<br /> Saturday, July 1/17, 9:07 AM, my wife out sailing (yard that is), me home alone and our phone rings. Normally I ignore the ringing of our phone because, ever since my aneurism on June 28/01 my mother's 82nd birthday, every person I once knew must have thought I had died, the phone is only for me on Father's Day and my birthday. But in a weak moment I answered the phone with a cautious "hello" and a man's voice asked "is this Randolph Toope?". "Who wants to know?" I answered. The man told me his name, said he was originally from Botwood and moved to Ontario several years before I did in 1964 and that he now lived in Keane, Ontario. He had just finished reading an article in the Life is better Downhome Magazine that I had written about my summers in Thoroughfare, and after saying "I'm Randolph Toope", he told me that he had immensely enjoyed my "memory note" and praised my writing style. I think that was what he said. Before we said good-bye he thanked me for rekindling old memories of home that my article had awakened in him.<br /> <br /> At the time of this telephone call I was unaware that my article, which had been sent to the magazine on a dare, was published in the July 2017 issue of the magazine. I went to the Downhome Web site and reread my article sixteen or seventeen times just to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me. Then, metaphorically speaking, I started trolling through the annals of the Downhome web site and came across an article from September 16/14 by Derby, Vermont referencing an article from August 2014 by Ed Smith about poor driving conditions on the TCH. I couldn't find, or didn't look for, Ed Smith's article but the mention of bad driving conditions on the TCH, the Avalon peninsula portion in particular, caused vivid memories of my first trip on the TCH to return to me with a vengeance.<br /> <br /> Saturday, July 7/62 my wife Mary and I were visiting used car lots looking for a better car than the old 1954 Dodge that we owned at the time. We had already visited a couple of lots but could not find a car that suited us or our budget. We then went to Munn Motors on Blackmarsh Road (why do I remember the phone number 579-4061?) and according to the salesman at Munn's the car that I was looking at, a low mileage 1958 blue Meteor, was previously owned by Senator Calvert Coates Pratt. It was especially customized, had power steering, power brakes, a V8 police car engine and many more options that, in all of my twenty years, I had never heard about. This again was according to the salesman that I had just met and implicitly trusted and believed every word he said. I can't remember his name, what he looked like, how old he was or any thing else about him but I was sure at the time that he was an honest person and had my best interests at heart. But I did look for old Purity Factories goodies but found none. Munn's did a good inside cleaning job. <br /> The1954 Dodge that I had let run dry of oil causing the engine to "knock"louder than a starving beggar would knock on a door looking for food to keep himself alive, was to be my trade in. The salesman at Munn's wanted $2,400.00 after my trade in and because I wanted my dream car so bad I said OK "where do I sign?" . But my wife said "hold on one second, that is way too much money, we will not pay a cent more that $1,800.00!" I was about to cry a watershed of tears as I could see my dream car going the way of the dodo as I knew Mary would 'act the mule' and not give in until she got her way. The salesman did a double take, thinking he had closed a sale and looked at Mary, with a disbelieving stare on his face and said "I'll take it to my Sales Manager and see what he says". The salesman came back to us about five or ten minutes later and with a withering look on his face said "lady, you drive a hard bargain but you have a deal". Thanks to AVCO, despite working for a bank I wasn't earning enough money to qualify for a bank loan, I became the proud owner on Tuesday July 10/64 of Senator Pratt's old Meteor automobile.<br /> Mary said to me on our way out of Munn's "is there really a sales manager?"Discretion being my forte, I didn't answer her.<br /> I had two weeks vacation coming to me in August and with our, new to me and reliable car, decided to drive to Trinity to visit my uncle Raymond and hopefully have a fisherman motor us to Thoroughfare to visit my grandparents. My wife and I along with our 9 month old daughter, my sister, her husband Frank Saunders and their two year old son packed our bags and left for Trinity via the long anticipated Trans Canada Highway which was still not complete and under construction in "all the wrong places". But I figured the TCH would make our trip a lot quicker than it would have been a year or two before when we would have had to go via the Conception Bay Highway, a scenic but tiresome ride that I had endured with my parents numerous times before. Our trip turned out to be almost as arduous as the Conception bay highway but we made it to Trinity with out major incident and then on to Thoroughfare. <br /> <br /> For our return trip I had knowledge of what to expect and was better equipped for our journey except for one thing that I hadn't anticipated. Shortly before we reached the Goobies turnoff a torrential rainfall started and continued until after we finally arrived back in St. John's. The rain we encountered along the way turned the TCH approaching Whitbourne into a river but as I had a real good car I just plowed on. All of a sudden 'Senator Pratt's Meteor' was stopped dead in the middle of the highway having gone into a pothole, that seemed deep enough to bury a corpse, and held the driver's side front tire firmly in place. After help from another motorist, a bumper jack and some 2&Atilde;-4's we found along the side of the mud-way, we rescued my car from the crater-like hole and started to head for home. "Oh, oh, something is wrong" I said to Frank "I can't steer the car I think my arm is going to break off". Frank got the jack out again, hoisted the car up and crawled under the front end, then I heard him say "Randy, the power steering box is hanging off and all the fluid has leaked out of it, we're in a lick of trouble".<br /> <br /> <br /> But Frank, besides being a solid fellow was a jack-of-all-trades, said "hold on a minute and let me check in the trunk". In a rusty old tool box that my dad had put in the trunk of my car Frank found some old pieces of electric wire and a roll of electric tape. Taking these items with him he sidled on his back, while up to his neck in muck and mud, then wired/taped the power steering box to the car's chassis. We all got back in the car and headed for St. John's, with me still driving but more slowly and with more caution, until we were safe at home. There, with every muscle sore I crawled into our bed and slept for almost twenty straight hours, waking up only because of Mother Nature's call.<br /> <br /> If Ed Smith had been with me on that trip in August 1962 his August 2014 article about poor TCH conditions would have started with a different statement than I imagine it did. Most likely he would have started it with some thing along the lines of this: "From start to finish of that neglected, shoddy and god-awful roadway the experience is nothing but physical misery and mental anguish"and I have not witnessed anything that was as bad since August 1952"<br />   Submitted By: Randolph Toope