by Dan Kolbet
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For 35 years, Jim Emery taught Geometry and Algebra at North Central High School. He had been hired at the school his first year out of college and never thought to look elsewhere. He eventually led the Mathematics department and served on committees that developed new and better ways to educate students. Jim demanded that Harold’s grades were excellent, but would also spend hours at the kitchen table working through school lessons and projects with him to ensure that success wouldn’t be a surprise, but the result of careful effort and planning.
Harold stood at the main doors of the school, catching his breath from a mile-long run through the snow. Despite his heart racing out of his chest, he enjoyed the feeling of his youthful body in motion, contrasted with his 74-year-old-self taking half-steps to preserve his limited energy.
He looked for the buzzer, to be let into the school, then up to where he expected a closed-circuit camera was watching him from the office. He waved his arms to get their attention. No one must be manning the camera, he thought. He tried the door, which opened easily, and chastised himself for forgetting what year he was in. Schools in the 60s were not locked down like small prisons like schools in 2020. This was long before school shootings and bomb threats stripped away the innocence of students.
He walked right in, just as he had one year earlier as a high school senior. His memory of his father’s classroom was clear. Room 205, up the main stairs to the right. Mr. Emery, as Harold was required to address him, had insisted that Harold took his math classes from him, not some other teacher at the school.
It was sometime mid-morning. Harold guessed it was third period, as he climbed the stairs toward Room 205. Halfway up the stairs, the bell rang, and the halls instantly filled with teenagers packing books in their arms. The rush of students and the squeaking of their shoes were disorienting. At his advanced age, he’d begun to dislike being in crowds. The suffocating feeling of not being able to move about freely was nearly overwhelming. For this reason, he had always arrived early to Tigers’ games in order to avoid the packed corridors of fans rushing to their seats. Why was this feeling still with him now? He never had this anxiety when he was a student. He weaved his way toward a set of lockers and planted himself against the cool metal until the crowd thinned considerably.
As if this day could not get any stranger, Harold saw a sight that stopped him cold. He didn’t need to go to his father’s classroom. His father came to him, after emerging from the teacher’s lounge.
“Harold? What are you doing here?” his father asked.
Harold couldn’t help it. He thought he knew what he would say. He needed to tell him about Gail. He needed to get his car keys and race toward the bluff. Yet, when he saw his father, all of his plans drained out of his head. All he could see was the man who lovingly raised him. Gone were the winkles around his eyes and extra pounds he gained after retirement. Today he was a thin man in his mid-40s. He wore a crisp white dress shirt, cardigan sweater and black tie. His horn-rimmed glasses made him look as though he was sent directly from a movie studio’s Central Casting department to play the part of a math teacher.
Harold hugged him with a burst of joy and wept happy tears into his father’s sweater. He didn’t care that such signs of physical affection were frowned upon in a work setting, or that his father seemed very uncomfortable with the whole thing. It didn’t matter. It was his dad. It was a miracle.
“Harold, get ahold of yourself,” his father said. “What in the world has gotten into you?”
“It’s just been so long, Dad. I can’t believe it’s you.”
“Been so long? You mean since I saw you last night? What’s it been ten or eleven hours? I thought you said you didn’t get homesick when you were away at school.”
Harold thought about what he was saying an instant too late.
His knees felt weak and his body tingled. Not again.
His father taking him to dinner in Pullman on a surprise visit to the college campus. Cheering on the Cougars at a Saturday football game next to his dad. A firm handshake. Two $5 bills placed discretely in his palm, not to be mentioned again. Sadness when his father drove out of campus. A warm feeling of thankfulness.
So apparently not all changes he made in the past would be all bad. Hugging his father led him to believe Harold was homesick from college, which must have led to his father visiting him at school later in the year. How could that be a bad thing? It wasn’t. He was thankful for the new memory he accidentally created. What was astounding was how real the new memories felt. He was there. It happened, but it was recalled in his memory as a fuzzy recollection with decades of new memories built upon it. It was like a loose retelling of a story so far in the past that you would have trouble remembering if it were sunny or rainy, what you ate for lunch that day, or where it fit chronologically in the year. The specifics were hazy. He remembered the feelings of the new memory, above all else.
It was a wonderful memory, but Harold feared the slightest change in the past could cause dramatic and irrevocable changes to life as he knew it. His attempt to save Gail at the bus had only made things worse, and within seconds of seeing his father new memories were created, potentially erasing others. Who knew what memories he had somehow simply deleted by his actions. What did the guy in the white room say? It only takes a minute, and he’d forget the old, now false memories.
He resolved to be more careful, which meant acting the part of a 19-year-old college student in the 1960s, not a 74-year-old man, thrilled to see his dead father roaming his old high school.
Nineteen-year-old Harold wouldn’t have rambled wildly about a bus accident he should know nothing about. Or how his sister was in perilous, but future danger thanks to something that hadn’t happened yet. Nineteen-year-old Harold wouldn’t hug his father, at least not at his place of work.
“Dad, I need to borrow your car,” Harold stated, forcing down the emotions in his voice and the sheer unbelievability of the conversation itself. “Can I use it, if I get it back to you before school gets out?”
“I told you already that the car was going to Frankie’s yesterday afternoon to get that engine leak checked out,” he said. “You don’t remember that conversation? Boy, what am I to do with you if I can’t trust you to remember the simplest things? Is the college life too much for you to handle?”
Harold fought back the urge to explain to his father that yesterday was actually 55 years ago and that he shouldn’t be expected to remember such mundane things, but he didn’t say any of that. He also found irony in his father quickly believing his emotions came from his inability to handle the stress of school. Was that the sense he projected back then? Unsure and stressed?
He tried to think up something that passed as somewhat believable to explain his request for the car.
“Yeah, right,” Harold said. “I remember that, I just thought they would have completed the job early this morning, since you took it in yesterday after work. I know they don’t take new service appointments on snowy days with so many people coming in to get winter tires installed without an appointment. I hear the new Yokohama tires are nice.”
“Yoko-what?” his father asked, confused by the name of a Japanese tire company that didn’t expand into the United States until 1969.
Harold couldn’t believe he made such a stupid reference. His years at Ford meant he was a wealth of information about the automotive industry, but nearly all of that information was irrelevant to anything in 1965. How could he be expected to keep it all in order? His father wouldn’t know what the Yokohama Tire brand was, since they didn’t exist in his 1965 world.
“Firestone Tires,” Harold corrected. “The new Firestone ones.”
“Well, I’m not buying winter tires from Frankie’s. My whitewalls will do just fine for the limited amount of driving we do anymore in the winter. You probably don’t know that I’ve begun walking to work. The air in the morning is quite nice.”
“That’s swell, Dad,” Harold replied
. “So, can I borrow the car?”
“You’ll be saving me the time to pick it up, so yes, that’s just fine. Have Frankie put the charges on my account, and be home by dark. This snow looks like it may last all day.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Harold said.
The hallway had already emptied of students heading to their classrooms. The bell rang, signaling the start of a new class period. Harold expected his father to rush off so his students were not left unattended, but he didn’t.
“Harold, is everything alright?” his father asked. “You seem… a little strange today.”
If he only knew.
“I have a free period. I had planned to grade papers, but I can do that anytime during the winter break. Come to my classroom and let’s talk for a bit. Have you begun to drink coffee in college yet? I can get us some from the lounge.”
Harold glanced at the teacher’s lounge, cigarette smoke pouring out from under the door. Oh, how he wished he could accept his father’s offer. How wonderful it would be to spend just a few more minutes with him. He immediately thought of a dozen topics he’d like to interview his father about. The war in Vietnam. Gail. Hobbies. Stories about his grandparents. Marriage. He wanted to warn his father to not invest any money in Reynold’s Electrics Outlet, which would fail miserably in 1971, wiping out his parents’ savings account and forcing his mother back to work full time, and his father to seek summer employment. He wanted to tell him about the internet and digital world that would soon be thrust upon them, but he couldn’t do any of that. He couldn’t risk changing history or hurting them.
“Maybe next time, Dad,” he said, playing the part of a standoffish teen, despite the pain. “I just need the car.”
Harold stuck out his hand and his father looked at him quizzically, before offering a firm handshake as a goodbye. He looked his father in the eye, one last time, memorizing his features as best he could.
As he descended the stairs and exited the school, Harold wiped away tears, grateful for the brief interaction.
Chapter 7
Harold knew Frankie’s Auto Shop well, having worked there for his last three summers of college when he was back in Spokane. The owner, Frankie Rubin, was a loud, boisterous man who treated his customers fairly. Automobiles of the day were mechanical wonders, but a far cry from the complex, electronics-laden models that would eventually take over the industry. Harold’s generation had pioneered digital diagnostic tools and electronic monitoring systems. While Frankie’s mechanics were sharp and efficient, the systems were simple, at least compared to what would come after them. Nonetheless, Frankie’s employees were excellent.
His mother’s note in the kitchen reminded Harold he was supposed to visit Frankie’s to interview for a job, but he also knew that the interview was not supposed to take place today, at least in the history he remembered. What exactly had gotten in the way of that interview was abundantly clear—the bus accident. He recalled during his interview; it had appeared Frankie had taken pity on him, because of the accident that killed Gail, and offered him a summer job greeting customers and changing oil. He knew distinctly that the interview happened days after the accident, when his mother told him it would do him some good to leave the house and find something to occupy his mind. Somehow he ended up at Frankie’s and landed a job that would spark his interest in cars, how they worked and how they could be improved. When he eventually landed at Ford, he drew heavily on his time at Frankie’s garage learning the ins and outs of Chevy Impalas, Dodge Darts, Ford Mustangs or whatever happened to roll into the parking lot that day.
He jogged the three blocks from the school to Frankie’s. The garage had three bays with roll-up doors containing hydraulic lifts. Each bay was full, as were all the spaces in the parking lot. An attendant jogged up the sidewalk, keys in hand, after parking a customer’s car around the block. The rest of the nearby street parking was gone. Harold hoped the rush of customers getting their winter tires installed would be enough to occupy Frankie. He needed to avoid the interview—at least for today. He had no way of knowing if the interview’s outcome would be different today, and considering how pivotal the summer job was to his eventual career at Ford, he couldn’t chance screwing it up.
Get the keys, get the car and get out, he told himself as he pushed the shop lobby door open. The ringing of the silver bell on the door was nearly inaudible, because of the din of customers chatting in the cramped lobby and the clanging tools inside the garage. His nostrils were immediately filled with the nostalgic rich smell of motor oil, gasoline and exhaust that had seeped into the ground and walls of the place. Environmental regulations would eventually mean less oil and gasoline was spilled at auto shops, but the smell never quite disappeared and it was one that stuck with Harold his entire life.
Melvin Bosman stood behind the counter, writing something on the scheduling sheet. He didn’t look up as Harold approached. Harold knew Melvin well, or rather would know him well in the coming years. They were only a year apart, but Melvin worked full time as a mechanic at the shop and they had been acquaintances for some time since Harold’s mom helped keep the accounting books for the shop. The fact he was behind the counter right now and not working on a car was a bad sign for how busy they were.
“Sorry, no more walk-ins today,” he said, before finally looking up and seeing Harold. “Oh, sorry, Harold. It’s real busy today. You come for your dad’s car?”
“Yes,” Harold said. “He asked me to get it for him and put the charge on his account.”
“You bet, we can do that, but it’s not like Frankie is going to charge him for the service, not with your mom working here and all. I just need to check if it’s done and where we may have parked it. Let me go check with Frankie and I’ll get you out of here in no time at all. You can wait over there. ”
He motioned to several wooden chairs, all occupied by men reading magazines. Harold turned around to tell Melvin that he was in a terrible hurry, and that if he could find the car quickly, he would really appreciate it, but Melvin had already disappeared into the back office.
With nowhere to sit, Harold stood at the glass window looking out at the growing inches of snow and counting the seconds until he could leave and finally get to the bluff. He had already wasted several hours this morning. He could not afford to wait any longer. The accident happened on the drive back from the bluff, as the field trip was ending. But what if it was different this time? What if they left earlier? He had to get to the bluff as soon as possible to give him time to think up a way to prevent those buses from rolling off the road. Standing here reminiscing about his days in the garage wouldn’t do him or his sister any good.
A firm hand on his shoulder startled him.
“Harold, my boy,” Frankie said, his voice booming. “I was hoping we’d see you today. Let’s get you a set of coveralls and you can give us a hand.”
It was just like Frankie, trying to put him to work. It was a trick Frankie pulled on all of his prospective employees the first time they interviewed. Their reaction said a lot about their willingness to work hard, he claimed. Did they want to jump in and get their hands dirty, despite their lack of training, or were they soft and would be more trouble than they were worth? Harold knew there was only one way to reply, despite his need to keep the interaction brief.
“Of course. You lead the way,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”
“Now, that is the spirit! I think we’re going to get along just dandy,” Frankie said. “But, tell you what. I don’t really have time to train anyone today. How about you come back tomorrow or the next day and we can make this little arrangement official. How’s that sound?”
“That’s great, sir. I will. Thank you so much for the opportunity,” Harold said, hoping his interview had concluded. “One more thing, though. My father’s Bel Air. Is it ready?”
“Oh, yes, the venerable Chevy. Leak in the oil pan. We fixed it right up. No problem there.”
“That’s great, I’d like t
o take it over to him. He’s eager to get it back.”
“That might be an issue. I told him it would be a bit. You see, you can’t just drive away after you make a repair like that. It needs to sit for at least a day. It’s got to fully seal up. Normally I’d just swap out that pan for a new one, but because of the snow, I couldn’t get one here until next week, if you can believe that. You know how it goes. So we just re-sealed it.”
Auto parts not being available wasn’t an issue isolated to 1965. Small shops were always having to beg and borrow parts from around town to get their customers’ vehicles moving. But never had a parts delay come at a worse time. The car wasn’t done. His progress toward the bluff had again been thwarted.
Frankie turned toward the counter as the lone woman in the lobby raises her voice at Melvin.
“You expect me to walk two blocks down in this weather to get my car?” she shouts. She wore a thin scarf over her hair, that was soaked from the snow. “I brought my business to this shop, not some shop down the road. I brought it here this morning for goodness’ sake!”
Frankie marches over.
“This is my shop,” he says. “What seems to be the problem here?”
“This shop does not know how to treat a customer,” she says. “I paid for my service and the least you could do is bring my car back to the place I originally dropped it off. You expect me to wade through this snow and slush to retrieve it like some hunting dog chasing a bird?”
Harold had seen this before. The parking lot was small and some customers didn’t appreciate that their cars had to be parked a block or two away from the shop on busy days like today. The customers were predominately men, who were a bit more understanding of the inconvenience. However, it was the women who caused a scene. Normally, Frankie would just send someone down to get their car for them.