The Hot Rod Lincoln

By Jack J. Rossate

Timothy Flynn Farrell is a cocky Marine War hero from the Gulf War. The only reason he came back to North Conway, New Hampshire was to see his mother. The town hadnt treated him fairly since he was a child but his mother loved the area. As a good son, he would come back for her sake.

But life offers its own plan for him. Nothing happens the way he expected, but he also learns that perhaps nothing happened the way history had called it. The real story covers the way his character had prepared him for the challanges that lie in wait. As you follow him keep in mind that the more things change the more they stay the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 24, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462803897

Jack J. Rossate

Jack Rossate is a recent entry on the scene. He has enjoyed a broad ranging career mainly in sales and management for small manufacturing businesses. He has been married for 33+ years, raised three children, served in the military, gone to college, worked on the factory floor and filled a position in the boardroom. All the while he has been a part of business he has been an observer of business. While never being very active in politics, his upbringing in Chicago has given a unique perspective on the intertwining facets that can take place in the powers of government. Jack is a firm believer in cause and effect and his storyline shows that. He began writing at the age of fifty and it looks like this work will be the start of yet another direction in his life.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Holy Shit! . . . Incoming! . . . Hit the Deck! . . . he screamed from instinct. He rolled from his bunk in response to the impact he felt as the shell rocked the ground. The roar of the explosion reverberated in his ears. In the split second that it took for him to open his eyes, Timothy Flynn Farrell realized that he had managed to scare or at least startle the twenty-three people still aboard the Concord Coach Lines Mountain View Special. Still, he knew that his Marine training had taught him to act immediately and question later and he figured that this training and action had served to keep him alive in Panama and later in Kuwait and if it now offended or bothered someone in Conway, New Hampshire, that wasn’t going to be something that he was going to worry about. As he shook himself awake, he guessed that the jarring feeling and loud noise which had interrupted his dream and he had reacted to as an explosion from incoming artillery was only the still un-repaired and rough grade crossing south of Conway on Highway 16.

He looked around the bus and was able to confirm that there wasn’t anyone aboard the bus who he really cared about apologizing to but still he looked at the woman seated behind him, the person most visibly shaken by his action, and said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, guess they still haven’t fixed the crossing yet… must be getting into Conway… He made a weak attempt at a smile, knowing that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would note that it was a disingenuous effort on his part.

It was a little over one year since he had last been home on leave. It was right before the Fourth of July in 1990 and he had come home anticipating a fun time. He’d planned on seeing his mother and maybe a few friends from High School. He thought back to how he had only been home for a few days when the news had been filled with the ominous statements that Iraq had invaded Kuwait. He was hopeful he would be able to enjoy his leave but then the recall had come and he had to return to San Diego.

Flynn, as everyone had called him, had missed the summer in New Hampshire. He and his mother lived on a small farm up in the Valley that surrounded Chatham. It was an area of truly brutal winters but they were balanced by the most glorious summers you could ever experience. The Valley would come alive with summer people and tourists and there would be opportunities for him, ever since he was 13 years old, to pick up a few extra dollars repairing cars over at Joe’s Garage in North Fryeburg, one of the towns on the way into the Big city of North Conway. Flynn’s father had taught him about working on autos and had shared his own love of cars with his son.

As the bus inched it’s way through traffic, Flynn let his mind drift. He had only been back 3 or 4 days last summer when his mother took the message off the answering machine. Hell, he hadn’t even had a chance to see Lynne Ward, the only remaining classmate he felt he must see whenever he came home.

Flynn had searched for her at Horsefeathers, the restaurant where she worked. But they had told him that she didn’t come on until 5:00pm and that was also when her grandfather could be expected to show up. They laughed about him always being there in time for the early bird special. Flynn knew that the Marines would understand him being late because he had to see a girl, but he was equally sure that they would not accept that as a valid excuse and he didn’t like the thought of spending time in the brig. He had asked the bartender to please give her the message that he had tried to see her. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to leave. Lynne was a beautiful woman now and was more likely than not the number one target on the most wanted list of all the young men in town and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was on this bartender’s list also. He had assessed the chances of her getting the message that night as slim or none. He wished it were easy for him to write letters to her but, even though he liked her, he had never treated her as anything but a friend and didn’t feel comfortable with presuming more of their relationship.

He was confident that his mother would have seen to it that everyone in her circle of friends and acquaintances was informed that he had been home and that he had been recalled and that he was now in the Gulf on the front lines. She would also make sure that her friends, Doctor Ward and Father Logan, were informed that her son had tried to see Lynne. Doctor Ward, at least, would tell his granddaughter.

His mother had known that he was a mechanic who kept the helicopters in combat ready status. What he hadn’t told her, but what she had finally learned, was that he sometimes volunteered to serve as a door gunner. That job sometimes put him in eminent danger.

He started to debate in his mind whether or not he should suggest to his mom that they go the Horsefeathers as a celebration or welcome home dinner, then they could just accidentally see Lynne. Maybe he should just tolerate the fact that she probably had a welcome home plan all ready and he could figure on looking up Lynne tomorrow. A look out the window told him they were almost at his stop so he would have to put off the decision for now.

He rose again and extracted his bag from the overhead. With bag in hand, Flynn started to make his way to the front of the bus, only bouncing slightly as the asshole driver jerked on the brakes. Pilots and bus drivers are all alike, he thought. You stand up before they tell you it’s OK and they’ll do anything they can to try to knock you down. Funny thing is that they never have the balls to own up to it, they always look at you sheepishly and say sorry and the stupid look they have on their face tells you that they don’t mean it.

With the trademarked loud hiss of the air brakes, the bus stopped and the driver pushed on the chrome lever to force the big silver door to swing open. Flynn could feel the cool rush of the clean mountain air. It was September 12th already and the afternoon air would no longer remain hot until the sun went down but would begin the ritual of fall by kicking up a little breeze after 2:00pm and letting people know that winter was coming.

He jumped off the bus step and onto the huge granite curb. He waited for the driver to unlock and tug open the baggage door. He watched as the man grappled with the luggage in search of his seabag. As he waited for the bag, Flynn checked his watch. The bus had actually arrived five minutes in advance of it’s scheduled 4:30 p.m. arrival time. He set down his carry-on and ducked to see what the driver was up to inside the cargo area. He did this just in time to see his seabag slide across the rear of the compartment and tumble out onto the section of roadway between the bus and the curb. The driver climbed out and picked up the bag with both hands and set it onto the sidewalk. After a perfunctory check of his claim ticket, the driver bounded up the stairs and simultaneously plopped himself down in his seat as he again pulled on the lever to shut the door. Instantly the sound of the bus engine roaring overshadowed any other traffic noise as the bus re-entered the north bound flow of vehicles. Flynn was left standing there in a thin blue cloud of diesel fumes.

He turned around and searched the area for a sight of his mother’s beaming face. Mary Flynn Farrell was a beautiful woman. She was barely 45 years old but she had lived a very busy life. Flynn had looked her up in the old issues of the yearbook which Kennett High School maintained in the library. All the kids whose parents had gone there before them had taken that opportunity. They wanted to see if their parents had grown into dorks or had always been dorks even when they were young. What Flynn had found was a young woman who was attractive even by his own generation’s standards and who was a class leader, involved in the few sports available to a girl in the 60’s and active in numerous organizations. There was even mention of her working at a bakery and thereby having the experience to arrange a huge bake sale to raise funds for new basketball uniforms.

Today, he was expecting to see a beaming Mary Farrell, this was her son, her only child, home at last and a hero to boot. God how he hoped she would quickly get over that moniker ‘hero.’ She had called him ‘hero’ so many times over the phone, twice when he had called from Chicago during his change of planes. She had pleaded with him to call as soon as he landed and he had decided to call a second time when he was bounced from his connecting flight because it had been overbooked. It had upset her but he had been able to soften the blow by telling her that he had been compensated with a free round trip ticket wherever American flew. That meant that she would be able to come to San Diego for Christmas. That served as some consolation to her. But he still was going to discuss this ‘hero’ business. He certainly didn’t consider himself a hero. His underlying job was always described as to keep his fellow Marines alive and to keep himself alive, in that order. That was what he had been trained for, if a fellow Marine is down and in danger, you have to go out to rescue him or her, you don’t have to come back. Now, after you do your job, they want to nominate you for the Medal of Honor. He was having a hard time understanding that he was going to be rewarded for killing over 12 Iraqi soldiers, kids who were so brainwashed they were following orders of some despot. All he had done was what had to be done, no more and no less. He knew he would have to explain that to her and he hoped she would understand.

He was continuing to look for her or her car but his watch still showed that it was not quite 4:30 and everyone up here knew that the Concord Coach was hardly ever on time. He stood and took in the beauty of the Mount Washington Valley. The trees were mostly still in their summer green but, here and there on the mountains, it was starting to be highlighted with dots of red and yellow and orange. The full change of colors would take place in about two weeks or so and he planned to be here for that plus the Fryeburg Fair. What a sharp contrast from Saudi Arabia, he thought. Sand only changes shape, not color.

That the Conways were still a lot like they had been all of Flynn’s life was readily apparent to him. He had been on a runway in Saudi Arabia a week ago, the company had flown to San Diego and spent a day getting all their gear stowed before he was allowed to go on leave. He had flown from San Diego to San Francisco and from there he had connected with a flight to Chicago, changed planes and then on to Boston. Then he had taken the MTA to the terminal and ridden a bus up to the White Mountains. He had traveled half way around the world and then some and come from burning oil fields all the way to now be standing across from his old grade school and high school.

He looked across at the candy store where all the kids had congregated after school and where old Father Logan, the pastor, had joined the kids and told them how bad this attraction for sweets was for them and then, to reinforce his point he had dug into his pocket and extracted the money needed to buy all the students Milky Way bars. He had even included kids from the public school who happened to be there. He would always call them ‘little sinners’ and give the store owner a wink.

Father Logan had always treated Flynn very fairly. When Flynn had spoken of wanting to get a nice outfit for his mother for Mother’s Day, Father Logan had taken him over to the Mall and seen what he wanted to purchase. He told Flynn that there was a job available for someone to come over and clean at the church. They had figured how many hours the job would entail and they had determined how much Flynn would earn. When they reached a total which equaled the value of the outfit the two shook hands on the deal and Father Logan purchased the outfit, had it wrapped and stored it in his closet. There it sat, for Flynn to check on each time he came in to do his work. And when the agreed upon work had been completed, Flynn had ridden all the way home with the box on his lap and proudly presented it to his mother. Both his parents had shown their pleasure at his initiative in working and getting her this fine present. He hadn’t been but 10 years old at the time and it wasn’t for a few years until he learned that Father Logan hadn’t been reimbursed out of the church budget because this had not been a job the council approved but rather that the pay had come from the same pocket which had purchased the candy. The older that Flynn got the more he learned that he must have been very dense as a small child. He knew that he had several acquaintances but few friends, he knew he had a few people he was indebted to, mostly adults and mainly his mom. He didn’t want to dwell on why that was the case.

He realized he had been day dreaming a bit. He looked at his watch and saw it was 4:45 p.m. already. She definitely was late. Conway Travel had already closed for the night, they were always closed at the time the bus from Boston was due in. He looked in back and down the street and he could see that there had indeed been one change in Conway. He could see that there was a new pizza and ice cream shop which had opened on the Village Green and across from the high school. The street it was on was the street which all the locals used for turning around. He reasoned it to be an ideal place to go in and have his first frappe in over a year. As he walked toward the store with his seabag and duffel he could see that the table directly in the center of the front window was empty. He’d sit there and have a commanding view of her arrival in her gold Duster. He patted his breast pocket to make sure the envelope was still there. Inside it sat $17,000 in winnings from poker games he had played in for the past year. Yes, tomorrow, after he picked up his car from Joe’s Garage, he would get his mother out of the house and they were going to get her a new car, he was thinking maybe a convertible like she had commented on, perhaps a Sunbird. It was going to be like her birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Mothers’ Day all rolled into one. Yes sir, he thought, Mary Flynn Farrell, September 13, 1991, is going to be one of the happiest days of your life.

He pushed the door of Lillie’s open with his seabag. He could feel the eyes of the two young girls staring at his dress blue uniform. He placed the bag on the chair closest to the window and sat down with his back to the counter, facing out onto the village green. His view of the road was perfect. He guessed his mom to make the turn, go down to the alley and turn around. She would have looked for him when she went past so if she assumed the bus was later than she, then she would probably park right in front of the window. He thought it would be great to just walk out, frappe in hand, and surprise her.

One of the young waitresses came up to the table. Can I get you something? she asked.

Yes maam, a chocolate frappe, please. Flynn always liked the look teenagers gave him when he’d speak to them with deference like he had just done. His dad had taught him that during the long nights and weekends they had spent tinkering in the barn or working on the Lincoln. Damn, that 50’s and 60’s rock and roll music blasting on the record player and the hot rod magazines scattered about the workshop with pictures cut out and tacked to the walls. His dad had talked about Elvis Presley and how, with all his money, he had always spoken to people with yes maam, no maam and yes sir and no sir, and how, when you learned to use it all the time, it would catch a lot of people off guard.

Sir… ahem… anything else with that frappe? She stood there with her little order pad and a needle sharp pencil poised to take down anything else he might want to order.

Flynn realized that he must have been daydreaming again, thinking now about his father. Ah, no, thanks but just the frappe will be great.

Say, she shifted her weight to one leg and put her right index finger to her cheek in thought, are you the guy who won the medal?

Damn, he thought, does everyone here know the story. No way, I didn’t win any medal and I sure don’t know what you’re talking about.

Still keeping her finger to the side of her face she shot back, What I’m talking about is some Marine, from Chatham, who went to Kennett High School, my school, and he’s going to get the Congressional Medal of Honor for what he did in the Gulf War! Way! she pointed at him as she finished that statement. Then she turned to call out to the other girl, Jenny, what do you think the chances are of two Marines coming to Conway at the same time?

Let’s see, I’ve been here for five years and can recall one Marine coming last summer for a couple of days, and, wow, that’s the same one who is supposed to be here now, she was being very theatric, clasping her hands together like Scarlet O’Hara and walking slowly toward them, so I guess the chances would be real bad that there would be two Marines here at the same time on leave. No Lillie, I think your right, this is the fellow.

I’m not that guy. He turned to look out the window and heard the girls talking to one another as they made their way back to the counter. The only word he could make out was ‘jerk’. He knew that his mother must have spread the word around town and he had best be careful that they didn’t go and plan some kind of damn parade.

He laughed to himself. This was the town where people had treated his grandmother and mom and dad and finally himself like a piece of shit for five decades and now they were praising their local hero and talking about his brave deeds and proudly referring to their small connection to him. This was a town which his mother could always forgive the inconsiderate person who treated her rudely because they didn’t know any better but she never understood why he had a hard time giving someone a second chance. He had always rationalized that since he couldn’t understand how she could turn the other cheek it made complete sense why she couldn’t understand why he couldn’t forgive, sounded even to him. Father Logan had spent a great deal of time talking about the concept of turning the other cheek but it really went against Flynn’s nature, and after awhile, they both agreed to disagree on that topic.

In the Marines he had never been one to turn the other cheek and now there were several Iraqi soldiers under the desert sand who could testify to that, they should have never turned their weapons toward him, if they had run they would still be alive today. You shoot at Timothy Flynn Farrell and you expect to be shot back at, your problem is that Flynn doesn’t miss.

Here’s your frappe. Are you sure you’re not the guy? We only had a few guys from here who even went into the service, most are back and this medal guy was due back sometime around now. I heard that the school was planning to have him come to some kind of assembly and give him an honor, you know, put up a plaque for him.

Now if I was the guy, don’t you think that I’d tell you? Wouldn’t you tell everyone if you were a hero? He knew that most people reveled in getting honors but he just wanted to keep a low profile, do what had to be done and move on to the next thing in life. His dad had taught him that philosophy.

Flynn could tell that he had succeeded in getting this girl to question whether she had judged him correctly or not. That was a condition, confusion, which gave him the most control. After all, he only wanted to sit there and drink his frappe and watch for his mother. He looked again at his watch, it was now 5:10 pm and he wondered what was holding her up. He looked around the shop and saw a telephone on the wall. He took his frappe and walked over. He read the note on the phone that he could call anywhere in the US for 25 cents a minute. Then in small print there was a note that there was a 4 minute minimum. Doctor Ward had commented that when some shithead judge decided to break up the phone company you had better hold onto your wallet, that prediction had certainly come true. He put four quarters into the phone and dialed home. He waited through the silence and then heard the tone indicating activation of the ringer, one… two… he counted… three and he hung up. He and his mom had determined a code years ago. He knew her answering machine would link up on the fourth ring and so they would try to reach each other by letting the three rings occur, wait one full minute and repeat the procedure. That was a way they allowed six rings for their personal calls, in case she was in the cellar or out in the yard. He waited the prescribed time, it took that long for this coin phone to return his money anyway, and re-placed the call. Again he counted the three rings and returned the phone to it’s cradle. He looked out the window again and sipped on his frappe until his money returned, he scooped it up and let it drop into his pocket. He returned to his seat and watched for her car.

Drinking his refreshment and watching the street with the Presidential Mountains as a backdrop on this beautiful clear fall afternoon, he let his mind drift into memories.

He had earlier been jolted from thoughts of his father and the fun they had before he died. He let his thoughts wander back to his dad and how he had taught Flynn the basics of auto mechanics out in their barn. His dad had been a dreamer when it came to cars. He had a barn full of parts and a clearing behind the barn filled with hulks he intended to restore. But it had been by Flynn’s happening on a rusted carcass that one dream had come to the forefront and they had worked together on achieving it. It had been a teenage dream of his father’s, inspired by an old 45 rpm record his dad would play while they worked, over and over, hundreds of times until the record was hard to understand because it was so scratchy.

They had listened to all kinds of hot rod type records that his dad had kept from his youth. Songs by the Beach Boys and the Ripcords, Jan and Dean and some groups his dad called ‘one hit wonders’. They decided early on to dedicate at least one hour every night to work on the car, Mary had been pleased that ‘her two men’ as she called them, were bonding. Some evenings she would come out and watch them but she would always leave when they would burst into the chorus of song that had become the blueprint for their car.

Flynn had found the car, abandoned, sitting up in the woods on a piece of land which he later learned had last been cut in the late 30’s. It was obvious the car had been there for a long time and it was probable that he was not the first to see it. Some hunters, perhaps, had stumbled upon it and used it for target practice since the windows were shot out of it. The elements had ravaged it and some birds had built nests inside of it using the mohair for nesting material. The tires weren’t flat, no, beyond that, they had rotted and were missing chunks here and there. The passing seasons had deposited leaves and pine needles whose rotting had raised the floor of the forest so that the wheels themselves were sunken in over four inches of dirt. Phenomenally, a tree had fallen and barely missed crushing the car, it had put a small wrinkle in the fender and rust covered the area where it had chipped off the paint.

His father had dutifully asked around to see if an owner could be found. He had checked with the summer people and had talked to the woman who had owned the land before it had been sold to the government. She had owned the property since 1918 and, although she was in her 80’s, her sharp memory was able to rattle off every make and model of automobile she, her husband or either of her children and their spouses had owned. Her son-in-law had volunteered the use of an old, converted Model A which was now used as a tractor. It had just the cowl and radiator remaining to identify it to the casual observer as a Model A but the trained eye could tell what it had begun life as by the suspension and the conversion which had added hydraulic brakes and late model Ford wire wheels. But the kicker, which had captivated Flynn even at that early age, was the second transmission. This allowed the skeleton to be geared down low and with this came pulling power, the power they needed to drag the hulk from the start of it’s grave into the sunlight of the field a mile through the forest.

Once they got the car to the open field, his father, Tim Farrell, had enlisted use of a hay wagon from a farm across the way. Men had come and tugged and pushed and finally there, atop the hay wagon, it sat. Flynn had the honor or sitting behind the wheel and beaming proudly as the tractor slowly pulled the hay wagon into their driveway. There sat 7 year old Flynn, waving at his mother from behind the wheel of a dirty and beat-up Ford Model A four door sedan. Mary stood on the front porch smiling at the trophy which her two young men had brought home to her. Flynn was lifted down from the car and all the men now set about the task of positioning 2x12s for ramps and then rigging a winch to roll the car off the hay wagon, his dad tugging at the wheel trying to control the big sedan with no tires and questionable brakes, what a chore that had been for his dad. The final step was pushing the car inside the barn for them to fulfill their dream.

The work had begun on the car in 1977 when Flynn was barely 7 years old. His dad had painstakingly removed each screw that had remained on the car, handed it to Flynn who had sprayed it in oil and placed it in a bag his father had given him along with a note indicating some identification of the screw. Other parts were placed in numbered boxes. Boxes which they would acquire with each trip into town. There were potato chip boxes from Emorys’ in Fryeburg, beer and wine boxes from the state liquor store and even clothing boxes from Carroll Reeds. The garage looked like a total mess to the outsider but Flynn knew that his father was taking notes, notes which would become the plan to resurrect the car.

Once the car was down to the frame, it was now time to start on one more list. Flynn and his dad had never defined exactly what they were going to do with the car. Flynn guessed that, due to the effort they were taking to identify all the stock parts, the plan was going to be a complete restoration. He was glad he had guessed wrong. One night at dinner, his dad took out a pad and pencil and started to sing to his mother. The words of the song generated the parts list for the plan for creation of his father’s dream hot rod. It’s got a Lincoln motor and it’s really souped up, and that Model A body makes it look like a puff, it’s got a four barrel carb and dual exhausts and 4:11 gears that can really get lost, it’s got safety tubes and I’m not scared ‘cause the brakes are good and the tires are fair… His father had started the song but Flynn had quickly jumped in and was dancing around the table while his mom sat laughing at the way her boys were carrying on.

Dad had been captivated by the song The Hot Rod Lincoln since he had first heard it on a Portland radio station. When the record stores in the area didn’t get it he had broken away from his high school field trip to Boston and had found a store which had one copy. He told how he had saved to have the dollar that the record cost him, but he just knew he had to have that record. Now, they had the shell of the car and they knew that there was a list of parts they needed. They had a large empty crock in the kitchen, into that crock his father and he would deposit their spare change every night. There had been times when Flynn could remember seeing his mother sneak something extra into the jar even though it had been determined that this would be a ‘guys only’ sacrifice. The times when he had seen her do that were usually just after Christmas or her birthday or some occasion where gifts had been exchanged. Flynn would notice that one or two of her gifts weren’t being used or worn or something and then when he would ask he would be told that she had found a flaw or that it was the wrong color and the store was ordering the right color or that perhaps grandma had already promised her something like that and she didn’t want to hurt her feelings. They were the type of excuses which would be accepted by a young child but which a 21 year old would now be able to see through