Story-A-Day #351: Betsy

BETSY

Those were different times.  You probably wouldn't get it because your version of the '50s only exists in your mind based on what you have seen in the movies, but things really were different back then.   Sure they were simpler and more honest, but it was more than that.

When I was growing up, we had to work hard every day just to get by.  I'm not going to tell you that I had to walk ten miles through the snow to get to school every day and that it was uphill both ways, but things were definitely harder.

I remember saving up my money for years so that I could buy my first car.  Why did I want a car so badly?  Because of Rita Granger.  She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a radiant redhead, and when I did get my car, I wanted to make sure it would be a worthy chariot for my belle.

I had a problem with my plan though.  The problem was that Rita had no idea that she was my belle.  In fact, she had already sidled up with Tommy Coughlin.  He was what you might call a greaser, which wasn't really a bad thing back then, but he had a great baby blue car that he had been driving since he was fourteen.  He called that car Betsy and he was the envy of every guy I went to school with because of that car, but for me, it was all because of the beautiful Rita who clung to his arm.

When he crashed his car on Route 7, it devastated the town, but no one more than me.  Rita had been with him at the time, and she was thrown from the car.  She did not survive.  Neither of them did.

I spent a lot of time out there on Route 7 trying to figure out how my life had all gone so wrong.  I know it sounds selfish, I was still alive after all, but on the inside, I did not feel like I was.  Something had died inside of me that day as well.

I wound up buying Tommy's wreck and told everyone I planned to fix it.  I never did though.  Instead I spent all my time out there on Route 7, wishing for a way to change what had already transpired.

I still go out there every year on October 28th.  On those cold autumn nights, I sit by that bend and wait, and every year, without fail, thesame thing happens.  Everything falls silent and then the roar of an engine fills the night.  I sit there patiently and wait.  the roar grows louder and then two dots of light appear.  It's Betsy.  She roars past the place where I sit and Rita waves delightedly as the race past my spot.

There is no crash this time though, she just disappears.  It's the damndest thing, but it gives me a sense of peace seeing her as she was back then, full of vibrant life and promise.

I'll be there again tonight, waiting for my fleeting glimpse of what could have been.  I'll sit there in the cold and wait for Tommy and Betsy to deliver me my last vision of what I lost all those years ago.