Tiger in the Tank

Tiger In The Tank

By Bob Liddil

The cost was just too high for me to handle all alone. So three friends chipped in with me to buy a tank of gas. Five bucks it cost, in pennies, dimes quarters and a silver dollar contributed by Bud Bell who always made a point of showing off about how rich he was.

Thirty cents a gallon! What an outrage! The little station up the road from us had raised the price by 3 cents a gallon since the previous Saturday. Split amongst the four of us, though, it wasn’t too hard a bite and we really did want to get away for a while from the hum and drum of our jobs.

We were all counselors at a YMCA camp outside Columbia, S.C. Actually, three of us were. “Frog” Lane was a counselor in training because he had not yet turned sixteen. We'd worked all week long and it was now Sunday afternoon. The campers were all gone home and new campers would not arrive until Monday noon. In the meantime, we were free.

The '54 Chevy in which we rode was mine. It was a 2-door sedan, white as new snow, with black wall tires and black wheels capped by chrome baby moons that set me back more than four bucks at the K-Mart in the city. It ran as sweet as fresh watermelon, had a brand new muffler and played rock and roll on WCOS AM loud enough to wake the dead. That car was our ticket to freedom and we were ready to ride.

I'd had my driver's license for two years, ever since I’d turned fourteen, but up until that summer I’d only used it for the moped I rode back and forth to school. The Chevy was a recent acquisition, bought in the spring for fifty bucks from a lady who knew me from church. It had only two doors, which she saw as an inconvenience, but I saw as ice cool.

So off we went, zooming south on US highway One, headed toward Augusta with only a single thought in mind, the same thought that has undoubtedly occupied young men in the summer since time and adventure began. Fireworks.

In South Carolina in 1962 fireworks were illegal. You couldn't buy a firecracker, a bottle rocket, a roman candle or so much as a sparkler anywhere inside the border of the great Palmetto State. Ah, but Georgia? Hooya! Now that was something different entirely. Bud Bell had been to Augusta with his dad a couple of months earlier.

"They got everything." He said. He told us he saw. "Black Cats and Ladyfingers and M-80's and Cherry Bombs so powerful it could blow your hand clean off!" That, of course, was all any of us needed to know.

Crossing the border into Georgia was easy. We just did it and then it was done. The first sign we saw proclaimed, "Boom City Fireworks! Best Prices!" in gaudy red and yellow letters, with a picture painted on the side of the building of a big black cat holding an exploding M-80 between its paws. The latter set Rich Dees to laughing so hard in the back seat, I thought he was about to have a fit. The rest of the sign said, "Must be 18 to purchase."

I, for one, was completely undaunted. "Try and look old." I admonished my friends, "Be cool."

We spent our whole week's pay, more than 8 bucks each, on every conceivable thing that would go bang, pop or flash. Things that shot, flew, exploded, smoked, sparkled or writhed into a simmering mass when lit all made it into an inventory of pyrotechnics that seemed akin to a preparation for war. The Fourth of July, just a few days away, would surely be a holiday to be remembered if we had anything to do with it.

The clerk accepted that we were all 18, as we claimed. Despite a sign proclaiming that all ID would be checked, none was. He bagged each purchase with no comment as to our youthful appearance and bid us to “have a nice day,” the fulfillment of which he was actively contributing to.

Out the door, back in the car; soon we were on our way.

Unknown to us as we rode merrily along, the South Carolina State Highway Patrol awaited us just on the other side of the border. Suddenly he was behind us, appearing out of nowhere like a ghost with flashing red lights. Of course, we had to stop.

He strolled up to the car with authority, looked inside at the four of us and drawled, "Where Y'all boys goin'?"

I said, "Home," at the same instant that Bud said, "Work," and Rich said, "Vacation." Frog just managed, "Uhhh" until his voice cracked, and then he shut up.

The trooper said casually, "You all don't have any beer or illegal fireworks in the car do you?"

We all replied in four-part harmony, "Noossir!" trying to sound convincing and earnest at the same time. In truth, the fireworks were in the trunk and the topic of beer had not been discussed at all until that moment.

"Because there'd be a $500 fine for having anything like that." He continued. "Unless you turned it in before somebody found it."

He hesitated expectantly.

Before anybody could say anything, I blurted out, "We really have to go. I want to get home before dark and my daddy will be worried if I'm late."

He looked at me for a long minute, staring the same way the man with no eyes would stare at Paul Newman in the movie "Cool Hand Luke" that I would see years later in an upstate cinema. He stared like a man weighing a decision.

Suddenly he smiled and said, "Y'all drive careful now boys, y'hear?" He wheeled around; quick as you please, and strode back to his car, got in, killed the red lights, made a U turn right there and just drove off toward the Georgia line.

For a minute I numbly gazed, transfixed, into the side view mirror as he disappeared behind me. Then, I turned the key and gunned the engine twice before pushing down the clutch pedal. I eased us back onto U.S. One, pointed north and homeward. At that instant we all started breathing again.

The Chevy was a rocket that afternoon as I put as many miles between that State Trooper and me as I could. There was contraband in the trunk, a tiger in the gas tank and a deep longing in my gut to see the parking lot at the Y’ Camp. It was a fine balance we struck between going as fast as we could go and so slow as to not attract another cop. We were outlaws racing against time and the setting sun.

We celebrated the Fourth that year with a gusto born of adventure. A crackle of ladyfingers rippled across our lake and echoed back from the stillness of the woods beyond. Under the rockets' red glare, amidst the boom of the M-80s and cherry bombs, we reveled in our youth and our chutzpa and our luck.

In the parking lot beyond the lake, my Chevy awaited its next ride, though none would ever match that first one in all the years afterward. We'd used up a little over half a tank of gas and I got to keep the rest for another day. In retrospect, I have to believe that the price wasn't as bad as I'd first believed.