Captainkirk's Duster project

The summer had gone quickly; much too quickly for me, and it was time to leave for tech school, an 18-month AMT school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This was around the middle of August, I believe. I loaded up as many tools and spare Mopar parts as I could fit in the trunk; nuts, bolts, gaskets, etc; stuff I'd never use but I took it anyway. I was following my dad, who was driving his big Jimmy half-ton pickup with the big stuff.The Duster actually got fairly decent highway mileage (for that era), although that was not a huge concern; gas had not hit a dollar a gallon yet. You could still buy leaded premium!
I was a little concerned, as this was my first real road trip in the car; not to worry! It ran and drove beautifully. I'd put on a new Walker dual 2 1/4 exhaust through Turbo Hush Thrush cans and reinstalled the original bullet tips; the motor still growled plenty but it was a bit more civilized finally ;no more eye-popper pounding headaches and ringing ears! We made St. Louis uneventfully the first day and stayed overnight at my uncle's house.
The next day we finished the trip, also without a hitch. When we left Chicago I was nervously scanning the gauges all the time, ear cocked for the slightest sound out-of-sorts. The second day I relaxed, finally, and enjoyed the ride. When we hit the Will Rogers turnpike Dad kicked it into high gear and smoked along about eighty, (this was in the Carter-era when 55 meant 55!) with me "drafting" right on his tail. The Red Rocket fell into a kind of groove; the motor thrumming out it's muscle melody, wind in my face, groovin' to Robin Trower and Jeff Beck...that was a ride that coulda gone on forever, but all good things must come to an end, and so it did.....

Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hot, dry, dusty and flat. We stayed in a motel that first night, then the next day went down to the school and got me all registered. Placement hooked me up with some student housing (a mobile home, for cryin' out loud; I was feeling more like a redneck every day!) and a "phantom" roommate, who had not yet shown up. With that all taken care of, we drove out to the fancy new digs and unloaded. We went and got a bite for lunch, then Dad drove off into the sunset.
I spent an hour or so getting unpacked, then walked outside to view the surroundings. Nothing had changed; it was still hot, dry, dusty and flat. The sun was hanging up in the sky like this blazing blowtorch; I could hear half a hundred air conditioners humming; having a battle of the bands with the locusts (who won; they were louder when they put their insipid little minds to it) and cars moving past on the road; other than that was like the Twilight Zone; no wind and no people! I suppose they were all inside in the AC doing what trailer people do best (?)
This was not a student-only MHP; in fact most of the people living there were just ordinary....well, hillbillies. "Trailer trash", if you will, for lack of a better word. Now don't get me wrong; lots of the people in that MHP would probably give you the shirt off their back if you needed it; that's just the way they were. But I really didn't associate much with the ones who weren't students; there just wasn't time.
Being a student (cheap) on a fixed budget (cheap) with no job yet (cheap) I chose to forego the AC and opened all the windows, hoping for a wisp of a breeze; no such luck! You hear stories about illegal immigrants dying in a boxcar, well baby, I had my very own boxcar! It was like the hothouse in "Cool Hand Luke"! Three hours and I was already lonesome and homesick and bored; I had no phone yet, and didn't know where any pay phones were anyway. It was hotter than the bore of an M-16 in a fire-fight and I decided to go find a hamburger and later, a pay phone (to call my girl back home.)
Now this trailer park....er....MHP, was about two miles from the middle of nowhere. I had to drive several miles to get to anything resembling civilization. The funny thing was, there was a four-lane paved road leading there! With nobody on it! It seemed like a good place to romp on it.
I walked out onto the porch of the trai...er, Mobile Home, and the sun was just hanging there, this huge pumpkin-orange orb in a cloudless, windless sky. Hot as the inside of the MH was, the heat outside was like a wall you ran into; it took effort just to move into it. The seats of Red Ryder were so hot I had to throw a blanket on them; even at six in the evening. I rolled down all the windows and popped the rears open (one of the cool features about a Duster; rear windows that work like vents), and headed out for a burger.
Naturally, I romped on it. Even in the sizzling heat she ran like a fresh quarterhorse. This was more like it! At seventy, the wind moving through the car felt like a cold shower. I pulled into this drive-in restaurant and ordered up dinner, enjoying the AC indoors. These two guys in a nice Z-28 pulled up and were admiring the Rocket outside before coming in. They asked me if that was my car (duh, I'm the only one in here.......) and we started talking cars. I told 'em I was new to town, and they're like; "Duuude! You've gotta go down on XXXXXX street! Every weekend there's like this unofficial car show; some really cool stuff!" Now I'll be hog-tied if I can remember the name of that street; maybe some Tulsans out there can jog my memory. Anyway, I made a mental note of it, thanked them and finished my burger.
Right outside, as luck would have it, was a pay phone. Let me tell ya, a quarter didn't get you very far even then, despite what all the old-timers blowing smoke tell you! I called my sweetie but ran out of quarters much too soon, and found myself alone again, feeling all the worse. Well, the best thing when you're feeling blue is to...
Romp on it.
I did.
The sun was down below the horizon now, the light rapidly dying and the sweet smell of freshly-mown grass came skating in on the cooler night air. Robin Trower was goin' on and on about some funky Bridge of Sighs and the little motor was talkin' to me, daring me to put my foot in it and snarling at me when I did, and life was just a little bit OK again.