Thunder Road

Boy, what a pleasant feeling. I was setting here scanning the web and listening to Blue Ridge Country 98.1, when a song brought back a flood of good ol’ memories. Remember Thunder Road, by Robert Mitchum. I sure do. Both the song and the movie. In my minds eye I could plainly see the old 1950 and 1957 Fords ripping down the mountain, sliding around the sharp curves and roaring out of sight around the next bend. Dust flying. Then the lonely wail of a siren echoing down the hollers as the night came alive with the presents of the big bad ABC guy (Gene Berry).

I believe it was filmed in Ashville somewhere along Tunnel Road. Robert Mitchum was the hero of every young man with a car. Back then we had real cars. Not some junkie old Honda or Toyota. We had chrome, lots of chrome, and engines, big engines, with two or three carburetors. We had Hollywood pipes or glass packed mufflers, and fender skirts. We keep them polished and waxed like the day they came off the show room floor. Some raced them up and down the public highways while others just cruised the “main drag”. No sissy Boom Boxes for real men. We went for horsepower and rpm.

I miss those old cars. I get a good chuckle when I see some young guy today with a $300-$500 piece of junk in which he has installed a $1,500-$3,000 stereo system. Normally they have removed the back seat to make room for speakers the size of a 1950’s console TV. We used the back seat for other things and would never have done such a dumb thing. They have to face the speakers out the window or into the trunk and play them at full throttle. I guess their thing is making noise. Well, watch Thunder Road, that’s the way real men make noise.

Me, I drove the “Old Man’s” cars. I couldn’t afford a “Hot Rod” of my own. But I dreamed of having a ’57 Chevy like one of our cousins had. Jet black; with red interior. It had more chrome then you could shake a stick at and it would fly. I was stuck with a ’56 Ford but it was always washed and waxed and it would haul the mail when you need to. I have cleaned out a few ditches with that ol’ ford.

My big brother taught me to drive back in ’58. No, that is not right. What he did was teach me how to wreck. You see he was home on leave from the Air Force and he was teaching me to drive the old man’s 1950 Dodge. As I recall it had a new kind of transmission, Fluid Drive, which kicked in about a good 30 seconds after you tromped the gas. We were on Poplar Springs road, in that big hair pen curve. Back in those days it was known as the Church curve because there was a big Baptist church there and everyone liked to talk about how fast they could make the Church curve. Well, Big Brother was teaching me to “glide-in and power-out”. It was all in the technique, he said, as he “glided-in” and then we were upside down and wrapped around a tree.

He taught me well. I learned. And I never did that!