Oh What A Night Back in 1969

Influence is a powerful word.  It was so powerful that momma guarded what influenced us.  When I look at society today, there are more venues of influence than any time in the history of the world.  Some years back, I read that people read more on one page of a daily newspaper than people did before the age of the printing press read in twenty years.  Can you imagine the magnification of that fact today with the media resources available today, especially smart phones and access to the World Wide Web?

When we discuss influence, VCR’s, DVD’s, and CD’s have entertained those that are in their mid to late fifties.  I remember discussing the subject of VCRs with a cousin that operated a video rental store.  These stores, as well as VCR’s, have gone the way of the dodo bird.  They no longer exist.  My cousin told me that VCRs were great babysitters.  Her sons, who now have teenagers of their own, watched VCR’s every day after school until her and her husband got home.  They may have been good babysitters, but the content of the VCR’s has influenced a whole generation.  The verdict of this way of life is pending.  Mama always said, “You will reap what you sow!”

Another one of mom’s favorite sayings was, “Birds of a feather flock together.”  Bad friends result in bad behavior.  If momma or dad said that they did not like a certain friend I had and that I had better stay away from them, I took note of it.  Dad was a very good discerner of people and momma wasn’t too shabby at judging folks either.

Because of a life without many amenities, I did not have many friends.  I was embarrassed to invite them to the shanty where I lived.  Most parents of kids from school had barns and sheds that were better than hour house.  I did not want people to see how poor we were.

In my late teens, I befriended some of my football teammates.  One evening after practice, some of them invited me to spend a few hours with them.  After hanging out at the local hamburger stand across from our football practice field, one of my friends, “Butter Bean,” invited to ride with him.  His dad was a mechanic and auto body technician.  Butter Bean’s dad had restored a 56 Chevy.  It was turquoise and white two-door hardtop with a 327 engine, four-in-the-floor, chrome mag rims, and Tiger Paw tires.  A chance to ride in it was wonderful since I was driving an old wore out junker 1950 Plymouth which have restored and currently drive.

I loaded up with Butter Bean and a couple of very impressionable junior high boys. We took off from the hamburger stand with the sound of cherry bomb mufflers sounding like the fluttering of angel wings with changing of all four gears.  We had not gone very far when I realized I might have made a mistake.  As they broke out the Miller High Life beers, I knew it could not be good.  I did not drink.  When we stopped at the I-65 over pass near Rocky Mount Methodist Church, I got suspicious.  When they opened the trunk and got out the cases of eggs, I had a sick feeling down in my gut.

About this time, I asked, “What are y’all gonna do with them eggs?”  Butter Bean said, “We are going to throw them at cars on the Interstate.”  Well, I was pretty naïve, but I’m not stupid.  I folded my arms, sat down in the open trunk and told them that I was not gonna throw eggs.  I watched as they had their fun and prayed that no one would get killed and that the Jemison police or Alabama State Troopers would not show.  They drank beer, threw eggs, and snickered in demonic timbre.

I was glad to return to the hamburger stand, get in my old Plymouth, and get home.  I told daddy what I had done in hopes that he would be proud that I did not participate in the demonic debauchery and revelry of interstate eggnog.  I hoped that he would believe me, and he did.  But he gave me some advice that I carry with me to this very day.  He asked, “What would you have done if the police showed up that night?”  I told him that I would have told them was not drinking and I was not throwing eggs.  Dad said the police would not know any difference and would have assumed that I had.  He said there would be no way to convince them that you were not drinking and had not thrown eggs, and the best thing would have been to start walking back to Jemison.  In my mind, I did what I thought was right and besides, I wanted to ride in the 56 Chevy again.

Thinking back to that night back in 1969, I am glad that no one was injured or killed.  Since that night, I have read and heard about numerous injuries and deaths due to objects tossed down onto innocent interstate travelers.  That night seems so trivial compared to the things teenagers are doing nowadays.  Today’s society is so much like those in the days of the Book of Judges.  

 

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25 KJV).