Chapter 6

School started a week later for Paul then it did for Ann. It was a long week for him and sure to be longer for Ann. At least he was at home with people he knew. He called Ann twice before deciding it wasn't helping her. She had no friend in South Bend and wouldn't get any if she stayed in her room waiting for his call. He told her he would write and asked that when she wrote to him, she tell him about the people she had met. That night he wrote a letter to her telling how much he missed her.

On Friday he drove his bike to Gainesville. He had thrown what he was taking to college in Steve McLaughlin's car. It is less than 35 miles from Palatka to Gainesville; he could have commuted. He had two reasons not to; his parents deserved some time alone and he needed to make more friends.

It took him all day to get to Gainesville. He took a leisurely drive down Highway 17 and across the Ocala National Forest; it was a good time of year to go to Juniper Springs. Kids were in school, the worst of the summer heat was over, and it was still too hot for the snowbirds. He thought about stopping at Silver Springs. They were filming the TV series Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges but Silver Springs was just too much of a tourist trap. Riding through Ocala he wistfully looked wistfully at the corner where McDonalds would be and then drove north to Gainesville.

Steve wasn't in his dorm, but Paul was able to use a coat hanger to open the front door of Steve's car. He took his belongings to the dorm. He didn't leave a message since he didn't know his own dorm's phone number.

Maybe I'm not so odd after all; Paul thought when he arrived at his dorm. Arthur Williams had already moved in and appeared to use a casket for a bed. Arthur didn't think he was a vampire, he was trying to be distinctive and he was succeeding. Arthur was short, skinny, with red hair and glasses just like Buddy Holly's. He had yet to decide on a major. Paul would give odds that it would be Theatre. Arthur had the room fairly neat, just the right balance for a dorm room, halfway between a pigpen and obsessive compulsive clean. Arthur had a fan aimed at his bed. Paul put his fan down and thought about getting a third one for the window.

The dorm was an old wooden structure. The wood stained dark from years of use. Communal bathrooms, so the were floors wet from dripping students walking back to their rooms after showering. The dorm smelled like mold. Arthur was headed out to meet his girl friend as Paul was coming in. Arthur seemed like a decent guy even if he was distinctive. There was a letter from Ann. She missed him and loved him. Maybe I should have gone to Notre Dame, he thought again.

Paul unpacked, made note of the phone number, and headed over to the athletics' dorm. The athletes had rooms under the stadium. UF was football crazy. Steve wasn't in so Paul left a note. He headed over to the Physics Building to see if he had any paper work that still needed to be completed. He didn't but he had a box full of mail in the department office. He poked his head in Dr. Brennan's lab to say hello and headed to the cafeteria. Meat loaf, corn, mash potatoes, and ice tea that was super saturated with sugar. The food tasted like cafeteria food. Oh wait, it is cafeteria food. God, what I wouldn't give for a Chick-File-A and Waffle fries.

Most of the mail was from post-docs wanting to for him. They would be disappointed. He was a freshman, the lowest of the low. In general, the faculty wouldn't even acknowledge his existence for another two years. His notoriety had changed that, some would even said hello to him, but he was still a freshman. Too bad there wasn't a copy machine. He would have to type each answering letter separately.

He noticed that the person standing next to him was Ava Wells. Close your mouth Paul, he thought.

"Hi Ava, it's nice to see you. How you doing?" Crap. She would perceive that as bad grammar not a hip saying. God she was gorgeous.

"How am I doing? I'm fine. What are you doing?" She even sounded good when she was correcting you.

"I'm just answering my fan mail. Noblese oblige and all that."

"So you know Latin but not English?"

"Apparently."

"Let me see your fan mail." She sat down across from him and took a stack. Her light blue sweater wasn't cut low, but she was wearing a necklace with a gold heart that kept drawing his attention to her breasts. They were worth looking at. As soon as he would realize he was staring, he would look up at her face. But the necklace kept calling him. He was going to get vertigo if this kept up so he opened another letter. Paul was not going to risk eating in front of her. The letter he opened didn't make sense. It probably would later when he was away from her.

"You really are famous," she smiled as she said it.

"Yep. I'm famous to physics students all over the country. There must be hundreds of people who know of me. Of course they think I'm a professor not a freshman."

"David Rogers said that within 5 years you will be known all over the world and you will be rich."

"I hope David is right. How is he?"

"He's fine but we broke up."

"I'm sorry. Maybe we can go out sometime?" He had actually said it.

"I'm dating someone else now. He's taking me to New York this weekend. Maybe you can take me out if you can think of an interesting place. I need to go unpack. Bye-bye." She set the letters back on the table, rose from her seat, and walked out of the cafeteria. Paul watched every step she took. Two students came over to ask him who she was.

Paul went over his conversation with Ava. If he had the right date, she would go out with him. Science bored her. That limited his options. What he needed was a way to take her some place had prestige and was expensive; some place like Italy, France, or Monaco.

How do you go somewhere like Monaco. More importantly, how do you get invited to parties at a place like Monaco? There is a way. You just have to impress the right people.

The town's toy store had two plastic models of the 1956 Ferrari 250 GT. Paul bought them. He also bought balsa wood to make the changes to one of the models and paint for both of them. He decided to make an all-nighter out of it so he bought two Formula 1 cars, extra balsa wood, and a carving knife to make the new F1 model. Hopefully, the safety changes he was incorporating would trickle down quickly from racing cars to street vehicles, at least by 1962. The changes in his mother's life should already be enough to save her from the car wreck, but why take a chance.

The models were reasonably good representation of the real 250 GT. Paul could get an idea coefficient of drag of the unmodified car since he knew the horse power and the top speed of about 150 mph. He could treat the modified car as an upside-down wing and estimate the coefficient of drag and the "lift" of the modified car. The modification would lower the top speed to 135-140 mph but would allow the car to pull 1.4 lateral g's in the corners instead of 0.9 g. The car could be much quicker in the turns. More importantly, the driver would be able to brake harder into the turn and to get on the throttle harder out of the turn. It would more than make up for the lost of top-end speed. It would be a hard sell at first. When Jim Hall introduced a wing to sports car racing, he put in a pedal to engage the wing. That was one too many pedals for the driver so instead of manual transmission, the car had automatic transmission. Automatic transmission loses more than 10% of the engine's power. But a demonstration would be easy and the engineers would understand the Bernoulli's principle. A couple of hours of bodywork and the concept could be tested.

If Ferrari accepted the idea for the GT, changes to their F1 cars would be come quickly. The safety features added to F1 would become international news. F1 is the penultimate racing. F1 drivers are international stars.

In the 50s F1 cars were be brutish roadsters. The engine is up front and the driver sits in the middle. There is a minimum weight so the cars are made as strong as possible. Not the best conditions for a driver. The driver has a seatbelts, when the car hits a wall, almost all of the impulse (change of momentum) is transferred to the driver because the car doesn't deform. It's better than being thrown from the car or impaling yourself on the steering wheel but it is still bad. The cars are built solid. Impulse can kill you in a crash; in a very short time your body stops, but your organs don't. The heart can tear away from the aorta; the brain bounces around inside the skull, the top of the skull keeps going and the bottom doesn't. Modern cars deform predictably. Increasing the time of the collision and lowering the impulse. That's why they seem to explode when they hit the wall. Destroyed car; sore driver. Better than drivable car and dead driver.

Another big safety factor? Fuel tanks that don't rupture. First made for military helicopters, fuel tanks are made from laminated rubber, fabric, and steel mesh and can take almost any impact. The fuel lines break at pre-determined points and won't leak. No longer do you see cars and crowds covered by huge sheets of flame. Changes in the cars and changes in the racecourses made auto racing safer. Safe enough for Mercedes to join in again; Mercedes had stopped racing in 1955 when one of their cars went into the crowd at Le Mans, killing 82 spectators.

Now Paul needed to get to speak to someone of importance with Ferrari. His best chance would be at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but it was held in March. Paul didn't want to wait until March. He wanted to date Ava sooner than that. Why Ferrari and not some other carmaker? If you have to ask, it's a hopeless to explain to you.

He began to whittle a model of a simplified F1 car from the late 80s, when the side pods were huge and down force was easy to come by. He started with the tub, then the engine, the front end, and the trans-axle. He used the wheels and the motor from the F1 model. He worked with a single mindedness that had been the trademark of Dr. Paul Sheppard. He finished at 5 AM and slept for 4 hours. He took a shower and changed clothes.

Paul stared at the stack of mail. If he answered all the mail, he would be doing nothing except answering mail for the next 2 days. He made an executive decision to spend no more than 1 hour a day on mail. Besides the request for jobs, he had a large stack of idiotic suggestions for new lasers. Those he filed in the trash can. Sorting the rest of the mail took 30 minutes so he answered requests for jobs for thirty minutes. Anyway to get the school to pay for postage? He wondered. Anyway to get a secretary to help?

He spent most of the day strolling around campus learning where all the buildings were and checking out people. He ate breakfast and lunch alone at the cafeteria, hoping that Ava would make an appearance. When he got back to his dorm, there was a message for him to call Steve. A schedule hadn't been set for answering the phone, so he had to call several times. There was only one phone on each floor of the dorm. Students would sign up on a schedule to answer the phone. Most did home work while they had phone duty. Paul finally got someone to answer about 4 PM. Steve was in. God I miss mobile phones, he thought.

"Be in front of my dorm at 7 o'clock, you've got a date. Wear blue jeans and don't embarrass me."

"Who do I have a date with?" asked Paul. He was happy to look at girls but didn't know if he was ready to date just yet. Ann had only been gone a week.

"Judy Nelson. You'll like her." Click. It didn't matter if he was ready or not.

Paul did like her based on first impression. She was cute; a little on the short side, with dark hair and freckles on her nose. Like everyone else in the car, she had on blue jeans that were too long, so they were rolled up making a 3 or 4-inch cuff. She wore a dark green shirt that brought out the green in her eyes. Steve's date was Pam Andrews. She was like most of Steve's dates, full figured. She was the ideal for the 50s; she was blond with blue eyes and wore a light blue shirt. Steve no longer wore his high school letterman jacket. He was back to a shiny black jacket with silver studs and lots of zippers. He wore the obligatory white T-shirt, same as Paul. It wasn't cool enough for a jacket; it was just a fashion statement. So were the cigarettes. Paul was the only one who didn't smoke. It could be worse, they could all chew tobacco.

A mediocre restaurant provided dinner and the four talked during the meal. Judy was Pam's best friend although she was a year younger. She was a freshman like Paul. From Pam's point of view, a perfect setup for a blind date. Paul wondered if she was having second thoughts. Judy seemed to be having a good time. She was outgoing and kept the conversation going by talking to Steve and Pam. She was a going to be a history major when school started Monday. She had no real plans for after college. Paul suspected she was looking for a Mrs. Degree. Pam was a sophomore. She and Steve had been dating for 6 months. She was English major and wanted to teach school when she graduated.

Judy had learned from Steve that Paul was not only on a 4-year scholarship; he had a job as a research assistant in the Physics Department. She and Pam were impressed. Paul was impressed that Steve expected to be the starting cornerback this year. Steve told how he and Paul had become friends. The embellishments only added to the story.

After dinner Steve drove them west of town and onto a dirt road. He parked his car next to 3 others cars, grabbed a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer from the trunk of his car, and headed down a well-used path. Pam seemed to know where they were going and Judy and Paul followed along. Paul took Judy's hand as they walked down into huge hole. It was dark and he didn't want her to fall.

It was a sinkhole. The Floridian aquifer flows underneath much of Florida. Water seeps underground from the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and travels through hundreds of miles of limestone. In places the water erodes huge caverns that sometime collapse during droughts. The holes left behind can be hundreds of yards wide and hundreds of feet deep. A perfect place to party if it isn't under water.

A small crowd was seated around a fire at the bottom. It was an egalitarian place; any white person was welcomed. The four said hello and sat down near the fire. There was no wind and the smoke went straight up. Steve opened four beers and gave one to each of them. He sat with his arm around Pam.

Paul sat down near Judy but not touching her. He didn't know how comfortable she was with him. The talked about the courses they were taking and about their last year of High School. They both bemoaned the fact that as freshman they would have early classes. They ran out of things to talk about and stared at the fire until Steve and Pam were ready to go. Judy was nice enough, but she and Paul didn't have much in common. There was not enough attraction to really keep things going. On the drive back Judy sat in the middle of the seat, not next to Paul but not away from him either. It was going to be their first and only date.

Steve and Paul walked the girls to their dorm. Steve wrapped his arms around Pam and kissed her. Paul took one of Judy's hands and without thinking leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. He was shocked when she slapped him. "Fresh!" she said. "I'm not that kind of girl."

"No. Apparently you're much more violent. Goodnight Pam. Goodnight Steve." He turned away. He was mad and embarrassed. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He walked to the stadium and slipped through a hole in the fence. The top of the stadium on the fifty-yard line was a good place to sit think. He stayed there for several hours.

When Paul got back to his dorm he had a message from Steve. He returned the call.

"Paul, what was that all about?"

"I have no idea."

"Pam's mad at me so I've got to stay away from you for a few days."

"She's mad at you because Judy hit me?"

"Yeah. She had to leave with Judy and she blames me."

"Steve, the female of the species is not really human."

"Yeah. See you later alligator."

Paul skipped the "After while crocodile."

Paul wrote a letter to Ann. He told her he missed her. He told her that he loved her. He told her of his blind date. He promised to write again soon.

At breakfast the next day, Paul looked up to see Pam looking down at him. "Can I join you?" she asked.

"Sure. Have a seat." Paul rose until she sat down. He kept eating his breakfast.

"Paul, why are you so mad?" Paul put down his fork, kept his face neutral, and stared at Pam.

"Ok. Maybe she did over react," Pam allowed, "but she didn't want you to think she was easy."

"Pam, my mother lets me kiss her on the cheek. Does that make my mother easy? If Judy doesn't want me to kiss her cheek she could move her head out of the way, said no, please don't, or I'm not that kind of girl. She could have said lots of things. Any of them would have stopped me. But she didn't. She slapped me. My guess is her last relationship ended badly, didn't it?"

"Yes it did. Her boy friend beat her. That's why she is so sensitive about it."

"I don't think that is the reason and I don't want anything to do with her. We would probably get along fine if I hit her back. I don't want to go there." Shit, bad choice of words. "I mean I don't want to be part of a relationship that involves physical abuse. We didn't really hit it off anyway so I see no need to go out with her again."