The Beast

The summer of 1969 I had been at Jeff State College for almost a year and was working at Hutchinson Company at night. My dad signed for me a car in the spring of that year and I'm still amazed that he did. It was a 1965 Chevy Impala SS. It was fire engine red with a four speed manual transmission. We popped the hood and there was an engine under there as big as a voltswagon. I cranked that baby up and I could not believe my ears....a sweeter sound I had never heard. Dad walked around that car and kicked the tires and looked down the side of the care from rear to front as if he was sighting a gun. He was trying to see if it had been wrecked. An hour later the deal was done and I was rolling downtown Jasper towards Sloss Hollow.
The car was too cool for air conditioning. When ever I drove it anywhere, all four windows were rolled down because it looked better that way. Jilda didn't like that aspect because she had long flowing hair and five minutes with those windows rolled down and it looked as if she'd been in a hurricane.
Later that summer she and her family went to Laguna Beach, Florida for two weeks. I decided to go visit her one weekend while she was there. My cousin Tommy Lowery had a dune buggy that wasn't street legal but he thought it would be fun to have it there so we hitched that puppy to the back of "The Beast" and headed south at warp speed.
I got a ticket in Clanton for doing 90 miles per hour. As I sat in the back of that sheriff's car he said it looked like the dune buggy was actually sailing. We had a big laugh, but the mood was dampened somewhat when I learned how much the ticket would cost.
When we got to Laguna Beach, Tommy and Garry Butler wanted to take the Beast down on the Miracle Strip. I wanted to spend time with Jilda so after threatening them with certain death if they so much as put a scratch on the Beast, they drove off.
A few hours later we got a call at Mr. Quinn's house from the Panama City Police. It seems that Tommy got caught burning rubber to impress some girls. The policeman quickly determined that the car didn't belong to them so he called me. "These boys say that you let them borrow your car." I decided to have a little fun so I told him that my car had been stolen a few hours ago...."Stolen, the cop repeated." I could hear Tommy and Garry in the background saying he's kidding ....he's kidding. I then told the policeman that I was actually kidding but he could beat the crap out of them if he wanted to. I heard him laugh a little.
A short time later they rolled into the yard.
We had a lot of good times in the Beast. I think I loved it more than any other car I've ever owned.