Dave always liked to go fast. And, I was always with him when he borrowed his dad, Harlan's, '65 Fury for the standard loop through Hedges-Boyer, Washington St., and then, heading West on Market St. (when was the last time you, not by mistake, drove West on Market?), a drive-through of Frisch's Big Boy. We would run through a quarter of a tank of gas, at 25 cents a gallon, making these loops through town. At some point there wouldn't be anyone new to honk, wave or flip at so Kunie would point the Fury either North on 53 or West on 224 -- and bury the peg. The Fury was fast, damn fast! It would reach 120 in a countable number of heartbeats. Well, my Catholic education allowed me to count mine anyway.  I clearly remember the picture of Dave's cigarette sticking straight out toward the windshield which almost perfectly intersected the blur of fence posts we flew by. Dave would shut her down at this point to keep from breaking the speedometer. He figured, and rightly so, that Harlan would be disinclined to let him borrow the car with a speedometer perpetually stuck at something over 120.

 

Dave also borrowed my '58 Chevy on New Year's eve in '67. I had picked him up for a poker game at Benny Monaco's. Dave wasn't winning, maybe because he had one too many PBRs.  Well after all it was New Years eve in the year we managed to graduate! An extra PBR, or two, was in order since he wasn't driving. Right? Someone finally noticed that Dave had not returned from an extended bathroom visit so we all fanned out to find him. He wasn't in the house, he wasn't in the backyard and he wasn't in the front yard. Neither was my car! Expanding the fanning, we climbed into cars. We found Dave exiting from a car, not mine, at his parents house on S. Monroe. I calmly, in my humble opinion, asked where I might find my car. He sort-of pointed West, said the name Roxy and then, a little unsteadily, climbed the front porch stairs and disappeared into his house. 

 

Roxy was a mutual friend of Dave, Dick Vassell and myself. Dave evidently decided a chorus of Auld Lang Syne with Roxy and her family was in order. Unfortunately, since I wasn't driving far that night, I neglected to fill the car with that 25 cent gas. Dave reached the 1/4 mile long lane to Roxy's house but got stuck in the snow. He then ran the car out of gas trying to free it and then exhausted the battery trying to start the car after the tank contained nothing but fumes. (By way of full disclosure, the '58 would still read 1/8 of a tank when it was actually out of gas. I too learned this by running down the battery.) Roxy's father was the person who gave Kunie a lift home. Evidently my car was sufficiently in the ditch as to offer no obstacle to her father's passage down the lane. This was verified the next day.

 

New Years day in '68 was cold but my poker partners from the night before, Benny, Joe Hartzell, Stub and myself worked up a sweat in the snowy ditch.  

With the help of my friends, a bumper jack and some conveniently frozen ground we were able to teeter-totter the white and rust beast out of the ditch.

Kunie didn't make it to this early morning extraction party and so we didn't speak for a few days. But, as luck (well really a "sure thing") would have it we ended up simultaneously at the Clover Club a few days later and patched the recent hole in our friendship. After all, what's a gallon of gas (25 cents) and 4 man hours of effort then (total of 12 bucks) compared to a lifetime friendship (priceless)? Yea, a few laughs and beers were exchanged and we left as friends of the best type. 

 

A month or so later in '68 Dave headed off to Fort Wayne to attend Sam's Electronic School, after having tried his construction skills while working for my dad. My dad wasn't the easiest guy to work for so the fact that Kunie didn't excel in construction may have been a mutual sort of thing. Anyway, Kunie took off for school, Benny was in school in Toledo and that left Joe and I to man the 224 Club until we both left for the service in April. He to the Marines and I to the Navy. Dave eventually ended up in the Army, in Korea, as he didn't seem to take to either Sam or electronics. I never found out which. He was however already discharged when he performed, flawlessly the duties of Best Man at my wedding in September of '71 to, as it turned out, his first cousin. It was funny to see that Dave was much more nervous than I was that morning. We stood on the rear outside steps at St. Mary's and Dave chain-smoked until it was time for the service to begin.

 

My marriage to his cousin and school at Bowling Green occupied the 12 months between my discharge from the Navy, in February of '72, and Dave's death. We would see each other when possible and spoke on the phone often. My mom, after Dave's death, said that he seemed to have lost his way. I think Dave just hadn't developed a life plan yet but, hell, we were young. We had lots of time. Dave will always be young in my memory. I wish it were otherwise. Maybe then I would have matured enough to have been able to tell him that I loved him. But, this continuing maturity doesn't prevent me from kicking his gravestone when I have the opportunity.