120 mph on the clock

This may be *****’s car! (Photo by Dan Lyons.)

—The May 2019 entry in my Tide-mark Muscle-Car calendar is a 1963 Plymouth Savoy two-door owned by Chuck Bubie.
HO-HUM! Not much to look at, but I bet it’s a sleeper. Four-barrel 383, four-on-the-floor.
It’s a dead ringer for the car my friend **** ***** purchased to replace his 1959 Chrysler 300e. 413 Cross-Ram; probably good for an honest 130 mph.
***** and I were students at Houghton College. He was Class of 1968, I was ’66.
***** drove like a wildman. He always had that 300 topped out on the long straightaways into and out of the college.
He’d attempt turns I’d never try. One night I heard knocking on my door.”Hughsey,” ***** said. “My car is in the ‘dyeetch’.” (Tennessee accent.) He wanted me to help pull him out with my Triumph sportscar.
He wasn’t just in the “dyeetch.” He was in the remnants of the Genesee Valley Canal. Part of the reason evangelical Houghton was founded was because hyper-religious Willard J. Houghton loathed the depravity of “Jockey Street.” (Houghton was originally called “Jockey Street,” where horses raced down the main drag.)
Genesee Valley Canal went through Jockey Street, and there were brothels, taverns, and houses of ill repute to serve the “canalers.”
The actual canal was long-gone. Most of its towpath was converted to a railroad-grade, also abandoned. The canal had been drained, but there was still a little water in it here and there. The part *****’s 300 was in was fairly dry, but the “dyeetch” was 10-15 feet deep with sloped sidewalls.
Pull a 4,500 pound Detroit sedan out of the “dyeetch” with a tiny sportscar? No way José! We didn’t even try. We all piled into the straight-eight Buick Sedanette of a friend and managed 100 wheezing mph back to *****’s car.
***** returned to trying to back out his car. He tore off the entire exhaust-system trying. —He’d almost make it, but never did. Extraction would require a tow-truck.
The next morning I heard raucous racket as ***** roared back to campus. He got it out! 130 mph unmuffled.
That was before Christmas vacation my senior year, and Christmas vacation was when ***** gave up on his 300e. He traded for a red Plymouth two-door much like the car pictured. An elemental muscle-car; precursor to the Plymouth Road Runner, introduced in the 1968 model-year, four-barrel 383, four-on-the-floor.
Attractive as it was the Road Runner is not the sleeper this car is. Line yer souped-up ’56 Chevy against this thing, and yer gonna get spanked.
I drove a Triumph sportscar during my senior year at Houghton. It was an old drag-racer, extremely strong. ***** was always impressed, despite his preference for Detroit-iron.
So during my final semester at Houghton ***** let me drive his new Plymouth. Hammer down, up through the gears, on the southward straight out of Houghton. 120 mph when I glanced at the speedo — and it felt like 60.

• “Sleeper” is a term common among hot-rodders. A “sleeper” is a car that doesn’t exude performance.
• Late ‘40s and early ‘50s GM fastbacks were called “Sedanettes.”