I read on the Internet the other day that it was Road & Track magazine that first started calling them muscle cars back in 1965. I didn’t get mine until 1974 – my senior year in high school.

It was a 1969 Buick GS 400 with raised white letter tires, dual exhaust with glass packs, chrome tailpipe extenders, bucket seats, a 4-speed Hurst stick shift with a white cue ball grip, and enough horsepower to make you go from zero to sweating in less than 6 seconds.

It was a pretty blue almost gray color with a white hard top. Daddy said I washed it so much I was gonna wear the paint off. He asked me one day how my car was running. I jokingly told him that lately it had started cutting out around 120 MPH.

When he didn’t smile I said, “Fine Daddy, it runs just fine.” And boy did it. Well with one exception, it ran hot all the time. I had to keep a bottle of coolant in the back seat and refill the radiator every time I stopped. But other than that, it did run fine, just fine, and fast.

In the mid to late 60’s a lot of kids in my hometown had muscle cars. John Lane and Roland Sheehan had a baby blue Pontiac GTO convertible with white interior, the same car the Monkees drove around on their TV show.

Harvey Davis had a Camaro he later converted to a dragster. Rob Newsom owned a pristine Chevelle SS. Almost every time you passed his house he was in the driveway washing it.

Everywhere you turned there were Chargers, Super Bees, Barracudas, and Firebirds. Every now and then I would hear stories about them being taken out to a stretch near Fellowship to see how fast they could run the quarter mile.

I took my muscle car with me to LSU when I went there to spend a few short years on academic probation. Mostly because I never had any money for gas, I rode my bike around campus. My fuel gauge needle always stayed just a little bit north of empty.

There was a guy named George who was our apartment handy man. He was a short scraggly guy who still wore his Army fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut off and his name on the pocket. Word was that he’d seen some pretty tough fighting in Viet Nam and had that ten thousand yard stare they talk about.

He didn’t own a car and asked to borrow mine so he could go see his mother in Baker, a suburb of Baton Rouge. He always brought it back with a seldom seen full gas tank.

Whenever I would see him out cutting grass or something I would remind him, especially when it was back on empty, that he was more than welcome to take my car to see his mom anytime he wanted.

One day he didn’t show up for work. We found out later that George had come home from Viet Nam with a monkey on his back and had recently been busted in Baker for trafficking in heroin. Way to go Rogers!

I didn’t dare answer my door for days. Good Lord, can you imagine Jake Rogers getting word that the muscle car he bought his son had been seized in a drug bust? to the police station and turned myself in. The police would ask, “What are you turning yourself in for?” I’d say anything, it doesn’t matter, what do you need? Pick a crime, any crime. You gotta get me off the streets before my daddy finds out about this.

From that point on, I didn’t mind as much that my fuel gauge had returned to its near empty state. I was just so relieved that no DEA agent ever showed up at my apartment door wanting the keys to my first and only muscle car.

Hauling Hay

I didn’t grow up on a farm but I had access to many. Buster Delony’s dairy, manure, and mosquito farm was just a block away from my house. That’s where I learned once you got the cow manure wiped off hay rope, like duct tape, you could pretty much use it for anything. We used it to lash logs together to build our forts in the woods northeast of the sewage pond.

Speaking of the sewage pond, were you aware that even with that wonderful kid proof Zebco 33 and your most favorite Lucky 13 bait that you cannot catch a fish in a sewage pond? Try telling that to an eight year old. Hey, we didn’t know. We saw it being built and thought it was put there for our fishing enjoyment.

All we ever caught in the sewage pond could neither be eaten nor described in a family newspaper. I ask you today, where, oh where were the grownups? Any one of them could have come forward and saved us an awful lot of fishing time and needless em barrassment.

During the summer of 1973, I was still a reserve outfielder and designated bunter for the reigning Louisiana state champion T.L. James Contractors American Legion team. Most of the players who helped us win the state championship had moved on. Several including Rodney “Pea Ridge” Howard and others were now playing for Louisiana Tech.

Having won his elusive state title the year before, our immortal coach Billy Henderson moved on to greener pastures. Our new coach, Cecil Barham, was cut from a different cloth.

He read his pep talks from a 3 by 5 card. Nothing wrong with that mind you, I’m sure it helped him stay organized, but it just seemed to take a little pep out of his talks.

Our star catcher Tommy Durrett returned in ’73 and brought with him several players from Simsboro: Ronnie and Bobby Dowling, Doug Durrett, Tim Harrison and Ricky Canady. Ronnie and Bobby lived on a farm in Simsboro and invited me to work there that summer.

That’s where I learned how to stack bales of hay on a goosenecked trailer so that they would be sure to fall over on the way to the barn. Provided you had an “inny,” I also learned how hay seeds can sprout surprisingly well in your navel.

We didn’t do it for the money. How could you? We’d work most of the day for less than 20 bucks. Truth be known, I would have paid Mr. Lamar Dowling just for the pleasure of hanging with his twin boys and the rest of the fellas – Tommy D, Tim Harrison, Tim Brown, and crew. And I would have paid double just to put my feet under Miss Seabell’s table. She worked and cooked for the Dowlings, but don’t ever kid yourself; she was family.

We’d come in from the hot dusty hay fields for lunch and Miss Seabell would have the table fixed with not one but two fried chickens, sweet tea, and every garden vegetable you could imagine: black-eyed peas, sweet corn, squash, sweet potatoes, and hot water corn bread. Hauling hay made you hungry, but Miss Seabell’s cooking made you come back tomorrow.

Tommy Durrett was born and built to haul hay, tall and country strong. Whenever we were in the barn unloading a trailer he would spot something in the barn and say, “Hey Rogers, you think I can throw this hay bale over that?” Of course I would say “NO!” just so he could prove me wrong.

That went on all summer long. I never saw anything Tommy couldn’t throw a hay bale over. I don’t think Tommy could have tossed one of those big round hay circles I see in the pastures these days, but given his unbeaten record, I still don’t think I’d bet against it.

During the great summer of ’73, I was just like any other kid growing up in God’s Country. Surrounded by my good and strong friends, we hauled hay during the day, played baseball at night, and ate Miss Seabell’s cooking in between. Other than the heat, the dust, and hay sprouting in my navel, I just didn’t have that much to worry about.