Bob May

Bob and his family moved to Gamboa in the mid 70's when I was just starting High School. I got to know them, well; because Gamboa was a small town and everyone knew everyone. Being a small town there was not much to do and what there was to do got old pretty quick. So when Bob got the keys to his mothers VW Bus and came to take me driving it was the new best thing. It didn't take me long to convince him to let me drive and it was the most fun I'd had in a while. Something about driving that bus, where you are sitting on top of the wheels over the road was better than driving anything else I'd driven so far, which hadn't been much truth be told. We tooled around Gamboa once or twice hitting all the hot spots; pool steps, McGrath Field, boat docks and stables. Then turn and start the whole circuit again.
One night I talked him into venturing out across the bridge towards "the city" along the Highway. We were just cruising along with no place in particular to go when we came across "the old Gamboa Road", the dirt track that led into the back of summit and was only used now by hunters and horsemen. Four wheeling in a bus? Why the hell not? Bob took some convincing but I got him there so, down the road we went.
Between Gamboa and the "city" of Balboa the railroad tracks weave along the same general path. They cross the Gamboa Bridge together, skirt separate sides of the Penitentiary, kind of peek back and forth at each other through the jungle before meeting up again at summit where the tracks cross over the highway. So, all this to say, when we headed down the dirt track towards summit, neither one of us had thought about having to cross the railroad tracks. And since the road was no longer used for vehicles, there was no crossing. Just two sets of tracks jutting out of the earth for as far as we could see both ways.
Now of course Bob was ready to pack it in and turn around. We were about a quarter mile back into the jungle in the pitch blackness of post twilight before all the stars come out and no light could be seen but our twin headlights trying to penetrate the dense growth of jungle all around us. But if there was one thing my Daddy laid down in my soul with a firm foundation it is that there is never any going back. You can return to point A, but you must do so in a circular manner so as to appear as if that had been the intention all along and negate any suspicion that you had been confounded or lost. So I coaxed and cajoled and wheedled and begged and Bob gave in. He insisted on the condition that he be the one to drive the bus over the tracks. I was willing to concede the point so we switched sides and he idled up to the tracks.
Touching the front wheels to the tracks he powered up the engine to no avail. That bus just did not have the power needed to hoist its front end over that barrier. Getting into the spirit of things now, Bob backed up and got a few inches of running room. A few inches would not do the trick so he backed up a foot. Still no luck. Determined now to salvage the night, Bob backed up two feet and got a good running start while gunning that sewing machine engine for all it was worth. I held my breath as we hit the tracks, rocked up, teetered on the edge and slipped to the other side. Woo hoo, we cheered and screamed and laughed our fool heads off. We had done it and now we knew the secret of success. Bob sidled up to the second track to get a feel for where it was and then backed the necessary two feet. He stopped, shifted into drive and glanced over to grin at me before revving the engine once more for all it was worth. Yeah! Success again as we tottered over the second track with our front wheels.
Now the story could have ended there in triumph except for one small detail. Do you know the wheel base of a VW bus? We certainly didn't back then, but I can tell you today that it is about 4 inches greater than your standard rail road tracks... so there we sat with our front wheels on one side of the tracks and our back wheels on the other and not enough room to to rock it forward or back. Not that we didn't try, using up at least half of the gas left in the tank. Then Bob got out and tried pushing while I drove. Still no luck. Let me tell you it was a real joy sucker that situation. Not to mention the fact that while we were sitting there discussing what a bummer it was, one on us remembered the freight train that rumbled nightly through Gamboa on its way to summit and beyond. That's kind of when things got tense for Bob. He decided to hike out to the highway and flag down a passing car for help. (We are talking 1975 here, I don't think even the CIA had cell phones then).
Now another thing you have to understand about the Gamboa Highway is that is was only used by people going to Gamboa, which was the end of the road. We are talking about 300 or so families, and not alot of them are out and about on a week night. So Bob sat out there for what seemed like hours before I heard him waving down a passing car. "Hey, Hey, Stop, Help, No - don't go!" I heard along with the distant sound of a car coming and going. It was several minutes before once again I heard his screams, this time an octave or so higher. I could imagine him jumping up and down on the side of the road, waving his muscular arms, his wild hair blowing across his face and almost didn't blame the driver when I heard Bob yell "Stop, Stop, Damn you, you &*#$%!".
It was about this time that I yelled out to him that perhaps I would have better luck getting some raodside assistance, so he came back to the car and I went out to the road. It was perhaps 15 minutes later and I was looking at my watch and wondering how long it would take the train to reach us, seeing as how if it was on time it had passed through Gamboa minutes before; when Jimmy Dufus came driving down the road and pulled right over when I waved my hand at him. He was more than willing to give us a hand and pulled his car over so he and I could walk back to where Bob was waiting at the bus. When we walked up we could see Bob out in front of the bus in the headlights placing something on a neat little pile he had made there. He turned and headed for the bus and set to work tring to remove the fan from the dashboard. When asked what he ws doing, he replied in a resigned voice that he was trying to save as many "things" of his mothers as he could out of the bus before the train hit it. Jimmy and I talked him into putting that aside (though he was very reluctant to leave the fan) and to try pushing again now that there were two of them to push while I drove. It took several times, but we were able to rock it back (to my chagrin, I would have still rather gone forward but understood that Bob had "lost the mood"). Bob was able to get over the second track backwards with some help and we turned and headed back out to the highway. After collecting all his mothers "things" of course.
Somewhere along the way we saw the train pass by in the night but weren't talking much at that point. To the best of my knowledge that was the last time Bob ever took me driving in his mother's bus.