house that day was because she had a migraine. A bad one. So each scream from the stupid kid in the kart behind her was only a reminder that she’d had to pick up my sorry seven year old self. Each time she heard me screaming, she sped up even more.
We were approaching warp 9, and Mr. Sulu wasn’t exactly around to apply the brakes. We’d lost Scotty at that last speed bump, and I was pretty sure that portions of my liver and at least one of my kidneys was lying on the side of the road somewhere.
We approached the last big turn on the way home and, not being a religious child, I still prayed fervently that she would slow down and allow me to survive long enough to get home and be punished. She didn’t.
The go-kart swung wildly toward the side of the road and me, wide eyed and terrified, screamed like a little girl. A high pitched wail at the top of my lungs that I’m sure sounded like nails on a chalk board to most of the feline population within miles of the incident.
My right tires approached the edge of a river bank, and I could see the water was a full twenty feet below. All I could think was that I didn’t want to crash for a second time that day, and worse yet, she seemed determined to make sure it happened.
As I screamed from behind that Volkswagen Rabbit, I could hear through the open driver’s side window what sounded like muffled laughter. She denied this for years later, but I could hear her. The muffled laughter grew to a full on riotous cackle, and from that a laugh that would transcend the laugh of any animated witch in any Disney cartoon. I felt a chill run down my spine. She was enjoying this.
The person that had given me life (and was in the process of trying to end it), was enjoying this entire ordeal that was likely going to scar her offspring for life.
We rounded that final corner, mercifully coming to a stop outside my house. As my mom got out of the car she no longer seemed upset at me or in pain. She said, “Well, get that in to the garage so you and your dad can fix it tonight.”
And with a smirk, she walked inside the house and left me sitting in the go-kart, white knuckles still gripping the steering wheel and feet braced against the front side of the metal chassis.
It wasn’t the last time I messed with that stupid limiter (I was always a slow learner), but it was the last time I ever called my mom for help when I knew I’d be in trouble.