Me, Darst, and Alley Oop

By John R. Riggs

Me, Darst, and Alley Oop is many things--a romp, an adventure, an odyssey, a coming of age tale, but mostly it is great good fun. A true story that frames the summer of 1964, it relates the cross country journey of two young men in their borrowed car, a hobbled and cobbled 1946 Dodge named Alley Oop.

Darst and Riggs, a mismatched pair of fraternity brothers from Indiana University, have little in common but the desire to leave it all behind and hit the open road for the golden shores of California, and the bouncing beach bunnies and boundless good times they hope to find there. Little do they know what hazards lies ahead or what it will take in resilience and fortitude, conflict and compromise, to make their dream come true. From the first day on, as they leave home and comfort behind with no cell phone or credit card and a hundred dollars between them in a car lately driven to its death, they are at odds with the elements and each other and can only succeed by forging ahead. Because, to return is to admit defeat, and thus cast a shadow over all future journeys of faith.

Told simply with wit and humor, Me, Darst, and Alley Oop takes an unvarnished look at the travelers, the journey, and the people they meet along their way. Its lessons come as revelations. With each new challenge, each new fork in the road, each new mountain high and valley low, Darst and Riggs learn a little more about themselves and each other, and the marvelous goodhearted country they are crossing. Never again will they undertake such a journey. Never again will the stars align. Its either make or break with no points given for a nice try.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524619541

John R. Riggs

John R. Riggs John R. Riggs is the son of Samuel H. Riggs (1913-2002) and Lucille Ruff Riggs (1918-2000) and the brother of C. A. Riggs, Prescott, Arizona. John was born February 27, 1945 in Beech Grove, Indiana, and in 1949 he and his family moved to Mulberry, Indiana, where they owned and operated Riggs Dairy Bar for a number of years. John attended Mulberry Schools (1951-1961) and graduated from Clinton Prairie High School in 1963. He credits his teachers at Mulberry and Clinton Prairie for their direction and inspiration and for grounding him in the fundamentals of thought and action so necessary for meeting the challenges of life. John then entered Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and rode in the Little 500. While there he earned a BS in social studies and an MA in creative writing. He later attended the University of Michigan, studying conservation and environmental communications. On September 2, 1967, John married Cynthia Perkins (1945-2002), and their children are Heidi Zimmerman, Mansfield, Ohio and Shawn Riggs, Colorado Springs, Colorado. On July 1, 1988, he married Carole Gossett Anderson and their children are Flint Anderson, Coatesville, Indiana and Susan Shorter, Spencer, Indiana. Since 1971, John has lived in Putnam County, Indiana, currently on a small farm southeast of Greencastle. While in Putnam County, he has worked as an English teacher, football coach, quality control foreman, carpenter, and wood splitter. From 1979-1998 he assisted James R. Gammon of DePauw University with Gammon’s landmark research on the Wabash River. He recently retired from DePauw University Archives, but continues to mix chemicals for Co-Alliance, Bainbridge. John is the author of 18 published books in the Garth Ryland mystery series, and the 2001 Bicentennial History bulletins for the Indiana United Methodist Church. He has also written River Rat, a coming of age novel; Of Boys and Butterflies, his ongoing memoirs; and numerous essays. Me, Darst, and Alley Oop, a travel odyssey and his first extended work of non-fiction, was published in 2016.

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2016 John R. Riggs. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/8/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1955-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1954-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911954

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Reflections

John R. Riggs

We sang in the sunshine

You know we laughed every day.

We sang in the sunshine

Then I went on my way.

From the song, We’ll Sing in the Sunshine

To the Wayfarer in all of us,

And, as always, to Carole

INTRODUCTION

A ctually, it began with a trip to the dentist—the chain of events that would lead to Darst and I driving a 1946 Dodge with a 1954 Dodge engine on the wrong motor mounts with the fan blades cut in half and no emergency brake through the Badlands, Black Hills, Rocky Mountains, and all points west on our way to California. It was Saturday, February 8, 1964, the day before the Beetles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I was running late, and as I left Mulberry on my way to Frankfort and the dentist, I noticed that Alley Oop had no oil pressure.

Mulberry is a town of about 1,000 in Clinton County, Indiana and ten miles east of Lafayette on Indiana State Highway 38. Frankfort is the Clinton County seat and ten miles southeast of Mulberry. Alley Oop, so named by my mother for the comic caveman riding the crest of a number one song, was a 1946 Dodge that my brother, Carl, had bought in the spring of 1959 for a hundred dollars from a local farmer and that Carl and I had then brush painted a dark blue with red wheel rims. Carl drove Alley Oop to and from his summer job at a Lafayette A and P and throughout his senior year in high school, then turned Alley Oop over to me when he left for Miami University in the fall of 1960. I in turn drove Alley Oop on my Indianapolis Star paper route, and to and from Clinton Prairie High School August 1961 to May 1963. I also drove Alley Oop all over the back roads of Clinton County as I ferried teammates home from basketball practice and friends to places we ought not have been, but that is another story. Alley Oop rode like a log wagon and drove like a tank with a top speed of eighty, downhill and downwind, but he had a good heater and a big back seat and usually got me where I wanted to go. There was the added bonus of knowing that whoever dated me did not do so for my car alone, since Alley Oop was not a chick magnet in any sense of the word.

The plan that Saturday in February 1964 was for me to drive Alley Oop to Frankfort to the dentist and leave him in front of the dentist’s office while I finished my appointment. I would then catch my ride back to Indiana University in Bloomington. Meanwhile my father, who worked at P.R. Mallory in Frankfort and who had ridden to work with someone else, would drive Alley Oop home.

The fact that Alley Oop now had no oil pressure might complicate matters. But ten miles? Surely I could make that, oil pressure or not. Besides, I was running late and Alley Oop’s gauges had never worked all that well anyway. How did I know that he wasn’t lying to me as he had so many times in the past?

That, at least, was my rationale, which always has deluded itself in favor of forward, when confronted with the choice of going forward or back. Honest reflection would have told me that Alley Oop’s gauges had never lied to me. Not once, ever. I, on the other hand, had routinely ignored them—which explained why I had once driven to Clinton Prairie and back, twenty miles in all, in sub-zero temperatures, with no heat and a frozen radiator.

The first five miles of my trip to the dentist, while not worry free, went without incident. So far so good, I thought. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But shortly after I turned south at US 421, Alley Oop developed a knock that became a clamor by the time I reached the outskirts of Frankfort. From then on I was a one man band, as people along the way stopped whatever they were doing to stand and stare, dogs ran for cover, and mothers with small children chased them indoors.

When I called Pop a few days later to learn what had happened next (I had kept my dentist appointment and then gone on to Bloomington with Mike Timmons and his family), he said that no indeed, he hadn’t driven Alley Oop home. He had ridden in the wrecker that towed Alley Oop home. Alley Oop had dropped a bearing and scarred his crankshaft. Nobody would be driving Alley Oop again soon, if ever.

No matter, I thought. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I’d worry about it tomorrow.

CHAPTER 1

W hy California? Why in May of 1964 did I suddenly decide that I would work my way to California and back that summer? One of the reasons was (no surprise here) a woman. I thought I loved her with all of my heart. She loved me like a brother. To complicate matters, she had a twin sister who loved me better than she did. Or at least her twin gave every indication that she did. But that all changed when her twin and I began to date. I was back to being a brother again. If you’ve ever been there, on either the brother or the sister side of the equation, you know how it feels—like your heart has been ripped out and hung on the line to dry. To be later eaten by crows.

Then there was the Little 500, the fifty mile bicycle race, made famous in the 1979 movie, Breaking Away. While in junior high and high school, I had gone three and a half years without losing a distance race. In the middle of a cross country race, while running stride for stride with Bob Burris from Dayton, Indiana, with my legs gone to wood, my lungs begging for air, my mind screaming, Why? Why? Why?, I stopped. Walked the rest of the way in and finished fourth.

In the next year and a half I would win only one more race. Not because I didn’t try. Not because I didn’t run myself to cramps, fall on the track, and rise on dead legs to black gnats and dry heaves. But because while in training I wouldn’t push myself beyond pain, which is required of champions.

Little 500 would give me a chance to redeem myself, to erase all of those doubts that had crept in of late as to my worth as a man and an athlete. We started training in February for the race in May, rode outside in all kinds of weather, including one memorable trip to Morgan Monroe state forest on hills from hell in a freezing rain, which coated my glasses and froze my gloves to the handlebars; rode the rollers in the basement of the fraternity house when the snow was too deep to ride outside, and spent our spring break riding the roads around Monon, Indiana, which (trust me on this) is not Clearwater Beach, Florida. I had no idea where our team, Lambda Chi Alpha, would finish the race. I only knew I had to train as hard as I possibly could and earn back my self respect.

We qualified twelfth, finished fourteenth. We would have done better had I not panicked when I came flying in for my first exchange, lost sight of our pits, froze at the handlebars, and slammed into the Beta Theta Pi catcher, who was still out on the track following an exchange of their riders. We lost the pack and essentially the race at that moment, then had to scramble to get another bike and rider on the track.

Still, we (Harry Lloyd, Jerry Miller, Dave Phillips, and I) rode hard. Might have finished in the top ten had not the safety director lost his balance while inspecting the track and stepped out onto the track right in front of Harry Lloyd, our best rider. The collision cracked five of the safety director’s ribs and drove cinders into Harry’s leg from his ankle to his thigh. That really hurt our chances of gaining any ground. But at least Harry’s legs now matched. The other was already black with cinders from a practice crash. (Different curve, however).

Even more than the race itself, the victory banquet that followed a few days later and the respect accorded the winners told me what a big deal the race was and served to heighten my resolve to win it all the next year. But what impressed me the most was that just hours after the finish of the race and while still in a great deal of pain himself, Harry Lloyd had gone to visit the safety director at the hospital and learn the extent of his injuries. That simple action would forever color my view of such matters, by showing me that one didn’t necessarily have to win to be a champion. The yin and the yang. Just a preview of what would become a summer of contradictions.

Love’s labor lost, the Little 500 lost—two good reasons to head off to California and put it all behind me. But there were other reasons, too, for going, reasons much more fundamental to who I was and who I was becoming.

Mulberry, my hometown, was the perfect place for me to spend my childhood. We owned a dairy bar, every kid’s dream, where along with the banana splits, vanilla cokes, and cheeseburgers with fried onions, I enjoyed the gossip of the day and the endless variety of people and commerce that passed through its doors. It seemed that not a day went by when I didn’t greet a stranger, or learn something new. Perhaps it wasn’t always good news, such as the day in September 1954 when polio came to town and struck down seven of our people, two of whom died, but that made it no less vital. And I attribute my lifelong interest in world affairs to those early days at the dairy bar that made it smart and fun to be in the know.

At that time (the 1950s) Mulberry was surrounded by woods and farms, where I had all the room I wanted in which to roam. Often I would be gone from one meal to the next, chasing butterflies, hunting rabbits and squirrels, damming streams and building hide outs, rattling my bones on some of the meanest sled hills in Madison township. Each and every day was