Joyriding

My grandfather was a rumrunner. His job was relatively simple. He would load up the trunk of his car with cases of alcohol, then drive across ice-covered Lake Michigan from Canada into the United States. There had only been one chase across the lake, and he had been careful to make no turns during the pursuit. It was three in the morning, and he turned off his lights and used the moon’s reflection off the snow to guide his way across the ice. When he finally reached the other side, his car slid onto the ground, and the Studebaker made its way to Detroit to cash in.

After prohibition was over, grandpa bought a stock car, and began racing it on the lake each winter. It was blue with the number 9 painted on each side. There were no stripes or logos. The stock cars were pretty non-descript in those days.

Each Christmas, if it was cold enough, grandpa would load up the grandkids and drive us an hour north to the lake to go joyriding for the afternoon. We screamed and laughed as he spun the car in circles. Sometimes it felt like the car wouldn’t stop before it hit the side of the lake, and sometimes it didn’t. We would knock up against the embankment, and when all movement had ceased, we would look around a laugh some more.

Grandpa died last week. Brain cancer. He worked on the assembly line for General Motors, machining pistons. My family lived in Lansing, and we visited four or five times a year. Their house was in the country, next to a lake, of course, but for some reason it never froze over enough for grandpa’s joyrides. He knew this because he had an old sedan at the bottom. That winter, while ice-fishing, he decided the ice was thick enough, but when the ice broke, and the car began sinking like a submarine into the country lake, grandpa climbed out, went into the house to lie in the tub, and after he warmed up, decided to never try that again.