The absolute scariest ride I've ever been on in my life was in the exact twin of this Impala
I was 16 in the summer of 1961, living in Omaha with my recently-divorced mother and two total dork younger brothers. Was around this time of year and she was dropping us off with my dad in Lincoln, a drive of 55 miles for a long weekend in Kansas City to see a three-game series between KC and the Yankees with great seats from my uncle for the series. Well, mom was kind of a flake and got us to Lincoln late. By the steam pouring out of my old man's ears to mingle with the pungent reek of Jim Beam and Marlboros I knew it was going to be a long day. The dorks, being the natural cowards younger brothers are, bolted immediately for the back seat of the Impala, volunteering me for shotgun. The tender amongst us may not recall a time when interstate highways, especially in the midwest, existed primarily in imagination so it was two laners all the way to KC. Once on the highway the torture began in earnest. Passing trains of five or six vehicles led by a lumbering semi and backed up by drivers too timid or stupid to pass, he'd put the pedal to the metal and the sound of that 4-barrel 348 opening up would turn my guts to water. Four interminable hours of unrelenting terror punctuated by one brief moment of comic relief when the old man launched a backhand over the seat and put a double-tap on the dorks for making fun of what might have been a somewhat girlish involuntary scream that just jumped out of me when I thought my last moment of this life was at hand. By a series of miracles we got there in one piece to witness two outstanding historical events: Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris chasing Babe Ruth's single-season home run record--as I recall they each had a couple of homers over the series, as did Yogi Berra--and the unbridled teenage joy of hanging around the pool at my uncle's apartment with his 22 year-old fiance in her bikini. I rode the back seat home, thinking only of baseball....