Little kids sneak out of church, steal Oldsmobile, go drinking, driving, shoot up the countryside

This is the story that I thought of when I saw Charlie's 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire:

I suppose that it might be an exaggeration to say that we stole the Oldsmobile - after all, it was Randy who drove and his father owned the Oldsmobile. It's just that I was 11, he was 13 but looked ten - too young to drive and his dad had no idea that we had taken the car and certainly had not given his permission, so, in a sense, we had stolen it.

But if you had been with us, you would have understood. It was what Mormons call "Fast Sunday," and if you had ever been a boy forced to sit through such an ordeal as that day - and there was nothing at all fast about it - then you would have wanted to steal a car and go driving in the Montana Countryside, too.

Fast Sunday is the first Sunday of every month and the idea is that you begin the fast on Saturday evening, when you skip dinner. You continue the fast through breakfast and lunch and then break it at dinner. You take the money that you did not spend on food and donate to the church's welfare fund so that it can be used to buy food for the poor.

And when we fasted, it was a complete fast - no food, no water, no juice, no consumption of any kind.

But that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part was Fast and Testimony Meeting, which came after Sunday School. Usually, the Bishop or one of his counselors would start off by bearing his testimony and after that it was all "open mic." As the spirit struck, people got up to bear their testimonies, and there was always a lot of weeping. There was no time limit and the meeting could last hours.

And Mom always embarrassed me, because she would get up, bear witness for an interminable length of time and at some point would single me out and tell some story that showed what a good, faithful and righteous boy I was.

No boy wants the other boys - not even the other church boys - to think that he is good, faithful and righteous. Mom had no idea about the fights that this kind of thing got me into.

I imagine that when Mom got up and told the story on this particular Sunday, she scanned the congregation, looking for my sweet face and then wondered where the hell I was.

Yep, I was with Randy. We had gotten into his father's Oldsmobile and driven off, two little kids, one of them peering over the steering wheel, trying to stay out of the sight of cops.

Randy came from a poor family, yet somehow he always had money and he was generous with it. So before we headed out of town, we stopped at Safeway and he bought Pepsi, Candy Bars and Twinkies for both of us, then we drove out into the country, drinking and eating.

We broke our fast early that Sunday. 

We drove out of Missoula and past Lolo Hot Springs, down a dirt road that crossed the railroad tracks and then Randy found a place and parked the Oldsmobile.

"I got something to show you," he said.

We got out and I followed him as he opened the trunk. Inside was a .22 rifle and two or three boxes of long-rifle bullets.

We had drank our Pepsi's by now, so we put the empty bottles atop some fence posts, shattered them with bullets, then searched about, found beer bottles - and in those days, one could always find beer bottles laying about anywhere in or near Missoula - put them on the posts and shot them, too.

Then Randy drove us back. He parked the car and we went into the chapel, just as the closing prayer was being said.

Thank God!

There there was another Fast Sunday, a year or so before that one, that also involved Randy, cars and sneaking out of testimony meeting. In this case, the cars were Ramblers, a very pathetic brand of car that was none-the-less popular and there several of them parked in the church parking lot.

The word, "Rambler" was spelled out in the grill of these cars in chrome letters about two inches high that were attached to the car only at the base.

Randy showed me how a well-aimed, swift kick, would knock a letter free of the grill. So after that, probably just as Mom was once again telling the congregation what a sweet and righteous boy I was, Randy and I kicked the R-A-M-B-L-E-R out of every car thus branded.

Afterward, we divided the letters up, he taking one half and I the other.

We stashed them until it was safe, and then each of us took our letters home.

I put mine in my middle drawer, where Mom soon found them. She wondered where I had gotten them and so I told a plausible story.

Unfortunately, the Rambler owners - one of whom happened to be the Bishop - all noticed that they had lost their letters. The next Sunday, the Bishop made an issue of it from the pulpit.

Mom instantly figured it out. For the salvation of my soul, she insisted that I go stand before the Bishop and confess my sin.

I did and it was hell.

Comments

[Albert Lewis]

Ah, Fast Sunday. Yes, been there, done that. Left it all behind 40 years ago. Haven't regretted it a day since.

[debby]

Gees. It's been my experience that if you don't feed the kids, they get mean. I always kept mine well fed just to avoid things like grand theft auto.

[Wendy Warnick]

amen

[Hal Johnson]

Sheesh this was funny. I'll be back.

[MikeG]

Did you see the picture of Pia in the ADN with her 15lb mushroom? I believe it's the same Pia you met in the Vagabond coffee and tomatoes blog

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

Mike - I did see that picture. I got a big kick out of it, because I had asked her if she was going to enter anything in the fair and she said, "no."

She was protecting her secret.

Hal, I hope you do come back. Too bad you caught me just when circumstance forces me into "Cocoon mode."

Thank you, Wendy.

Mean and desperate, debby.

I understand, Albert.