Cloudy with chance of Snow and Idiots

I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but somehow around 1970 I met up with Peter Lumby—AKA The Lump in Toronto. He sold advertising and I was a graphic designer. I rented an office from him. A perfect marriage…except, I was rather gullible and The Lump was not averse to profiting from such weakness.

As an example, he was buddies with the manager of the bank where I foolishly kept my money. I don’t know how he orchestrated it, but on one occasion—when he was a little short of the readies—he managed to talk his friend into extracting a thousand dollars from my account and depositing it in his! (Some fifteen years went by before I recouped it).

But despite such skullduggery, we got along well. I paid him back in other ways—such as depriving him of his trousers and underwear and dangling him by the ankles from my second floor apartment on Avenue Road during rush hour.

But on with the story.

It was a Friday afternoon in the middle of October. The Lump and I had taken a long liquid lunch at our local grog-house. We emerged from the trough around four in the afternoon to discover a rather substantial shroud of the white stuff adorning the city—the first of the year.

Our plan was to head to back to Peter’s place and order pizza to get something solid into our stomachs.

As we approached the car-park at the back of our building, Lumby chirps up, “You Australians don’t know how to drive in snow—race you to my place.”

In those days, driving with a few grogs aboard was not a hanging offence—most of us who imbibed did it on a regular basis. I eagerly embraced the challenge.

I owned a Mustang fastback—Lumby had a Buick something-or-other. I was blocking him in, so I took my time clearing off my windscreen before heading out onto Dalhousie Street—more of a lane really, its only purpose being to give access to parking spots behind the buildings on Church and Jarvis Streets.

Shuter East was the best way to get to Peter’s place. It was perhaps a hundred yards south from our driveway. I’d covered about sixty yards and was slowing for the intersection when The Lump came flying past me, head turned, grinning triumphantly.

As soon as he pulled in front of me, his brake lights shot on. But he’d left his slowing down far too late. He began to slew sideways. Then he over-corrected and went the other way, mounting the curb and charging straight into a telephone pole—which was probably fortunate because it prevented him from flying out into Shuter Street and getting T-boned.

I pulled up beside him and was about to offer my gleeful condolences. But he leapt from the car—completely ignoring me—darted around to the front and jammed the seriously bent hood down. He then dashed back, jumped into the driver’s seat and started cranking the engine over. For him, the race was still on.

When I heard the car start, I turned onto Shuter and began cruising east. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the distorted snout of the Buick emerging. As the car straightened out, I noticed that the front passenger-side wheel was tucked under the vehicle at an alarming angle. And although my windows were closed, I could hear—above the racket of the city—a horrible intermittent screeching sound.

Not wanting to wait too long for The Lump, I took an early turn in order to treat myself to the longer, but more scenic route.

I was a block or so from his apartment when I began to hear that intermittent screeching sound again. I looked in the mirror—no sign of the bent Buick. But the sound was getting louder. As I slowed for an intersection, prior to making the turn onto Peter’s street, the sound became almost painful—SKREEEK, SKREEK, SKREEEK…

Suddenly the Buick went flying past in front of me. Once again, The Lump was leering at me triumphantly through his window. He’d won the race!

I believe, incredibly, that he might even have re-stated that Australians didn’t know how to drive in snow.

How grown up is that – silly idiots! Davina