In between classes during my senior year at S.D. Lee, a spiraled notebook was passed hand to hand. It was my version of today’s internet blog, detailing the week’s activities of our “gang.” Others would add to it as it made the rounds.

Mahlon Vickery, a very talented illustrator and artist, would often drop a wry cartoon to illustrate the news of the day, which many times would be an adventure featuring Stevie O’Callaghan, masterful guitarist and class clown extraordinaire.

One weekend at a gravel pit party, Stevie made a beer run with passengers including my future wife Denise. He flipped his mother’s car over a barbed wire fence, parking the vehicle upside down.

Luckily no one was hurt and it made “the notebook” as a big news item all week.

Stevie O. earned the name “Crash O’Callaghan” from that point on.

Filled with fairly obscene comments and drawings as only teenage boys could conjure up, this group diary would have brought the wrath of Coach Carr’s wooden punishment machine had it been captured.

One summer night, several of us delinquents were sitting around drinking our illegal beer and smoking our illegal cigarettes bemoaning our state of boredom. As usual. Possum Town was dead at the moment. There were no parties, no good bands were playing around town. And you could only cruise through MSCW so many times honking at the girls’ dormitories ‘til it got old.

Speaking through a Budweiser haze, Stevie – the sworn enemy of boredom – suddenly sat up: “Let’s go down to Florida.”

“Go down to WHERE?” someone asked.

“Let’s take Jerry’s car, gas it up and go to Panama City.” He was pointing at probably the first hippy convert in Lowndes County, Jerry Talbot.

Jerry was a couple of years older and had graduated two years before. He had grown his hair out and matched it with a big bushy moustache. His eyes very rarely showed any white area around the pupil. Talbot was Columbus’ version of Cheech…AND Chong.

We all laughed, and one by one the guys left and headed home except for Stevie,

myself and Jerry. A wild look started to grow in Stevie’s eyes. Jerry looked up.

“Let’s…do…it.”

So we did.

Now I was the only one in our crowd who had actually been to the “Redneck Riviera,” having lived there for several years when my dad was stationed at Tyndall AFB. I had warm memories of the place.

Leaving at about midnight, we wound our way down dark Mississippi highways on our way to the Promised Land. I was brutally awakened from my nap in the back seat as our screeching carnival ride went spinning all over the road. Jerry had nodded off behind the wheel. Luckily, there was no traffic in the wee hours and we survived.

He was replaced as driver by Crash O’Callaghan. Not exactly an upgrade, but we pulled into Panama City Beach just as the sun rose over the water.

Still not quite sober from little sleep and lots of beer, we parked the car next to the beach. After dozing in the shade of some foreign-looking plant for a couple of hours, we decided to walk up the beach to what looked to be civilization.

I don’t know what area we were in, but I don’t think it was the First Class section.

There were quite a few dingy souvenir shops, little sketchy convenience stores and beach umbrella rentals. Some nondescript hotels loomed in the distance.

But the girls on the way to town were very friendly. They all waved enthusiastically as we sauntered past. And blew us kisses.

And here they are on this hot day, walking around in their dressy dresses and wearing high heels to boot. They really took pride in their appearance, I guess.

But it seemed like they were way out of our age range. Some of them quite a bit.

We remembered that we were horrifyingly out of beer. As we got close to this one convenience store, we saw a sign: “21 to buy alcohol.” (In Mississippi at the time it was 18 for beer, and Jerry had a fake ID that reflected that, not 21.

Devising a plan using someone’s discarded can, we talked Jerry into walking in with a beer can in hand like he was drinking. The logic was, if the clerk saw you WITH a beer he would think you must have shown ID somewhere. We rehearsed his lines for a good 10 minutes, fidgeted around and got more nervous by the minute.

As Stevie and I looked through the dirty window, we watched Jerry falling apart looking guilty as a congressman caught in a motel room. Oh no!

We cracked the front door just enough to hear his wrap up in a squeaky voice that sounded like he had just lost his puberty. Oh no!

The vaguely foreign looking clerk, wearing a “wife beater” shirt two sizes too small glowered at Jerry. His eyebrows became one.

Then he slapped a six pack on the counter. “Two dolla.”

As we were leaving, a state trooper was walking in. He was about the size of a medium grizzly, and he looked us up and down. Intensely. We could see his cop car behind him, parked with a boy about our age riding in the caged back with his frantic face pressed against the window. His eyes screamed, “Help!”

As we made it back to the car, we felt home calling our name. Enough excellent adventure for the moment.

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.

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