Velociworld

Tampa 1967

A story is a story, and we all like to feel ourselves immune to the scurrilous tides of revision. Our story is the true story. And yet, even our own story can change, depending on perspective. The Benjy Factor, or Sound and the Fury factor, I call it. Anyone can tell the same story, but the angle is, as they say, the angle.

And so I've told this story before, but not from the idiot manchild perspective, and therefore it is new. Afreshed.

Tampa, 1967 indeed. But we back up a few weeks. Your loving and temporarily crippled correspondent is at a 4-H camp in Dahlonega, Georgia. Ten year of tender age. Wasega, I think it was called. But that is for the bloody revisionists, eh? An Indian name, though, state employees no doubt feeling the winsome loss of aborigines after that Trail of Tears fiasco. But good Indians were dead Indians, we were all taught, and we could now dignify them with 4-H camps. And with any luck we could show the little girls there our wampum. Or in my case whompum. Wait. I was only ten. Okay. See what I mean about revisionism within ones own worldview? Hell, even I almost bought into that bullshit.

And so I was in camp in North Georgia in June 1967, a feckless little idiot manchild redneck with a puncture wound in his leg, courtesy of a bush hog. I wasn't allowed to go deeper than my ankles in the stream, and I obeyed that admonition like a fucking Calvinist.

But the Senator picked me up on cast off day, in order to take me to Indian Rocks, a decent area of St. Petersburg, where we alternated vacations every year. The alternate years were Fort Lauderdale, the Senator being blessed with very many Jewish friends in Savannah, but he having a bit of culture shock in Miami Beach, not cleaving unto the Yankee variety of Judaism, and so he found Fort Lauderdale more to his taste in obsequious waitstaff. There can only be one bellowing calf in a room, I suppose, and Big Daddy were going to be that calf. I tend to inherit that sense of Me! Me! Me! So do you, Intrepids. Admit it.

Anyhows, I've told before how I played the practical joke on the Senator, and hids from him in the bowels of the SceniCruiser, only to pop out at the last minute as it pulled away. Reprehensible, but very, very sweet. He almost had the infarction right there. I still feel bad about it.

But here the story veers from culpable little rodent. The old man could drive like a fiend, a ghost rider, when he knew a fine Canadian cocktail or seven lay in the lurch. And he knew the rest of the family was already ensconced at Indian Rocks, awaiting his retrieval of the Velocipup. And so he put the ennobled hammer down, and screamed through the backroads of Georgia, with no doubt an empty whisky bottle on a ten-penny nail floating on the dashboard as a compass, screaming South, Massuh! South!

He managed to pull into a fleabite in Gainesville, Florida about 9 of the Christian clock, a HoJo. I remember, because I remember the placemat hawking the 32 flavors like I can see my hand while we placed our order. I believe for appetizers he two-fisted four Canadians, then slumped back, grinned at me, and said "Heh! That was great! What say we get those clam strips, Ral... Gre... what the hell is your name, Boy?!?"

"Steve," said I.

"No, you're Kimothy Sam, the Biscuit Man," said he.

"Yup," said I.

So now that we knew who each other were, not a great stretch for me, we had those classic clam strips, and retired to the room, wherein I was afeered I would have to see the Senator in all his old boxer glory. And so I did.

But he also turned on the television, and was there shocked to see Negroes rioting in the streets of Tampa, a stone's throw from Indian Rocks. Being calm by nature, the Senator immediately ascertained that these two hundred disgruntled blacks would morph into several thousand screaming Zulus, who would descend upon St. Petersburg and Indian Rocks with the rapine and pillage of white womens on their minds. "Human nature," he affirmed to me. "Can't be hepped."

So he called my mother, and warned her the television showed great black hordes swarming upon the land, but he was right up in Gainesville, and could be there anon!

Gainesville, Georgia? she asked. No! he crowed. Florida! He winked at me. She said okay, we'll watch the news, then the old man went to his glove box, assured himself he could take out six of the marauders, saw that there were 4 or 5 people pushing shopping carts around Tampa proper, and fell into the deep slumber of the self assured.

I did, too. Because I guarantee that Lincoln Continental would have smashed its way into the heart of Indian Rocks, if necessary, that night, and it would have been Rorke's Drift all over again. The old man could shoot, whatever the BAC, and he could certainly pick a target.

Tomorrow: my 4 week old scab disintegrates in the Gulf surf. I am grounded.