Gary Scow

 

He was my teenage friend; part of the gang that hung out together on the playground to play softball (and talk to girls) at Burbank Elementary in the summers.  That tradition started as younger teens and continued into the car years.  Gary and I would go to the drags at Lyon’s Dragstrip and end up in the pits with the nitro fumes and the rubber smoke.  He knew people there, and was friends with a guy who drove a *very* fast 1955 Chevy.  Gary was an easy-going guy who, with his mop of blonde hair, looked like a California surfer dude, but he was pure motorhead.

 

I had a cool car, a 55 Chevy with a small-block (283 cubic inches) V-8 and a Hearst floor shift.  He had a cooler car; a 57 Chevy retrofitted with a big-block (348 cubic inches) V-8, with three two-barrel carburetors and a four-speed.  It was a beast.  His rear tires were always smoking and always bald.  We hung out together and listened to the car radio and talked cars.

 

The last time I saw Gary I didn’t know it would be the last time.  It was before I went away to the Army.  When I came home on leave I went to see him again.  He lived upstairs in the house behind the house, like the old neighborhoods are full of in Southern California.  Convert your detached garage into living space and rent it, or build out a second floor with apartments above the garage and rent them out.

 

It was after midnight when I decided to go see Gary, but that wasn’t unusual.  Before I went in the Army I always got off work late.  I’d close the gas station at midnight and, still wound-up from work, I’d go find someone to hang out with for a while before going home to bed.  So this night I walked quietly down the drive past the house in front.  I climbed the wooden stairs and walked the outdoor balcony down to his bedroom window.  I called his name (in a loud whisper so I would only wake him) but he didn’t wake up.  That wasn’t unusual.  He was a heavy sleeper.  Sometimes I had to climb inside and shake him awake.  I tried to open the window but he had it blocked with something.  It only opened part way.  That wasn’t right.  I called more, but he just wouldn’t wake up.

 

I had to give up and walk away, disappointed I didn’t get to say hi to him.  When I was halfway down the driveway, a man’s voice called out from the window I’d been trying to get in.  “Who are you and what do you want?”  Oh shit!  Gary doesn’t live there anymore!  I tried to climb into someone’s bedroom window.  I could have been inside a stranger’s bedroom shaking him awake!  I explained and apologized as best I could from halfway down the driveway.

 

I am so lucky that whole thing didn’t turn out terrible.

 

I never found out where Gary Scow moved to.  Recently I googled him and found news articles about him driving a funny car at Lyons, and later a drag boat.  He was famous as a drag boat driver, being referred to in the newspaper as the Great Gary Scow.  That was when he was being put into the cockpit of a drag boat with a small crane, for the first time after being hurt so badly in a crash that he couldn't move well enough to climb in on his own.  Found the newspaper articles, but never found Gary.