Let me digress a moment to the redneck crowd I hung around with. This will be the last entry before I transition to the after high school era. With the crowd I hung with, we were so large and diverse that it was great to be associated with so many, but not without its trials. Billy Holiday was the rebel of our group and caused more than his share of trouble. We had to put him on the straight and narrow on several occasions. He’s the one who stole gasoline for his car from Jaime Lamm’s farm. Jaime switched the tanks. He had diesel fuel in one, gas in the other. Billy’s car was messed up trying to burn diesel. Anyway, there’s a couple of times he harmed people. There were a couple of times he pulled his car out in front of people and cause wrecks. Once we know was intentional. Al Stilley, was the recipient of the intentional pull out. You see, Billy started this rumor that I was out to beat Al and he told him I was going to beat him. I had never said such a thing. About this same time our group had been given the freedom to use and old two story house next to A.B. and Levy’s Hardy’s house on a dirt road for our meeting place. All that was required of us was that we be responsible for having the power turned on and pay the electric bill. That we had done. Well, one evening this Al and me issue had come to a head. Al came looking for me and knowing where I was he stopped by and came in. Funny thing is our getting together reasonably cool let us put things into perspective. We conclude Billy was instigating this fight. Al and I shook hands on putting Billy in his place again. While we were sitting around talking Billy drove up in his ’62 Ford convertible. Al turned into something else. He could be very hot headed. That’s why I said it was funny we got together like we did. Well, Al lit out the door and ran around to the driver’s door of the car and confronted Billy about his lie. Billy was a wus anyway and he got defensive and floored it and left with Al yelling at him as he sped off leaving a trail of dust on this dirt road. Al got into his car and gave chase. He lost Billy, because Al was driving a VW and Billy was driving in a V-8 car. Later that night Billy was lying in wait in a side road, knowing that Al would be coming by. When He saw the headlights of the VW coming down the road Billy waited to the last second and with his headlights off pulled out in front of Al causing Al to swerve and roll his car over. Billy left the scene. Al was alright. I think Billy is very fortunate to still be alive knowing Al’s disposition.
A second time Joe Harris, who lived down the road from me had a Mecury Comet that was hopped up pretty good. It was a very nice car. Billy pulled out in front on him on the corner where Shirley lived and Joe swerved off the road and his car ran up a guy wire on a power pole, snapped the pole and his car landed on its roof in the road. I happened to come up on this one. After this incident I think Billy toned down his wayward driving habits.
I must at least relate one more incident with Billy. Even though he was a member of our gang, we had a way of letting him know we didn’t approve of his antics. On one of those evenings we decided to spend the night at our club house Billy had done something he shouldn’t have done, as usual. We had running water at the house too, so we locked Billy out of the house and he would drive off yelling he’d be back to get us, so we decided to make sure we got him first. We got a couple of peck buckets and filled them with water and sat them by the front door. We locked the door and went upstairs to bunk down. Sometime shortly we heard Billy’s car pull up and we went down stairs as he was coming up the steps. He started banging on the door when he realized it was locked and demanded we open the door. Sooo, two of us go the buckets up and a third opened the door while he was banging on it and we threw both buckets of water on him. He was totally soaked, to say the least. He was totally PO’d at all of us. But he learned a lesson. Don’t trust us when we open a door. And don’t think you’ll get away with anything if you wrong one of us.
Okay, so I lied. One more thing, although not related to Billy directly. He was involved, though. A.B. and Levy Hardy lived next door to our club house. Their dad worked for Bayboro Chevrolet and never owned a car. He always drove home a car off the used car lot. That left the budget open to buy A.B. and Levy both brand new Honda 150’s. They pulled the mufflers off and we rode them all over the neighborhood with those loud pipes at all hours of the night. I bought a Honda 90 so I could ride with them on my own little speedster. One night around one or so we were riding through a little path between some houses and the main highway and as we went by we say a porch light go one at one of the houses. We just laughed at the idea of waking someone up. We weren’t laughing when we came back by though. The porch light came on again as we drove by, but we saw a shot gun at the guy’s side and he raised it up into the air and blew off a couple of rounds. That was enough for us to go settle in at the club house for the night.
Okay, okay, how about one more. There were two little country stores within walking distance of our club house and we used to go up to Tiny’s the most. She married Hobert Walker when her husband died. It was the smaller of the two stores I’d say, but she was always friendly to us. The other store, I can’t remember who ran it, but every once and a while we would go sit under his stoop if it was raining. One of those evenings one of the guys realized the front windows weren’t locked. There just inside the window was the ice cream box and on top of the ice cream box was all the candy that was stocked for sale. We tried not to make it obvious, so we would only take a few candy bars at a time. Back then a Milky Way or Zero were treasures for candy. Aluminum can drinks were coming into being about that time, too and you had to have a church key to open them. Pop tops hadn’t been invented yet. So we always had something to eat on Saturday night.
All in all, there are many other things I could mention and may remove this paragraph and add those thoughts and memories as I get them, but for now it is time to move on.
LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL
Graduation had now thrust me into a whole new realm of life. What was I to do? School had structure and meaning with a goal to attain. Now the future was wide open. The hippy culture was coming into its own. It was the summer of Woodstock. The Beatles had evolved into the drug culture. Corvettes had taken on a new Stingray look. They were no longer the Sting Ray. One word instead of two. The muscle car era was in full swing and I was driving a ’60 Ford Falcon by now. Wow, what a rush. Most of my friends had hot cars and the best I had come up with was a six cylinder with a slush o’matic. That’s the term for a two speed automatic transmission. My first car was the ’53 Chevy my dad bought me from Mitchell. I drove it till the brakes died and it and almost killed me. I knew the car would do all of 98 mph. Well, it could have probably hit a hundred if I didn’t have four more people in the car to help me document the top end on this beast. It was originally blue, but had never been painted since the day it was new, I would say. I am backing up a bit here. We got the car in ’66. The blue was now nearly white with a hint of blue. Paint didn’t hold up to well back then. To top it all off the seats were worn rather badly, so I went out and bought seat covers. They were bright red. Can you imagine? My taste for color coordinating back then was a bit lacking to say the least. I bought a couple of cans of black spray paint, popped the hub caps and trim rings off and painted the wheels black and then I shined up the trim rings and put them back on. It was my hot rod. It wasn’t complete without a STP sticker on the center of the back glass at the bottom. It put me right up there with King Richard. That’s Richard Petty for the non-NASCAR fans. Okay let’s ratchet back up to this after school era.
My graduation night was full. I went off to the high school auditorium to meet up with my classmates. We took pictures, talked of the last twelve years together and the excitement of what had been a different kind of last year at school. I will digress just a few days prior. Back then we had baccalaureate sermon the previous Sunday morning. I don’t think public schools have these anymore. We all went in cap and gowns and listened to a sermon on a new life in college or trade school or on into the job world. Okay, back to Friday night. We went through a sobering time as well as celebratory time to flip our tassels over on our mortar board and became graduates of high school. The excitement spilled over afterward when we all broke loose for a night of splitting off into our groups. The group of twenty some guys I knew went off to celebrate overnight. My mom and dad didn’t plan on me being home at all overnight. Actually I don’t remember much of what we did that night except to say I know I had fun and remember being on the road at two or three in the morning and how it’s memory of that moment was indelibly stamped on my mind. Things were going to change I though. Really change. I had done my duty as a citizen at eighteen and registered for the draft and was classified as 1A. There was no honorable way of getting out of that. I wasn’t qualified for college at the time and the only other alternative was to go to Canada. I’d never been out of the state at that time, so I wasn’t real sure I wanted to do that even for that reason. So there I was. I was a weekend away from hitting the real world and a real job, since my dad had already seen to that. He had since moved on from Rae, Brown and Root to another construction outfit called Daniel Construction Company. They were building a pulp paper mill for Weyheuser.
