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Blind Dates, Coon Huntin' and Camaros

By Dennis Clay Smith

Thinking back to when I was a teenager, roughly 1970 AD, I recall the dilemmas that beset this young man. Important decisions had to be made. I was torn between a love for hunting and fishing, and chasing after the opposite sex. Different hormones drew me to the excitement of listening to my Redbones hammering on a tree while wagging their tails like a windshield wiper on high--and getting out in the other night-life and wagging my own tail.

When I turned sixteen I got my first car. It was a hand-me-down from my dad, and I was glad to get it. It was a 1961 Impala.

This was your basic set of wheels, with basic being the keyword.

I was 8 years old when my dad originally bought it brand new off the lot at Blackwell's Chevrolet in Doniphan, Missouri.

I don't think a car was ever born with fewer options. Options? What options? It had no power steering, no power windows or brakes, no air conditioning; it didn't even have a radio. There was a silver plate where a radio would have been.

200 thousand miles and eight or so years later my dad handed me the keys and title and said, "take care of her son, change the oil regularly, keep her tuned up and she'll last you a long time. You'll need to pay for her upkeep and insurance though, otherwise she'll sit in the driveway."

The motor was a 283 with a two-barrel carb and it ran great. The car's body was not so great. The rear quarter panels were rusted out so bad you didn't need to open the trunk to remove a suitcase. I didn't care; she was mine. (To bad the kid who owned Christine wasn't around to advise me.)

At the time, I was working at McDonalds, flipping hamburgers in a fog of grease that did wonders for my teenage complexion. I made the minimum wage, a grand sum of $1.45 an hour. Six months later I was promoted to the "window" and taking orders from customers. Uncle Sam was more generous too. He upped the minimum wage to $1.62 an hour. Finally, I was making the big bucks.

A few years, a couple girlfriends, and a few pay increases later, I was able to acquire a new, used set of wheels--a 1968 Camaro.

This car turned out to be a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. I bought it at one of those used car lots that had more light bulbs strung up than the Salvation Army's Tree of Lights. There were, roughly, a gazillion pie-shaped, multi-colored flags flapping in the breeze. Three guys were washing and polishing cars, and two of the three looked like they may have "done time". The salesman was a short, portly guy with small, close-set eyes and a pointed, turned-up nose. His long, black hair had several cords of gray running through it, and it was combed straight back and plastered down with a liberal application of grease.

He looked like a wolverine in a suit.

Several repairs on the Camaro sapped my savings like a pond with a slow leak. When the car ran, it ran like a racehorse.

It had a 327 cubic inch engine that was rated at 275 horsepower.

A big Holley four-barrel carburetor sat on a high performance Edelbrock intake, and that combination, not to mention my heavy foot, kept me pulling in to the gas station regularly.

One particularly memorable event happened at my first blind date's house. I spent most of a Saturday cleaning the Camaro. I vacuumed the french fries from between the bucket seats and removed the dead wasps from the back window. I washed and waxed the Camaro till it resembled what the car jockeys refer to as "show-room condition". And finally, I doused the carpet with Brut 33 to help cover up the lingering effects of the BJ's catfish bait I had left in the car.

I pulled up to her house, rang the doorbell, and was greeted by the most buxom girl I had ever laid eyes on. And laid eyes, I did. I couldn't help it. The term "well-endowed" seemed inappropriate; "over-endowed" was more like it.

Anyway, as we were leaving the house, I shook her dad's ironworker hand, and he gave me a little extra squeeze and a "have fun".

Well, now, the Camaro won't start. Not to worry. Here comes her Uncle Ed who's supposed to be a mechanic. He's a tall, wiry guy with thick glasses, and he's got a three-dollar cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He was bald except for a tuft of hair that stuck out at the base of his skull. He reminded me of a Wood Duck. (He told me earlier that he used to have a full head of hair, and that doing too many transmission fluid/filter changes had caused it to start falling out.)

He had me get in the car and then he raised the hood. I watched him through the space between the hood and the bottom of the windshield. He twisted on the battery cables and hollered out, "Crank her over, kid!"

I did and she started right up. Then, while the car was running, he pulled one of the plastic caps off the top of the battery and leaned over to have a look at the battery acid level. Just as the end of his cigar converged with the top of the battery - CABOOM! - the top of the battery exploded! Towards the stratosphere went his cigar; I saw it take off, shooting straight up like a rudderless bottle rocket, end over end.

He grabbed a shop towel from out of his back pocket and ran for the garden hose where he sprayed off his face.

After he decided he was ok, he walked over to his truck and pulled a greasy, used battery out of the back. He removed the "dead" battery from the Camaro and put in the "new" one. After connecting the cables, he stepped back, and said, "Crank her over, kid." She fired right up. "No charge," he told me.

Everything on the coon-hunting front was going well, until my mom convinced my dad to trade in his truck on a Chevrolet Caprice. There went my hunting vehicle and means of hauling the hounds. My coon hunting was now done in a Rally Orange Camaro with black racing stripes.

A night I'll not soon forget came near the middle of December. The ground had been frozen like steel for two solid weeks, but a couple warm days had started to thaw it out. About 10:30 at night, I called my cousin who lived about 20 miles away to see if he wanted to go coon hunting. He did.

"Come pick me up," he said. "My truck is broke down again."

So to the dog pen I went and led my best dog, a Redbone named Jake, back to the Camaro and put him in the rear seat. When Sundown Sally and Current River Ranger realized they were being left behind--something that never happened when we had a truck--they cranked up an impressive duet of bawling and chopping. The volume couldn't have been louder if they'd had Big-foot treed. I pictured the neighbors sitting up in bed with a nasty scowl on their face, and I got the heck out of "Dodge" pronto. As I drove out to my cousin's I'd occasionally steal a look at Jake in the rear view mirror. He was sitting on the seat like a perfect gentleman, panting slightly and taking in the scenery. He looked like he was enjoying himself at this first-class upgrade--riding up-front and being entertained by Merle Haggard.

My cousin was ready to go when we pulled up. He had his surly, big Black and Tan on a leash and he brought him out to the car.

"We're taking this race car coon hunting?" he asked. "Why don't we ditch these dogs and go find some girls?"

"You and Rufus get in," I said. "We're going coon huntin'."

And off to the woods we went. Everything went fine. The dogs split-treed two coons in the first twenty minutes. They went on hunting while Mike and I carried our coons back to the car. When I popped open the trunk, Mike tossed his coon in on the new carpet section that I'd installed the week before.

"Hey, what's this wadded up in the corner," he said.

"That's the tarp we were supposed to lay the coons on," I replied.

Suddenly, old Jake let out a bawl that made me forget the blood on my new carpet. He was really poling one through a cornfield at the edge of a creek. Soon Rufus joined in and their baritone and tenor bawls were filling the night with music. They made a big circle around the field, crossed the creek and headed up a brushy draw. At the top of a long hill, Rufus and Jake started hammering hard. Mike and I fought our way through a thick stand of honey suckle and grapevines, crossed the creek, climbed two fences and finally made it to the dogs. Rufus and Jake were plastered to the side of a big White Oak, toe nails dug in, and putting on a show. Rufus would throw his head back and alternate between a short ball and a series of rapid chops, while Jake steadily hammered every breath and slung slobber all over his face. Mike circled the tree and we both searched for those yellow eyes with our carbide lights.

I spotted him! He was hunkered down in a fork about two thirds of the way up. I pulled out my six-cell light and laid it against the barrel of my .22 rifle.

When I pulled the trigger I heard the familiar "thunk" of a bullet hitting meat. The big coon tumbled out and hit the ground like a twenty-pound sack of potatoes, about five feet from Mike. I hadn't seen him going in to leash his dog and he was back peddaling like Wille Mays when the dogs torn into that coon. The hounds and coon tore up a good-sized patch of ground as they went round and round. The squalling, growling and popping of teeth was accompanied by an occasional yelp as the coon got in his licks. The hounds finally finished the job and they stood over the coon, panting hard and trying to catch their breath. You could almost see the adrenaline slowly ozzing out of them and a satisfaction on their bloody faces.

We leashed them up, "good-boyed" 'em, picked up the hefty coon and headed back down the hill. Half way down we turned them loose and headed up the creek towards another stand of corn.

The farmer who owned the land was always one of the last to harvest his corn, and, for that, we were grateful. This place was a coon magnet for sure. We hunted two more hours, made three more trees, picked up another coon and had two den trees. We decided to call it a night.

I pulled into a car wash at the edge of town. We'd got stuck in the edge of a cornfield and the wide Mickey Thompson rears tires did a fine job of painting the Camaro a chocolate brown. And I wanted to examine the depth of the scrapes and gouges the briars and limbs had inflicted on my paint job. Four dollars in quarters later, we pulled out of Judy's Wash and Wax with a semi-clean car.

"Let's go through a drive-through," my cousin, Mike, said. "I could eat a sow and seven pigs."

When the girl at Steak n Shake slid open the window, both dogs got a whiff of the wonderful odors that were drifting their way. While I tried to place our order, both dogs attempted to climb out the window over my back.

"Do something, will you Mike!" I barked.

He reached behind me and grabbed them both by the collars and dragged them back in the seat. He had to repeat that maneuver several times, and as I found out later, they put several nice punctures in my back seat with their toenails as they jockeyed for position and dug for traction to get at those enticing smells. We finally got our food and we pulled off to the side to try to eat. We both alternated between taking a bite and elbowing the hounds to keep them from climbing up front.

After wolfing our food down, we headed for Mike's house. It was about 3 am and I was beat.

"Man! Crack your window, I'm dying here!" I said. Mike busted out in a fit of laughter, "You know, I ran out of dog food, and the only thing Rufus had to eat tonight was a bean burrito right before we left the house."

We started down a long hill and I heard a loud bang.

"What the Sam Hill was that?" my cousin asked.

I pressed down on the gas pedal, but the engine just revved like I had the transmission in neutral.

"Oh No! I think we just busted a U-joint," I said.

We coasted to the bottom of the hill and pulled over on the shoulder as far as possible and I shut off the engine. I got out with my flashlight and looked under the car. I expected to see the driveshaft dragging the ground. It wasn't.

I opened the door and told Mike, "I think the transmission went out."

After discussing the matter, we decided Mike would walk back to his house and get his dad's truck and a chain and tow my car back to his place.

Two hours later, here he came.

He pulled to the front of the Camaro and backed up. Then he got out and said, "I gotta get my old man's truck back before he wakes up."

"No problem," I said. "We're only a mile or two from your house."

We hooked the chain up to both vehicles and I gave him the high sign; I was ready to be towed. He started out slowly and gradually gained speed. When he got up to 50 mph, I hollered out, "Slow Down!"

Suddenly, I heard a loud bang behind me, and as I turned to see what it was, one of my rear wheels, with half an axle still attached, flew past me, end over end, into the ditch.

My cousin didn't know anything was wrong and he had the "pedal to the metal". I frantically felt for the small wire hanging from my steering column that served as my horn and I grounded it against the metal steering column to honk the horn. Just then--Bang! --My other real wheel and axle passed me on the other side. He must have had the radio blasting because he never let up. I flashed my lights off and on quickly and he immediately came to a stop and got out.

"Jesus! What happened to your wheels?" he gasped.

I pointed toward the ditch behind the car. "They're back there!"

I put my hands on the roof of the car, closed my eyes, and bowed my head. When I opened my eyes the hounds were staring back at me through the window as if to say, "now what?"

Then I saw a set of headlights coming over the hill. A man in a four-wheel drive pickup slowed down and gave us a long look as he passed. I immediately spotted the deluxe dog-box in the bed of the truck and a "For Sale" sign in the rear window.