it was black

My VW pickup was black originally.

That has nothing to do with this story, but when I first made the beetle into a pickup it was black.

One day I was driving home in my little bug-up. I was driving speed limit or so and as I went to pass a big ugly Chevy pickup, it would speed up and not let me pass.

That happened a couple of times, then the chevy went on down the road ahead of me -- for about a mile.

He was going maybe 20 and I was going 45. I went to pass and he did the speed up thing again, but I was going a lot faster and he could not catch up.

Then I saw and felt that he had pulled left against my little VW. I felt the two touch. He was intending to push me off the road. There was a corral and a big barn on that side of the street and I quickly did not like the looks of that.

So, with little thinking I pulled my rig toward him (remember we were in contact) HARD. Because I had inertia, my disadvantage in weight was evened out and I was able to push him back into his lane as I whizzed by.

I looked out the mirror. The pickup stopped and two guys got out to look.

Not being really stupid, I high tailed it for home. End of the story, I thought.

A few months later I was loading carpet at the store I worked for. I had the pad and carpet and a box of tackless strip on the back of the bug-up.

I saw a car pull into the store parking lot, a good distance from me and a guy got out of the car and came my way.

“Is this your rig?” he asked.
“Yea.”
“You owe me a fender.”
“Why?
“You ran into my pickup.” He reminded me what we were talking about.
“Were you the idiot that was driving it?”
“No, my friend was.”
“Tell your friend to not drive into people.”

Now, I am not a particularly brave guy, I might even be a bit of a coward, but I knew I had to at least look and act resolute, so I continued to talk and tie my load down and walk between him and my VW.

After another exchange or two he told me that if he saw my pickup around he was going to torch it. Then he turned and walked away.

When he got in his car he had no choice but to turn it so I could read the license plate number, and as he looked my way I made a point of looking at the plate and writing on the tackless strip box, so he would notice.

What to do? Never had that happen before.

But I went down to the Sheriff’s office and explained the story and his threat, and gave them his license number. “I want you to have record, so that if my rig gets torched, you will know about this conversation.”

The young Deputy grinned a bit and promised to have a chat with the driver. I never heard from them, or the driver, and my VW was not set afire as long as I owned it.

But as I think back I had decided a long time before that if some one tried to force me off the road they would pay. I might be forced, but not for lack of defense, and it was that decision, I think, that saved my body.

Glad it ended up rather humorous memory, it could have been really bad.