A Charming But Awful Night ...

There was quite a charming Friday evening in Beaumont for this sixteen-year-old kid back in 1952. The occasion was special because I had a date with a fine teenage girl. I really wanted to impress her. Rather than drive my old 1939 Buick, I asked Dad if he would loan me his fabulous 1950 Oldsmobile 88. He agreed reluctantly.

He had wrecked the Olds back in 1950 when the car was brand new. That’s when we got the old Buick. He needed something to drive to work while awaiting repairs on the Oldsmobile. When my dad retrieved his car from the body shop, he decided to keep the Buick for my mother and me to drive. Especially he didn’t want me to take the Olds out and get it torn up again.

Anyway, he relented and permitted me to drive the Olds on this particular date. My date’s name was Joyce Perdue. She lived over on Threadneedle Street in South Park, not far from Highland Avenue. My family lived on the Voth Road (now Concord Road) near the Village Shopping Center. That meant I had to drive all the way across Beaumont to Joyce’s house.

As I was driving through the south part of downtown on Park Street I saw three of my band buddies on the side of the road hitchhiking. In those days, hitchhiking was a common way to get to town. I did not know what they were doing in town but they wanted a ride out to South Park. I stopped and picked them up. I cannot recall the names of the two friends who sat in the back seat but Gayle Crysel sat next to me in the front seat.

We were cruising south on Park Street at about 40 mph. I had the right of way. All of the cross streets had stop signs. Then the charming part of the evening began. One of the guys in the back seat had a package of Charms. You know, the little square candies similar to Life Savers except they did not have a hole in the middle. He opened up the Charms and offered one to everyone in the car. Just as I reached for my Charm a black 1936 Ford ran the stop sign and plowed into the right front end of my dad’s 1950 Olds. The impact knocked us up onto the curb. I don’t know the name of that cross street but on the corner was a Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Dealership. We stopped short of crashing into the showroom and shaking hands with some those bikes.

Gayle cut his hand on the front side car window. No one else in the car was hurt other than the shock that comes from nearly being forced to enter a motorcycle showroom.

When I got out of the car I saw a police cruiser and a Carroll-Wallace ambulance already at the scene. This caused me to think that perhaps I had been unconscious for a few minutes. How else could the police and an ambulance already be present? It turned out the other driver was intoxicated. He had already run his car into the ambulance. The ambulance driver had radioed the police. So both the police and the ambulance were chasing the drunk driver, which is why he ran the stop sign in the first place.

The next day, my dad and I drove out to the wrecking yard to see what shape the Olds was in. It was pretty well dented up. But what I noticed most of all is that there were candy Charms scattered all over the interior of the car.

Needless to say, my dad was not charmed …

Winston Hamby
WinHamby@gmail.com