Wisdom, Blessing or Experience?

I recently went to Bennettsville to make a low, fast pass of observation and to attend to some business at the Marlboro County Courthouse. I decided that it was time to visit an old friend, my "spot"...the place I've always gone to when I need to pray and meditate. Mama suggested that everyone should have a "secret place" to go to for clearing your mind and that you should keep that spot a secret between you and God.

I steered in the general direction of McColl and decided to pray for peace, courage and wisdom. As I approached the dirt road I intended to turn onto to get to my "spot" the wisdom flooded in and I decided not to turn in. It sounds atypical to the lead up....after all, I am trying to get closer to Him, not distance myself.

It must have been December of 1986 because Renee was home for Christmas, having just completed her first semester at College Of Charleston. I remember that it had been an unusually warm fall, and we had experienced a lot of rain that year....a lot! We didn't have a lot of options for entertainment in Bennettsville, SC back in the 1980s so we did what most teens did which was to cruise the 15-401 bypass from McDonalds to the old Kress parking lot, and back up to McDonalds; when the gas gauge got close to showing empty we would find somewhere to park and "chill out" until sufficient funding for fuel could be allocated out of the beer fund. For us, the aforementioned Kress parking lot was where we typically hung out and when I wheeled in one particular Saturday night in 1986 it was no different than the rest, except for destiny.

A mere four years earlier I had met a cute brown headed, brown eyed preppy transplant from Kentucky named Renee in this same parking lot and now here she and Melissa Hinson are, telling me about how Melissa ran away from home and has a room at William's Motel and that I should stop by and hang out.

I had absolutely no idea what I was heading into when I agreed to motor over and hang out, and some how the word got out that Melissa had a room at Williams so about ten others decided to come along as well. It all seemed so normal.

The room at William's was a scene of unbridled debauchery! There were at least twenty people in the room, a couple dozen empty beer cans on top of the nightstands, Bayard Coggins and his sister Berenthia dressed like they just arrived from Paris and Vernon Huggins was gagging on the cigarette butt Dave Galvin put in his Budweiser.

MTV was on the television and as those girls in the red outfits pouted for the camera we got our groove on just a little too loudly and the lady from the office called to ask Melissa to please turn down the TV, and we obliged for about 3 minutes then the door swung open as another seven or eight revelers showed up. "Alright, Johnson!" cried an unknown crasher as Vernon Huggins and Dave Galvin slip by me and soon return, both carrying suitcases of Budweiser. Looks like the party is right here!

The party didn't last long, as the fateful visit from the desk clerk soon came, and it was time to "vamanos" so Renee, Melissa and I set out in the big blue Buick "Land Yacht" in search of a new venue to continue the festivities of freedom.

We giggled mightily as we sped east on 15-401, watching the still-opened door to room 8 illuminate the slowly shrinking silhouette of the desk clerk shooing off stragglers and Melissa moaned about departing with $19.95 for the room when she only had about one hundred dollars. I instantly thought of high school economics class and Bill Cary's mantra of "opportunity cost" and how poor Melissa was learning a hard lesson but doggone she sure was cute! Vernon Huggins thought so, too as he and Galvin caught up to us at the traffic light in front of McDonald's and yelled at us to follow them to the Farmer's Market, so we fell in behind Dave's little silver Datsun and made our way to the Farmer's Market...a shed out beside the Marlboro County DSS.

There were a few people congregated under the shed when we arrived. Susan Graham was there along with Andy Keith and Rusty Jackson, and we bailed out to join the party as Bayard and Berenthia slid in beside us. I hooked a somewhat-cold Bud out of the 18 pack and slide up to Andy and say "Buddah K! What ya say?"

Andy just looked back and said he was dreaming of life in a northern town and experiencing life from the ground up. I glanced down and noticed that, although it was unseasonably warm it was, in fact Winter and Andy was shoeless. Andy intoned that he was "feeling the world from a different perspective" and indeed he was!

Renee and I milled about, chatting up folks when the plan was launched....a trip to the Bingham Light! We went to get the Buick "Land Yacht" to make our escape, but discovered the back seat was currently occupied by Melissa and Vernon and they were not in a position to be disturbed! Renee was about to throw open the door to get her camera and I shooed her away and said "have a look".

She peered in and said "Oh!" and quickly turned away, cheeks flushed in embarrassment. Ooopsie!

We convinced Berenthia to join us and she offered to drive so Renee and I piled in her little Ford EXP and raced down the bypass, turning left at McDonald's onto 38 South when Renee exclaimed "My camera! I left it in Scott's car...turn around and let's go get it!" Berenthia obliged by whipping into the vacant lot behind McDonald's and turning around...and pulling out in front of Sgt. Curtis Kelly of the SCHP who proceeded to run into her brand new EXP! We got out and Berenthia slyly tossed an opened bottle of Vodka into the ditch when Sgt. Kelly looked the other way, then turned to face the heat that I was feeling as a red-faced Sgt. Kelly lambasted me for once again being in his presence. Curtis Kelly knew me well!

Sgt. Kelly advised us that Berenthia was being detained until the investigation had been completed and he didn't care where we went, as long as it was far away from here. Renee and I complied and walked back to the Farmer's Market to get the "Land Yacht" and we agreed that it had been a crazy night, one that would be talked about for years. Seeing how we had gotten this far and nothing worse could possibly happen that hadn't already transpired, the decision was made to continue our quest to see the Bingham Light. We should have just gone home.

We arrived at the farmer's market after a ten-minute walk and conversation about the crazy night, and hopped in the land yacht where I discovered the defroster did a half-hearted attempt in dislodging the moisture clinging to the interior surface of the windshield. That must have been some hot passion in the back seat! After wiping down the glass with an old Boy Scout T-shirt found in the trunk we slipped off from the farmer's market and retraced our route to McDonald's and turned left onto 38 south, pausing to give a salute to Berenthia's Ford EXP as ole "Fatback" Stubbs was hitching it up to tow it to the vehicle impound. We were positive the ills of the eve were now behind us and our excitement grew as we hummed southward towards the forgotten parcel of land known as Bingham.

After a twenty minute ride down 38, through the heart of Blenheim we turned left onto Highway 34 and proceeded until we reached the dirt road that takes you down to the Bingham Light. Once again, we should have turned around for as soon as two tons of Buick powered by an anemic V-6 motor hit that quagmire known as a dirt road it fishtailed, slewed and slid....right into a ditch! With the Buick tipped at an impossible angle I muscled the door open and stood to survey the predicament. It was not as bad as it looked and I thought that if I could just get the right rear wheel up a little I could shove a pine log under the tire and get out of this ditch. I fished the key out the ignition switch and rounded the back corner of the Buick to fetch the jack out of the trunk. My hands were pretty muddy by this point and a combination of grubby hands, an awkward position and frantic fright combined and as I reached up and tried to unlock the trunk my hand slipped and sheared the key clean off in the lock! To make matters worse, GM had decided to quit with the separate keys for ignition and door/trunk locks in the early 1970s and gone to consolidated keys....in other words, the key to start the car was now sheared off in the trunk lock. It was one am in the barren middle of nowhere, we were hopelessly stuck and now the ignition key was laughing, mocking us from it's cozy hideaway. Life was good!

Fortunately Renee just happened to have a nail file, and I used it to pick the sheared key out of the trunk lock. I washed it off in a puddle of water that had pooled in the depressions made by my feet in the mud and carefully inserted it into the ignition switch with the aid of her file. I gave one more valiant effort to unstick the yacht from the ditch, but the traction just wasn't available and all we succeeded in doing was to dig ourselves a deeper hole. I was out of answers, Renee was hiding her fright and the walls of darkness were closing in. One of us remarked "Boy, it sure would be nice if someone with a four-wheel drive truck or Jeep came by."

Ten minutes had passed and I had exhausted every possible fiber in my being and accumulated about thirty pounds of sticky red clay mud when we saw lights swinging off the highway and headed our way. We watched and listened as a Ford Bronco approached, the beam from the headlights swinging wildly as the Bronco slithered it's way down the muddy road and the sharp exhaust note declaring it's presence to all around. Once the headlights of the Bronco illuminated the scene the exhaust note changed in pitch and it made a beeline for us. Now, God watches over drunkards and little children; and this was no exception. Renee was Catholic, and I am convinced she used a direct line reserved only for those children of Mother Mary and called up the Bronco. We all know that in the southern part of these United States the guys with four-wheel drive vehicles live for this moment, and Bronco guy was no exception!

We discovered the Bronco was driven by Robyn Jackson's boyfriend, and Robin was having a good laugh over the situation. She cackled gleefully as I lay in the mud to wrap the tow chain her boyfriend supplied around a frame member of the Buick. I arose from the mucky mire and we held a tailgate meeting to figure out how to best resolve this mess. There was no way we could turn around so the only recourse was to drag the Buick down to the end of the road where there was enough room to drag it around and back out to Highway 34. I agreed, and returned to the Buick while he took out the slack in the chain. I got behind the wheel, started it up and told Renee to hang on, this is going to be a wild ride!

It was indeed a wild ride! Bronco guy was in his element, gunning the motor and spewing sheets of red-clay mud off the huge tires. We slithered behind the Bronco, trying to avoid letting the chain go slack and wrestling the steering wheel like Tommy Bostick in turn four at Dillon Motor Speedway. The act of steering the Buick was merely a suggestion of course in the muddy conditions and the fact that we were chained to a madman in a Bronco who was currently towing us down a muddy road at a high rate of speed at night in a heavy Buick not designed to navigate the muddy road of the Bingham Light. The mud flew, and by the time we had been dragged to the end, around and back to 34 that Buick had accumulated a coat of mud that would turn any 16 year old kid with a four-wheel drive truck green with envy.

I unhitched the Buick and offered Bronco guy the $20 bill I had in my wallet; he refused and said it was his pleasure. We watched as Bronco guy and Robyn slithered back down the muddy trail and when their taillights disappeared we jumped in and headed back to Bennettsville, but not before stopping at a car wash, swinging all four doors open and washing the accumulated mud....red clay mud....out of the interior of the car. That was a first! I dropped Renee off at her folk's house on Oakwood Street and drove back to South Cook Street. I rolled all the windows down to let it dry out and went inside as the sun was coming up and the birds sang to herald my return. I collapsed into a huge pile of relief, and reflected on the night before saying a shaky prayer of thanks and drifting off to sleep.

Mama and Daddy didn't learn of that night until almost twenty years later when I told Daddy of the adventure of our first date. He howled in laughter about it, and Mama finally knew where the giant lump of dried mud came from that fell from somewhere deep under the dash and landed in a crash as her feet while driving about two months after that night. Just before turning onto Bigfoot Road the memory flooded in, and I wisely kept motoring East and went to McColl to visit Greasy Corner instead. Have a Rice Day, y'all!