The ’54 Olds

Sonny Apple's mom had a 1954 Oldsmobile '88. It was light "blur" and white. Blur in this case is not a mistype. This particular car had a pinched exhaust pipe, and when the accelerator was depressed, which was the case most of the time, the sound emitted was that of a miniaturized wind tunnel. At seventy, at night, in the country, the sound was distinctive and not readily recognizable.

One very dark, damp, summer night, on the return trip from our regular haunt, Gainesboro, TN, the '54 Olds "blurred" trough the hills and dropped down into one of the long creek bottoms that led to Granville. This was a very flat stretch of road that allowed one to open up and run. The proper term in the rural vernacular is, "sopping-out" a curve. Those not familiar with the term, “sopping” need not be concerned.

The picture then: Two teenage boys filled with fun and hormones, the windows down, the radio playing Fats Domino, Sonny and I talking and laughing at the top of our goose-bumps, "sopping-out" that long curve. The exhaust was somewhere between a whistle and a scream.

Just as we started out of the long left curve we topped a small hillock, and there appeared the white face of a 1,500 pound milk cow suspended in space, two feet in front of the left headlight.

A black and white Holstein was standing on the center line with her ample black rump towards us. She had looked around to investigate the peculiar sound coming from behind, and in that split-second her white face was all our wide eyes could behold. It was henceforth and forever imprinted on our minds!

It is difficult to visualize the size of a full-grown Holstein's face when it is the only bright object in your field of view at 70 miles per hour! I could've sworn that old cow had a face at least four feet long and two feet across at the eyes! That's probably inaccurate, but remember, I only saw her briefly!

Things got very quiet after we went by that stationary bovine!

It didn't take us long to realize just how close we had come to making more than hamburger in the middle of the road that night. I recall during our much quieted ride back to Carthage that I made several promises to the creator of the universe. We arrived back in Carthage a few minutes later than we would have had we not encountered the cow. And thus far the creator and I have done pretty well by each other.