Runaway “Their Moment in Time” Read Free

great for children, because the streets were a maze, with only one way in and one way out. Random, crazy traffic never affected us, but unfortunately, our lemonade stands never did very well.
     
    In fact, if we did see a car on the street, we knew one of two things; the occupants of the car lived nearby, or they were lost and couldn’t find their way out of our maze-like neighborhood.
     
    People in our town were simple, kind and unobtrusive. Moms made cakes, cookies, and pies for their neighbors. On occasion, we went to neighborhood barbecues.
     
    Plaid shorts, knee-high socks, and surf attire were popular. We drank out of garden hoses, froze orange juice on a stick, and bought rocks as pets. Technology was minimal—video games were in their infancy. In fact, the only video game that existed was called “Pong,” and after about five minutes, the players could go insane from boredom. So we played outside as a form of entertainment. We rode bikes, played in fields, and swam in neighbors’ pools. My friends and I had a particular favorite pastime—taking out our bikes and racing down the streets with the wind in our hair and adrenaline pulsing through our veins
     
    It was a great way to grow up. As with most kids, I spent almost all of my time with my friends. Every morning, as early as we could, we were out in our neighborhood with our bikes, ready for the day’s adventure. We stayed out until the street lights came on, without any fear of the scary outside world.
     
    To make our youth even better, we were lucky in that we had a favorite hangout. It was a diner called The Oasis, and it was our special place. One of our friend’s dads owned it, and before him, it was his father’s. The diner originally had been built in the early 1950s when Brandon Thompson’s dad was just a kid.
     
    The Oasis was located where the road forks in the town of La Verne. Route 66 continues east, and Baseline veers northeast.
     
    The Oasis had its own history and its own memories. Besides being an authentic drive-in of an era gone by, it was also a main focal point for early street racers. Baseline was originally an old country highway that took drivers through the main part of the citrus groves. It was a simple, less-traveled street than Route 66, and early on, teens from the 50s decided it would make a better quarter-mile race track. The Oasis sat facing the track as its parking lot was next to the track itself. It wasn’t so much an official racing strip as it was a desolate strip of asphalt with a spray-painted line.
     
    The Oasis wasn’t large and it wasn’t well known… it was just ours. It held a sense of wonder for us. On any given day, my four friends and I would find ourselves sitting in the diner, listening to Mr. Thompson tell his stories from the past. He was kind, friendly and always eager to tell a story, which usually had something to do with racing, cars, or engines.
     
    In the middle of a story one day, Runaway blurted out, “Did they always race for pink slips?”
     
    “Well, no,” he said. “Not always. Sometimes people would race just for fun, and they had no intention of taking their opponent’s pink slip away.”
     
    I realized that I hadn’t been listening as closely as I thought. Looking up, I asked, “What’s a pink slip again?” I was only about eight or nine, and clearly I had gotten lost in the explanation.
     
    “Car ownership papers,” Mr. Thompson said, smiling at me and probably realizing I was trying to process too much information.
     
    “Like when?” Runaway persisted, completely ignoring me.
     
    Looking back at her, he said, “Oh, sometimes when they were racing friends. Pink slips were taken when the car clubs got involved. Then, and only then, did drivers start losing cars. But,” he took a breath and, with his eyebrows raised, said, “People just didn’t race on our quarter-mile, you see—sometimes they went other places just to hang out. There are actually two other