Big Timber Bash Fest

1994

This is the story of a much younger more impetuous Underhill. Freshly married and trying to face the world how he could in the wilds of Montana. I had been married in March and we loaded up and moved within a week of our wedding. My beautiful wife had asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I told her how I wanted to be a radio disc jockey. She told me she did not want me to leave this life with any regrets. So we moved to where I could make my own chance of going on air and honing my skills. I was advised by a air staff member here in Denver that I should find some rat hole town and knock the door down trying to make my way into radio. I eventually did just that but that is a story for another time.

                The first thing you must know about the younger poet Underhill, to fully grasp the sheer lack of common sense he had, was that he drank what Dean Martin would call heroic amounts of booze. Usually this was Vodka, but I really drank anything I could get my hands on back then. The cheaper the better, because that meant more could be consumed. I am surprised my liver did not just spontaneously amputate itself and scream at me “I want a friggen divorce!”

I would do just about anything to get a laugh back then and the more I drank the more grandiose my gestures would be. I would take things to the extreme, and probably a lot further than I should. I know a lot further than my newlywed wife would have liked, as she reminds me to this day that I was a jerk on the sauce. That being said, this story happened while I was stone cold sober, and proves how the alcohol abuse was seeping into my normal everyday life in making very poor choices.

I have worked nights for as long as I can remember, and I was working for a gas station while interning at a college radio station in Bozeman Montana. I lived in Livingston and commuted to Bozeman for the radio, but worked in Livingston. I have always been one to compromise sleep for gaining valuable life experience. This is about one of those days. I had worked the night before, and came home at seven in the morning. I ended my day like most lushes do, and drank a cocktail or two, and then went to bed at eight in the morning after telling my wife I wanted her to wake me up around one in the afternoon so we could do something fun.

She woke me, and I felt no remaining effects of the alcohol, and I drank a cup of coffee and told my wife I had heard that there was a demolition derby in a town east of us called Big Timber. It was 37 miles of interstate driving, so we could make it there quick. We stopped and picked up a coworker of my wife’s and we were off. The afternoon sun was warm on the skin and I remember having that familiar feeling like I was skipping school, even though I had not been a student for years. I still occasionally get that feeling even now at forty years old, but the times grow further and further apart as time goes by. The drive seemed to be momentary, but back then I drove at 85 to 90 miles an hour wherever I went, so it really was momentary.

We arrived in Big Timber and found the place that the demolition derby was being held. Literally it was being held in a small arena that they hold bull riding contests in. Not huge, but not too small either. We bought our tickets and found some seats; I even made a run for some snacks before the mayhem commenced. I had no clue at the time, but in this derby was a driver that I would end up being friends with for fifteen years. He and I met up after the derby about two months afterward as he worked in radio as well, and we eventually ended up coworkers. The track announcer was nothing special. My wife even made mention how much better of a job I could do than him, but I think she is a little biased. He did the normal lead in to the demolition derby with the national anthem, and invocation, and thanking the sponsors of the event, giving the rules of the event and then he announced the first heat’s drivers. You could hear the powerful motors roar to life in the makeshift pit area which was really just an open field next to the arena.

In the first heat I noted there was one absolutely crazy person driving a mid nineteen eighties Toyota against all of these huge older cars that had more metal in their bumper than the whole Toyota did. I also watched as he had problem after problem in the heat with something in his carburetor. He was pummeled by the bigger cars. They made their way through the assigned heats; I think there were four of them. They has a consolation main where the last car running got a provisional into the main event, this was a thinly disguised ploy to buy the drivers time to work on their jalopies for the main event. During the consolation main the Toyota made an attempt to run once more. He made it into the arena but stalled out once more leaving him to be fodder for the bigger cars to launch from side to side with every hit.

They held the main event which my future friend placed third in. It was fun to watch but deep down inside I wanted to be driving one of the heaps around crashing into other cars. It had been a dream of mind since I was a child. We used to go to Watsonville Speedway and watch our uncle drive tow truck for the races. I was hooked when I saw my first destruction derby. I was like a junkie who had gotten his first hit of the purest stash around. I needed more. My folks took me every time there was a demolition derby scheduled.

After the main event the announcer said they would be bringing the cars that could still run back out for one last banging session with nothing but pride on the line. I started looking off to the makeshift pit area trying to guess which cars would return to the arena for this last session. I also noticed the guy with the Toyota beginning to pack his gear. I told my wife that I would be right back, and made a sprint to the pit area. I asked the guy if he was done for the day. He let me know he was through trying to get the POS (acronym) working. I asked if he minded if I tried to make it work. He said sure but I needed a helmet. My future friend was all too willing to loan me his and I climbed in the rolling beer can and was off.

I pulled the car to the arena entrance and the crowd could be heard laughing. The track officials and I use that term loosely, stopped me and made me put a flag on my door frame to signify I was live bait… or in play. The only instruction I got from them was when I was done break the flag off the door frame. I drove in and gained a head of steam and aimed the nose of the car at the nose of a huge Torino wagon and braced for impact. With a huge thud the laughter had turned in a giant sucking sound. Unbeknownst to me this guy I just hit was a twenty year demolition derby champion. I did some serious damage to his front end, but also mine as well, that is when it sunk in that I needed to be hitting them with my rear. I spun the  car around the best that I could threw the sucker in reverse and took a second shot at the guy as he was locked up with another car. With a loud bang I crashed my rear end into this radiator, but really did more damage to my own car at this point. I also sealed my own fate, as my hit dislodged him. I pulled off to try and get another shot at him, but when I threw the car in reverse to go at him it stalled out. I jimmied with the carburetor and a can of starting fluid but it did not roar back to life. I looked in the passenger area where the battery had been moved to and there it was turned on its side and the cables had popped off of it. I was going nowhere. I next noticed a deafening silence and looked over my left shoulder to see the car I had been picking on while he was stuck, barreling a crossed the arena toward me. The crack of him hitting the back driver’s side of the car I was driving was loud, followed by a thud and then blackness. I came to with a track official waving a flag at me screaming at me to see if I was alright. I reached up as if by instinct alone and broke the flag off the door frame of the car to signify that I was no longer able to run and was out of the competition, that way I could no longer get hit. To this day I do not know how long I was knocked out for. I am not even sure my wife knows I was knocked out. I waited patiently for the rest of the cars to finish the last hoorah for the day, while trying to gather my senses from the dreadful hit the Torino laid on me. Closest I can figure is that when he hit the car my helmet hit the driver’s door frame with such force that it laid me out.

After the heat was finished my wife sprinted toward me and started hitting me for being so stupid. She chastised me for doing it while she was pregnant with our child. I regret not one bit of driving in the derby. The ride home was filled with laughter as my wife and her friend made fun of me going to the pits and soliciting a ride. The only down note about the whole afternoon’s events was that I knew I had to go work an eight hour shift that night. I muddled through the best that I could. I was sore, my head ached and my left elbow and knee ached a little. I did my normal shift duties and went home and slept. It must have been for hours and hours, because I had the next night off. I woke up in the early evening and tried to move. My left elbow and left knee both felt as if someone had lit them on fire. I asked my wife if she minded getting me a cup of coffee, and she laughed at me. She told me my wounds were self inflicted and that I needed to pay the price for my spontaneous joyride. I remember seeing halos around lights for the rest of the evening, which is a clear sign of concussion. Truth be told occasionally even now I get that, which lets me know that it was a bad concussion. I probably damaged some remote part of my brain holding the cure for cancer or something and now I have robbed the world of it. I managed to get my own coffee and sit in our living room thinking about the good time I had the previous afternoon, and again even in the pain I was in, I regretted nothing about doing what I had. I knew that it was a childhood dream come true.