Old Crow's Car

It was spring semester of my freshman year in high school in our small rural town many years ago. Billy ("Old Crow" to his fellow students) was a senior and one of the few boys in school to own a car; his was a box-shaped '49 Ford. The natives were restless, and it seemed a spur-of-the-moment thing to do. Many of us boys began removing all the seats, except the driver's, from Crow's car. Then we piled both into and onto the sagging vehicle, packing it like sardines in the manner in which college students use to pack themselves into phone booths. Boys lying intertwined on the hood, on the square trunk, on the roof---boys mashed into the empty inside of the vehicle. I was planted in the front seatless "seat" right next to the driver, Crow himself; my brother, Mike, was somewhere on the back floor. Crow made his move to fire up his bomb, grinding his elbow into me as he had to manipulate the floor-planted shift. Twenty-nine high-school boys stuffed inside and outside this one small car! It chugged as Crow drove it oh so slowly around the corner, all the boys screaming for air and from crushed ribs, and right to the town's newspaper office. One quick picture by the photographer, and we made a world's record! Old Crow, you da man!

-Old Doc