The Dips Don was new to the area, and driving a wretched old car ... maybe a 39 Hudson or something that had been beat to hell before he bought it.  The interior smelled old, the roof liner had long ago been cut and the fabric dangled.  I showed him where the Dips were.

The Dips ... was the highpoint of some evenings of local teen carousing in a small town.  For thrills, an occasional car would make its way up past Baseline take a right turn and head through down a paved orchard road towards The Dips.  This had to be done in the evening, as part of the right of passage.  The Dips were a series of hillocks that had been paved over, and cars would begin speeding a bit with the effect of going up and down like a roller coaster but the effect was almost like boulder jumping.  

Sometimes you'd just fly .... other times, people would head down the first steep hillock too fast and end up crashing the front end of their car (or their parent's car).

I admit, I showed Don the Dips and explained the calculus of the approach and trajectory modified by speed and all, and we did the Dips slowly a few times so he could get a feel for the roadway.

Later, he bottomed out that car while doing the Dips.  As a local incident, the report of Don's small crash, because not much went on in that town, made both the local newspaper and a small column inch in the Pomona newspaper, what was then the Progress Daily Bulletin.  Don was with a girl at the time, and that girl was not me.  Avid Beefheart fans could find these reports by cranking through endless loops of microfiche at the Library (for both the Claremont and Pomona newspapers), or if the records don't go back that far for the Pomona paper, then check the morgue at the new merged Inland Empire Daily Bulletin. 


  ¶ 9/21/2013 09:51:00 PM