The Mother of all Road Trips

After seeing my website for the first time, Ron  my best friend from childhood days called me. If you have followed this site you probably have read some of our adventures  and misadventures. Ron finally visited this site and read many of my reflections of our times on Town Street, Circleville, Ohio.  After reading them he had to call me and remind me of our road trip adventure that I am about to share with you.

Growing up in the 1960s we probably did some crazy stuff but nothing could compare to the road trip Ron, Edwin and I took to Waverly Ohio and Lake White in the summer of 1965 to see those lovely girls Ron and I had met a few months before.  Besides Edwin's wheel flying off the car  with us traveling about 70 MPH, staying at one of the girl's homes while their parents were away and of course the highway patrol looking for us, it was pretty much uneventful. 

All three of us worked at a farm just up the highway making a $1 an hour but this particular weekend we decided to play hooky from work and sneak down to Lake White in Waverly, Ohio which is about 38 miles south of Circleville. The problem was we didn't tell our parents.  Since we had planned to be back early the next day,  we decided we could just camp out at Lake White and sleep in the car.  

I packed an overnight bag and threw it out the front upstairs window where Edwin scooped it up and put it in his 1963 Chevrolet Impala. Ron got his stuff out the front door somehow.  We lived next door to each other so we could keep each other's parents busy. Since Edwin drove his car, Edwin made Ron and me responsible for the food and gas. 

Edwin was a nice guy but whined a lot and definitely not a type of guy that most girls wanted, although my mom use to say "there was somebody in this world for everybody."  Somehow I couldn't relish the thought that there was a girl for Edwin.  (Edwin did get married later in life) We invited him along because he had the nice car but the main reason was   he hounded us to death to include him.  Picture this guy if you can, first of all he was about 5' 7" and weighed 90 pounds soak and wet and had buck teeth.  I don't want to offend anybody reading this but Edwin also played the tuba for the high school band.  How could a guy that size lug around that big tuba?  He was small but could he eat!  He loved A&W Root Beer Papa Burgers.  He could wolf down two of those large burgers plus fries in no time flat. Where he put it I don't know. (maybe inside the tuba.)

As the case of all our road trips, we had to have the radio blaring as we headed down the highway.             

 You can click here and it will open in a new window so you can listen to what I remember were the hits of the summer of 1965 that were probably playing on the radio as made our way to Waverly. 

We usually listened to WCOL of Columbus but since it only broadcasted at 500 watts we soon lost it and I can't remember for the love of me what station we tuned in but we had it blaring as we barrelled on down the road singing the lyrics of most of the songs that were playing. 

We arrived at Lake White some time in the late afternoon so we stopped by A&W Root Beer drive-in for our early supper.  Of course Edwin had his usual Papa Burger banquet. We had to keep reminding him that we were on a strict budget.  Why couldn't he be satisfied with one Papa Burger like us?

Ron then called Jayne and told her we were in town and had a third wheel with us who needed a date. She asked what did he look like so Ron described him completely out of listening distance from Edwin.  She actually found a date for him but the problem was my girl, Sandy was away for the weekend with her family so now I became the third wheel.

Ron, Edwin and I cruised the town for awhile giving the girls enough time to do what girls do for a date.  Edwin's date lived just up the road from Jayne on Lake White.  Jeanne was a really beautiful girl.  I couldn't believe this girl was for Edwin.  Of course Ron would have nothing to do with me sitting in the backseat with Jayne and him so I parked my third wheel hind-end in the front seat with Jeanne and Edwin.

As we cruised around town,  I could feel Jeanne staring at me but I kept my eyes to the front because after all, I had Sandy and this was Edwin's date.  That didn't last too long before long I looked over and she was over me. I never knew an aggressive girl before.  This was new for  me.  Did she know who her date was?  We just met and everybody in the car couldn't believe what was happening, including me.  Edwin was purely teed off at me and went ballistic with.  Like an uncontrollable child he mashed down on the accelerator of the 409  and kicked the 4 barrel carb in and before long we were rolling down the highway at a high rate of speed.  We all were screaming at him to slow down. Jeanne was punching him as I was trying to kick his foot off the accelerator. Then suddenly the wheel flew off and the car rocked and spun like it was going to overturn but it came to a rest on the side of the road right side up.  We were lucky we weren't injured or even killed.  The car had to be towed in; so much for sleeping in the car at the lake. The car couldn't be worked on until the next day and since we didn't have enough money to cover the repair, Edwin called his dad the next day and man did stuff hit the fan.  We could hear his dad yell obscenities on the telephone.

Since we had no place to go we stayed at Jayne's parents house whose dad and mom were at a medical convention.   Jayne's younger brother Bobby was home which interfered with any real fun.  This kid was an actual Eddie Haskell type smart ass even though he was probably about twelve.

Well Edwin got over Jeanne quickly and adopted the family dog, Percy. He hugged, kissed that dog and joked about it all evening long.  Edwin and Percy got along pretty well as did Jeanne and I.  Later that night Sandy called and of course Jayne snitched to Sandy about  what was going on between Jeanne and me so Sandy and I were no longer an item.

At breakfast that morning, as Bobby watched Edwin eat like eating was going out of style, he made the remark "I can't wait till I visit you guys, I've never met anybody that lived in a barn."  I had to agree.  Edwin's table manners were quite embarrassing.

When we failed to come home that night  my mom called the highway patrol and reported us missing in action.  There was no report of any accidents but the Ohio State Highway Patrol said they will keep an eye out for us.

The car got fixed by noon and Edwin's dad paid the mechanic and we  made it home without any interference from the highway patrol but with all said and done, Ron and I were both grounded until we were age 45.  I think Edwin received a more harsher punishment, he lost the use of the car for quite a long time. 

Edwin has been deceased now for several years.  There isn't a time when my mind doesn't wander back to those days and to our antics. Most of it was always  innocent fun. As I recall those times during the sixties, those antics still bring a smile to my face .  I still think about Ron, Edwin and  others I grew up with and yet wonder, even though they now have lives of their own, if their thoughts slip back now and then to a place and time where we were so much younger and so much more carefree.