Man, I've had some good times in my life. I was thinking about some of them tonight, and it made me smile. I thought about back in my younger years when I drove this old 1975 Toyota Corona. It had a CB Radio and a loud speaker attached to the front center beneath the bumper. Then my friend Billy made me this mixed tape and one of the musical interludes was this random crazy circus-sounding music. So I'd load up my car with people and we'd drive around at 5 - 10 mph waving at people with the circus music broadcasting - like we were in a parade. We'd make frequent stops and yell out the windows at the make believe shriners to keep it moving. And sometimes, we'd even toss candy at the parade-goers on the sidewalks. Ahhh, good times.
We used to go camping a lot. John's Mountain was 30 minutes up the way. One summer night, a group of us went up in the middle of the week for a quick one-nighter. Later in the evening we did our camping ritual of relaxing around the fire, taking tokes and drinking liquor. Chelle drank half a bottle of Blue Raspberry Mad Dog (hey man, we were in college) and had to spend some time slumped over in the woods. When she came back, she was feeling the need to put something in her belly, and the chick sitting next to her was munching on Teddy Grahams, so she asked if she could have some. She put a couple in her mouth, started chewing, and a strange look came over her face right before she confusedly said, "These taste like sand." I still laugh at that today.
The next morning, all the girls were quite hungover and feeling queazy, and I was driving them back in my old car. Apparently, I used to drive like a bat out of hell (not anymore), but I knew the roads well - all the curves and hills, etc. - and drove them like I knew them well while the girls moaned in the back seat as they swayed back and forth in tandem with the car's motion.
I realized later just exactly how frightening my fast driving on those back roads was when my blind friend Tony and I made an afternoon trip up to John's Mountain to play in the water. On the way back, with his seeing-eye dog Quint sitting between his legs on the floorboard in the front seat, Tony kept jumping and flinching as we took those curves on two wheels. I think I slowed down after that. Nothing like a blind man to show you the error in your ways. Raymond Carver's Cathedral, anyone?
There was that time at midnight in the park in downtown Rome where the three rivers meet. We got busted for - gasp! - drugs. Chelle, Amy, Rebecca, and I had decided to walk to the top of 100-year old cemetary next to the park (it was one of the seven hills in the town that gave it its name), and when we arrived back at the park and chilled in the gazebo for a minute, Amy decided she wanted a cigarette, so she walked back to Chelle's car where she'd left them. At the same time, Chelle walked out of sight down to the edge of the river. Halfway to the car, Amy spotted three cop cars around Chelle's car, so she turned back to grab me and Rebecca. The three of us approached the car when the cops asked us where we'd been. "We took a walk to the top of Myrtle Hill," we told them. "At midnight?" they asked. "Don't you know how dangerous it is down here? There are all sorts of homos down here at night." Yeah, they actually said that.
Then they set up the scene for us. One of the cops was patrolling the park when he spotted Chelle's car. He looked around the park but saw no one. He peered into the car and saw girls' bags sitting on the seats, so out of concern and thinking some girl had gotten snatched up, they entered the unlocked car to look for identification. "Miss James, would you like to tell your friends what we found in your bag?" In a meek and tentative voice, Amy said, "Marijuana." (Ironically, it was the first bag Amy had ever purchased).
They asked us where "Miss Parks" was - the owner of the car. "We don't know," we told them, "She walked down by the river a few minutes ago." What kind of friends are you, they asked, to let your friend walk off by herself like that? Then they accused us of hiding her, but we told them we weren't. So they kept me and Rebecca and took Amy with them to look for her. As they started to walk off, Chelle comes walking up the hill and in a cheerful voice says, "Hey guys! What's going on?" The cops recap the situation to her, and they tell her in her bag they found a hookah, surgical clips to hold roaches, a vile of roaches, a bag of pot, a pipe, and rolling papers. Then they asked Chelle what all the empty cigarette boxes were in her car for. "Are they to hold your marijuana cigarettes," they asked? Confusedly, she told them no, that she just hadn't cleaned out her car. Next, one of the cops picked up one random box, opened it up, turned it over in his hand, and half a joint fell out. I shit you not.
Coincidentally, I used to nag Chelle for always carrying that stuff around with her. "It's going to get you in trouble," I would say to her, always being the voice of reason.
They took my backpack off my shoulder and searched it, but of course, found nothing in it. "Told you so," I told them. So then they lectured us, took all our illegal stuff, and sent us on our way. That was a close call.
One month later, it was Chelle's birthday, so another group of seven of us drove over to Alabama to Little River Canyon for some fun in the sun. We hiked down a rocky, steep path with a cooler of beer to a spot that had an impressive cliff and waterfall. There was a rope swing rigged up that you could use to jump off the cliff and into the water.
After nearly two hours, out of nowhere appears a park ranger. He tells us that he's been up on the mountain watching us for 45 minutes through binoculars (yeah, I bet he was). Then he tells us that we're in a dry county, and we've got a cooler of beer. That's illegal.
"You girls don't have anything else illegal do you, like drugs or firearms?" We didn't, but he searched all our stuff anyway. Then he arrested us. We went to the station and sat around a table as they filed police reports on everyone except me and Karah because we weren't drinking. Hey, look, I'm a good girl, what can I say? Then one of the girls started crying, and a couple more followed suit, begging them not to do anything to them.
The cops told us they'd make a deal with us. If the two girls who weren't drinking (me and Karah) agree to do a weekend of community service in the national park with the five other girls, they wouldn't file reports against them. Karah was headed back to Maryland for the summer, so that left me to step up for my girls. So I did.
A couple weeks later, we headed back up to the National Park on Memorial Day weekend to carry out our community service. First assignment from Ranger Rick: set up our camp and walk the grounds and pick up litter. Two hours later, he came and picked us up and took us to the lodge. Chelle and Amy got kitchen duty while the rest of us had to clean rooms at the lodge. That's where we met Phyllis, the lead maid who supervised us. She had an Native American lover named White Cloud, and we took smoke breaks with her after every two rooms we cleaned.
After a couple hours, Chelle and Amy finished up kitchen duty and joined us. Still today they talk about walking up to the lodge and seeing the hilarious sight of me with a doo-rag on my head, a towel tucked in the band of my shorts, and a cigarette hanging out of my mouth as I pushed a cart of cleaning supplies. Funny thing about the lodge, too - they had matches with the slogan "Alabama - state of surprises!" so our motto for the trip became, "Surprise, girls! Dry county!"
After a couple more hours, we finished cleaning the lodge. It was only 4:00, but Ranger Rick told us we were done for the day, so go enjoy ourselves. So we did. We went back to the scene of the original crime and swam and sunbathed. In the evening, we headed back to our camp and cooked dinner over the fire. As the hour grew nigh, we thought how we sure would like to have some cocktails, but hey, we were in a dry county. That didn't stop us. We decided to make a 30-minute drive back to Georgia to the liquor store. On the way back, we realized that it may not be the wisest thing to get busted drinking in a dry county at our camp when that's exactly why we there doing community service in the first place, so we decided to get shitfaced in the car on the way back (except for the driver, of course) and dispose of the evidence before we got back. So that's what we did.
And it was fun.
~ the lady love
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