Listen to Jim: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theroarofthemotor.mp3

or read on…

I’m off my rocker today, and I’d like to stay off it as long as I can. The ol’ rocking chair don’t got me yet, but sometimes I can feel it beckoning.

Looking in the mirror is kind of awkward to a geezer my age, since how I feel deep down inside doesn’t in any way match up with the image I see reflected back at me.

In memory ever re-booted, I’m still a teenager back in the village of Tuscaloosa, way back before you were even thought of.

Back then, the roads are two-lane blacktops, the terms fast food and convenience store don’t exist, a screened-in porch is the only air conditioning in most homes, movie theatres pour real butter on their popcorn, and any kind of wheels you can conjure up provide the best and cheapest thrills imaginable. My elders weave tales of their teen years—all about how the only way to get a reluctant date to put  her arms around you is to take her for a spin over Thrill Hills.

That gets my attention: How to get a pretty girl to hug you.

Back Then, Thrill Hills is the stretch of winding road between my home on 15th Street and the east side of town, near the veterans’ hospital. The hills are closely packed, and if you speed up while cresting one of them, you’ll begin a descent so fast that a near-weightless state occurs. The stomach turns, the roller coaster you momentarily pilot almost leaves the asphalt, and your companion screams, grabs hold of you and hangs on for dear life, whether or not she feels so inclined.

I think about Thrill Hills for years until, one day, I get a chance to propel myself and a date along the route. It works. If lucky, it might occasionally lead to some smooching, but that mostly is just in my mind, not hers.

Many decades later, I drive to Tuscaloosa to find the Thrill Hills stretch. It exists no more. The hills have been “developed” and smoothed down and multi-paved, so that there is no real leap of death. The Thrill is gone. What do teenagers do for cheap thrills nowadays? I don’t want to know, thank you.

One other hill in Tuscaloosa has disappeared, too. Let me describe it to you.

Back then, Downtown Tuscaloosa and the City of Northport are connected by a giant Erector Set of a metal bridge spanning the meandering Black Warrior River. Going over that bridge from T Town to Northport, you get ready to descend a long hill. These days, it, too, has been smoothed down, the bridge demolished, and a streamlined multi-laned overpass replaces it. But back then, making the return trek from river-level Northport back into the City is a real challenge.

Late at night, having finished my midnight shift as a teenaged announcer at WNPT radio on the north bank of the Black Warrior, I board my Cushman motor scooter and prepare to ascend that long, long hill. The Cushman is friction-taped together, and the motor barely runs. But, as my sole source of transportation, it is a thing of beauty. Only problem is, it takes about a mile to work up enough speed to get to the top of that hill. Luckily, it being the wee hours of the morning, there is little traffic, so I head north for a stretch, u-turn toward the bridge, and accelerate to the limits of the motor. I usually make it on the first try, but now and then, if forced to stop or slow down, the process has to be repeated.

So, most of my teenage thrills are free…the thrill of soaring over hills with a girl my age, the thrill of conquering the Northport hill several times a week, and the additional motor scooter thrill that only motorscooterists know about. Asking someone you just met to take a ride with you cuts through weeks of excruciation dating. Do you know a quicker way to get a girl to wrap herself around you, squeeze tight, and yell, “Faster! Faster!” ?

Well?

Nor do I