"Are you crazy?” the man on the telephone asked. Maybe I was. The pictures of the vehicle he posted on Craigslist didn’t hide anything—I knew what I was buying. The guy probably thought he’d sell the old junker for parts.
“This car hasn’t moved in thirteen years,” the man warned. “What makes you think you can get it to move twenty-five hundred miles?”
“It’s a Checker,” I said, as if the answer were obvious. A ’66 Checker Aerobus, to be precise. Eight doors, room for a driver and eight passengers, a classic from the golden age of American automobiles.
Sure, the car’s headliner was torn and sagging, the tires were rotted, the door hinges were rusty and the Lord only knew what it looked like under the hood, but if there was one car that my close group of boyhood friends and I knew inside and out, it was a Checker.
It was the only vehicle, we all agreed, that could take us on the road trip of our dreams. A cross-country cruise on Route 66. Before we ran out of time. One of our buddies had died recently, at only 55, the same age as me. We’d already lost two others from our group in the years before.
How long had it been since we’d all been together? What if we didn’t get many more chances after this?
Route 66. The Mother Road. The Main Street of America. By the 1970s, when my friends and I in Sarasota, Florida, finally got our driver’s licenses, new, faster interstates crossed the country, but that didn’t stop us from imagining how much fun it would be to cruise that fabled road.
Gary’s dad had a garage full of antique cars, and our “Rat Pack”—nine of us guys at the time—spent hours washing and waxing them, as much for the thrill as to earn some money. We even learned how to fix and customize them.
“Our” first car was Gary’s father’s powder-blue ’69 Checker wagon. Gary was the first to get his license—and probably the most responsible—so he’d drive us all to the beach or take the wheel as we tried to meet girls (Tommy’s jokes always made them laugh).
The Checker wagon only seated six, but we usually crammed at least one more in. We talked about driving coast to coast one day, but college, then marriage, then our careers put our dream on hold.
Now I ran a machine shop in Pennsylvania. The other guys were still in Florida. Dave worked as a public defender, Gary was a travel agent, Billy was a charter boat captain, Tommy was a contractor. It was now or never, I decided.
The Craigslist posting, from a guy in California, was an answer to prayer, despite him questioning my sanity. “I’ll wire the money,” I told him.
Tommy and I flew to Sacramento and drove a rental car northeast, deep into the pines of the Sierra Nevada. The Checker had been used for tours by the forestry department, the seller had told me.
We pulled up to his address and there it was in the driveway: off-white with Creamsicle-orange trim and orange-and-yellow racing stripes down its length. The driver’s door groaned when I opened it. A strong, musty odor hit me. My heart sank.
It was going to take a lot more than some elbow grease to get this Checker running. Our carefully plotted itinerary only gave us four days to get to Los Angeles to meet up with Gary and Dave, who were flying in.
Tommy, armed with rolls of paper towels and cleaning solution, pulled the seats out and started on the interior. I lifted the hood, took out the decayed battery and the spark plugs, which were shot. We’ll need to replace the radiator too. The hot sun beat down on us as we worked.
“This was a lot easier when we were kids,” Tommy said.
“This was a lot newer when we were kids,” I said.
The next day we put it up on blocks, changed the tires, reinstalled the seats. “Remember how Gary’s dad put in racing harnesses to keep us safe?” I recalled. “And then he still wanted us to wear helmets?”
“How about that water-filled bumper?” Tommy said, laughing. “We used to bump into things just to see how high we could make the water spout!”
The following morning, I sat behind the wheel of the Checker, took a deep breath and turned the key. It started! Tommy hopped into the rental and the Craigslist seller wished us good luck.
“Here,” the man said, handing me a heavy block of wood. “You’ll need to put this behind a wheel as your emergency brake.” Oh boy, I thought.
We made it to Los Angeles in time to pick up Gary and Dave. We cruised down Rodeo Drive, keeping our eyes peeled for movie stars. We passed Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces. But everybody was staring at us. This was why it had to be the Checker!
I felt like we owned the street, just as we had back in high school. Who’s crazy now?
Then…thump. The muffler lay behind us in the road. Now not only were we the longest car on the stretch, we were the loudest too.
Easy enough to fix. While we were at it we put on chrome accents. Dave insisted we get a stereo to play the stack of Allman Brothers CDs he’d brought, so we installed one and duct-taped speakers to the ceiling.
To the strains of “Ramblin’ Man,” we left L.A., picked up Route 66 and headed toward Kansas City, to collect Billy, and Gary’s brother Greg.
Truckers blasted their air horns and waved, teenage girls gave us thumbs up and yelled, “Love the ride!” We were an odd sight, a bunch of middle-aged guys in an ancient behemoth, driving a road that time forgot.
Then, somewhere near the Grand Canyon, the Checker ground to a halt. Pressure had built up in the brake lines. We removed the wheels and jerry-rigged a warning system using a pressure gauge, a length of wire and a red light.
All of us worked together, just as we had in Gary’s dad’s garage. Now we’d know when the brakes were about to lock up.
“You know who would have loved this…” Tommy said wistfully.
We talked about the friends who were no longer with us. Our gang of nine, all those years ago in Sarasota. There happened to be nine seats in this Aerobus. “They may not be here, but they are, you know?” Gary said.
Billy and Greg joined the quest in Kansas City, as planned. In St. Louis, we parted ways with Gary and Dave. The rest of us drove on, stopping at the statue of Paul Bunyan with a giant hot dog. We passed Lincoln’s tomb, snapped photos of the world’s largest rocking chair.
At every stop, some on-the-fly repair had to be made to the Checker. We never knew if we’d get it running again. By the grace of God, we always did.
Late one night in a small town outside Indianapolis, we stopped for pizza. But as Billy pulled out of the parking lot, the lights wouldn’t turn on. We stopped and popped the hood. Maybe a blown fuse? No, the alternator, I concluded. Not fixable.
No garage would be open at this hour, and anyway, who had parts for a ’66 Checker? After 2,000 miles, we’d reached the end of the road. Just then a truck rumbled into the parking lot. A classic Chevy pickup, even older than our Checker. The driver got out.
“Want me to take a look?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” I said.
He unzipped his jacket and stuck his head under the hood. On his shirt pocket was a logo of a classic car, and his name, Martin. “My classic car shop is up the block,” Martin said. “Maybe I can help.”
I doubted it, but we made the trek to his shop, which was really his home, along with two metal sheds used to store parts and tools. “Honey,” he called to his wife, then said something in her ear. She looked skeptical. He said something else. Then she disappeared.
I was thinking about asking him what he’d give us for the Checker when she returned with a chunky metal cylinder in her hand. She showed it to her husband. He peered at it and smiled. “This is it,” he said. An alternator for a ’66 Checker!
At long last the Checker chugged into Baltimore—15 days, coast to coast. It wasn’t the same car it had been at the beginning, with all we’d had to rig up and repair.
But we weren’t the same either. Along the way we’d deepened old ties. We’d traveled back to a time in our lives when a bond was forged. One we discovered would never be broken.
Were we crazy? Yeah, a little, I guess. Blessed too, though, every mile of the journey.
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