Birth of the Blue Missile

Captin:
Evil---NO, MAD maybe.
You know hot rodding used to be about trying different things and pushing the envelope. Not just bolting a few things on and going.
I for one am willing to fail, Especially if it means taking a chance of tasting sucess.I can not tell you how many times I have been told that something will not work, and have tasted sucess in that thing anyway.Especially in the field of mechanical engineering.

Thank you all for the encouragement regarding this post.
Heres the next bit:


After attending quite a few of these Friday night Breaks and getting involved with the C.B. radio crowd I got a job at a radio repair shop called “T.Js”. TJ was short for the owner, Jim Shaw’s C.B. radio “handle” “Tennessee Jim”. Jim was a citified mountain man from northern Tennessee who did a lot more drinking whiskey than selling radios, which he left up to us. He had a habit of giving people nicknames and the one he gave me was “Jew boy”. He was taking a vacation and going back to Tennessee so all of his CB buddies in Miami planned to give him a going away party (as if they really needed a reason to party)


The week prior to the party I decided I should be baptized as instructed by the scriptures. TK, his girlfriend and one of her friends and I went to Hollywood Beach at sunrise. I will say that this was the kind of a ceremony you could only pull off in those days. The two girls were wearing the skimpiest of bikinis and were as hot as they get. When the sun was an orange ball just coming out of the water and the ocean was like glass, they proceeded to baptize me in the ocean while reading Mark 16:16 and Acts 2:38. It was a few days later, that in spite of all that I was doing that was not of God, that God convicted me of, and told me to stop doing just one thing, premarital sex! This was not good news to the woman I had just become involved with. The day before the party I broke the news to her, which ended our relationship. Little did I know how valuable that decision was going to be.

As the party went on Jim got so drunk that he actually stumbled into the front area behind the counter and pointed to a clock on the wall. He said I bet you think I’m too drunk to hit that thing on the wall,. And proceeded to take out a pistol from his belt and put a shot right through the center of the clock. Well his aim was good but we all gathered around him and took the gun away telling him that he had had enough. He went out into his car and slept it off until morning. Early that next morning it became obvious he had gotten so drunk the night before, that he was still unable to drive. That being the case, he told me I was going to drive him to Tennessee and he would pay me for the time off, to which I agreed.

He then told me to disassemble the back seat of the station wagon and pack his hunting rifles into it, so that if we were stopped, there would be no questions by the cops. This should have been a red flag, but it was not. I popped off the seat bench and unbolted the back and carefully slid all the weapons into seat back being supported by the springs. I reassembled the whole affair and we got ready to leave. We drove all day to arrive at his mom’s farm just after dark, he then told me that we were going hunting in the morning. After dinner he took me out into the local area looking for some of his friends, who he said would know where to find some real moonshine. Praise God we didn’t find any. We then bunked down on the front porch for the night. The next morning we awoke to my first real country breakfast of ham, bacon, eggs, fried okra, biscuits and gravy. Boy could his mom cook! We then proceeded to pack up and go to his hunting cabin, which was 2 hours further northwest of the farm.

Upon arriving at the camp I told Jim that I didn’t hunt except with a camera. He then told me there was no choice in the matter. Being out in the middle of the Tennessee woods, I decided that I would go along with the plan rather than start a confrontation. I graduated from a military academy so I knew well how to handle a gun. His buddies arrived with Fred, the guide, and we all went out into the woods so Fred could show us our stands for the next mornings hunt. That night we ate and hung out by the campfire where I found out we were on the edge of a government game preserve we would be hunting in. This meant I was in the company of real poachers. They also laughed about the mysterious disappearance of a game warden, who by the occasional smell of something dead they claimed they couldn’t find,was probably buried in a shallow grave nearby—which also meant one or all of them were murderers! At that point I knew they were not about to let me pass on going hunting, so I prayed that I would not have to kill anything the next day.

More later
Andrew