Trucks and Hotrods

A close childhood friend, Lynn Montgomery, called last night with the sad news that her older brother, Gary, had passed away last Friday. Yet another member of the “South Knoll Road Gang” is gone, and this time it wasn’t one of the parents, which makes me particularly sad.

In my eyes, Gary was always the cool guy on the street. Tall, laconic and five years my senior, we never “played” together, but we shared some of the same interests, including model railroads. And, naturally, when I was at their house playing with Lynny, our paths crossed, especially on nights when Mission Impossible was on. That was his favorite and we would all sit around the T.V., munching on s’mores and popcorn.

Gary’s family came from a tiny town in the Sierra’s called Groveland. Our family passed through it each year on our way to vacationing in Yosemite and the joke was that if you blinked, you might miss it, it was that small. But Groveland is in the heart of logging country and logging was in Gary’s blood. Back in Mill Valley, Gary would modify his Tonka trucks to be accurate depictions of the Peterbilt logging rigs he got to ride in with his older relatives. To me, they were amazing.

He was very good with his hands, building model railroad cars and scale buildings from kits, assembling fighter plane and car models. He was particularly fond of the ones that featured ghoulish zombies driving improbably souped-up hotrods. He could also do anything mechanical. I got my first multi-speed bike from him, which combined a three speed internal hub with a three-speed derailleur. I’ve never seen another set up like it.

Naturally, he would graduate to working on cars, but he never became what we called a “greaser.” He was too smart for that and excelled in school. He did have a very nice hot rod, an Impala (or a Chevelle?), which he would tinker on for hours in his driveway two houses up the street from ours. I remember hanging around watching him work on the carburetor one day when I was 12 or 13, when he asked me if I wanted to go with him to see how his modifications had gone. He didn’t need to ask.

We drove up Highway 101 to Atherton Avenue in Novato, since that was suitably isolated from the prying eyes of the CHP. Then he waited until the road was clear and wound the car up to just over 110 mph. Man, what a rush, and scary, in a roller-coaster sort of way. The burst of speed was, thankfully, short-lived but as we headed home I was still flying. Looking back, I realize that was probably my one-and-only genuine American Graffiti moment.

In Gary’s senior year at Tamalpais High School, he started dating Jan Baroni, literally the girl next door (all right, across the street). A dark haired Italian beauty, they made a picture-book coming-of-age couple for our neighborhood. We all went over to the Baroni’s house, which was the hub of South Knoll Road, to admire their outfits and her corsage.

Gary took his smarts and mechanical ability to Cal Poly, where he got a degree in engineering. But he soon chucked his job working for Bechtel, a big corporation, to join a drag racing team, traveling the country and working on incredibly fast cars.

Eventually, he married and settled down in Jamestown, near Sonora, and returned to his first love, driving logging trucks. The stories he would tell of wild rides and narrow scrapes were still exciting to me whenever the neighborhood gathered for our regular anniversary, wedding and holiday parties.

I always admired Gary for following his passions and for his easy-going ways. It’s sad that something as simple as a kitchen fall can lead to an unfortunate chain of medical complications that would end such a vibrant life, but sometimes that’s just the way things play out.

This morning, as I finished sharing the sad news with my sister, Kathy, all we could conclude was to keep looking for those 110mph thrills that life sometimes tosses our way, and to tell the important people in our lives that we love them, as often as we can. It’s funny that we need tragedies to remind us of those simple facts. Wherever you are, Gary, thanks for the ride.