Road Trips

BY BILLY SNEAD

By the time I was twenty-one years old, I was pretty much a wasted commodity. Flunked out of college, gained about 35 pounds and simply had no direction or, indeed, ambition.

Twenty-one meant something to me. I could no longer be a boy scout at that age and I was no longer eligible to get into the military academies. There was a certain closure with this milestone age which concerned me for some reason and I wasn’t quite sure why, while most of my friends couldn’t wait for it.

Oh how I envied those guys in my high school graduation class who knew from 9th grade what they were going to be in life and were well on their way to being it. You know who I’m talking about, the ones whose parents had businesses in town or had high profile positions with some of the larger local companies.

My father was a bricklayer, a builder, and so he wanted me to be an engineer, but I had squandered my academic potential in high school in favor of more hedonistic pursuits – besides I didn’t want to build. I applied at VPI and was accepted on the condition that I attend for two years at the extension school located on the campus of RPI in Richmond. But I was ill prepared for the rigors of engineering learning and after a year and a half of probation, strict probation, and strict, strict probation, I was advised in terms that even a failure could understand; don’t bother to come back.

So I sold my "mechanical drawing class" skills, a class that I was good at, to an engineering firm in town and became a draftsman at a fast $52 per week.

Since I was still living at home, as indeed most of my gang was, that $52 afforded me a fair amount of financial freedom. The year was 1956 and I traded my 1947 Plymouth ex-cab for a two-toned green 1953 Plymouth with 18 convenient monthly payments at $37.63. If I were to ever find any direction in my life, I had the wheels to guide me there. But for now, I was a failure and it was nobody’s fault but my own.

Almost every weekday and weekend night found me in a booth at Colonial Inn on the corner of Colonial and West Cary, drinking large 25 cent drafts of Richbrau adding to my waist as well as my wastefulness. Now my parents thought that I had a good job. To them, anybody who worked forty hours a week had a good job.

But, remember, they were Depression people and were still somewhat mad at me for giving up my paper route some four years earlier. "It was steady work", they said. The facts were that I had a dead end job going nowhere with the only salvation, if any, being that at least I knew it.

Meanwhile, why not at least have a little fun, which I knew, also, that I was good at. We had many adventures during that period of my life and most of them emanated from misguided and ill thought out plans made around those Colonial Inn (C.I.) booths, usually around cut off time which was, in those days, 10:45 PM. "No beer or wine after 10:45 by order of the ABC Board," the sign on the wall read.

But the bottles and glasses could stay on the table after 10:45; so at 10:44 we would order several short drafts (15 cents) to extend the evening as long as possible, until finally, at some time, Mr. Zack, the owner, would come around and clear the table and run us out.

The Panty Raid

 

One night before we were run out, one of those ill-conceived adventures was proffered to the five guys sitting at the booth by another one of us who had just gotten there.

With excitement and enthusiasm he was ranting about something he had seen in a newsreel at the movies, a panty raid! "

A what?" said we.

"A panty raid. It’s where all these college guys climb up the wall of the girls’ dorm and steal their panties."

"Why?" said we.

"I don’t know exactly, but it looked like fun," he said irritably.

"How do you climb up the walls?" we asked.

"They’ve got thick ivy growing up the sides, you dumb bastards."

He was now regarding us with disdain and his tone was condescending. He thought he knew all about something that he didn’t think we did and he was "milking " it.

"So these raids happen in the Ivy League Schools way up north?" we asked.

He just drooped his shaking head.

"S’pose the windows are locked?" we said.

He sighed heavily, "Look the windows are open ‘cause the girls open them. They just throw their panties out the window at you, bras too." "Bras?" we said. "So it’s a bra and panty raid."

"Yeah, I guess it is", he reluctantly admitted.

"Well, if it’s a raid, why do the girls help you?" we said.

"Look, damn it, I’ve told you all I know, but the main thing is it looks like fun, don’t it?"

"Do you have a bonfire afterwards, or just take the panties home?"

He didn’t answer.

"Don’t seem like it’s named right, raid?" we said.

When he started talking again he was leaning over in his chair, voice raised, neck veins pulsing, and each word shot beads of saliva over the booth caught up and visible in the dim lights.

"Y’all are the dumbest bastards, I’ve ever known," he almost yelled.

And then he caught our smirks and knew that he had been had.

We all laughed saying, "Duh, we’re too dumb for a panty and bra raid, could you explain it all again?"

"Screw y’all," he grinned, "but what do you say, let’s try it."

"We’re game," we said, not knowing then that what we really were was fair game.

So after cut-off time that very night and emboldened by Richbrau, we hatched our plan. We eliminated UofR and RPI because all of us had flunked out of those schools and we didn’t recall any ivy at either of them. William & Mary, being the next closest co-ed school, was the designated target, and with snouts full, we jumped into Crow’s new red and white ford convertible and with the top down, headed for Williamsburg in the midnight air.

The trip down Route 60 took exactly one hour as Crow was moaning his new ride all the way. We pulled onto the campus in search of a girls dorm although none of us would recognize one if we saw it. We pulled over on a dark street, everything there was dark, and we decided to reconnoiter on foot and besides all of us had to take a leak.

We sort of spread out a little bit and even in the pitch darkness, had the decency to step behind trees. As we stepped out from behind the trees, all six at about the same time, and we gathered to discuss the situation, a strong wattage search light smacked us in the face and we were advised, one and all, that we were under arrest.

And indeed we were. It had taken us one hour to get to Williamsburg and three minutes to get arrested.

Panty Raiders Par Excellence! We had not come close to seeing any panties, bras, or indeed anybody who would wear them. Maybe it was just one of those Ivy League things, way up north.

The arresting officer had a brass nametag on his chest, which told us that his name was Officer Shirley. He was alone and since we were all still pretty high, having had several "to go’s" on the ride down, we started having fun with his name.

"Hey, Shirley, gonna cuff us, wanna frisk us, etc." Those being the days long before Miranda.

He seemed a little nervous, being out numbered and all, but we weren’t the violent type. He even told us that his radio wasn’t working. We would have to ride in the police car and so all six of us piled in anxiously.

The guys in the front were all playing with the equipment, moving the search lights, talking into the mike, etc.

"Where’s the siren?"

Since we had filled the car, Officer Shirley had no place to sit so he then ordered us all out. "Get the hell out of the car and get back in yours," he ordered in high-pitched authority.

We had to follow him to the jailhouse. Follow him! God, they were "good old days," weren’t they?

We complied. We arrived at the jail a short time later, it couldn’t have been very far away from the scene of the crime, and there we were met by the entire force, all five of them. They stuck us in a holding cell, a barred room about 10’ X 10’ and let us stew for a while.

Now we all turned on the original profferer of this insane failed mission.

"Boy, did you see all of those babes at the windows waving their panties?

I liked the one with the big bra.

I didn’t see no ivy, next time we need to bring ladders."

"All of y’all can go to hell. I ain’t never going anywhere with y’all again," the profferer said. But he did.

Meanwhile, Officer Shirley was being touted as a hero for cracking this case wide open, capturing an entire gang single handedly.

They then began interrogating us one by one in a separate room, but the wall was thin, and we each, waiting our turn, could hear what questions were coming.

It didn’t matter, we all told the truth, and the truth set us free. The cops simply could not believe our quest. A Panty Raid! They all laughed their asses off.

"What a bunch of numbskulls, we know you’re telling the truth ‘cause you’re not smart enough to make something like this up."

They took our names, addresses, phone numbers and school histories, etc., sent us home and told us to be in the Dean’s Office at 10 o’clock Friday morning. The ride home was very quiet and within the speed limits.

Friday morning found six different personalities standing meekly with hands by their sides in the Dean’s Office. The Wednesday night beer bravado was long gone.

We were ready for the worse although we hadn’t really done anything to be charged with except maybe trespassing and urinating in public. We were really just plain ashamed of being caught at such a stupid stunt.

The old Dean sensed it immediately and knew that we, humbly standing there, was all the punishment we needed and after letting us squirm for a while, finally spoke.

"What I ought to do," he said, and we never heard anymore after that because once those words are spoken, what follows is usually a wrist slap compared to the "ought to."

Did we ride home wiser and better men? Did we mature at all from the ordeal? Maybe, but we stopped by C.I. for a couple of short ones anyway.