Alligator: The Barn Tilted to the Right

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Alligator: The Barn Tilted to the Right

Briefly Said

Curt Ghormley

Oct 02, 2023

October 2, 2023

Laboring under the insecurity that afflicts every teenager, I invested a great deal of emotional energy in seeking approval from my peer group when I was in high school. For a boy in the 1960s, this had a lot to do with wheels.

Due to internal family negotiations that were never fully clear to me, the car I ended up with was a 1966 Austin Cooper “S”. It was one of the original British sports cars of the era, alongside the more well-known MGB, Triumph Sprite, Austin Healey 3000, and the Italian Fiat 124 Sport Spider.

The Austin Mini, as it was known, was unique with its tiny transverse four-cylinder engine, mounted left-to-right under the bonnet, enabling front-wheel-drive engineering.

The Mini with the “S” designation was a high-performance sports car: Zero to 60 in 10.5 seconds, through a quarter mile in 18.1, its astonishing low-end acceleration rivaling the fastest of the American muscle cars of the time over short distances.

Today’s fuel-injected sedans with fully automatic transmissions can put that record to shame by merely holding the right foot down on the throttle, but in 1966, maximum off-the-mark speed was a matter of physical coordination, gear shifting, fast clutching and throttle tweaking. Lots of sound and fury; shake, rattle and roll.

The car was of unibody construction, meaning there was no actual chassis or frame; the body itself gave structure and stability. For further enlightenment see the 1969 cult classic “The Italian Job,” with Michael Caine.

By today’s standards, the movie starts slow, but the chase scene in the last 30 minutes is awesomely entertaining.

One year – it must have been around 1969 or 1970 – I took it on myself to organize a Christmas caroling party. Socially awkward, I found it difficult to approach any of the girls I knew, so I ended up inviting only guys.

The event was nominally built around my church youth group, which at best had about three members, and I invited those I thought were the cool crowd, most a year or two ahead of me in school.

This was perhaps not the best demographic for a sedate evening with manger songs. Also, I had not made arrangements for a hayrack ride, anticipating we would pile into a couple of cars to make the rounds of church families.

The event had all the appearance of a rowdy, drunken mobile party, except, thankfully, without the alcohol.

I had asked Mom to prepare hot chocolate for us, and I had invited the participants to come out to our farm afterward. That was something of a draw because of a feature I had not anticipated: Teenage boys with driver’s licenses and cars, especially with gas at a mere $.35 a gallon, looked for any excuse to run those cars whenever they could.

As I recall, there were eight of us, each in separate vehicles, roaring around town from one suspect’s house to another, gracing residents with unusual versions of “Joy to the World,” “Silent Night,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Cars were haphazardly parked in the streets, engines idling, blocking traffic as we tromped across manicured lawns.

When we tired of the singing (after maybe two or three stops), we set out for the farm.

Our family lived only one mile from the edge of town, on a paved highway. The farm driveway was a quarter-mile long gravel road lined with pine trees, and required a 90-degree right-hand turn from the road. Eight cars made the trip in what immediately turned into an all-out road race. Aging sedans accelerated bumper-to-bumper in an impressive display of spinning tires, oily exhaust, screaming engines and fish-tailing bodies.

The procession included a lumbering ’59 Ford, a gorgeous ’57 Chevy hardtop, a ’64 Impala, a ’50 Buick, and others, along with my ’66 Mini and, bringing up the rear, an almost-new 1968 VW Beetle whose protesting engine made that distinctive “wham-wham” noise of a hay-baler that had run out of hay.

Each driver navigated the turn into the driveway as best he could, most of the ungracious beasts fish-tailing wildly under violent deceleration.

A conventional rear-wheel-drive automobile, making a severe turn on loose sand, and going too fast, will spin out tail first into the fence. If the driver keeps power on, the rear end will most certainly break loose; if he takes power off, it will still spin out but maybe not make a complete 360.

A front-wheel-drive car, such as the Mini, with power off, will absolutely spin out tail first, but keeping the power on will cause the front wheels to continue to pull the car through the curve. As long, that is, as traction remains.

With the Mini, the front wheels, with power on, would break loose, slide sideways over the gravel, then gain traction again momentarily. This causes a churning “grind-grind-grind” through the corner, and this lasts as long as the outside front tire does not catch in deeper gravel or sand. When it does catch, however, catastrophe is not far away.

The centrifugal force has to go somewhere.

This night, I was about half-way back in the pack on the highway, keeping up admirably, I thought, and when I approached the turn I was in third gear at about 60 mph. No problem for a Mini… piece of cake. I double-clutched down to second, tweaked the throttle mightily to synchronize the gears, and saw the tachometer spike to 6,500 rpm.

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The engine was red-lined at 6,000 but I had been here before and was confident it would not fail me. The exhaust shrieked maniacally. I horsed the steering wheel around, full power on, and felt the front end predictably tramp and grab as traction was lost and re-gained. I was only feet from the car in front and the one following.

And then the left-front tire caught in the loose blow sand.

I saw a phenomenon I had never observed before and hope never to see again: The barn at the end of the driveway, 200 yards away, sitting peacefully aloof in the moonlight, suddenly tilted violently to the right, held for a split second, and then settled back to an upright position. Pine boughs brushed the top of the Mini as it fought its way through the corner.

I came within milliseconds of turning the car over in my own driveway.

The shaking didn’t stop until I was well into the second cup of hot chocolate. I know I was strangely silent for being the host of a rowdy party, but I had suddenly settled down to an unaccustomed consideration of mortality, and how to avoid a conversation with Dad, and what life might have been like without the Mini.

I never invited those guys out to the farm again, at least not in a group, and that one incident, as close to disaster as ever I came, slowed me down permanently. I still shudder at the panic, half a century later.

Theological Contemplations

I don’t think any passage in the Bible speaks of someone doing something stupid and paying the price for it. Sinful, yes, but that is in a somewhat different category.

The verse about Jehu’s driving in 2 Kings 9:20 may be, however, relevant: The driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi—he drives like a maniac.

A lookout on the tower was watching for news of the battle. Observing the chariot far away with the naked eye, he made the announcement, and from this, we gather that chariot drivers in that day could be marked by their driving habits, just as we do today.

The mind wanders to two-wheel carts fish-tailing, horses lashed to faster speed, rooster-tails of dust at dirt-road corners.

Using the Hebrew pronunciation of Jehu [YAY hoo], that’s probably where we get our term Yahoo, which used to be pronounced the Hebrew way and was derogatory until the search engine came along. (Maybe it still is.)

Nevertheless, if we are faithless, he remains faithful… (2 Timothy 2:13). I know this passage is a stretch, way out of context, but anyone who has fervently prayed against the consequences of foolish action on the part of their son or daughter knows the extreme reach of panicked Bible interpretation.

It doesn’t change the fact that our hearts yearn to see loved ones delivered from their own foolishness. Consider the father watching for the return of his son (Luke 15:20, the parable of the Prodigal Son), no doubt praying for him as the wayward boy labored among swine in a far country.

I’m pretty sure Mom was not watching the driveway that night (because I would most certainly have heard about it later) but if she had observed my antics with the Mini she would have rolled her eyes to heaven and prayed, her lips moving like Hannah of old (1 Samuel 1:13) in fervent prayer for her idiot son.

And that is as briefly said as I can say it.

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