On the Coat Tales of a Gambler
Do you know that song, Night Moves, by Bob Seger? Listen to it if you don’t know it. It is pretty much my high school summer and a benchmark in my life. Kind of funny how the song is so much like that summer. I guess I kids are kids growing up everywhere. Maybe you have that story too. Ha ha!
In June of 1956, it was my first time going to Pensacola. I didn’t even know life existed outside of Robstown. I was fifteen years old and on my way to the tenth grade.
I had an old, ‘43’ Chevy, straight six on the column. I spent the summer dragging main and hanging out on the corner with some of the older boys. The Joker Drive-in was the other hang out for kids in those days. It was our version of Mel’s Drive-in like in that movie; I don’t recall the name of it.
Some of the guys I spent time with I later ran into during my days with the firehouse and then Scarpone. The Joker drive-in had parking for about six, maybe eight cars parked right and six stools on the counter. Behind the counter was the slab for cooking burgers. It was a tiny place. Basically, a kitchen on one side, and the counter, and the door. The owner’s name was Don. He shaved his head and always wore a black barrette and a white apron down to his ankles. He was a Don Rickles look alike with a Beatnik look. Don did everything at The Joker. He took orders, made the shakes, and cooked the burgers. We’d have to go inside to order and pay Don. He was not about to serve food and beverages to kids in a car. He did have a girl running the food to the cars on weekends. She was hot, I sure remember her. She was a big flirt and a big teaser. Tips were meager and she knew how to play for her money. She kept the guys hanging out, which was good for Don’s business.
Don loved us and didn’t mind us hanging out for a coke and a hamburger, in between dragging main. He had the local radio station tuned in and hooked up to one large out-door type speaker. The music had a kind of tinny sound, but no one noticed to complain.
Don was a big fan of the high school football team, with pictures on the wall of when he played quarterback for the fighting Wild Cats of Robstown High. During football season, he’d always have the game on, blaring loudly from that speaker.
During that summer, I was often conned into taking a trunk load of guys to the Mystic View Dive-in theater. I hated sneaking them in, scared that if I got caught, my dad would take my car away. They guys would pitch in for me and one other buddy, so it never cost me anything as the smuggler. Aside from schlepping my buddies, that ‘43’ served as my training ground for smooching at the drive-in. Hell, for fifty cents each, I could take my girl out and never see the dang movie. Too bad they did away with drive-in movies. I think if we still had drive-ins today’s kids would be better off.
Having a car at fifteen was a big deal. Most of my buddies walked. But I had saved up my gas station money and soda jerk money to buy that Chevy. The guy wanted $225, and I got him down to $175 plus my bicycle. I thought I was hot stuff for just a kid. Later I found out the car was probably worth $75. Live and learn.
It was a straight six, three speeds on the column. The headliner was torn in the back (you can take a good guess) and it had that funky old car smell. The radio worked most of the time but with scratchy sound. Main thing was the car ran. You could see the pavement through a rusted-out hole in the back seat floorboard. The linkage was also a bit rough and often it could stick when shifting from reverse to first gear. The first time it happened I was so scared that I had blown the tranny. I drove it in first gear, jerking like a bucking bronco, all the way to my uncle’s gas station. He popped the hood and ordered me to get a couple of wrenches. After monkeying around with the linkage and squirting it with oil, I saw the shift lever moving up and down. My uncle called my pride and joy a “rolling toilet” and told me that I should keep a set of tools, jumper cables and a tow chain in the trunk, along with a flashlight in the glove box.
I thought I’d be smart taking a part-time job as a bag boy at Tilford’s Market. Dumb me, the summer before I had worked six nights a week at Potter’s drug store as a soda jerk. (It turned out to be the best paying job of all my high school jobs because of the tips) I could have gone back to work there, but, foolishly, I thought that I was too big a deal for that kind of job…talk about stupid. I made less than half the money that summer, compared to the summer at the drug store. Again, live and learn.
The best thing of all about that summer was I had a really pretty girlfriend, the great Joyce McAllister, from Barella High, in Parker. She was a cashier at Tilford’s, where I worked. That summer, I burned up the highway going from my home in the south, north to where she lived. That girl filled up three pages of my high school yearbook with how much she loved me and how great I was. This will make you laugh I later found out that I was just one of three loves she had going on at the same time. Live and learn.
She was a “Parker girl.” Parker was a lot like Robstown, but it was just slightly more affluent. To the folks in Parker, “Robstowner’s” were trash. For some reason that I could never figure out, folks in Robstown kind of accepted their snobby opinion as fact. In reality, both towns were nice places to work and raise families. I guess you have that situation just about everywhere. One community looks down on another, just so they can feel better. Like Espanola is the butt of jokes in New Mexico. But, if you want to see lowriders, Espanola is the world’s capital for them.
Young as we were, on our way to the tenth grade, we both knew what we were going to do after high school. Joyce was going to go to college and become an RN… she did too! I ran into her about ten years later downtown. There she was dressed in white, with a little white cap, and all. I loved the way nurses used to dress. I recall wanting to have some excuse to go to the hospital just so Joyce could be my nurse. I didn’t have the guts to try to re-open our past, just conversation… never mind being married and having kids at the time.
As for me, well I knew that I was going to join the fighting glory of the USMC. Typical of my ways, I had no plans for anything after that. But Joyce sure did. In my yearbook she wrote, “…after I become a nurse and you come home from the Marines, we’ll get married, we’ll have lots of children and live in a cute little house…etc., etc., etc.” Ha, ha, youth! I often wonder what she wrote in the other two guys’ yearbooks. In my heart I’d like to believe she wrote nothing, but I will never know.
It is finally raining here in Taos. Boy, it has been dry, dry, like a popcorn fart. Fire danger is extreme. They won’t let you light up a smoke in public… really! You have to be indoors. Guess I could go to Las Vegas to smoke, nothing there grows so there’s nothing to burn.
Joyce was so nice, but she was not the first love of my life. My first girl had already dumped me, before it got to love, if you know what I mean… so, in a way, guess I never really did have that first love. But life was soooo good in those days. I felt like I was on top of the world. Heck, I had a car, some money, and a good-looking girl. That was the summer Joyce and I drove to Pensacola. Of course, ya’ll don’t get to hear that story… only that our alibis did not hold up… the old ‘43’ Chevy did, thank God. That was among my dumber stunts in life and yes there was plenty of hot water and Joyce’s insane dad, complete with a shotgun. Lost my car for about three months and that pretty much cooled things between Joyce and me for a while… still we managed to fan the ember through our senior year.
On the Coat Tales of a Gambler continues in Episode 13
Here’s that bone for you.