I had the world by the tail. I was 19 years old, a freshman at Athens College, and earning $30 a week at McConnell’s Funeral Home.
I figured I was pretty cool. I could inhale without coughing, exhale through my nose and steer my green and white ‘55 Chevy while resting my elbow out the window.
I was also engaged to marry Carol, my high school sweetheart.
My ‘55 Chevy smoked so much that one fellow asked me if I was burning cordwood instead of gasoline. The tires were also bad. Another fellow said they were so thin that he saw air running around inside them. Of course, I didn’t have a spare. That would have been planning for a blowout, which was negative thinking.
My life was busy.
I attended classes Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. until noon, then jumped in my Chevy and sped off to McConnell’s Funeral Home, where I worked all day and alternating nights. Fellow employee, Buddy Evans, relieved me each morning at 7 a.m. I sped home, wolfed down breakfast and skidded up to class by 8 a.m.
Buddy was Limestone County coroner and drove a ’60 Chevy that still had the new smell. He and Bobbie had two children, Johnny, about 4, and Jerry, less than 2.
Carol and I set our wedding date for Wednesday, Aug. 30, 1961. My employer gave me Thursday off.
We were married in the chapel at Market Street Church of Christ. Dan Williams was best man. Looking back, I don’t think he did a very good job, as I was divorced only 25 years later.
Afterwards, we went to Uncle Bobby and Aunt Anita Holt’s house on Highway 99 for a reception. Dan and several guys painted “Just Married” all over my ’55 Chevy and tied tin cans to the bumper.
Just as we were about to depart on our honeymoon, Buddy and Bobbie Evans drove up in their shiny Chevrolet. Buddy chewed on his pipe stem as he eyed my old car.
“Where ya’ll going on your honeymoon?” he asked.
“Nashville.”
“You’ll be lucky if you reach Ardmore on those tires.”
He handed me his keys. “Y’all take our car, and we’ll drive yours.”
We left for Nashville in the shiny new Chevrolet, and Buddy and Bobbie departed in my painted up old ’55, tin cans dragging and rattling from the rear bumper.
I gave my bride a spectacular honeymoon. We munched on great burgers, luxuriated overnight at a Holiday Inn and on the way back to Athens the next day, toured the Carter House and battlefield at Franklin. Wow! That was some experience.
In Athens, I drove over to Buddy and Bobbie’s house and exchanged cars. Bobbie said they had taken the babies and gone to the drive-in theater in Decatur. It was late at night when she got out of my old Chevy to hang the speaker back on the pole. That’s when she saw the flat tire. Of course, there was no spare.
“We had to find a phone and call an all-night service station to come out and fix it,” she said.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
“There I sat in that ‘ol car nursing my baby with ‘just married’ painted all over the side. Why, I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life.”
It just demonstrates that some adults don’t use good judgment. In spite of it, Bobbie’s reputation didn’t suffer and Buddy was elected sheriff in 1963 and served four terms.
Jerry Barksdale
December 12, 2008
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