Road Trip #18 On to Gunnison

One last look at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison

    

We finished at the Black Canyon Museum and Gift Shop early in the afternoon, and Wayne pointed the big Ford east again, for the short drive to Gunnison.  You may have noticed that Wayne has done all the driving.  There was a reason for that.  Wayne, who is ordinarily as brave as the next fellow, was deathly afraid to let me have the wheel.  The pickup was brand new, not a scratch on it.  He wanted to keep it that way. 

     I am a competent driver.  I have been doing it for over sixty years in every type of driving environment ordinarily faced by mankind.  For years, I negotiated Loop 610 in Houston at rush hour, and Dallas’ Central Expressway at all hours. I raced up and down the streets of Lubbock as a teenager.  I drove an International R-190 diesel truck all over the New Mexico oil fields and put over fifty thousand miles on an Alfa Romeo Spyder in Texas and Louisiana. I coaxed a thirty-two foot motor home up over the rim of the Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park and rode a motorcycle over back-country logging trails from Mora to Taos, New Mexico.

     I could say that I have done all that driving without a single mishap, but that would not be truthful.   The truth is, there may have been several little bumps along the way, but I have never been hurt and I have never hurt anyone else with a motor vehicle.  With all the experience I listed above, and with the maturation process that we all must go through, you must realize that some of that driving was done in a chemically altered state of consciousness.   During those times, I was lucky.  Very lucky.

     I might as well admit this up front, because some of you won’t let me forget it.   I did once high-center a ’60 Chevy Impala on top of a panhandle farmer’s hog feeder.   That was a special case.  My date was utterly fantastic, so I was trying to impress her.  The road was lonely and desolate, and I managed to perch my car up there about one am.  With some help, I removed it before eight the next morning.  Down through the years, at least three hundred people have sworn they witnessed the incident, and giggled about how funny it looked, parked up there.  My date was not impressed.

     We are currently on our way to James Collins’ house in Gunnison.  James and I have been friends for many years, and he is the only witness to the uncanny skill I display when I become “one with the automobile.”  During our formative years, James and I spent a lot of time together, and a lot of it was in a car, going somewhere, or coming back.  On three different occasions, James was with me when I was driving down the road at something over sixty miles per hour.  Backwards.  On those occasions, I was truly “one with the automobile.”

     On two of those trips, there were others with us and one time, I was absolutely sober.  In all three cases, because the vehicle and I were one, I managed to safely stop without damage to the car or its contents.  (There are those who might testify that I was spinning down the highway, out of control, but my friend James knows that I was “one with the automobile” and completely in charge at all times.)

      I am not proud of the fact that I operated a motor vehicle while under the influence.  I was young and foolish and it was a different, much less populated, world.  The MADD ladies had not yet become necessary.  They do wonderful work now, focusing attention on this problem and helping to save lives.  I can only say, as I did above, I have been very lucky.

     This must be where I need to say, “But I digress….”

     Back to how Wayne developed his entirely unreasonable phobia.  On the second day of this trip Wayne and I had a pit stop just west of Phoenix and he pitched me the keys, saying, “You might as well drive a while.”

     I eased the big, unfamiliar pickup onto I-10 and headed west.  Wayne adjusted the music and leaned back for a well-deserved rest.  I accelerated to freeway speed and passed an eighteen-wheeler.  In an hour or so, we’d be in California.  Wayne opened a soft drink.

     I decided to put the truck on cruise control, because I didn’t want to get a ticket.  I glanced down at the unfamiliar controls—I drive a Buick and a GMC pickup and their controls are entirely different from this big Ford.  I wasn’t going to ask Wayne---I’ve been driving for sixty years and I don’t need any help to figure out a cruise control, for Pete’s sake.  Besides, he had put up his soda and was settling down for a nap as I was getting to be “one with the pickup.”

     I pushed one of the buttons on the steering wheel and nothing happened.  I glanced down at the wheel.  Why would anyone, even a Ford engineer, put such a confusing array of buttons all over the edge of the steering wheel?  I pushed another---the radio changed stations---that woke up Wayne.  He looked around nervously.

     We were startled by a loud “whoosh” as the eighteen-wheeler I’d just passed came back around.  I had been a little distracted and my speed had fallen below fifty-five.   Several trucks were clustered behind me.  I stared down at the buttons on the wheel, trying to decipher their code.  Another truck pulled alongside.  Wayne was wondering if he could help.  He had turned pale.  Ashen is more like it.  I was looking down, concentrating on the buttons.

     Finally, I managed to get the speed control set, and looked up just in time to avoid sideswiping an eighteen wheeler as it pulled alongside.  I whipped the pickup out of a collision course, and said, “Boy that was close.  Good thing I was paying attention.”  Wayne was making gagging sounds.

     Wayne decided we needed gas at the next exit, before we got into the really expensive gasoline in California.  We had only been twenty miles, but I humored him and pulled up to the pump island and turned off the ignition.  Wayne’s hand moved as quickly as any cobra.  He snaked the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into his pocket before I could open the door to get outside.  I haven’t driven at all since.  Wayne really likes to drive.

James Collins at the dining table in Neil McMullen's summer home.  The water you see in the backyard is the Gunnison River.  Neil has to walk all the way over there to fly fish.

      It was a bit after three o’clock when Wayne pulled up into James Collins’ driveway, just across the street from a beautiful golf course.  A hundred yards behind the house, I could see the quick waters of the Gunnison River.  James had several sides of his justifiably famous ribs on the barby.  He and Neil McMullen were there in front, waiting for us.  What a great time we will have with two old friends from the Lubbock High School Class of 1955.   Friends we don’t see nearly as often as we would like.  Stay tuned….

Neil McMullen, at the command center.  Scratch biscuits, sausage, gravy, hash browns---Who knew how much talent the boy has?