We pushed the little brown import car backward down the gravel driveway towards the street. The sound of the wheels on the gravel seemed as loud as firecrackers as it slowly rolled along. It was one o'clock in the morning. Mike and I had been up all night in anticipation of this moment and our adrenaline was pumping.

Once on the street we pushed the car backward to the dead end, cursing the revealing brightness of the streetlight overhead. We jumped in and shut the doors half way; we could shut them all the way once we were out of earshot. I took the key that I had "borrowed" from my mother's purse and slipped it into the ignition. The car started right up and we drove off as quietly as possible. Once we got a few blocks away from my house we both let out a great victory cry as a great sense of freedom and independence came over us.

We drove into town, passing by the hangout spots where our friends sometimes congregated, but we couldn't stop or get out. The cops know a 14-year old driving his parent's car when they see one. So we just kept cruising around town for a while, taking turns at the wheel, and passing by people's houses that we knew. Eventually we noticed that we were going to have to get gas soon. But how would we do it without risking getting caught? Mike said, "there's a gas can on my front porch. Drop me off by the house and I'll run over and get it". We reasoned that filling up your gas can at two in the morning may seem a bit funny but it won't get you arrested.

I parked a safe distance away and watched as Mike made his way over to his house, using the shadows for cover whenever possible. He crept up the stairs of the porch with all of the stealth of a ninja and retrieved the gas can. With gas can in hand we drove off to the gas station and parked out back. Pooling each other's allowance we managed to get five dollars worth of gas for the little brown import. We poured the gas into the car, trying to get more in the tank than we got on the ground.

Once we were finished, we headed for the back roads. Long stretches of asphalt winding their way through the evergreen covered hills and valleys. Whenever we saw headlights, we would drive as sanely as possible. But when the headlights had passed, Mike and I would become Bo and Luke Duke of The Dukes of Hazard, testing the fine line between centrifugal force, gravity, and friction on the tight corners of the narrow back roads.

We would stop in the middle of the road, rev the engine up, and pop the clutch, making the wheels squeal as long as we could only to pull the emergency brake and do a 180 a few hundred feet down the road. Later, we discovered on a straight stretch that we could get the car up to 55 mph in second gear before the engine sounded like it was going to blow up.

Mike was driving when we came over the crest of the Basin Hill. A two-mile straight stretch of road lay before us, all down hill, interrupted only by a few cross streets that made flat spots in the road where they crossed it. Mike said to me, "let's see how fast we can go", and I agreed. As he pressed the accelerator to the floor our speed rapidly increased. It became too difficult to keep the car in one lane so we rode the center stripe. I looked at the speedometer; the red needle passed 80 and then 90.

Hitting the flat spots where the cross streets intersected was like a skier hitting a mogul field. As soon as the car recovered from bottoming out on one flat spot we would hit another, bottoming out again. The needle was past 100. The car floated from one lane to the other despite Mike's efforts to keep it over the center stripe. The scenery became a surreal blur as it flew by. Mike let the car slow down as we came to the bottom of the hill. As we passed the gravel road where the cops usually sat with their radar guns, we were able to breathe a sigh of relief seeing that there were none there on this night.

As we drove through town again we decided to go on one last adventure before calling it a night. We made our way across town to another set of back roads where a friend of ours used to live. About a half mile up this particular road it turned from blacktop to gravel. Just after turning to gravel the road went up a small, steep hill and gently turned to the right at the top. We drove up the hill, trying to spin the tires in the loose gravel. After reaching the top we switched seats and I got behind the wheel. I had a little something special that I wanted to try on that hill.

I turned the car around and headed back towards the hill. As we came around the bend at the top of the hill I cranked the wheel to the left trying to get the rear of the car to swing out. But we were going too slow and it didn't work. Turning around at the bottom of the hill I decided that we would need to go a little faster this time to get the car to fishtail. I turned around just beyond the top of the hill and punched it; the gravel flying off the tires sounded like hailstones as it hit the car body. We rounded the top of the hill again, this time going about 45 mph. I cranked the wheel to the left - the back end swung out to the right and then back to the other side, even farther and more violently. It was at this moment that I realized I had lost control of 3000 pounds of sheet metal.

I yanked the wheel to the left and back to the right, trying to regain control as the rear of the car swung out closer and closer to the drop-offs on either side of the road. In my panicked state I became rather stiff and unknowingly pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. Mike, his fingernails digging into whatever they could find, yelled out "shiiitt!".

The back end swung out to the right one last time as we neared the bottom of the hill and the telephone pole. The telephone pole's suspension wire caught just forward of the rear bumper as we were sliding sideways towards it. The suspension wire acted like a slingshot, catching the back end of the car and then shooting it in the opposite direction from which it had come. Now airborne, the car spun calmly and quietly through the air like a Frisbee as we floated down the road. We landed on all four wheels about 60 feet down the road at the bottom of the hill, our headlights shining up at the dusty gravel road we had just come down.

As the dust settled I sat, stunned, in the front seat. Mike jumped out to look at the damage. "Oh shit" I heard him exclaim. Slowly I got out of the car, afraid to see what had happened to the little brown import.

"What am I going to do?" I said to Mike as I looked at the back of the car. The telephone pole support wire had ripped the left taillights off like a giant cheese slicer on a block of cheese. Underneath the car, suspension parts were bent and contorted in unnatural ways. "Where's the bumper?" I said frantically, even more dazed than I had been at first.

We looked around for pieces of the car, finding what was left of the tail light assembly, but no bumper. While looking for parts, Mike noticed a small bump on his head that he had gotten from hitting it on the roof when we landed. Other than that we were okay.

The party was over. I got in the car and tried to start it. After a couple of tries it started up and we drove back towards town, the car rolling down the road a little sideways. I dropped Mike and his gas can off at his house; he said good luck as he shut the door and walked away. Feeling a little abandoned and thinking of all the trouble I was going to be in, I drove towards home.

As I turned off of the highway onto our street I noticed the train going by up ahead. I thought for just a moment about flooring it and ramming myself into the side of the quickly passing train. Sanity prevailed, however, and I made it to the other side of the tracks in one piece. Parking the car in its usual spot, I noticed that it would be getting light soon. I went in the house and quietly went to bed.

I awoke the next morning to my mother slamming her fist into the middle of my back and then bursting into tears. "What have you done to my car?" she cried. Then my dad stormed in. Grabbing me by the shoulders, he shook me back and forth like a rag doll yelling, "what the hell were you thinking"?

Dad had to drive Mom to work, so I was alone for a while and had some time to think. I realized, as the events unfolded, that freedom comes with responsibility. My actions did not only affect myself but also my family as well. My joyride with my friend would interrupt schedules and soak up paychecks for several weeks.

I didn't go to school that day. Instead Dad and I drove to the crash site to survey the wreckage and look for the bumper. We found the bumper way out in the bushes, and a little piece of brown sheet metal wrapped tightly around the now very slack suspension wire.

I was on restriction for the next several weeks, baby sitting my little brother every day after school to help repay the money it cost to fix the car.

Ironically, I became the owner of that little brown import car and drove it all over the countryside during high school until it finally died of exhaustion.

R.I.P.