Long before we were old enough to drive, our fascination with cars began. By seventh grade, John Morris, Chuck Hancock and I were hanging around together. John lived off Tom Hall Street behind Main Street. To the side of his house John’s father had built a corrugated metal building that was about 10’ by 12’ and since it was not being used, we appropriated it as a club house and a place for us to build model cars. We had built plastic models on our own for years but the club house took model building to a new level.
About once a week in the late 50’s, we would walk up to Robert Bradford’s store and pick out a new model car or two. We didn’t even glance at the airplane or ship models. We were automotive purists. Bradford’s Store had clothes that no one of our age would ever wear but he did carry two things we bought regularly; model cars and 45 rpm records. His store was the best source in Fort Mill for current records. When Fort Mill folks did the twist, Bradford’s Store furnished the Chubby Checker and in 1963, many teens screamed about the Beatles on Ed Sullivan on Sunday and bought their records at Bradford’s on Monday.
The automotive catch word during the 1950’s was customize and every plastic kit offered many ways to individualize the model. Once the car was complete, there would always be lots of parts left over and we had boxes full of them above our work desks. It was only natural to consolidate and after a little sorting we had a wide selection of tires, chrome accessories, seats, decals and all manner of other leftovers. Need a Corvette steering wheel for a 1932 Ford hot rod? How about lake pipes for a 57 Pontiac? We had those and more. Every afternoon after a day at Central School, (later A. O. Jones) we would sit, each at our station and painstakingly put every tiny part in its place while we dreamed of one day being able to customize our own real car.
Car clubs were all the rage in the late 50’s and when we needed a name for our auto club, my Dad suggested “Road Rattlers” and painted a sign for us. It was a coiled rattlesnake on a blue background. His National Guard unit at the time had a rattlesnake shoulder patch and I think it was his inspiration. The sign was proudly displayed above the door of our boy cave.
Good taste was not among our standards for how the cars looked. This was a time that Don “Big Daddy” Garlits was building dragsters, George Barris was designing California customs, and a character called “Rat Fink” was a popular decal for car windows. Every car of the era had outrageous fins…Have you ever seen a 1959 Cadillac? The double mounted, red, bullet-shaped taillights of the Cadillac were pure gold in the customizing world. They showed up on real cars and on models. Their appeal was obvious to every boy.
My showcase model was a 1932 Ford Coupe. The “Deuce Coupe” was the ultimate hot rod. It was customized by anyone who could find one and celebrated later by the Beach Boys. My version was a deep metallic purple created by layer after layer of paint. Everything was brush painted and the hard part for me was letting the paint dry before putting the model together. Not so easy. Many of my models had fingerprints made by my impatient hands while the paint was still soft. My purple Deuce Coupe had a small block Chevy engine with three deuces and side pipes. The interior was purple with baby blue bucket seats and accessorized with a tachometer mounted on a racing steering wheel. John, who has always been classier than I am, built an incredibly cool cherry red 1959 Chrysler 300 convertible. John loves Jaguars while I love to hear something that goes Vroom! Vroom! I cannot remember Chuck’s favorite. As with many things, I wish I could call and ask him.
The three of us wanted to be Keith. Keith was John’s big brother, a senior in high school and he constantly drove a cool car. At different times he had an Austin Healey 3000, a 1954 Corvette, and a Teal 1955 Chevy with a white convertible top and custom bucket seats. Keith Morris had the waterfall haircut, wore just the right clothes and always had a great-looking girlfriend.
Keith had every high school boy’s dream job in the 1950s. He was the soda jerk at Martin’s Drug Store. Occasionally we would go by the drug store and get an ice cream or a fountain coke. It seemed the tables there were always populated by high school girls. We imagined Keith in his soda jerk paper hat spending the day making ice cream floats for beautiful young women in black and white saddle shoes and poodle skirts wearing their 1959 Cadillac cashmere sweaters.
I guess it wasn’t all about cars.
In an attempt to keep me safe when I started driving in 1961, my father bought a 1952 Nash Rambler. Underpowered, under-sized and completely underwhelming, the Rambler was transportation and I was glad to have it. The Rambler had one feature that redeemed it in the dating world. The front seats could fold back almost flat, I guess for naps on the road. In my fifteen-year-old testosterone fantasy they were just the thing for a heavy date at the local Drive-In. In reality, no respectable father would let his fifteen-year-old daughter anywhere near the Fort-Roc or Auto drive-in movies. Another dream crushed.
During that time I was part of a Presbyterian Youth Group. Every Sunday night ten or so of us would meet in Mrs. Bixler’s office at Unity Church and talk about issues of the day and how to handle life as a teenager. The meetings were never really preachy and since the ratio of boys to girls was about one to four, I always looked forward to them.
Often after youth group and sometimes after sports events, I would serve transportation for three or four girls. Needless to say, my focus was not always where it should have been. One night, at the red light at Banks Street and Tom Hall Street, Susan, Linda, Donna and Cindy were piled in the Rambler for my home delivery service. While I was stopped at the light, something was making everyone in the back laugh and as I turned around, the light changed. By the time I realized it, the light had gone to yellow and I accelerated onto Tom Hall. I was a little too fast, a little too distracted and the steering was a little too loose so my turn was in a wide left-hand arc. I ended up with two wheels off the street before I managed to stop.
My usual luck held and just as I stopped, the police car behind me lit up in that shade of “Everybody! Look who is in trouble” red. (There were no blue lights then). I stayed put and the officer walked up to my window, shining the light on my cargo of girls and into my saucer-sized eyes. He asked me to get out of the car and walked me back beside his patrol car. After some stern questions and a few minutes of observing my behavior, he shook his head the way adults do when a teenager does something stupid.
“I stopped you because I thought you might be drinking,” he said. “But you seem to have been distracted. I am going to let you go but pay full attention to the road and not the back seat.”
The Rambler met its violent end six months later and only a couple of blocks away. Again, I was distracted but this time it was not because of a car full of girls. Chuck Hancock and I were riding around through town and both of us were smoking. (Don’t judge me, everybody smoked cigarettes then.) We were fairly new to the sport, however and our technical skills were not well developed.
On Unity Street, between the Post Office (then Central School) and the Presbyterian Church, I dropped my lit cigarette in my lap. I tried to find it, but instead, found a telephone pole on the edge of the church parking lot. There was quite a loud bang and it took a few seconds to recover from the shock. Before the “Are you okay?” question came the command. “Get rid of the cigarettes!” Chuck, with a chipped tooth and a busted lip, answered, “I already threw them over the fence into the school yard.”
Just up the hill from the wrecked Rambler was the old Presbyterian Manse. It is gone now after a second life as a Boy Scout meeting house for years. Then it was occupied by the Reverend J. Ed Wayland. Reverend Wayland, with his shocking white hair, was the sternest man I had ever met. “If you died right now, would you go to heaven?” was his signature opening line.
He heard the crash and down the hill he came. I would rather have seen the Valkyries coming to take me to Valhalla. At the time I thought he was probably without sin and I waited on him to pronounce judgement on me.
He didn’t. He made sure that Chuck and I were okay, called my Dad and the police and then sat with us and tried to calm us down while we waited. For the first time I saw him as a minister and not just a preacher.
The police officer who showed up wrote up a ticket for careless driving since no one else was involved. When Dad arrived, he looked at us and calmly handled the situation of getting the car towed and getting Chuck looked after. The man always kept his cool. I never remember my father yelling at me about anything that was accidental. He did, after we were home and safe, give me the responsibility lecture.
Bob Hill, WWII Marine Veteran, could sure talk about responsibility.
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