The Bug and the bully

Went to school with a guy who was always trying to pick fights. By the time we got to high school, he had morphed from open confrontation to finding little ways to harass people.

With me, instead of trying to pick a fight in the school halls, he messed with my cars. I had a real soft spot for the cars I drove and everybody knew it. So when I walked out of the school to find all the lug nuts removed from my wheels, there was already a crowd standing there to see my reaction. I did my best to try and let it go. You know, just a “prank.” Hardy har har. Still, it wasn’t much fun having to call dad and have him bring me a tin of lug nuts so that I could get home. But I tried that whole bit where, supposedly, if you don’t give somebody a reaction, they get bored and move on.

A few days later I was surprised when I went to open the door to my ’68 Fastback and it came off in my hands. The hinge bolts had been removed. So had the nut that holds the steering wheel onto the steering column.

This time there was no way I could shrug it off. Even back then I had a real issue with messing with somebody else’s car, especially in ways that constituted vandalism, real damage or permanent harm.

Somehow, some way, I just had to get a little revenge and teach this clown he was in over his head.

It was with great satisfaction when, a couple weeks later, I overheard him in auto shop having a discussion with one of his buddies about his prized El Camino. Seems he was worried the rings were going out because he was starting to notice a little smoke coming out of the pipe when he started it.

Over the next few weeks he became more and more disheartened as the amount blue smoke belching from the tailpipe increased as he drove home from school each day. Soon it was obvious he would eventually need to rebuild the engine.

Yep. Rings will do that. Of course, dumping motor oil down the gas flap will, too. And if you start with just a little bit and slowly increase the amount, over a month or so it gives the appearance of a growing problem. And the nice thing is, it doesn’t damage the engine; just makes lots of smoke.

Hollywood does it all the time when they want a car to appear to run poorly. The nice thing is that if you stop dumping oil down the tank, the blue smoke clears up pretty quickly after a fresh tank or two of gas. Or, in the case of the bully, you can assume your rings are going bad and spend the next month pulling your engine and rebuilding it. (“Gosh, when I got down to the block, the rings didn’t look bad at all!”)

He was so busy working on his car that I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. Wrong. Turns out that he rebuilt his engine with a performance crank, high-rise intake and some other goodies that made his El Camino into quite the street rod. And what fun it was to sit behind him at the traffic lights as he power-braked a screaming tire burnout instead of proceeding through the green light. He would only let off as the light was turning red, thereby forcing you to sit through another entire cycle before you could go.

Many of my classmates were collecting rock chips, broken headlights and went home stinking like burning rubber thanks to his nonsense. I lost my cool again when he put rock chips on the front of my Dodge not more than 48 hours after I had just re-painted it a beautiful two-tone green.

I decided the cure for this bully was my Dad’s old 1960 VW Beetle he kept parked out behind the garage. No engine, musty and dirty, it was supposed to be a parts car for some later project. But I had use for it.

Sitting in dad’s shop was a Gene Berg 1848cc dual-carb VW racing motor. This was a hot, hot motor strictly made for the track. One of the fun things about those old air-cooled VWs is that you could install an engine in about 30 minutes.

So one Friday afternoon, my best friend spent about an hour installing that motor and slapping a set of road-worthy tires on that old Bug. We didn’t even bother to scrub off the dirt, just hopped in and headed to town.

Back then my little town had an impromptu “cruise night” on Fridays and Saturdays along the main drag. The responses we got from our classmates as we rolled into town driving that filthy “Yukon Yellow” (yes, that was the official name for the color) 1960 VW ranged from incredulous to gut-busting laughter. Eventually we located our target leaving a 7-Eleven parking lot and heading up the four-lane mile-long hill that lead out of downtown.

Predictably, as I slowly went to pass him, he romped on the gas. No way was an old bug going to pass him! So, with great satisfaction, I dropped the little Bug into third gear and jammed my foot on the gas.

The nose of the Bug left the ground as it blew by the Chevy like a greased rocket. When I shifted into fourth, the nose went up again as the gap between us widened. By the time the road went back to a two-lane he was long gone in the rearview mirror. My buddy and I drove the Bug back home, laughing all the way.

For the rest of the school year, the guys wouldn’t stop ribbing that chump about the nasty little Beetle that had smoked his El Camino. Thankfully, he was much more subdued and quiet as a result.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.