I graduated from Bennettsville High School in June of 1983 and my Grandfather, WP Sandifer presented me with a most awesome graduation gift, a 1976 AMC Pacer DL. I'm sure you remember those......most everyone referred to them as "The Bubble Car". It was so ugly that you couldn't help but like them! The Pacer was one of the first "Cab Forward" designs and despite the ungainly appearance they were interesting cars. It was rather small on the exterior but the bulbous body created tons of interior room and it was quite comfortable on the road.
My Pacer was the "DL" model which stood for "Deluxe Limited"......I guess some marketing genius at American Motors came up with that designation as it was neither deluxe nor limited. Mine was a deep crimson color with a few chrome trim pieces, vinyl seats, no power steering, no A/C and an aftermarket stereo with an 8-track cassette had been installed by the previous owners, Johnny and Linda Powers. I remember giggling at it whenever Mrs. Linda would drop David off at Bennettsville Junior High School in it, thinking it was the absolutely ugliest car I had ever seen! Never in a million years would I have thought that it would be mine one day.
Although it was possibly the most "unhip" automobile that an 18 year old kid could ever drive, I loved that car. It hauled me and at least five passengers in relative comfort....six if someone was willing to ride in the back hatch area (until I installed a huge pair of home stereo speakers back there to be able to blast Led Zeppelin tunes more loudly!) and we had a lot of fun cruising Bennettsville in it during the Summer of 1983. I took Julia Breeden to the Senior Prom in it after spending the Senior "cut day" washing, waxing, polishing and vacuuming it. I'm pretty sure it hauled at least four couples to the Cottingham's cabin for the 1983 BHS Prom "after party" where we had a grand old time.
I had been accepted at The University of South Carolina and in mid-July of 1983 I had to go to Columbia for freshman orientation and to register for classes for the Fall 1983 semester. I could hardly contain my excitement as this would be my first trip out of town of more than 100 miles on my own. I was feeling rather grown-up when I set the alarm on the GE pseudo-digital alarm clock that I had received for a graduation gift from some long-forgotten patron. It was one of the mechanical clocks with the "flip card" display and I thought it was pretty doggone fabulous. No snooze button, no light and no multiple alarms or even a radio. It had a simple thumbwheel that set the alarm time that was vaguely accurate.....it got you to within 6 minutes of your desired alarm time and the buzzer that acted as the alarm would start softly buzzing 6 minutes prior to it going off, which only caused six minutes of anxiety as you knew the harsh "BZZZZZZZZZ!" was approaching.
At approximately 5:06 am on the big day I was rattled awake by the buzz, and leaped out of the bed. I hurriedly took a bath and completed my styling regimen that involved blow-drying my blonde mullet into a puffy, zipper-headed crown of blondeness and excitedly dressed in a pair of too-tight Levis, a checkerboard-print "Myrtle Beach" tee-shirt and my beloved checkerboard Vans "Off The Wall" skateboard shoes (without socks, of course!) and exited the front door of 105 South Cook Street. My glorious 1976 Pacer gleamed in the early dawn light as I eased down into the drivers seat and started the 258 cubic inch "straight six" motor of the "Death Mobile". Mike Hyduke had christened it with that moniker because he thought that if I were to get into an accident all that glass would cut me into ribbons.
I backed out of the driveway and checked the gas gauge, noting that I had a nearly full tank of gas and slapped "Led Zeppelin I" into the tape deck. "Here we go! My first adult adventure!" I though as I steered through the empty downtown of Bennettsville while Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham hammered out "Communication Breakdown". I stopped at the Fast Fare on East Main to purchase a "Mickey Cake" and a 16 ounce Pepsi for breakfast, spending $2 of the whopping $10 I had in my wallet. Pay attention, this purchase will come into effect in a little while!
I steered my way down East Main and onto 15-401 West towards Hartsville, SC which would then lead me to Bishopville, SC and the junction of I-20 West towards Columbia. The Pacer was humming happily along, the sun was coming up and I was motoring west into adulthood. My mind was whirling with all the possibilities that lay ahead for me; all the cute girls I would meet, the killer bands I would be a part of and the general awe that the innocence of childhood offers. I was eighteen, free and so full of myself that I felt absolutely invincible. Wild horses couldn't drag me away from anything!
Shortly after seven am I merged onto I-20 West in Bishopville and swapped out the Led Zeppelin for an 8-track cassette of Devo. "Might as well start getting in the spirit of being a college man" I thought, convinced that ALL college students would be into new-wave music. I daydreamed the miles away, dreaming that my impeccable taste in music would make me a BMOC and that all the Sorority girls would swoon over my golden locks, checkerboard motif, ruggedly good looks and Charles Atlas physique. Man, life was good!
Thirty minutes later I was passing exit 92 in Lugoff, SC when the first disaster struck. In order to save money I had "recapped" tires on the Pacer. If you recall those horrors then you know of their faults. I had the tread on the right front tire separate which set up a horrendous vibration as six ounces of tread turning 1000 rpm at a radius of twenty inches creates an imbalance of nearly 10 pounds of force....enough to shake the steering wheel from your grip! I had no choice but to either A: change the tire or B: try and cut off the offending section of tread. Orientation started at 8 am and I elected for option B. I had a big old steak knife stashed in my "emergency kit" and sawed off the offending section of tread on the side of I-20 which left me with some rather dirty hands. Problem solved, I jumped back into the "DM" and continued west.
Fifteen minutes later I discovered Disaster number two.....I had forgotten my directions to The Russell House! In my teen haste, I had left them on the desk of my bedroom. All I remembered of them was that I could exit I-20 at North Main and follow it until I crossed Greene Street, then turn left. I found the North Main exit, motored down through the heart of Downtown Columbia, circled around the State House and got lucky finding Greene Street. Whew, it was 7:55 am and I was going to make it......if I could find somewhere to park!
I did locate a spot, fed the meter enough nickels and dimes to give me two hours and found the Russell House, located the room where orientation was being held and strode in like I was some sort of Roman Warrior. I found a seat and was soon joined by a cute redhead named Samantha Bryant of Lydia, SC. She spied my checkerboarded attire and made a beeline for me. She greeted me with "Who are you, Spicoli or something?" and grinned at me with a big toothy grin. I laughed a nervous little "heh" and we exchanged introductions. Samantha was, I found out, from Maryland and had taken residence with her Grandmother over the last year to gain In-State tuition status. We struck up a nice friendship right off the bat and was impressed with my musical tastes. She, too, liked Devo and I could hardly contain my excitement when our lunch break rolled around and I escorted her to the Pacer to take her out to the KFC I passed on North Main.
Samantha and I had a nice lunch date together and we were hitting it off! She dug the Pacer, knew all the words to every song on the "Freedom of Choice" tape and really thought checkerboards were "neat". I was in teenage heaven! We made our way back to campus and headed off to the Carolina Coliseum and the "Elephant Room" down in the basement where we discovered the SNAFU that was named "OSCAR". Optically Scanned Computer Aided Registration, or "OSCAR" was the brainchild of a graduate student and Fall 83 registration was the roll-out of this new system that performed flawlessly......if overfilling classes and dropping classes from schedules was considered flawless!
Needless to say, getting registered for classes turned into a three hour tour of misery. Wait in line for a class that my advisor had suggested, get to the terminal and sign up, take the printed bar code from a geeky guy at the station and go wait in line for the next class. Wash, rinse and repeat until you had a barcode for every class and then proceed to the mile-long line for the final station that would scan your sheets and enter you into classes. Upon arrival at the final station you were supposed to receive a printout of your classes which included location, time and professor. It was here that you would discover that your requested class was overbooked, and you would return to the first series of lines to try and find a class that wasn't overbooked. I ended up with 8am classes every day of the Fall 83 semester!
I finished up around three pm and searched high and low for Samantha. I had encountered her a few times during the OSCAR ordeal but she was nowhere to be found.Experiencing Disaster number three, I admitted defeat and trudged brokenheartedly back to the "Death Mobile" and slowly slid down Main Street towards I-20. I decided that instead of taking 20 back home I would follow the path that Daddy always took to Columbia, US 1. Besides, US 1 went right through the heart of Lydia, SC and, well.....you never know!
3:30 pm found me in the heart of Camden, SC and I decided to stop at a Seven-Eleven for a snack which was yet another Mickey Cake (I even remember which one, a "Cream Boat") and a sixteen-ounce Pepsi. I checked my wallet for a quick inventory of funds and I had a whole dollar bill to get back to Bennettsville with. Satisfied, I carried my snack back to the Pacer in a brown paper sack and once again set out in an Easterly track back to the 'ville. Like John Prine, thoughts of Lydia, SC circled my head and dreams of Samantha filled my mind.
I was motoring happily along US 1 near the big city of Cassatt, SC when I spied a sign that said "North Central High School" with an arrow indicating which direction to take. Bennettsville High School had scrimmaged North Central just two years prior at football camp in Rock Hill, and we took the Knights to the woodshed in that scrimmage. I even had a tackle for a loss in that contest, and gained the respect of my teammates, the 1981 Bennettsville Green Gremlins.
Curiosity got the best of me and I diverted my course to go and see just what North Central looked like, and to eyeball their football stadium. Yes, you guessed it.....Disaster number four. I apparently missed a turn for NCHS and wound up in the most desolate stand of Pine trees I had ever seen. I was not only lost, I was hopelessly lost! I wandered through the area known as "Lucknow" (it was supposedly named that because sometime in the past, timber cruisers for the paper mill in Georgetown were in the area, crested a rise and saw all the pine trees and remarked "Man, we're in luck now!") for around thirty minutes and finally came to the town of Kershaw, SC. I had no idea where I was, but found Highway 521. I figured it has to lead somewhere as it was not a secondary road, so off I went......lost as lost can be!
I eventually found myself in Lancaster, SC where I knew Highway 9 passed through from our many trips to Clemson, SC to see my brother Wallace. I jumped onto Highway 9 and once again headed east, humming happily as that 258 cubic inch straight six bit deep into the fuel tank at 70 mph. All was right with the world again, as the familiar landmarks bolstered my lagging sense of security and had me pointing in the right direction.
As I rounded the curve into Pageland, SC I experienced my final disaster.....the fuel gauge was flat on "empty"! I had exactly one whole dollar, ten thin dimes, a mere four quarters to my name! I found a Gulf station, bought one dollar's worth of gas and drained the hoses of the two other pumps into the tank, and set out again. The gauge showed about an eighth of a tank of gas.....oh no! I still had about fifty miles to go and although the Pacer had the six-cylinder motor it was a bit "thirsty" and only got about 15 miles to the gallon.
I resorted to every trick I could think of to increase my fuel economy. I switched off the 8-track to reduce the load on the motor by cutting down on the load on the alternator, rolled up the windows, threw the transmission in neutral and coasted down every hill, and made my right foot as light as a feather! On long, flat stretches I would limit my top speed to about 50 mph and when coasting down hills I would throw it back in drive, ease down on the accelerator to gain speed and utilize the momentum to crest the next hill before repeating the entire act.
As I was passing the "Grits and Groceries" store in Chesterfield, SC I tore a piece of paper from the sack that my Camden snack had come in and covered up the gas gauge so I could no longer see it laughing at me, and make the "nyah nyah nyah" face as it mocked my stupidity. I was fresh out of economical ideas and figured that ignorance was indeed bliss, and pressed on. I imagined Samantha Bryant chastising me for being an idiot, and grew more nervous with every passing mile. My world was whirling as the emotional roller coaster of 18 year old hormones had overcome me with a nervousness never felt before!
Somehow, I made it to Bennettsville without incident and as I rounded Dew's Gulf onto South Cook Street the motor finally sputtered as the hard right turn starved the fuel pickup in the gas tank. I once again threw it in neutral and coasted into the driveway of 105 South Cook Street, stopping without the aid of brakes at the bottom of the driveway. They say God watches out for babies and fools.......thank goodness I was both of those! BTW, I did see Samantha again during Fall semester. I met her and her boyfriend in the University Bookstore, and we shared a laugh over the OSCAR fiasco. I went on the roof of Snowden dormitory and cried by myself until I felt better, then drove the Pacer to the Foot Locker at Columbia Mall and blew $30 on a new pair of red checkerboard Vans!