Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, May 23rd, 2025

It was the summer of 1973. I was twenty-one and living on Mike’s farm about 6 miles north of Vermillion, South Dakota.

Mike was renting the farmhouse and barnyard. The barnyard used to be a pigsty. Mike was a local and knew that pig shit was great fertilizer. So he planted marijuana, and it grew to ten feet high. We’d use our .22 rifles to shoot the rats who came into the marijuana garden. Maybe the rodents wanted to get high.

Mike was a big guy. He was an Armstrong which is a famous reiver family from the England-Scottish border country. His Dad was the local veterinarian.

Mike had this big old green 1968 Oldsmobile 98 four-door sedan. We’d drive around the countryside with fertilizer, water, and garden tools to take care of Mike’s pot patches. He had them here and there around the county.

Blair lived on the farm, too. Blair had long brown hair and brown eyes, and maybe he had said twenty words to me in the six months I knew him. I didn’t know if he was stupid, a genius, a pothead, or a Zen master.

Mike had short blonde hair and blue eyes. I had long blond hair and blue eyes. Mike was stocky. I was lean. Blair, I called him Blair the Bland, was lean, too.

One Saturday night, we headed into town, Vermillion, to drink beer and play foosball. Mike drove the Olds, I rode shotgun, and Blair was in the middle of the front seat.

We had a good time in Vermillion and drank a lot of beer, had a pizza, and headed home around 7 PM. Mike had to get up early to work on the farm.

It was sunset as we headed north on the gravel road in the boat of an Olds 98. We were laughing and carrying on. Blair the Bland suddenly locked up his arms against the roof of the car.

Mike had driven off the right shoulder of the road at about 65 mph. We went down into the ditch, up the other side, and right through an old gray telephone pole.

That pole was right in front of my face. The Olds 98 went through that pole like a tank through a picket fence. Mike wrestled the car back onto the gravel road.

Mike was mad at Blair.

“You froze up, and I couldn’t steer!”

Blair said nothing as usual.

I looked behind us and saw the telephone pole swaying as it hung from the wires.

We made it home okay. I looked at the Olds. There was a slight dent in the front bumper.

Just another day in South Dakota.

TJM