It was 1986-ish in Vancouver, Washington, a school day, as the students of Camas High (Go Papermakers!) were anxiously waiting for the bell to ring them out the door, into the parking lot that signified freedom. Camas police chief Don Chaney was there, paying a visit to the school principal. The chief and the principal were chatting in an office that had a window that overlooked that parking lot and the street that ran alongside the front of the school.
There was one particular Camas underclassman who knew that view very well. He had been in that office more than a few times. He also knew that Chaney was in that office and thus also had that view. So, the teenager knew exactly what he was doing when he eased his Formula Firebird directly beneath that office window and proceeded to drop the hammer, laying down a whipped-cream-thick cloud of blue tire smoke the length of that road, a cloud so large that it spent the next five minutes drifting directly into that office window’s view.
Chaney didn’t even have to ask who it was. He knew the car. Hell, he had a photo of it posted on the bulletin board of his police station. And his officers had issued so many tickets to the driver of that banana yellow Pontiac that they all knew him on a first-name basis…