My Ole Smokey!

                 Most American kids get their very first car when they turn 16.  Mine was at age 20!  Dad went out, shopped the used car lots and came home with a real "duezzy" of a car for me.  This was not any ordinary car and wait till you find out what I mean!  and...why were the cops looking for it?

    

My first car, Ole Smokey, a 1957 Olds sedan.

                    The dealer was a friend of his and he told Dad that he had "just the car" for his daughter, lil' ole me.   It supposedly belonged to a deceased farmer and his widow had said it was too much car for her, and she sold it to him.   Boy, was she right, and in more than one way!

                    When I walked out of our house to view my new "first car" I about died of happiness!    My Dad had it delivered to us and was standing there with his hands on his hips, grinning from ear to ear.   It was just what Momma had ordered him to choose: something solid, that would protect me in case of an accident, not too flashy and mechanically sound.    She also watched my shocked and surprised face as I got my first look at the car.

                  Sitting before me, in all its glory was a huge, gun metal gray, four door sedan, white leather interior, with huge white wall tires!    It had sleek fins and no dents or huge scratches.   It was a 1958 Oldsmobile, only a couple years old at the time!

                    You can't imagine my excitement as Dad backed it down the drive way and pointed it nose uphill on our road.   The road ahead was pretty steep, so he put on the parking brake.    I slithered joyfully into the front seat, grinning at the dingy, but white leather seats and the roomy interior.  It was a "tank", it was so big and solid, with steel "eye" beams in the doors and was a real beauty of a car.

                   My father, proud of my reaction and his good buy, (only $500) took the passenger seat and leaned casually back, arm on the open window edge.   He said, "Let's see how it drives!"  Grinning from ear to ear,  I GUNNED IT, punching the gas pedal to the floor!

                  The next thing that happened was my Dad FLYING over the front seat into the back seat!   He started screaming, "STOP! STOP!" as he gasped for air.  That Olds had leaped forward like a JET rocket, propelling his too-proud butt right over the slick leather seat and into the back seats!

                   Agast, I slammed on the brakes, set the handbrake and turned off the engine.   We were sitting right in the middle of the road, on a hill just by our driveway!    Not exactly a good place to stop.   What was going on?  I hadn't meant that to happen.  I knew how to drive, but this car had just leaped when I floored the pedal.  I had never experienced such power under my foot!  My heart was thundering a "tatoo" in my chest.

It was here, right in the middle of the road by our driveway that I floored the pedal!

                  Dad jumped out of the back seat, threw the door open and yelled at me to release the hood latch.   I did.    He ran around to the front of my car and lifted up the hood of my sleek gray monster.   His mouth popped open and he CURSED LOUDLY!   Uh oh.....  My Dad was not one to curse.

                   Having NO idea what he was seeing that he was CUSSING at, I got out and ran to the front of the car.  Well, I do KNOW a little about cars, BECAUSE DAD TAUGHT ME.  It was HIS job in life he felt, so had I learned powder puff mechanics.   I knew my basic engine parts.    What I saw, that he SAW, was this:

                  Like the evil triangular head of a venomous snake, there sat a HUGE air cleaner, astride what must have been a bunch of carburetors!  That meant this was NOT a "going for a Sunday drive", old farmer's kind of car at all!

                 "Old Farmer's wife, my a_ _!" Dad muttered under his breath as he unscrewed the air cleaner wing nut...  and exposed THREE smoking hot (but very cool) TWO BARREL CARBURETORS!   OMG!!  That meant it had tons of power!  No wonder my car had taken off like a rocket!!

                  For those of you who didn't have a father who taught you how to work on cars like mine did, that was a big A_ _ deal.    It meant that my car was POURING gas into the engine every time I accelerated, lots of it!   No wonder when I floored the gas pedal my car had vaulted forward, tossing my father like a leaf into the back seat!

                    This was NOT a lady's car, a young girl's car -- I had me a HOT ROD!!    And I mean H-O-T  R-O-D!!!   This was the kind of car that teenage boys love, dream of owning and love to show off in!

                   Turns out that I, in fact, now owned a Oldsmobile with a J-2 engine and three "duces" (3 two-barreled carburetors)!!    That meant this sucker could haul some butt on the road!!   My chest swelled out as I imagined me impressing all the boys my age and older with MY CAR!

                   My Dad did NOT want ME to have this kind of mean machine.

                  But, he knew he could not take it back, because he'd paid cash for it and got the title already and it was there, gleaming, purring and beautiful, locked into my heart and sight.    I would have killed anybody who tried to take MY first car away.  And he knew it.

                              Just looking at my face, told him that much.

Me back in the days when I owned my first car.

                   So, Dad had me "gingerly" start up the car and "ease" it up the hill and "gently" apply gas as I drove around the neighborhood, all the time, getting a LECTURE on the merits of NOT driving MY hot rod like one!  He threatened.   He warned.   He cajoled.   He said in fact, that if I got even ONE ticket for speeding, he'd take the car away from me.  

                                  That did the trick!

                    Over the next week I babied my new Olds.   I named it "Ole Smokey."  I used a toothbrush to clean the white leather upholstery so clean you could have seen your face in the shine on those seats.  I detailed out the whole car, doing little a touchup painting on any rock chips on the body...  I washed, I waxed, BY HAND, every inch of my chrome and steel monster car.  I adored it.  IT WAS READY TO SHOW THE WORLD!

                    I had scrubbed those huge white walls (tires) until they gleamed. I blacked up the rubber black tire part so shiny you could go blind looking at them.  I was ready.  My best girlfriend Linda, and I took a ride down to Buck's, the local teen hangout.  She had a steady boyfriend and I knew they'd probably get married in the fall, but WE were single as long as we were in MY CAR!

This was Buck's and the action was in the drive-in out back.

                     In no short order, I had FANS!  First thing I had done when I pulled into a slot at the drive-in restaurant, was to pop the hood!  That, of course, brought swarms of guys over to see if I had car trouble.  Once my "victims" looked under the hood, their mouths dropped open in envy!

                     Of course, every single one of the boys wanted to get behind the wheel and take Ole Smokey for a spin, but I said NO!  Only I was to drive my car, but they could come along for a ride.   Well, that really made me popular!

The driveway of our house, where Ole Smokey was parked every day.

                    Over the next few months, I really enjoyed driving Ole Smokey everywhere.  The gas was cheap in those days, probably under a dollar, maybe even less than 50 cents a gallon!  I took "road trips" out of town to dances down by Lake Lure, a place I had wanted to go for ages.  I was unafraid to take any long trip because of Dad's excellent training.  My folks didn't know where I went but they sure knew I was gone a LOT.

                  Old Smokey rolled hard around curves, squealing tires, and I didn't mind that much.   I grinned and felt like a queen as it roared up steep hills and passed other cars with ease.  What a powerhouse that car had!

                    Smokey got washed and cleaned every week, so it shined like a sparkling coin.   My girlfriend loved to come over and help, because she earned a ride every time I took it out.  I had her TRAINED!

                   One day Dad came out of the garage at  home, stopped short, and took a hard look at Ole Smokey.  He noticed something alarming.  The white walls were getting WORN off the tires!    He immediately went inside and pinned me against the fridge and interrogated me.  "Are you taking the curves too fast?"  "Are you yanking on the steering wheel and cornering too hard?"

Yeah, he had that look as he examined my worn white walls.

                    I WASN'T!  Listen, my Dad was the one who taught me to drive at 16.    I learned in the treacherous snow and ice in North Carolina, in the mountains.    Excellent driving was what I had been taught.    No accidents, no close calls, no speeding tickets.    I was a perfect driver.  I had heeded his strict warnings about reckless driving and I did not deliberately take the curves hard.  My car was just heavy, big and that's why I thought it cornered hard.

                     Heck!  Losing my first car was at stake.   I was not an idiot. I told him I WAS NOT driving like that. That Smokey just seemed heavy going around curves.  He listened and "harrumpfhed."

                    So, dear old Dad took Smokey for a drive himself, with me riding shotgun.   He seemed to find the car difficult to corner and an increasing frown began to spread across his face, the more he drove.  Uh oh, that was NOT GOOD...

                   "There's something wrong with the suspension or the steering," he diagnosed officially.   "I am going to take this down to my mechanic in Oteen and have him put it up on the lift so we can see if you have bad tie rods or some other problem."  (Okay, as long as I didn't have to pay for it....)  So we did.

                   At the mechanic's,  Dad drove my car up on the rails of the car lift and got out.  The mechanic pulled the lever that was supposed to raise Ole Smokey up in the air....  but something shocking happened.

                   Groaning like an old man trying to squeeze into pants that were too small, the lift struggled to raise my car, making alarming creaking noises.   My Dad's frown deepened and he "harrumphed" again!  That was NOT good.

                   Charlie, the mechanic, seemed puzzled that the lift was not working right.  When Ole Smokey got half way off the ground, not as far as it should, the lift totally quit.    The mechanic was NOT A HAPPY CAMPER, either.

                   Well, all three of us bent over, and climbed under the car (after the mechanic put a strong jack to keep the lift from dropping.)   I didn't see anything amiss.  The tie rods and suspension mechanisms seemed fine.  The mechanic walked around making noises and my Dad followed.  I was getting a feeling they were seeing something NOT GOOD....

                  Charlie, the mechanic, pulled a wrench out of his back pocket and banged on the wheel well area.   It sounded funny.   He was banging  on something solid that wasn't supposed to be there.   Suddenly I realized what I was looking at and what THEY were looking at -  solid metal TANKS! 

                    Tanks welded into the wheel wells!!  Where there should have been open space, there were these metal welded tanks with spigots!!   And the tanks were FULL!  Charlie turned a spigot and clear liquid poured out.  He shut it off quickly and turned, grinning at my Dad!

                  Sure enough, Charlie and my Dad decided right then and there that I had a MOONSHINE RUNNER!!!   (Moonshine is bootleg illegally made alcohol, about 200 proof, made in mash stills up in the back woods of western North Carolina.   It was carried illegally from one state to another in cars just like mine, and sold for a lot of money, because no duty or tax was ever paid.)  My mouth got chin burn as it fell open.  This was an illegal vehicle, loaded with very ILLEGAL cargo.

It was back up in these mountains where the moonshine stills were hidden.

                           MY OLD SMOKEY was LOADED WITH MOONSHINE liquor!

                    My Dad shook his head and chuckled.  Charlie looked at him like he was about to be given a nice juicy steak and a keg of beer.  Yeah, that's when my Dad pulled out a couple of twenty dollar bills, took ole Charlie over in the corner where they whispered and conspired.    Then Dad came back, and took me over to the other corner.  

                   "It seems to me that the farmer's SON was a moonshine runner, Melinda, and that's why this car IS a  REAL hot rod!"  He whispered, pinching my arm and holding me steady about five inches from his face.  "Now you are NOT to tell your MOTHER a thing about this, and nobody else either, do you understand?  DO YOU???"


                    I managed to croak a feeble "Yes, Daddy."   I gulped.   My mind raced.   Not only did I have a real HOT ROD but I had me a NOTORIOUS MOONSHINE RUNNER!!     That little fact was a popularity JACKPOT!!  Then I remembered I had just promised NOT to share this amazing discovery with ANYONE, not even the popular boys or my girlfriend.   DANG!

                    Dad and Charlie chuckled some more, and it was time to take Old Smokey home.    We got into Ole Smokey and drove back to the house to get Dad's car.     I drove my Ole Smokey car back to the mechanic's while Dad followed me in his Cadillac.  We left my precious hot rod car in Charlie's care and I rode home with Dad in his car, not a bit happy that I was without my precious car for a few days.   Even LESS happy that I couldn't share the juicy history of MY notorious car with anybody!

                  I never knew what Charlie did with the 80 to 100 gallons of bootleg moonshine that my car held in four deep, well-disguised wheel well tanks.    Dad never said any more about it, except that he was going to have to get me NEW tires.  I'd worn half the white walls off trying to corner with a car that weighted about 1,100 pounds MORE than it should have!    No wonder my tires squealed on every sharp curve!

                   Ole Smokey sure drove better after being "drained" (or having the "suspension fixed" as we told MOM.)    When I moved to Charleston, South Carolina in the fall to take my first job away from home, (I was often driving back and forth from there to Asheville to visit)  I got STOPPED by the Highway Patrol going each way, EVERY TIME.   I wasn't even speeding or driving recklessly.  But I KNEW why they were stopping me all the time.  I had to bite my lip not to smile.

                  They ran my driver's license, and the tags on the car and some of them even crawled under my car and tapped on the tanks.  Of course those former moonshine bearing tanks were EMPTY!

My favorite photo of me and my Dad in 1972

                    I pretended to be totally innocent, COMPLETELY unaware of Ole Smokey's sinister history.  They were looking for THAT car, expecting to catch it with a load of moonshine.  My car was on every state hit list in the South!   You know what would have happened to me if I had been caught driving that car with its load of illegal liquor?   I would have been arrested and gone to jail.  Whew!!!

                                 It was all funny to me.  Very funny.   My Dad had bought me an illegal moonshine runner, thinking it was a lady's car.  

                                  

                                It figures.  Only I could end up with something like that. Here is the corny poem I wrote about my car on my birthday in 1965; (my best girlfriend and I cleaned up my car and this is about that day). Don't laugh, I was only 20!!

                                                "Smokey"

                  She's ready to roll, this coach of mine, 

She's all bossed up with spit and  shine,

                  We washed her, waxed her, even wooed her, 

Why there ain't nothin' we aint "dood" her!

                  With sweat and soap we scrubbed away, 

All neglect of a long past day.

                  She's down right handsome and she's tough, 

With 300 horses and that's enough,

                To beat'em all around our town. 

If they don't move, we'll mow 'em down!

                She's white as snow inside her now. 

We scrubbed her clean, Man, and how!

               And her skin, she's charcoal gray. 

Mighty sharp I think you'd say.

               Her growl is deep and solid mean.

Rev her mill, see what a queen!

               She goes like fire, stops like, well...

If you stomp her, it's smoke you'll smell!

               I'm gonna treat her as good as I can.  

She's more to me than any man.

               I'll drive her like she were solid gold, 

And feed her all the love she'll hold.

               She'll stick by me through thick and thin,

No matter what weather it happens we're in.

               We worked so hard to make her prime,

For the celebration and now's the time.

              Give me the keys and off we'll go, 

There's a special place we both know.

              Where her dream was bred and born, 

Where Mom's Chevy's tires got very worn!

             Circling once, circling twice,

Hunting and dreaming of shoes and rice.

             Buck's is the name of the place,

And for her there's a parking space,

             For my rocket Olds 88. 

Come on Linda, let's not wait!

            Over good old times we'll reminisce, 

The "raisin'" days we soon will miss,

            And ride the range, and act real "hokey",

In my first car, my Grand Ole Smokey!