The Enthusiast Read Free Page B

twice anyway. There were motor-drive photos of Freddy Pasco in action, a story about a buggy breaking sixty miles an hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and ads for better wheels than the buggies came with, better bearings than the wheels came with, and bushings machined in someone’s garage, using the same space-age metals that Controlled Dynamics had relied on for precise Pentagon-bilking applications.
    The next day I typed a letter on loose-leaf paper and mailed it to Kite Buggy ’s parent company, Dobey Publications of Clayton, Illinois.
    Dear Sirs,
    I think you have a great magazine. However, I believe you should know that the two-point turn that was suggested in your last issue (“All the Right Moves,” June) could result in the rider being pulled off the back of the buggy at high speed, with extreme impact to the head. I think this was a shortcoming in what was an otherwise excellent story.
    Here in Rancho Cahuenga, we have what we feel is an outstanding facility that we put together at the former headquarters of a large concern. It features hills, a speed run, and a slalom. As many as 8 riders have used it at a given time.
    Yours,
Henry Bay
Rancho Cahuenga, California
    A few days later I got a scrawled note on the letterhead of the Clayton Quality Fast Printing Company:
    Dear Henry,
    Thanks for the heads-up on the 2-pointer. We’ll be printing your letter in a future “Buggy Tracks” column.
    Sounds like you have a great setup out there. Want to do a story on it? Photos?
    Go buggy,
Jim Rensselaer
    As a Future Litigator of America, I recognized the breezy thanks and the offered assignment as the sops they were, but I was over there buggying every day anyway. I borrowed Dad’s camera, shot two rolls, wrote a page of copy, and sent it all off. A few weeks later, as I packed for college, an envelope arrived with two copies of the new Kite Buggy and a note from Rensselaer: Henry—Good stuff. Thanks, Jim.
    There were four photos on the cover, two of them mine. The headlines slashed across them were ANDY WEISS RIPS IT AT RANCHO and CLIFF STARNER: “I’M TAKIN’ IT TO THE EDGE!” The story on Cliff said he lived in Florida, where buggy dealers were putting people on waiting lists. “Sarasota this year was intense,” he was quoted as saying. “Chicks, kites, and waves. Damn.” A shot of me illustrated an item on Alabama: BIRMINGHAM IS BUGGY-BURGEONING! A photo of Andy accompanied my piece on Rancho Cahuenga, which had been amped to the point of hallucination. “The primo buggy park is drawing mega-crowds,” it said. “City fathers are coming from all over the U.S. to check it out.”
    I was annoyed by all the lying, but no one else was. Andy bought five copies and Cliff kept saying the “chicks and waves” thing in a “whoa, dude” accent till we begged him to stop.
    The night before I left for college, I put my kite and buggy away in the garage and stood there for a while looking at them. I wished I could take something with me—the kite, a leaf rake, a web chair with my despondent dad in it. Finally I turned the lights off and went inside, and in the morning I left for Cal State Los Nietos to save my family.

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    W alking through the college library with an introductory law book in my hand, I saw a broad-shouldered blond guy sitting at a table shaking his head with melancholy awe at the book he was reading. He looked up, saw me, and said, “Have you read this?” as if we already knew each other and he was sure I’d want to be alerted to the book’s contents right away. He held it up: The World Rushed In , by J. S. Holliday. I shook my head.
    â€œThe gold rush,” he said, and read aloud, running his spread fingers under the words as if sight-reading music: “‘What a dilemma they faced. They had to justify their staying in California far longer than expected, leaving wife and family with