The summer of 1971 was both a happy and a sad time for us outport people in Trepassey.

One complaint you often hear from young people is that nothing ever happens in a small town. Yet if anything does happen, no matter how trivial, people remember it for years.

That summer, our Uncle Ben was dying of cancer at the age of 57, and we had family visiting from the Boston area. Around the same time Uncle Ben passed away, our neighbour’s son, who was only seven years old, drowned at the local swimming hole, Fanny’s Pond.

In those days, wakes were held in people’s homes because we did not have a funeral home.

The Harbour Road in Trepassey received blacktop pavement for the first time that summer. Southern Construction, owned by the Powers family from Trepassey, was awarded the contract. There were lots of jobs for local people. My father was asked by Mr. Mike Power if he would like some leftover crushed stone to make a road up our lane. Dad gladly accepted, and before long we had a proper road leading to our house.

It happened on a Sunday night. The girls were out at bingo, while Father, my four-year-old brother Fabe, and I were watching *Ironside* on television, the detective series about a crime-solver in a wheelchair.

Back then, Richard Petty was a regular sight on TV during NASCAR races on Saturdays. Richard drove the famous No. 43 car and won more than 200 races during his remarkable career.

Our black-and-white Motorola television sat in the kitchen, and we were watching *Ironside*. Father always kept an eye on the kitchen window and wanted to know every car that passed by.

All of a sudden, we saw the headlights of a new yellow Ford truck coming fast toward our lane. The truck came to an abrupt stop on a large boulder just outside our kitchen window.

It turned out to be a young man from St. Shotts who wasn’t familiar with our roads. If he had stayed on the pavement instead of taking the slight right at the Y, he would have been fine. As luck would have it, my father knew him because they both worked at the fish plant in our community.

No damage was done, and after we greeted him and made sure he was okay, Father looked at him with a grin and said:

“Must’ve thought You were Richard Petty.”