Rambling Down a Curvy Road. (An excerpt from an almost finished manuscript)
Once a long time ago I hung out with a guy…my best friend who had a car to drive:
It’s 1967, and I’m a High School junior. My best friend D.B. Sears and I were headed back to his house out in the country, about eight miles North of Welcome Hill. Along the way, there was a popular little eating joint known as the “Riverside Barbecue.” It was appropriately named, as the murky, slow flowing Chattooga was right across the road. The Riverside, was affectionately known as Dub’s. They probably had the best Barbecue I can ever remember putting in my mouth. They also bootlegged beer, since our county was dry back then. They didn’t care what age you were, since they were already breaking one law, what did it matter to them if you were only sixteen or seventeen years old. Maybe it’s what made the Barbecue taste so good.
D.B. and I were in hog heaven, as his sister had let him borrow her new car. We decided we were hungry so we stopped by Dub’s for a sandwich and a beer. We got our goodies, and D.B. kicked it into high gear up the little hilly, curvy road toward his house. We rounded one steep corner with D.B. doing about 60 miles an hour, and there was a car coming the other way over on our side of the road. D.B. did a one-handed-emergency-avoidance-maneuver (he had a beer in the other hand) which took his sister’s new Buick up the side of a twelve foot dirt bank. The car did a 360 degree turn, and came back down onto the pavement headed in exactly the right direction. Besides kicking up a little dust, you would have never known anything had happened. There wasn’t a scratch anywhere on the car, or on us.
“Sheeiiit,” D.B. stated calmly.
I never said a word, I just took another bite out of my sandwich, and continued to chew, out of reflex.
“What do think about THAT little bit of driving?” Said D.B. in a bragging tone.
I never said a word, I just took a huge swallow of Black Label, and sat perfectly still, like a rabbit that’s just seen the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun poke through the weeds.
About ten minutes passed before my vocal cords became “unparalyzed” from the sheer fright they had just been given. In that time I had mentally asked God to forgive me for all the things I should have asked him to forgive me for during the three second period of time we were up on that dirt bank.
“We’ve got to find something else to occupy our time, before we get killed,” I managed to wheeze out.
“Let’s start a band.” I suggested
Writing for Sanity's Sake 