|
My first car was not a car. It was a brand new Allstate Cushman scooter delux. I had quit school when I was 16-1/2 so I could go out during the daylight hours and converse with the world instead of languishing in a stuffy class room where the teacher kept saying over and over - BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA just like my sisters record player did. This was in the fall of 51 I went out to Bossier City La to earn my fortune and help my widowed mother who still had my younger brother and older sister at home with her and was working in a textile plant for peanuts and all the lint she could bring home in her hair.
I got a job with some Cajun painters cleaning up behind them. You ever clean up behind Cajun painters???? I needed a way to get back and forth to work so my sister helped me buy a brandnew Allstate scooter from Sears in Shreaveport across the river. I will never forget riding that thing of beauty home. I was in hog heaven. After I had worked about a year or so my brother and I decided to ride it home to Talladega Alabama from Bossier City. Mind you this thing had 3.5 HP and had a top speed of 35 MPH if you were lying down on the seat on your belly. About 25 MPH cruise. It took us three days. Spent the first night in Vicksburg in a motel where they took $8.00 of our $12.00 that we left Bossier with. The scooter got 96 miles per gallon so we still had plenty of money for the rest of the trip. We only ate candy and cokes and they were a nickle.
Larry and I left Bossier City on a Monday morning early. We were riding double on the Allstate scooter that I had bought new a few months earlier and it was in good condition. We had my BB gun tied to the bottom of the scooter and a suitcase tied to the right side of the scooter and a big cloth bag tied to the other side of the scooter. We rode and rode and rode. All morning. Stopping only to use the bath room beside the road. Back then it would be sometimes hours would go by without seeing another motorist. This was on US highway 80 too which was the main artery from East to West between Shreveport Louisiana and Selma Alabama.
Once one of us had to use the bathroom and their was no place to pull off the road. Their was only swamp on both sides of the road for miles and miles. This was when we were getting with about 20 miles of Vicksburg Mississippi. Finally we found a plank walkway that went out into the swamp and we decided to see if it would get us far enough off the highway to use the bathroom. We must have walked a quarter of a mile off the road before we felt like we were out of sight of the highway. In the distance we could see an oil well pump going up and down. I think this was a path for maintenance to be done on the pump. We used the bathroom and trotted back to the road worrying all the time if somebody may have bothered our stuff but it was still there when we got back. Actually we could have seen if anybody stopped but it would not have done us any good if they had wanted what we had. Don’t know why one of us didn’t stay with the scooter. Kids are just too trusting and ignorant to the danger when 14 and 16 years old. We finally made it across the Mississippi river about dark and the man in the toll office made us pay half price for crossing. I think that may have been about a dime. Just over the bridge we came upon a small motel and stopped and asked how much it would cost to stay the night and the manager told us it would be eight dollars. We went to the room and looked it over and paid the manager. When he got out of sight we rolled the scooter into the room beside the bed. We sure didn’t want somebody to steal it during the night. I didn’t sleep a wink all night and Larry slept like a baby. We got up way before daylight and rolled the scooter out the door and in a couple of minutes were on our way. We had something that Mable had sent with us for supper that night but the next morning we didn’t have anything to eat. I wasn’t hungry anyway so we rode on till we came to the next town and got us a coke and a pack of peanuts to eat. That was all we had to eat that day until we got to Tuscaloosa and Mrs. Beard’s house except for the ice cream that the milk man gave us on the road.. She ran a boarding house for the men who worked on the railroad at the maintenance shop that was in sight of her house. On out way that morning out of Vicksburg a man in a milk truck passed us about the break of day. About an hour later he passed us again and waved at us. On up in the day he passed us again and this time he really waved and laughed as he went by and yelled something out the door of the truck that we couldn’t understand. On up the road a ways he pulled over and got out of the truck and waved us down. He asked us where we going and we told him that we were going from Bossier City La. To Talladega Alabama. He asked us what we wanted to eat out of the milk truck. I asked him if he had any icecream sandwitches and he said yes. He gave Larry and I one apiece and a pint on Chockolate milk to wash it down with. I told him we didn’t have any money to pay for it and he said not to worry that he would pay for it out of his pocket.
That saved us from having to have another coke and peanut snack until we got to Mrs. Beards house in Tuscaloosa. We didn’t get to Mrs. Beard’s house until after dark that second evening. I can remember when we were coming into the traffic of Tuscaloosa how dog tired I was. Larry was sitting backwards on the scooter with our two belts tied around us both so that he would not fall off if he went to sleep. (First seat belts)
When we finally found Mrs. Beards house and pulled up on the sidewalk in front of the house it was totally dark. There must have been some street lights or something because I can remember that the sidewalk in front of the house was visible after the scooter lights were turned off after we stopped. My legs were so tired that when I went to put my left leg on the ground it was asleep and the scooter fell over with both of us tied together on the ground. Larry sorta came awake and started struggling to get up since he didn’t know where he was. About this time Mrs. Beard came out the front door with her pistol in her hand and pointed it at us and asked us to get out of there and to quit fighting on her sidewalk in front of her house.
We had not even told her that we were intending to spent the night with her and she really didn’t remember us at first. When Larry finally got back to his senses and Mrs. Beard found out who we were she welcomed us into the house with open arms like we were visiting royalty. She always did like to feed people. (She ran a boarding house and railroad people stayed with her)
She would not have it any other way but that we ate supper. We were so tired that we could not eat very much but she tried her darndest to feed us anyway. We soon bathed off and went to bed after everybody in the house had gotten up and came in the kitchen to see and talk to us. They just couldn’t believe that we had just driven the scooter all the way from Vicksburg to Tuscaloosa in one day alone. Later that year I drove the Allstate back to Bossier City in three days all alone. It wasn't nearly as much fun that time. To make a long story short I traced the Allstate for a 1938 business coupe in mint condition at a local filling station where some airman had left the car when he went overseas and the rent ate it so the owner of the station traded with me so he could use the scooter to go pick up cars to service etc. If I still had that 38 Ford it would be worth a mint! I still have lots to add about the Ford but it will have to wait I have to go to town to get stuff. Zane Sherman
Talladega Alabama
| 
