Among the many other things you don’t see now days are teenage boys “peeling out” and squealing their tires. This is also known as “laying rubber”. When I was in high school in the mid 1960’s, this was standard practice for all of us to do with our cars. It was considered “cool” to do this. I certainly did this every time I took off with my hot 1955 Ford Victoria. I bought if for $35.00 from my neighbor! Oh would that I still had it now! To see how it finally ended up, read the story:  MY “HOT” CAR.  As long as you’re off on a tangent reading some of my other stories, you might as well read yet another one about my wonderful 1955 Ford as well, A PIECE OF PARADISE FOR $35.   You can go back up to these links after you finish this story. I’d hate to have you miss the continuity of this one. Hmmm, come to think of it, I wonder if any of my stories have any continuity in them in the first place??? Between Tim, our buddies, and myself, the road just outside our driveway was covered with “peel out marks”. The same went for the exit to the school parking lot since most, if not all, of us “peeled out” after school. One time I got caught (naturally) by the High School Principal “BOBO”. He yelled at me and said, “Go somewhere else if you want to peel out!” Well, I did just that! It really didn’t matter where else I went because I “peeled out” anywhere I was anyway.

 

One thing besides just doing your basic “peeling out” was to try and make a really curvy “peel out mark” on the road. This was done by steering back and forth resulting in “curly peel out marks”. The best place to do this was on Tennent Road, which was located just south of our place. The road was covered with tar on top of the roadway and on hot days, it was really easy to “peel out” and “go curly”. Heck, we could even do it with our mother’s Opel! We borrowed her Opel before we got our own cars. WOW, was our mother nuts or what letting 2 teenaged boys use her car! Her Opel was about as small and underpowered as you can get. However, when Tim or I borrowed it, we managed to “peel out” even with that. “Peeling out” with a grossly underpowered car like that was an art, and Tim and I definitely had “the art”. After all, we both had a lot of practice “peeling out”! Eventually, the engine in our mother’s Opel “blew up”! Fortunately SHE was driving it when it did. (Gee, I just can’t imagine what would have caused that).

 

The guys that had “muscle cars” with big powerful engines could “peel out” indefinitely and leave really long “peel out marks” on the road. The ultimate “cool” for these cars was to leave some rubber after shifting into the next gear! Although my car had a powerful engine in it, I could never “leave rubber” when I shifted into 2^nd gear. We all had stick shifts in those days since it was considered very “uncool” to have an automatic. Only old ladies had automatic transmissions in their cars. My car was even “cooler” because I had a “floor shift”. Oh, I almost forgot, you can read yet ANOTHER story about my car and the “floor shift” in this story:  FORWARD IN REVERSE.    

 

As a postscript to this story, I never dated in high school mostly due to my shyness (Believe it or not, back then I was very shy). In spite of my car “coolness”, the girls just didn’t flock to me and I never figured out why. The only time I ever had a girl in my “cool” car, was when one of my classmates ask me for a ride home. (You remember that Diane?) (She reads my stories now since I finally remembered to add her to my email “new story list”). The main reason I never asked any of them out was because I didn’t think any of them would be interested in ME, maybe my car, but certainly not ME! At our 35^th class reunion, Tim had several girls from our class over to his place. I asked them why they never went out with me. They all said, “You never asked any of us, and if you had, we would have gone out with you”. NOW they tell me!!!!! Oh well, yet another missed opportunity in my life! So what else is new?

 

Well, I guess I’ll “peel out” of this story.