A lot of my stories revolve around my 1980 Datsun pickup that I inherited from my grandfather. My earliest memories of this pickup have my grandfather and I heading out to the farm to irrigate. We would spend a lot of time out at the farm with grandpa getting the water from the ditch to the field and me watching in amazement. You see I had tried it a few times and could never get the water to flow out of the ditch, up a black tube and into the field. Grandpa could just place the pipe in the ditch and with a flick of his wrist, palm over the hole, the water would come right out. He would always get a kick out of me trying and trying until I finally just put the pipe in my mouth and sucked the water out. More then one time I had water coming out my nose and I would come up sputtering and coughing.

Another memory is the time that grandpa had to head to Jerome and I had to stay with grandma. I wanted to go with grandpa so I went out and jumped in the bed of the truck and waited for grandpa to leave. After a little bit he came out and got in the truck and headed out. We were on the freeway before he realized that I was in the back and had to pull over to get me up front. He was not very happy with me and cussed me all the way to Jerome and back.

As far back as I can remember grandpa told me that truck was going to be mine. I would get in the driver seat and pretend that I was driving. My feet wouldn't even reach the rusted out floor boards and the steering wheel seemed like a huge wagon wheel it was so big. I loved that truck and even more I loved the idea that I was so favored by my grandfather that he was going to give me his truck.

Now, you're not reading this to hear my lame memories but to get sucked in by all my crazy antics so I will proceed. The first thing I did when I got the truck was rear end a lady on Blue Lakes Blvd in Twin Falls. I was trying to change lanes and wasn't watching in front of me and I slammed into the back of her. I was only doing 25 or 30 mph but it was a huge accident on my side. I smashed my face on the steering wheel and punched my teeth through my lip. I got out of the truck and told the lady I hit I was so sorry. She told me that I needed to clean up because my face was a mess. I went into JB'S and cleaned up and when I came out the women told me that she had called the police. She looked over her damage and then shut her trunk since that is all the damage she had sustained. My Datsun on the other hand was completely totalled. The entire front end was smashed and later we would find out that I had bent the frame. I had called my dad and when he got there he was so pissed. I remember the ambulance worker asking me if I wanted to ride with them to the hospital and I told them yes because my dad was going to kill me. I didn't go with them, instead we pushed the truck into the parking lot in front of Hastings. I was trying to get everything cleaned up while my dad was upset with me and when I shut the door to the truck to leave I noticed that I had locked the keys in the truck. It took us another 45 minutes, using a hanger, to get the keys out. My face was so swollen and I had wrecked my grandpas truck on the busiest intersection in Twin Falls. For days afterward I had people stare at me for a long time and then finally ask what had happened in that accident. They had driven by and seen me out there with my fat lip bleeding everywhere.

Over the next 9 months my dad, Marc and I would work on the truck. I learned a bunch from rebuilding the front end on that truck but the one thing that I got from it was that my dad could find anything to improvise when fixing this thing. We would joke that the front end was held together with duct tape and a hinge. Now the duct tape wasn't true but the hinge was in there. We couldn't find a washer that fit so my dad used a hinge instead. He did that a few places like where the frame was bent so badly that we couldn't reach the hole with the screw we just got a longer screw and used a bunch of washers. These times were not the funnest times but they were invaluable in hind sight.

After getting the truck back together I decided that I had spent too much time watching Knight Rider and Dukes of Hazzard to not put into effective what I had learned. I immediately set out to recreate almost every scene that I could remember. I would jump that truck over anything that I could find, I would fishtail even on a paved road, and best of all I would go as fast as that truck would go almost all the time. One night a couple kids and I decided to play cat and mouse. I had chased their car for awhile and now it was my turn to see if I could ditch them. Marc was with me and we headed to the country to see if we could lose them. I made a few spin moves and headed full boar down the road towards the highway. As Marc and I looked across the field we could see a diesel truck coming down the highway that intersected with the country road that we were on. We looked at each other and I hit the gas. This was going to be how I ditched these guys and I knew if I could out run the diesel I would lose them. Faster and faster we sped towards the highway and at the last minute I thought we may not make it, but we sped through the intersection and down the road on the other side. I can't tell you how close we came for two reasons. One, even if I did know you would think that I was exaggerating. Two I was eyes forward and balls to the wall trying to make it through that intersection without getting tagged by that truck. It wasn't until later that night when we caught back up with the other car at Maverick and everyone kept telling me how close we came to a huge accident that night. They all thought that I was crazy and from that time on people would ask me to drive whenever we were going to do something crazy because they knew that we could at least get away.

This incident just fueled me to drive faster and crazier then the last time. One night I was driving from one friends house to another and a cop got behind me. Growing up in Wendell you learned that the cops thought they had more authority then they did. No one respected them and you could usually find them at Miller Brothers having a coffee break or sitting in their single wide trailer office behind Maverick. Needless to say I had no respect for these guys so when this guy got behind me I thought for sure he was going to pull me over for the fun of it. I decided to ditch this guy in the country and I took off. His lights came on immediately and it was on. I drove down the frontage road and instead of making the corner I sped through a potato cellar and hit the road on the other side. The cop went to the corner and then hit the gas to catch up with me. I had the distinct thought that he could out run me at anytime so I was going to have to so something creative to get away. We came up on the field that my grandfather had farmed. I knew that field had a canal that ran along the one side and if I could run along it the cop wouldn't be able to follow so close. I took the chance and cut a hard left and onto the dirt road. The truck fishtailed a bit but I got it under control and sped down the road. About halfway into the field I saw the cop car turn around and shut off his lights. I made it to the other side and and took off on the pavement to another potato cellar where I hid for about 30 minutes just to make sure he wasn't going to find me. In case you don't know about potato cellars, when there aren't potatoes in them they are completely empty in the middle and along the sides there are huge metal tubes that they use to ventilate when the potatoes are in there. I used a lot of potato cellars to get away because you could pull in behind a few tubes standing upright and shut off your lights and no one would be able to see you. It was a great way to get away from anyone.