The Top Secret Society of Rocket Levels

Eight years ago I stood along side Kevin Lee in the empty parking lot of the old Ramada Inn at 3am in the morning. I don’t remember what was holding me up, whether it was Kevin or some inanimate object, but something had to be… I had stood on my feet for far too long that day and drank far more than any man should that night.

A man approached. Kevin and I both knew him as a soft spoken guy and as someone that was “one of us” so to speak.

“Hey,” the man said. “Wanna see a rocket car?”

I was drunk and figured I was hearing things, so I ignored the words that came out of the man’s mouth. Kevin, on the other hand, didn’t drink and had his wits about him. “Well yeah,” he said. “We would love to see a rocket car.”

Before I knew what was going on, the man had pulled around a ’32 coupe, popped the deck lid, and yanked out what looked like a carpenter’s level with two axles attached and a model rocket engine on the back. And by the time I had figured out what I was looking at, the man had hooked the ends of a pair of wires to the leads on the battery of his coupe. He then stooped down on the ground next to the carpenter’s level while he held the other end of the wires.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Before I could comprehend his words and Kevin could answer, the man attached the leads to the rocket engine and the carpenter’s level disappeared. Within 300-feet or so, the level had reached a speed of around 150mph. I shit you not. And just as it was about to break a land speed record of some kind, the level veered left, hit a curb, and shot straight up – hundreds of feet into the air. It landed on a grass island a few seconds later and instantly set its surroundings ablaze.

Suddenly, I was sober. Wide-eyed. Ready for adventure.

That night, The Top Secret Society Of Rocket Levels was born. Every year after the HAMB Drags and at around 3am, a group of people, that shall remain nameless (for now), met in an empty parking lot and battled for speed with carpenter’s levels and model rocket engines. Around three years later it was broken up by murder and a heavy police presence. Again, I shit you not. I can only talk about it now as the statute of limitations is up and the Society has disbanded.

Or has it?