The Night Dean Wouldn’t Let Me Down
“A thousand dollar car going to let you down,
More than it’s ever going to get you around,
Replace your gaskets and paint over your rust,
You’ll still end up with something that you never trust,
A thousand dollar car’s life was through,
Bought 50,000 miles before it got to you.
Oh why did I ever buy
A thousand dollar car?”
From A Thousand Dollar Car, by the Bottle Rockets.
Every time I hear that song on the Bottle Rockets’ CD the Brooklyn Side, I think about the $500 car (cost adjusted for inflation) I drove back in the mid-1970s. Or I should say I drove whenever I could get it started, which wasn’t always that easy to do.
A good buddy, Rico Cavatinni, took me down to Fayetteville where his father ran a used car lot and we came back with a 1967 Triumph. I’ve made some bad decisions in my life, but few of them have cost me as much aggravation and money as that one. The car’s most constant problem was the starter, which, on cold nights, took forever to kick off the engine. It would always crank, but often not until I had sat there and grinded the key in the ignition a dozen or so times while holding my mouth just right.
And that’s exactly what I was trying to do on one of the most embarrassing nights of my life. It was about 2 in the morning on Feb. 18, 1975. I was sitting in the parking lot of the Pines Restaurant on the outskirts of Chapel Hill and the only other car in the parking lot was a baby blue Cadillac. And in that Cadillac were Dean Smith and his son Scott. I kept telling Coach Smith that I’d be fine, that the car would start eventually like it always did, but he wasn’t leaving until he saw me drive off.
By way of back story, I was working at the time for a Captain Ahab-type character named Orville Campell, the publisher of the Chapel Hill Newspaper, who, in his constant quest to save a buck would arrange for me to fly with the team to cover road games for the paper. It was really awkward because if you knew anything about Dean Smith and the way he ran his program, you know how big he was on doing things the Carolina Family way. And with Dean there was always a clear delineation as to who was in the family and who wasn’t. As a scruffy, bearded 23-year old sportswriter who had hitch-hiked a ride on the team plane, I was in no way, shape or form a member of the family. He let me know that at least twice on the trip, once right after I had boarded the plane at the Raleigh Durham Airport, and again when we were boarding the plane in Roanoke, Va. after the Tar Heels and their freshman point guard Phil Ford had beaten Virginia Tech 87-75.
When I first got on the plane over at Raleigh-Durham, Dean had strolled down the aisle from the front to tell me that I was welcome to be on the flight, but he would prefer if I just sat there throughout the trip and didn’t say ``Boo,’’ to any of the players or staff. I assured him that was fine with me. And then after the game, I was walking a few feet behind Dean and the Voice of the Carolina Tar Heels Woody Durham on the tarmac, ready to climb the steps into the plane when Dean stopped me cold. “Hold on Dan,’’ he said. “Players board first.’’ Hell I didn’t care when I got on, but he made me feel like I was knocking people over to get the best seat.
Those of us who covered Dean knew how exasperating he could be. A contrarian by nature, he would always pick a point with whatever assertion he felt your question might imply. And he never, ever, ever forgot a perceived slight. One sportswriter wrote that of the two most famous sports figures in North Carolina at the time, one was named Petty and the other was also petty.
But all of us have competing sides to our nature, and the people who loved and appreciated Dean would go on and on about how loyal and decent and thoughtful he could be. That’s the side I remember after the team bus dropped everybody off at the parking lot of the Pines and all modes of transportation dispersed into the cold February night but my Triumph with the balky starter and Dean’s baby blue Cadillac. He had his son with him, I’m sure he wanted to get home and I’m sure he was planning to rise the next morning far earlier than I was. But he wasn’t leaving until, at long, long last, my engine finally turned over and I was able to get home on my own.
I saw Dean on television the other day, and he’s clearly showing his age. Scott is now a referee who works Southern Conference games. My son, Nate, is the age I was that night in the parking lot of the Pines, the night Dean Smith made sure I was going to be OK in spite of my $500 car.