Chapter 6
Driver’s License, Car and More Beer
The spring and summer of 1970 was a very pivotal time in my budding social life. I had finally navigated my way into what I considered a very fun and satisfying life at Vincent High School, where I had what I thought would be my life long best friends in Craig Spradley, Mark Brasher and Corey Moore. My first drink of alcohol, on May 15 1970, was the next to the last day of my ninth grade year and as things turned out, a time I transitioned from Vincent school to Harpersville’s “Coosa Valley Academy”, an all “white” school for a “better” education. The barn I described earlier was right across the road from Craig’s house in Sterrett meaning I had “spent the night” with him on the 15th. The following day, May 16 1970 was to be a short school day where the students showed up for roll call and to pick up the year end report cards. School would be dismissed about 9:00AM calling it a “year” for the 69-70 school term.
As I was only fifteen at the time, I had rode with Craig to Sterrett May 15th and returned for the final day of school with him the morning of the 16th. I could never forget my mother picking me up for my final day ever at Vincent school at 9:00AM May 16th 1970. Of course I had no idea of what a hang over was nor did I know what one would feel like. I was treading new territory in my blossoming life with new experiences and was undergoing what could truly be described as “on the job training”. One thing I knew with certainty was the events of the night before would, for all of eternity, remain secret from Tea Baker until the second coming at earliest. No matter what or how I felt of the above, this fact I was sure of. I remember clearly getting into the car with my mother for the short drive to Harpersville and using everything in my power trying to behave and act just like I would have any other day. To this very day, I really have no idea how well or even if I pulled this off.
During the spring and summer of 1970 I was filled with a great deal of unexplainable anxiety. I knew I was changing schools and did not like the prospect one bit although I kept my mouth shut on the subject as I knew better than to ever question or challenge my mother on any subject. I also knew I wanted to drink beer at any opportunity but being fifteen and very much under my mother’s control, the opportunity to do so would be very difficult to come by. During the summer I sought out every opportunity I could manufacture to get myself from Harpersville up around the Vincent area. Vincent, and especially around the school, was a compacted area where walking less than a half hour could get you to any of what I considered “fun places”. For instance, the community had a public pool which proved to be a great excuse and a starting point for my further mischief.
I found creative ways to get myself to the Vincent area as much as possible. To this very day I do not know the reason but after the hay ride with Susie, she broke up with me. Surprisingly this “glitch” did not disturb me and today I am able to look back and realize my mind was more focused on obtaining beer and getting with my “buddies”. In the sober moments of life, I have realized I missed Susie my whole life and truly wish I had of kept up with her as no woman has ever filled out a sweater the way Susie did.
Susie was from Sterrett and the best I was able to accomplish the summer of 1970 would be occasionally getting myself to Vincent. During the magical summer of 1970 I did start to notice other girls I had barely known from school earlier. Local to the Vincent community was Karen, Nancy, Cathy and Becky; all of which would become good friends. Better even, Karen and Cathy would be moving to the new “Academy” in the fall giving me even more to look forward to and of course, “work with”. Cathy eventually became a more permanent girlfriend for several months. Much later in life, and right before his death, Cathy would become the wife of my brother Terry, but of course…. that is another story.
Craig, Mark and Corey would occasionally make it to the Vincent swimming pool so the summer of 1970 was not bad as things go. There was one grand mistake on my part during the hot summer of 1970. Somewhere along the way I got the bright idea of having a summer camping night on a far corner of our farm where I planned on my friends coming with more beer. During the hot summer night this occurred, all was of course fun and I did once again drink to the point of drunkenness. My pattern of drinking was firmly established for the duration of my drinking life which would be 31 years. I have never known how but the next day my mother seemed to know as much about that night as I did. There are no words that can accurately describe and relay to any reader the fury I received from my mother the following day. When my mother did finally calm down, she did not speak a single word to me for a solid - straight ten days! This “quite” time was truly a humbling period of time in my life. One of my mother’s retribution actions I remember most was my mother carrying me around to everyone in our community making me confess what I had done. I really felt bad when I had to tell my much beloved grandfather about my camping night and carried that guilt every day of the rest of my life.
Before the years at Coosa Valley Academy, it is important to understand the “atmosphere” of the community and all the events that led to the existence of “Coosa Valley Academy”.
All that might ever read these words will know much about the history of our nation as well as the turbulence of the 1960’s as well as America’s history with “race relations”. That be as it may, for the purposes of this documentary it is important to “see” the atmosphere or “feeling” of our country through the eyes and feelings of a budding 15 year old boy that is quite excited about life.
The late 1960’s and early 70’s are truly some of the most eventful years in our nations history. Before I go any further in this writing, I want to be clear that my mother and all the other adults of my life were not “racists” in the traditional meaning and connotation of the term “racist”. On the contrary, these people including my mother Tea Baker, are some of our nations greatest, smartest and most hard working people of our entire history. I know deep in my heart and soul that none of these people ever “felt” any hatred or meanness toward any human being no matter who they were or their race. Every day of their lives the adults of my young life did what they thought was the very best they could do for their families and communities and this I am absolutely positive of. Only God could ever judge any harmful intent but as for me, the adults of my life are among the best people I have ever had the privilege to know. Being raised in such a community has truly been one of the great blessings of my entire life. With that said:
The Vietnam War raged in Southeast Asia during the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Their are so many notable events of this time period but discussing the “scarring” of Vietnam in regard to the effects on my life are important here. I have had a life long favorite uncle by the name of Glenn who was my mother’s baby brother. As a young man in his teens, Glenn made the decision of a career in the Army Infantry progressing from private to +20 years and retiring a full bird Colonel. The Vietnam War came about at the perfect (or perhaps imperfect depending on your point of view) time in Glenn’s military history. Uncle Glenn served not one but two full year tours of duty in Vietnam and those being 1968 and 1970. For students of the Vietnam War era, they will know those are some of the darkest and bloodiest days of the entire conflict. For anyone ever seeing Mel Gibson’s movie, “We Were Soldiers”, which depicted a battle of an area described as LZ X-ray by a Lieutenant Colonel named Hal Moore, you can change Hal Moore for my uncle Glenn and LZ X-ray for another similar battle three years later and the reader will have the perfect image of what my uncles Vietnam days were like. Glenn never discussed Vietnam much but once in a very depressed and drunken state he did tell me that one of his many jobs in Vietnam was picking up body parts and putting them on a helicopter to remove them from the active battle field. My mother once asked Glenn, why he drank so much and his answer to her was “It was all the killing”. These are only a sampling to describe the experiences of my uncle’s life to relay his personality and more importantly, the effect of his life on me. It is quite ironic but Glenn stopped drinking alcohol the same year I did. These events of Vietnam were going on while I was busy maturing the summer of 1970 walking the streets of Vincent at the age of fifteen listening to the anti war music and experiencing Richard Nixon’s anti war nation as the populace war rebellion and draft card burning was going on all across our nation. Looking back on the events of these days, I am truly amazed that all of us collectively as a nation even survived that very difficult and dark time. The one occurrence that has haunted me my entire life is how our nations military, which includes my dear uncle Glenn, returned from that foreign and distant land only to find the citizens of this nation loathed and hated them as anyone wearing a uniform became a target for the anti-war rage going on within this nation. Returning veterans were spit on, heckled, jeered and in every way humiliated starting at the airports they landed in when returning home. To this day I am thankful to God he allowed both my uncle as well as myself, to get sober many years later and deal with these hurtful years in a constructive manner. Uncle Glenn dedicated his remaining sober and retirement years working with active duty military and carrying the slogan of “Never Again” as he tirelessly mounted a campaign through “Blue Star Salute” to promote the patriotism of our nation’s troops. I can honestly say I have joined with him in this great effort as the times of 1970’s had a deep scarring affect on all who lived through them. But… Vietnam and our military was only a piece of the total picture during this great time in history.
As I earlier indicated, race, race relations and civil rights were front page nationally through this time all of which led to the creation of “Coosa Valley Academy”. Birmingham Alabama etched itself into the minds and memories of the entire nation as Alabama and Alabama politicians, either rightly or wrongly, worked their way through these difficult days. In Birmingham Alabama, which was about a half-hour to the north, it seemed to me the blacks were really causing some trouble. Well…. they must have been because all the news and local talk was about how the police were having to use dogs and fire hoses to keep the blacks from making such a mess of things. I certainly did not know any of the facts behind any of these events but my young mind did grasp the words of the adults that I was surrounded by. From the talk I heard, the blacks had become real uppity and they wanted to change how everyone behaved in Alabama. According to the adults of my world, that was simply intolerable and something would have to be done about the situation which included the creation of an all white school for us kids.
The events occurring in the late 1960’s and 70’s would affect Alabamians for at least the next fifty years if not forever. Some white men, and my guess would be the conies although I have no evidence of that, bombed a black church on 16th street north in Birmingham Alabama where four little black girls were killed. This event is still talked about to this day (for those able to recognize it) as if it were still a current event. When I heard this news (the 16th street bombing), I truly felt something really horrible had been done and the men responsible would be punished. However, as I kept hearing the adults of my world talk about these things, I soon realized that everyone in my town seemed to be almost pleased by some of these events. A few of these men escaped prosecution for the next forty years and some until their deaths. These events are still talked about in the community of my youth. With certain conversations of my life, I have sometimes felt as though I was talking to someone directly connected to the bombing. This bombing, as well as other events, was all very shocking to me and I could not quite understand it. After all, these same adults were always talking in church on Sunday’s against such behavior. Once again, I was trapped in my small world because I never had any one to talk with regarding the confusing events of my growing world. You see, my father never returned from the box I had finally come to accept he must have been in and most of my life has truly been spent with the feeling of being absolutely alone in everything I do.
In addition to the above race story, a lady by the name of Rosa Parks had also made a big fuss in the news. It seemed Ms Parks decided to sit in a different seat on the city bus and wrote herself into our nation’s history books. Of course sitting wherever you wanted seemed normal to me, after all whenever I got in a vehicle I sat wherever I pleased. Come to find out, the blacks at that time were suppose to sit in certain seats which were located in the back of the bus. Ms. Parks, it seems, sat upfront that eventful day. The Rosa Parks event seemed quite displeasing to the adults of my world.
The events described above (and many more unmentioned events) led the adults of my rural town to build us white kids our on white school in 1969 & 70 to be opened in the fall of 1970. I learned the reason for building this school was the blacks were going to start attending Vincent, the same school I had always attended beginning with the fall of 1970. This was called integration and I never understood the big uproar over all of it myself. It would have been fine with me for anyone to go to the school I had been in all my life. I knew I was quite happy there with my buddies and I did not really like this change happening in my life. However with such a dominant mother as I had, I had long ago learned to keep my mouth closed about such events and actions. Once my mother decided something, it just as well have been written in “her” Bible. After my father’s death, my mother became a very headstrong, independent, bible toting and in my mind, stubborn lady. A phrase that dominated the times by the then governor George C. Wallace sums up the entire period; “Segregation yesterday, Segregation today, Segregation Always” as the greatly loved governor of Alabama made his infamous “stand” in a Tuscaloosa school house door. I once shook that man’s hand as a young boy wearing a school band uniform, standing in a school band formation, on the front lawn of Vincent High School.
September of 1970 finally arrived and I made my way to the new Harpersville school and my first class. I would be entering the 10th grade and I would soon learn the new school would just be going through the 10th grade my first year. If that were not enough notable news, my class had thirteen (13) students. (This fact remained true through my graduation May 1973 as the school added a grade each year I attended through the 12th grade when I graduated in a class of 13…. with a wife and daughter. Perhaps this fact alone should have been an Omen).
After settling into the routine of a new school, I began spending more time with Cathy (from Vincent) and I was sure this “couple thing” would complete the image I saw of myself and give my life total meaning. Cathy lived about six or seven miles from where I lived.
January 4, 1971 was my sixteenth birthday. For sometime I had been anxious to have a driver’s license. Passing the drivers exam would be easy for me as I had been driving on the farm since I was ten and had become quite confident operating any motor vehicle. My mother took me to take the drivers test and pretty soon I was a grown adult licensed driver. My mother helped me find a black 1956 Chevrolet for $500, which I bought on first sight. I was set. God had truly smiled on me. I knew I was an adult male now that I could drive and had discovered cigarettes, beer and girls. After that first drinking night in the barn, I knew how I wanted to live the rest of my life. The beer I had discovered seemed to make me whole and have the people that I wanted to care about me, really seem to enjoy my company. Of course this is how my mind saw it. Now I could drive us around as we drank our beer and talked while we enjoyed eight track tapes of the great sixties music. Music like The Alman Brothers, Grand Funk, Rare Earth, Rolling Stones was just some of the top names of the great music of my young life. Having Cathy as a “girlfriend” seemed to complete the image I saw for myself.
My shiny black 56 Chevrolet was fantastic. Actually, the Chevy was any young boys dream car. My new car had wide tires and chrome mag rims. The interior was black and white role impleated leather that really looked great. The 56 had a four in the floor Hurst T-shifter that was quite impressive and fun to glide through the gears. Under the hood was a Chevrolet rebuilt 286 engine which by some standards of that time was a small engine but for a 56 Chevy, it was plenty of horse power.
Young males of this time had a “knack” for modifying or in some way making their personal marks on their cars. I would be no exception. It didn’t take long, with the help of a really cool cousin a few years older by the name of Donny Tate, that I would be completely breaking down the motor of my car and rebuilding it into something more suitable for a drag strip. Donny had successfully rebuilt the engine of his Chevrolet SS 396 earlier in a barn behind his parent’s house and during our conversations after church one day, offered to help rebuild my new car engine. I leaped at the chance. Donny instructed me that he could only work on my car at night after work and that was okay with me. That following Monday afternoon, I carried my car to Donny’s and by midnight we had the engine out of the car and loaded onto a pickup truck. I carried the engine block to an automotive shop in Birmingham where the motor would be cleaned and reworked seating new pistons, rods, cam shafts, crank shaft, timing belt and all associated bearings. As Donny and I began to put the engine and car back together in the following days, a Holly four barrel carburetor, an Edlebrock aluminum high rise manifold and Hooker headers just to name a few of the high performance extras on the engine, all found their way into my “new” car. My 56 Chevrolet was truly a sixteen-year old boy’s dream and every parent’s nightmare. I could uncap the headers and wake people up three blocks away when I cranked and revved the engine. My buddies were definitely impressed, which of course was the point. Donny and I smoked cigarettes, talked and sometimes even a six pack of ice cold Schlitz found it’s way to our make shift garage as this boy hood experience was truly a memorable event for a young, fatherless farm boy in rural Alabama in 1971 that just turned sixteen years of age.
The distance to Cathy’s house was perfect and going to visit her at her parents often gave me the reason I needed to get out and drive my car, with the loud Hooker headers, all over the rural area. I would often make detours on my way to Cathy’s as I discovered even more stores selling beer to minors. I would often pick up either three beers or a six pack as I was in route to her house where I would sometimes eat supper with her and her parents. I always felt I was more of a man after having a few beers when I was going to see Cathy. It seemed that the alcohol made me more daring and fun to be with. At least that is what I thought and how I saw myself.
Cathy was somewhat younger than I was by a year or two. I had not thought about what all that might mean when I first met her. When I was introduced to Cathy, all I saw was an attractive young girl that seemed to have all the parts that I was so anxious to discover. As time went by I learned that Cathy was still a little kid. She couldn’t ever leave her house which was a real problem to what I saw as my budding adulthood. I always had to spend time at Cathy’s house with her parents nearby. That was a real kink in the plans I had for Cathy. Of course I continually tried to find ways to get us alone together which was fairly easy after her parents went to bed. At that time, I would start my advances toward Cathy which always wound up pretty short of where I wanted to go. Oh, she would certainly allow me to kiss her which we both seemed to enjoy and Cathy would even let me play with her small young breasts which I loved. However, Cathy seemed very timid about me putting my hand down into her pants and that is of course where I wanted to go. I continued for several months to have my way with Cathy but nothing ever seemed to go any further and I was becoming quite restless with the kiddy type things we had been doing. After all, I was quite a man now ready to do manly type things. Besides, when I got with my buddies to drink beer, they were all starting to tell much more adventurous stories than my stories with Cathy and I couldn’t very well have that. At the time, I thought my buddies were the most important thing in the world to me. Impressing them and being accepted by them was the most important thing in my young life.
While all the above was happening and unknown to me at the time, my brother Terry was also discovering alcohol. Yep, sure enough Terry had followed me to Coosa Valley Academy entering the 9th grade, a year behind me. Later in life I learned that Terry had taken to beer much in the same way I had and was actually consuming a great deal, quite like myself. In addition to the alcohol, Terry also had another rather keen and gifted talent. Terry was quite a natural born artist. He had always been one to draw and paint and his talent grew more acute through the years. Terry was really good and soon people were asking for his paintings and even paying for them. He began to enter art shows and even study art in school. It’s a good thing God gave Terry this talent because as things turned out, it’s the only trade he was to ever know. Other than his paintings, Terry was to care very little about anything in life other than alcohol and later drugs. Also for some strange reason, the girls really took to Terry which is something I never quite understood. Girls flocked to Terry in droves but amazingly Terry seemed to care very little about them. Brother would use the girls often as nude models as his interest in art grew along with the alcohol consumption. (How Terry achieved this I will never know but would have paid dearly for the secret). Terry was well on his way to becoming a real stereotype model of the sixties as in “Sex, Drugs & Rock N Roll”. This “Hippie” personality was something Terry really loved and he kept the rest of his life, which as things turned out, was going to be quite short.
One other note worthy image my brother loved was that of a “Cowboy”. Terry and I both purchased and began riding horses a few years earlier but the image did not really stick with me as I followed the persona of the course described above. Terry, however, really liked horses and did well with them. It wasn’t long before Terry had accumulated all types of western wear and gear entering into horse shows and winning a great deal of trophies and ribbons. Terry looked the full fledge look of a modern cowboy wearing cowboy hats, chaps, boots, etc and he would alter between this look and the hippie look as if he were schizophrenic. Terry would often make self portraits or paintings of himself in this cowboy image. The last night of my brother’s life Terry enthusiastically watched a movie I later learned was his favorite, “The Cowboy Way”.
Coosa Valley Academy fielded a football team along with opening its academic doors. Of course I did not know anything about playing football but I was very eager to join up. I quickly became a fullback as my flat feet seem to have kept me from being a fast enough runner to play tailback. I would not have thought I would have liked being a fullback as that position is often a utility player doing a lot of blocking. I had visions of myself being much more like Johnny Musso who was the current “hot” player for the University of Alabama breaking and setting records as the nations leading tailback. However, Tony Baker was to be a slow fullback for the Coosa Valley Rebels, which of course no one ever really heard about. I did greatly enjoy my football years and excelled at this leaving me yet again with many wonderful memories. My mother never seemed to get excited or behind many of the things I got involved in and she had never seemed to excited about my football career but when it came game time, she was always excitedly there in the stands and after the games were over, and I heard her talking with other adults, I realized mother not only paid attention to every play but she could quote step for step every action I had been involved in the entire game. Once, when I took off down field un-practiced as my team was punting the ball away on fourth down, I hit the punt return player receiver at the exact moment he was catching the ball separating him from the football resulting with Coosa Valley Academy recovering the a fumble. I heard my mother tell countless adults for a week how her son had “setup” the game winning touchdown by causing a key fumble in the fourth quarter. I silently and internally beamed with a newfound pride.
One nifty memory of my football years was that Coosa Valley’s first football season was held with very little football facilities including a football field or a practice field. A rather important asset to a football program most people would agree. My mother donated our front yard as the teams practice field the first year which was my front yard I had to keep cut. This front yard was the size of four football fields, two wide and two long. Having my on front yard as the schools practice field helped escalate my status, at least in my on head, with all of my school buddies which was really important to me at the time.
Things fell into a routine for a while. I would go to school from eight to three and work on the farm in the afternoons. I had my car and could go see my buddies at the old school which I did as often as possible. What did happen that was a grand surprise to me was the new school brought with it a lot of new people I had never seen before. This quickly turned into quite a pleasant development as I soon realized a lot of these new people were very attractive young girls my age. A whole new selection of girls was now available you might say. So, in no time at all I had forgotten the talk and trouble that surrounded the new school as well as Cathy and soon began focusing my attentions on the new and attractive young girls.
Within no time at all I was doing everything I could to meet these girls. I didn’t have a regular girl friend for some time but rather I just sort of floated from one to the other. Of course I would have never admitted to any one but I was seeking a girl that would let me discover the mysteries that I had so long sought after. All the girls were different and would allow me different advances. All of course would kiss but were not having anything to do with my ever-increasing roaming hands. Then of course others were much more receptive and would allow various things to be done to them. I knew I kept seeking a girl that would actually allow me to “go all the way” with her but none of these girls seemed to be willing to go that far. One of the high lights of my life I remember to this day is when I met two girls that were friends from the neighboring Sylacauga area that had enrolled in the new private school. One of these girls became a very short term girl friend and the other, which was her friend I really did not know very well. On one fateful night when God smiled on me, I picked up the girl I was dating and she wanted to take her friend along with us. The friend sat in the back of my car that night as my date and I “necked”. Then I took my date home and was on my way taking the friend home when before I knew it, the friend and I were back at the same parking place with us “necking” a while.
The events of my life really seemed to be progressing better than I could have ever imagined. A car, girls, new school, football, popular, beer, cigarettes, more girls……
That’s when I met Brenda.
