Rides

Larry Lankford had a VW. A few times he would come by the house and pick up Allen, Wayne and me and give us a ride to school. One day he had some others with him. We had 7 or 8 guys in the car that morning. Things were a little crowded but we made it. One of the reasons I remember it was the radio was playing the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which was a good driving song. Do you remember there were some songs that sounded better when you were driving around?

Senior year Allen and Wayne had a brand new Duster. It was supposed to be shared between the two of them but Allen ended up driving it more. There were a few nervous rides in that car too. One in particular I remember was down river road. They both had a way of making the road feel a lot more narrow that it was.

One day after class Freddy Lindsey asked us if we wanted to ride to Knoxville with him. I was only one who said yes. I remember that trip because it was the one and only time I had to be corrected while living with the McNabbs. All their Mom said was I wasn't supposed to go anywhere without asking first.

One day I ended up riding around Lenoir City with Bobby Oody. I don't remember anything else about it except there was one other person in the car with us. What I do remember is coming down the hill toward Highway 11 so fast that at one point we were airborne when we hit the bump a cross street made.

Then a time or two we got beer from the little beer joint south of Philadelphia and took the back roads over toward Corinth and Piney. After one of those rides I got the "sniff test" when I got home. You know, when your Mom leans close to you and says something like, "Have you been drinkin' beer?", to which you're usually foolish enough to say no when it's fairly obvious you have been.

Ah, the teen years. They were great.