During my days as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s Alpha Co., 2nd/60th Mechanized Infantry Battalion at Fort Lewis Washington I often found myself right up against it for one reason or another.
Most of those “up against its” were my own doing.
Like the day Paul Banas, of Utica, N.Y., and I borrowed a very straight 1969 two-door Buick Wildcat from roommate Sam Cowgill, of Missouri, to make a run to the PX (postal exchange – military’s version of Walmart or Costco). On the way back, with our case of Rainier bottles, we took Sam’s Wildcat for a spin down the tank trails that wind through 20,000 acres of woods on Fort Lewis to exercise the 370 hp in the car’s 430-cubic-inch V-8.
