THE OLD GREEN BOMB

Woody was my first new friend in Harriman. We did not meet until after our junior year began. His dad owned a great little nursery across the highway from where we parked our trailer. Later, I got work at the nursery, very hard work that involved a shovel, a mattock, and “other implements of destruction” most days. The only worthwhile part of it, besides the $5 or so I made a week, was working a long side of Woody.

He was my age, very skinny, very fickle, undependable, and never seemed to buy his own cigarettes, but he and I connected on many levels. We both had a great work ethic and we loved music, cigarettes, guns, girls, and beer.

Woody was a philosopher of sorts, and contemplated the deeper things of life. He often quoted phrases and ideas from Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet,” a collection of essays about the human condition.

Woody made the author’s view of love, marriage, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, pain, friendship, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, religion, and death, among other things his own. By the end of that first year at the nursery, Woody had related almost every word of the book.

We talked endlessly, with me doing more of the listening, but even after work we would sit somewhere, puff cigarettes, and discuss countless things. He was Church of Christ and I was raised Baptist, so religion was often a topic which always ended in an argument. We finally learned to avoid the topic. It seems sometimes, that religion is good for nothing else.

Our favorite place to talk was in the “Green Bomb” which was his dad’s ’48 Chevy pickup. It was a classic with a strong straight six, three-on-the-tree, and it would run forever on $2 of gas – of course that was about eight gallons back then!

The only flaw in the “Green Bomb” was the passenger door that would suddenly swing open in the middle of a curve, but after the first time you learned to anticipated it. Many were the times I would swing out on that door with a hoot and a holler, banging on the outside panel, and swing back up in the seat as the road straightened out! The ease with which it opened came in handy when you wanted to “roll” a big dog!

We did not get permission to take her out as much as we liked, but we made up for it by stealing it! The truck was always parked on a hill and if you released the parking brake and pushed in the clutch it would quietly roll off and over the next hill. Woody would then turn the key, put it in second gear, pop the clutch, and we were off!

Once Woody’s mom and dad settled into watching TV in the living room, they rarely moved. So, on the return trip we simply doused the lights, killed the engine, and rolled the “Green Bomb” silently into its former position and stopped. I remember one night, just as we stopped; Woody’s dad came around the corner, from the back of the house and just said, “Howdy boys.”

We sucked in a breath of air and “howdied” him back, waiting for a lecture. As it turned out, he never knew what we had the truck out, just went on into the house.

Woody even dated in that old truck from time to time, which reminds me of a saying his brother-in-law had about girls that would date a guy in a truck! “If you can truck’em, you can _ _ _ _’em!” Believe me, that old adage was put to the test!

I loved that old truck and when I think back to my high school days, this truck stands out as that time’s icon. It was not a beauty, never turned girl’s heads, but took us everywhere we wanted and should not have gone. I can smell the musty dusty cab now, and feel my hand slam the glove compartment shut again for the tenth time on every trip.

Once we took it upon ourselves to teach Wayne, another friend, to drive a straight-shift. He did fine until he failed to negotiate a sharp curve and took out about six mailboxes! There was not a scratch on that old truck – they don’t mak’em like that anymore!

I bet, if I look outside just now, I can see ol’ Woody pulling up in the ol’ “Green Bomb” looking to bum a Winston.