As the headlights zoomed straight at me, I knew it would be over

Boys tell stories over and over and first thing you know, they believe them themselves. Here's one that is true and was from the first instant: I may be the only person in history who developed full-blown acid reflux disease in less than five seconds.

It happened one night as I was driving back to Lodi after work in Victor.

It was darkening and I sleepily saw a pair of headlights approach a while before I got to the railroad track by the old Roma and East-Side wineries.

Suddenly, both lights seemed to be on my side of the road. Just as I completely and fully panicked, knowing that I would die in a messy head-on collision, I screamed the one word that every pilot uses just as his plane crashes into the mountain.

Then the lights coming toward me parted like the Red Sea. One Hell's Angel went to the right of me and another to the left at speeds that were mercifully close to the speed of sound. And being jostled as I passed over the uneven tracks at the instant they passed me, with straight pipes bellowing, didn't detract from the reality of the moment one iota.

I knew I was a goner; the noise they made still echoes in my head when I think about it.

Of course, acid reflux disease didn't turn out to be the only gastro-intestinal catastrophe emanating from my person as I crossed those tracks at that seemingly apocalyptic moment.

Funny how certain adrenal reactions affect one's body and prevent sleep for a while. The only other time that happened to me was when I was bored into somnolence one night by a thick fog while I was at the wheel of my '51 Merc and was rudely awakened by the violent chattering of my car's wheels as I clunked 20 yards into a cotton field just south of Bakersfield about 50 years ago.

I wasn't tired for a week after that either.

In the words of a lady friend from years ago, "That scared me and I ain't ascared of nothin'."

Speaking of scary things: Did you see the story about the $5.5 million Carroll Shelby got for his 800 horsepower Shelby Cobra last week? You may not believe this, but that's more money than I got for my first few cars put together!

Having been interested in cars for the last 70 years, it seems only natural I should tell you what I know about Carroll Shelby and his connection with Lance Reventlow, the only son of Barbara Hutton, the heiress to the Woolworth department store fortune. She was married seven times, once to Count Curt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, and that union culminated in the birth of a son named Lance (etc.), who grew up just like me. He was nuts about cars by the time he was five.

The big difference was when he reached 12, his newest step-dad was a jillionaire race car driver and I had a used Western Auto bicycle. One of his other step-fathers was a guy named Cary Grant (no relation to Hugh, the idiot movie guy who was caught doing some dumb stuff a couple of years ago.)

Lance, unlike yours truly, had a racing and exotic car fleet before he was out of his teens. All that time, his mom Barbara was one of the richest women in the world and an heiress, who unlike the one we hear about incessantly these days, wore undies.

For a while, Carroll Shelby drove race cars for young Lance, and between the two, they developed a car Lance called a Scarab, which is an Egyptian beetle.

The Scarab looked a lot like the Cobra Carroll sold for five-and-a-half big ones last week. Mr. Shelby is 84 and is wisely looking for cars that get a little better gas mileage than his Cobra, which does 0 to 60 mph in just over three seconds — coincidentally, the same length of time it took me to develop acid reflux disease in 1950.

Bob Bader is a Lodi chiropractor, writer, artist, car-nut and amateur photographer. He may be reached at drrobertbader@sbcglobal.net.

First published: Wednesday, January 31, 2007