The Dukes of Vestal
By
Dick McCoy
Remembrance from the McCoy archives: I'll begin by reminding you that we were all wacky-crazy back in 1963 in Vestal... We were mostly country bumpkins. Even if we thought we were refined, I know now we didn't really fool anybody. Safe sex wasn't a "catch word" in those days, but then sensitivity, and certainly not judgment were either. High school guys burned rubber along the winding back roads of Vestal in smoking jalopies that usually ran on a few cylinders less than they were supposed to have.
We were cool: we drank beer, sucked on cigs hanging low on our lip the way James Dean did it, and talked of cars and "poontang". Some few of us, not to be named here, occasionally fired out the car window with a twelve-gauge at anything with four legs that moved. Usually my shots went high and wide (how I ever became a cop I'll never know...in more ways than just that one). We figured there was nothing in life but cars, guns, beer, and girls. As we still say in closed circles, we didn't have the common sense that God gave animals.
You know something? I'm glad we didn't. I've never done anything sensible that was ever fully satisfying. Anyway in tenth grade I drove a '57 Plymouth that had push button shift. Anyone remember push button shift? I could rev that six cylinder engine up to max, push in that "D" button (that meant drive, for the ladies reading this), and actually leave rubber on the road. Plus a few transmission parts. (bear with me; this all has a point. I think. Involving raccoons)
Anyway, that ol' Plymouth cornered like a stallion with its feet roped together and topped out at eighty down the hill comin' off Arnold Park, but it ran. That was enough. Our standards were low. If a car didn't have dents and four tires not of the same make and size, we thought something was wrong with it. The other crazy-wacky guys were my friends, because they had a pleasant suicidal bent that bored me less than other things.
There was Bill Stevens, who we affectionately called "Snickers", short for handkerchief-because he always carried one and was always blowing his nose. A nose which had a size and life of its own. How we got Snickers out of handkerchief, I don't really know, it just simply evolved, like nicknames usually do. Up until the 10th grade Snickers would've graduated with us, but his Mom & Pop decided to send him to a private academy called Lakemont up near Watkins Glen because "we" were a bad influence on him. Lakemont isn't there anymore, because just before graduation Snickers decided to "camp out" in his dorm room, complete with campfire ... but that's another story. I understand he later became a sane adult. We all knew he'd come to a bad end.
This isn't very coherent, but we're getting there. Patience. So one Friday night Snickers, Al Thrasher, Dave Williams, and I were motoring out on the back roads between Vestal and Pennsylvania in my ol' Plymouth. It could have been 1 A.M. The road was narrow, and wound through south Vestal like a boa constrictor with epilepsy. Al was a muscular Vestal Center boy with an IQ approximating his shoe size. Snickers, like me, was an IBMer's kid ... which, when I was a lil rugrat, was where I thought we all originally came from. I was blond and skinny and looked like a tubular Celt.
As we drove along, trees sailed by in the headlights; we had a case of Budweiser; everything was right with our peculiar world at the time. Drinking and driving at age sixteen wasn't a good idea. It’s still not ... it’s beginning to come to me why all my close friends went into dead faints when I told them I had become a police officer. On the other hand, if any of us had encountered a good idea, we would have been disowned by all the others. The air was fresh with the scent of spring, and ideas of what we were going to do with summer break were beginning to fill our lil peabrains. We felt free and wild, young male lions in the night (maybe that had something to do with the amount of beer we had consumed). Conversation was articulate and sophisticated:
"Hey Dick, gittin' any strange?"
"Here and there." (Lying is easier when not enshrouded by details)
"Would be strange if YOU got it. Gimme another beer."
In the midst of this roadway philosophy, a raccoon tried his best to beat my ol' Plymouth across the road. He lost. I didn't mean to hit him, it’s just that I didn't brake fast enough. Al thought this was splendid, really exciting, as if we had just squashed Mickey Mouse. "Dick, back up! Back up, Dick! Let's look!" he hollered. He had curious tastes in things to look at. We backed up until the ol' coon was lying in the headlights and we all got out, leaving the car running, and walked over to it.
He sure looked dead to all of us. For a moment we stood there, just staring, then without anyone saying anything, we all unzipped and peed on the beast. I don't know why. We didn't think it was funny or anything profound.. It just seemed. . .well, right. Maybe the beer inspired us. Maybe we were just marking our territory. Maybe I really don't know.
Anyway, things proceeded to get strange, and they were starting from a pretty good baseline. Dave yelled something like "It’s back from the dead!", and the next thing I knew they were all running, so I ran too. As I looked back I saw the afore-squashed 'coon getting into my car. I had a real quick thought: I hope he doesn't know push-button drive. I stopped, and so did the others, and as we watched that darn 'coon started shaking himself off, just like a dog does when he tries to rid himself of the bath you just gave him. Only this wasn't soapsuds he was ridding himself of, it was recycled beer suds ... pee ... all over my "nice" '57 Plymouth interior. Then he ambled back out of my car and walked away into the woods.
Well, at this point Al decided he wanted to ride in the trunk. The point was hard to argue. I mean, who besides me would want to ride in the car? So I opened the trunk and Al sat, beer in hand, on the space between the rear bumper and the trunk hole. He looked like Buddha with muscles. That too seemed right. It probably wasn't.
Then Snickers decided he wanted to ride on the roof. That really wasn't smart. Neither was Snickers, though, which preserved symmetry. (I think he ended up in some four-year college in the snowy state of Maine, which proves it.)We'd had an awful lot of beer. I thought about the roof. Everybody had to sit somewhere, I decided. Any fool knew that. Onto the roof Snickers went.
Dave decided the safest place was in the back seat, which had escaped most of the shaking. We actually drove off like that. How any of us survived to adulthood is a mystery. Dave curled up on the back seat; I seem to remember that he was muttering something about having to get up for work in the morning, but I could be wrong. In any event, he didn't make it in that morning.
We chugged down the road very slowly, since the driver had barely enough sense to know Snickers might fall off. Every once in a while I yelled out to see whether he was still on the roof. He didn't answer, but I could tell he was because his fingers hung over the edge of the windshield. Al whooped and hollered from the trunk. I think he was having a really good time.
A tremendous downpour began. The windshield just streamed water. I turned on the wipers. Dave began muttering more enthusiastically, but less articulately. I glanced back at him, and noticed that it wasn't raining on his side of the car. That was odd, I thought. My experience had been that storms weren't quite so localized. They usually got both sides of a car. It was like a rule. Further, the road was dry. As storms went, this one was on the weird side. As it turned out, Snickers was holding his beer by the wrong end on the roof, and it was running down the windshield. I yelled at him to stop. He didn't. He wasted that whole can of Budweiser on my windshield wipers.
And that's just one of those moments in time that comes to mind. It's how things were, and when you get down to it, sometimes I wish they still were. And yes, it’s amazing any of us ever survived.
6/8/00