There are three main routes from Spokane to Bellingham: The Two, The Twenty, and The Interstate. Back when I was there, there had been no Interstate 90 yet. Normally, the trip would take 6 to 7 hours one way. We could do a round trip up the Two and down the Twenty, or vice versa, in less than 8, sometimes reaching speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour.
There is a huge forest between the flatlands of Washington State and SeaTac, the Tacoma, Seattle, Everett coastline. Bellingham was north of those three and very close to the Canadian Border.
The State Patrol knew of the northern most route, The Twenty, but didn’t really spend much time up there. So we did. As per our training, we had the entire map memorized for all of the turn-offs, short cuts, and ditching spots. You didn’t really want to take a dirt and gravel road but, when in need, you do what you gotta do and then make your way back to the black-top.
Runner traffic going up to Vancouver came from Portland, Yakima, and Spokane. We all made blind drops in and around Bellingham but made pickups from all over the place from Bellingham down to SeaTac. There was an odd trip up to Penticton but the Spokane crews rarely took it. None that I knew of.
I found out years later that Seattle had a hodge-podge of gang bangers but Tacoma was primarily Bloods and Crips. We never cared who was who and didn’t really want to know. We just had the occasional “tangle” with them once we got into range of them.
I had started out racing for pinks. This is where one challenger and another would race on an agreed upon course and the winner would get the ownership of the loser’s wheels (the entire car). For Spokane, this was usually from near Gonzaga University somewhere and up North Division to some agreed upon intersection.
The Black. I never knew the details of just how the car I drove was put together. I knew the shop-guys called it a Frankenstein because it was made from parts of all sorts of cars and even trucks. Contrary to what all the “car” movies would have you excited about, The Black was quiet. The carburetor would howl if I punched it, but the exhaust was heavily muffled. It did have cutouts that would completely dump exhaust gasses and noise out to the sides but I never used it. And the insides didn’t have any of the gauges that worked other than an in-dash tachometer. That was it. The speedometer didn’t work, either. It wasn’t hooked up because there just wasn’t one, from what I was told. The four speed manual gear shift had two ranges, first and second was for in-town dancing, third and fourth were for flying. And, again, contrary to what the “car” movies would focus on, speed was not what The Black was good at. Slowing and turning, taking bumps, and accelerating was. Rock-like suspension, tires wide and tall, and brakes that never faded… all to make The Black good at running the streets. And I mean really good. I raced up and down North Division three or four times before word got out that The Black was a sleeper, a car that looked dumpy and slow but really wasn’t. Then, nobody would race me. That’s when Mr. Wilson moved me into a Runner slot so I could run packages for him.
And I got a jammer. I don’t want to give out his name because he might still be alive just as I am. I’m too lazy to make up a fictitious name for him, so I’ll just call him Jammer in this account. On a run, I would be out in front with Jammer about a mile or less behind me. And we chatted on the various empty CB channels with each other about our tactics when needed. You see, a jammer’s job was to remove any and all interference that a cop or civilian challenger might pose to my run. And Jammer’s car, also painted black, was specifically build to do that, up to and including ramming another car. The WSP (Washington State Patrol) would back off if we got into a tangle with one of them. Seeing a jammer was enough to tell them. It was rare that we were in the sights of the constabulary for anything more than a minute or two. But, once in SeaTac, gang-bangers didn’t care and would need a bit of convincing. Jammer was good at that. In the two summers that we ran together, we never got stopped. Of course, The Black got touched a few times but nothing ended things for me. I lost contact with Jammer in a tangle once just north of Seattle on our way back down. I had gotten out of CB range and continued on back to Spokane. He got back about 15 minutes behind me. I’ve never seen any of the Fast and Furious movies, but I imagine their stories were taken from what we were doing in Washington State for money as well as what the “Tuners” in California were doing for fun. I don’t know: I was running years before any of the movies came out. Well, there was Steve McQueen in “Bullet” but I hadn’t seen that until years later. Oh, and “Vanishing Point” which I saw that years later, too.
The run that is most striking in my mind was an uneventful one. We went up, made my drop, and deadheaded back to Spokane without incident. Jammer had been back a ways and quiet. I was just focused on the road with lights on both front and back. But, for some reason, the blast of forest air past the window invited me to roll the window down and let the rumble sing to me. I was young adrenalin junky which was why I loved the Running. But this night, I just sat back, slowed down a bit, and enjoyed the blurred trees whipping past The Black’s headlights. Jammer creeped up and I could hear his radio call. The wind ripping around my face muffled anything he said so I just replied that my window was down and that I was fine. I can’t tell you what was going through my mind; it was too many years into my past. But the delight I felt just easing down a long straight patch has continued in my reminiscences all these years. The world was a nice place to be alive in. No worries, no dangers, no responsibilities.
I gave you Mr. Wilson’s real name and anyone from that time and place will know who our mentor was. Everyone back then knew him. Cops, Runners, Racers, even the newspapers had written about him. But, what, ten years later or so, I ran into an old “Chop Shop” friend from our crew and we yammered for a while until he told me that years prior, Mr. Wilson had a permanent stop in Montana somewhere. Nobody had ever seen Mr. Wilson behind the wheel of the car. He trained us from the passenger seat. Why he was in Montana or even why the old man was running just didn’t make sense. Yet, he was gone. Was he looking for that joy I felt that night slipping through the trees? Was he looking for the exhilarating high we all got from making Runs? Was it suicide? His own “Vanishing Point”?
