Living at Hubbard, it was impossible to go home without passing two drive-in restaurants, a major automobile junkyard, a drive-in movie theatre, and two beer joints.
These two beer joints could get you in trouble. First they were both right on the highway and it was impossible at certain times at night to pass by without risking a collision with some hapless drunk heading home. Second, if you were a tourist, and accidently wandered in by mistake, you might end up having a very exciting evening...
Beer joints down South are not the same as "bars" up north. Fights were almost always a guarantee. If you ever had any curiousity about the criminal element, a beer joint could bring you up close and personal. Scratch-off games, pinball machines that paid off in cash, and low-level prostitution were not uncommon. If you were willing to pay a premium price, a bottle of bootleg whiskey could be had - saving a trip to Knoxville.
Not very far from my home at Hubbard, there was a beer joint that literally "hung" off the side of the hill in the low part of a hollow. It had no parking area to speak of and the "empties" were piled up along the side of the building. These beer joints did not check ID's so it was wasn't unusual for an underage crowd to frequent these places. One story that is my favorite was of two boys - one rowdy and one a teetotaler. On this night the rowdy one went missing. There was a death in the family and everyone was looking for him. The "tame" brother who looked remarkably like the "rowdy" one, started searching the beer joints. Without cell phones searches like this were difficult. As the "tame" brother wandered in to the beer joint, he was knocked cold by a beer bottle across the head.
The dangers of mistaken identity...
No comments:
Post a Comment