Car Keys - Part 1 AND Part 2 (NEW)

Car Keys, Part 1

It was the first and only time I can recall intentionally disobeying my parents. It was May of 1970 and I had just graduated from high school. Mom was so gentle and kind that I hated to disappoint her, but Dad was such an authoritarian that it seemed right to be willfully disobedient at least once before heading off to college. And that’s how it came to pass that I stayed out past curfew on the night before the high school state track meet.

When I got back to the house that night I just expected to slip in the back door like I always did and head up to bed. Mom and Dad would never know because the door was never locked and they never stayed up for me anyhow. There was no reason to do so because I never stayed out late, I never disobeyed, and was absolutely trustworthy. Well, except for this one night. When I got home the door was locked.

At first I thought that Mom and Dad had just forgotten I was out and did not intentionally lock the door. When I checked for the spare key in the garage and it was missing, I knew it was locked on purpose and they were upset. I thought about sleeping in the car, but decided that that was just delaying the inevitable. I rang the doorbell and awaited my fate.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually Mom and Dad both showed up at the back door in their bathrobes. Dad took forever unlocking the door and it seemed calculated to let me stew a little longer and speculate on my impending doom. As soon as the door opened Dad started in on me. I don’t remember specifically what he said, but no doubt it included my being irresponsible and risking a poor performance at the track meet the next afternoon. I was accustomed to my dad’s tirades, but this one was particularly stinging because he might have been right this time. Even more painful however was my mom’s look of disappointment.

The bottom line of it all was I was grounded until further notice and they took away my keys to the car. This was a first for me or for anyone in my family.

In my own defense it wasn’t just an evening of willful disobedience. I was pretty anxious about the state meet and knew I wouldn’t sleep well, if at all. I’d been training for this one track meet for an entire year. The previous year I’d finished fourth in the Mile at state in a 4:25. One of the guys in front of me was a graduating senior and the other three of us were juniors, so if I was going to move up a place, or just maintain my place in the pecking order, it was up to me to do the workouts. The problem was this; I was positive the two guys in front of me knew this too. They didn’t get in front of me by sitting on the couch. No doubt the guys behind me had placed a bull’s-eye on my back too.

I’d run throughout the previous summer in preparation, even after a full workday, or a graveyard shift, at the factory. I’d run two-a-day workouts frequently during the fall cross country season. I gave up my one true love, wrestling, in the winter when I separated my shoulder during a JV match, and it became clear I wasn’t going to make the varsity. So I focused on running through the ice and snow of winter with my separated shoulder, again, often twice a day. Every reasonable and unreasonable sacrifice had been made over the period of a year in anticipation of this one race. In fact, my girlfriend had dumped me just prior to the track season both years. Gee, I wonder what caused that.

So getting back to losing the car keys and getting grounded, I went up to bed and slept like a baby. Whodathunkit?

I had to get up early the next morning and catch a ride with an assistant coach who was driving me and a couple other guys over to Ames, Iowa, the site of the track meet. I was still a bit sleepy from my “late” night, so slept during the two hour drive over to Ames. By the time we got there I was well rested and felt ready to run.




Car Keys, Part 2

(You really should read the previous posts about the state mile first.)

My 4:19.9 Mile at state was a phenomenal improvement over my previous best of 4:24 and several tenths that I have forgotten. What I haven’t forgotten is that Coach Wilkinson claimed the official who was standing at the finish line got my time wrong. Wilkinson, sitting in the top row of the stands, said I had a 4:20.0. Either time was the school record by several seconds, but Wilkinson didn’t care what the official time was. He decided he would post the school record as 4:20.0 in the gymnasium.

I never got back to the high school to see my name and my time on the records board in the gym. Wilkinson had a dry sense of humor and liked to give me a hard time. It’s possible he was just razzing me and actually posted the 4:19.9. For the last 40 years I’ve told people that I ran a 4:20 mile just to be sure I don’t take credit for a tenth of a second I didn’t earn.

After finishing third in the mile at state I had an hour or so to recover before running the 880-yard run, aka the half-mile. Dennis Schultz and I got a chance to chat for a few minutes between the races. Dennis had won the mile with an impressive finish, which I didn’t really see from my distant vantage point. He said he was pretty tired from the effort and was thinking of scratching from the 880 in fear of embarrassing himself.

I chewed Dennis out for even thinking about it. He’d won our district race and had a time that put him in the fastest heat of the 880. While I was second to him out of our district, my time put me in the slow heat of the 880 and essentially out of contention. He had a chance to place with the fastest half-milers in the state. It was our final high school race. It was an opportunity not to be missed. I told him he owed it to the other guys to give them a chance to kick his ass after winning the Mile. It wasn’t fair to deny the other guys a chance to say they beat the state champion in the mile. We both had a duty to run the race to the best of our ability with whatever energy we had left. It was the right thing to do.

The slow heat of any event always preceded the fast heat so the faster runners would know what time they had to beat to win the event. The times of runners in the slow heat never seriously challenged those of the fast heat, but they were there to make the runners in the fast heat nervous and run exceptionally hard.

My mom and I have different versions of the slow heat of the 880. I suppose that Mom’s version is correct as she was actually sitting in the stands with Dad and has an unfortunate inclination to tell nothing but the truth. I much prefer my version of events as it doesn’t let facts get in the way of a perfectly good story.

In my version, everybody in the stands knew from the Mile race that that Friar Tuck-like bald man two-thirds of the way up in the stands was the father of the skinny little puke Miler from Cedar Rapids Washington. It wasn’t possible not to know this. The man was so obscenely loud and agitated during the Mile that everyone knew who the father was cheering for.

In my mom’s version my father was not the least bit embarrassing during the Mile, which would be a first occurrence for him, and did not draw any extra notice to himself above that of anyone else in the stands. I find this hard to believe as it would be uncharacteristic for my father.

Anyway, what remains uncontested is this. The slow heat of the 880 was of little interest to the fans. Slow heats never were of any interest to anyone but the parents of the kids. Nobody was paying much attention to us lining up in our lanes for the start. The crowd was deathly quiet. It was at this moment that Dad stood up to yell, “HEY TOM! IF YOU BREAK TWO MINUTES I’LL GIVE YOU THE CAR KEYS BACK!” Everyone in the stands heard it, and laughed.

A man down at the bottom of the stands stood up, turned around, and yelled up to my father, “HEY DAD! WHICH LANE IS HE RUNNING IN?”

“LANE 6.” my dad yelled.

I heard this easily down on the track and had to chuckle. My best time in the 880 (half mile) was a 2:04, but still, it was a day of miracles. I’d set a PR in the Mile by 4 seconds. That was a miracle. I thought, “What the hell, why not go for it? Who knows what might happen?” But best of all, I knew that my father had just forgiven me for my intentional disobedience the night before. I knew that all would be well again at home.

I had hoped to just enjoy the 880, but now, thanks to Dad, the entire crowd was focused on me, a crummy seed, in the slow heat of the 880. Many of the guys in my heat had not run the Mile and were fresh meat for the 880. Where I had been hoping just to finish the 880, I now felt obligated to make a good faith effort to run a good time so as not to embarrass myself or my father.

When the starting gun went off I took off like a bat out of hell, just like everyone else, and once again found myself in last place at the end of the first curve. Fast just wasn’t in my genetics. I don’t remember any more particulars of that first lap other than remaining in last place and thinking what a disappointment I must be to the fans after the brouhaha my father started.

At the beginning of the backstretch, with 330 yards to go, I began my kick for the finish. I didn’t have much speed, and I still don’t, but I could maintain what speed I had for a fairly long time. So I kicked it in with 330 to go and started passing guys, and I heard the crowd come alive. I thought to myself, “After what Dad said, who else would they be watching?”

The more noise they made, the more adrenaline I had, and the faster I went. Every time I passed a guy, the crowd became louder, and I got faster. I was having fun! Down the backstretch I passed a bunch of the guys, and tucked in on the final curve. As I came out of the final curve there was one guy left and a hundred yards of real estate left to cover.

We were both sprinting for all we were worth and I was gaining on him. The crowd was going crazy with the drama, of all things, of a close race in the SLOW HEAT of the 880. It was a drama, and was of interest only because of Dad’s remark prior to the race. Out of the corner of my eye I could see half the crowd watching the stadium clock and the other half were watching me.

Just like the Mile, those final yards hurt like hell, but I did pass the guy, and at the finish line I leaned for the tape like a sprinter, and heard the stadium roar for me, the winner of the slow heat of the 880. I looked up at the stadium clock and saw 1:59.9. I laughed along with the rest of the crowd. It was a crowd pleasing come-from-behind worst-to-first finish in a pretty decent time for the slow heat. It was the fastest 880 I would ever run.  Again, whodathunkit?

The man down at the bottom of the stands stood again to face up into the stands and yelled, “HEY DAD! WHERE ARE THOSE KEYS?” The crowd laughed as my dad stood up and held the car keys up for all to see. Dad made his way down out of the stands with great fanfare and met me at the fence. I got the car keys back then and there. Mom might have been taking pictures.



Epilogue –

I walked down to the end of the track to watch the fast heat of the 880. Dennis and Krantz ended up battling each other yet again and Dennis won in an incredible time of 1:55.2, the fastest time ever in any class at the high school state meet. I had to laugh. Dennis wasn’t going to run the 880 until I talked him into it, and now he was state champion in the 880 and the star of the meet. Way too funny.


If it didn’t happen exactly that way, it should have.