One day I saw a groovy old Vega station wagon tooling around in a parking lot and I texted the picture of it to Reggie.  I asked “is this what chased you all those years ago?”

He got all “smart aleck” and said, “it was no Vega, baby.”

Reggie’s saga continues…

The Opel.  Not many of those on the road in Maine ever, never mind in those days, when Audis were strange, exotic wheels.  There was a Ford Cortina belonging to a schoolmate, the pastor’s BMW, Devo’s big brother had a true Mini Cooper from their first go round.  There were Volvos, boxes on wheels, but they were hardly exotic.  Oh, and the Hales on Plummer Street had a Saab 96, a little grey thing that looked like a squashed teardrop.  That was about it for non-American cars in our neighborhood.

They weren’t an Opel coupe with tinted windows.

This was after the Vietnam War, during the “hollow” military of the 1970s.  The Navy base in Brunswick had its problems, and my father, a landlord encountered more than his share of them.  In those days drugs were rampant, before repeated sweeps and “Not in my Navy” became the catchphrase.  The sailors brought back all sorts of things from far away locations, most of them unsavory and some of them would make your skin crawl.

The Opel’s owner was one of those sailors.  The Opel’s passenger was an older girl who lived a block away from me (and our blog hostess), and she probably outweighed all of us put together.  Her family was renting the house they stayed in, and were likely Navy, too.

So when I saw the Opel on that lonely road with no one around, I knew what it was and who was driving.

What I didn’t expect was the Opel to pass so close that I had to jump into a snow bank to avoid it.

I’m sure they were laughing inside that coupe.  I got back into the road and yelled some choice expletives at them, accompanied by the finger.

The speeding Opel skidded to a sudden stop on the wet, gravel coated road.  It sat there for a moment.

Then the backing lights came on and the tires spun as he stomped on the gas in reverse.

I weighed my options in a flash, and chose the woods.  Over the snow bank I went and back down into the woods I had only recently come out of.

Fifty yards in I stopped.  The Opel loomed where I had bounded the snow bank.  I couldn’t see him, but the windows were down and I could hear him taunt me, threaten to hurt me real bad.

The fat chick cackled with laughter at his every word.

I turned and headed deeper into the woods, back towards the way I came.  His last words were, “You can’t escape me.”

Then the Opel spun out and raced off to where he figured he would meet me again.