Great wheels of fire

It was in the late 1950s, when I was a typical teenager with that typical teenage loathing for getting out of bed before noon, when my mother insisted that I serve Mass every Friday morning.

I am not sure why she did this to me. I rather suspect that she might have been using me as one-upmanship at her monthly Catholic Women’s League meetings when the sanctity of sons came under discussion.

My problem was that I had to get up at 5am to serve at the 6 o’clock Mass. Being a typical teenager, I tended to get up with extreme reluctance at about 5:45 and then have to rush like mad to make it on time—which I very rarely did. Strangely enough, I never got into trouble for being five or even ten minutes late. I rather suspect that this was because the priests also dragged themselves rather reluctantly out of bed at probably 5:58 am and were just as late.

I had to ride to Pretoria’s Nazareth House chapel at the top of the steep Queen Wilhelmina Avenue hill on a bicycle that was locked into high gear due to a broken three-speed.

To make matters worse, Thursday night was the domestic’s night off and an evening on which my mother made hamburgers with a liberal dose of raw onions. So as I battled up the hill I would breathe out and then ride straight into my steaming onion breath.

I know I have mentioned this before, and I will probably continue to mention it ad infinitum until I stop feeling like a martyr.

I used to dream in those days of having something with an engine in it to help me on my way. When I bought my first motorbike many years later, the first thing I did was ride from Johannesburg to Pretoria and whizz up Queen Wilhelmina Ave pumping my fist in the air and shouting “yeeehah”.

Then, recently, I got to drive a real American muscle car and wasted no time in pointing its nose up Queen Wilhelmina Ave and stomping on the accelerator with a vengeance, unleashing heaven knows how many angry horses and a trail of rubber smoke that gently rose into the still winter air like a conclave’s smoke signal over the Vatican.

It was a 1992 Chev Corvette V8, in absolute mint condition. There is no doubt why, in spite of its age, it turns so many heads and makes so many Merc, BMW and Audi owners green with envy. And that is quite strange, because there is actually no comparison at all between a ‘92 Corvette and a 2006 BMW or Merc. The German cars are faster, with much, much better cornering, road holding and braking. In fact, the difference in technology is as great as choosing to listen to a wind-up gramophone rather than the latest surround-sound Hi-Fi.

But there is something about these old cars, in spite of their ageing technology, that makes one’s motoring pulse race just that little faster.

Interestingly enough, the first thing that struck me as I eased myself into the very low-slung Corvette was that it boasted the most comfortable seats I’ve sat in for years. That’s the problem with a lot of today’s cars: they are so fast and have such phenomenal road holding that seats have to be designed to really hug the body and keep it in place against the G-forces not too far removed from those of a jet aircraft. And that often makes the seats a little hard and uncomfortable. But back in the early 1990s, in spite of vastly improved performance and road holding, the American manufacturers still believed that seating comfort was far more important than anything else.

I fired up the 5,2 litre V8 engine, and stomped on the accelerator pedal. It was like grabbing a bull by the tail after sticking a hypodermic full of turpentine into its posterior.

So this, I discovered, is what the thrill of a classic American muscle car was all about.

But for the life of me, I was still unsure what muscle they’re talking about.

Off I tootled at just under 120 km/h, with the rev counter sitting on 1800 revs and my backside not more than a foot above the ground.

Driving it wasn’t easy. At speed it was like trying to dance the cha-cha to Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls Of Fire”.

In wet weather, its front and rear wheels cooperated with each other at about the same level of collaboration of George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden.

Still, it beat the daylights out of a bicycle with a broken three-speed.

Oh, how I wish I’d had something like that to get me to Mass in the winter of 1958.