Danger Bowling & the Peanut Van
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”Kurt Vonnegut
I have mentioned before in this column that in my formative years I attended a low-budget private school. It was an interesting place to absorb an education, but while we were taught well, school could be sometimes dangerous. It’s fun to remember. And it is amusing to think that now my classmates, and all of us in that generation, are fully entrenched in all aspects of our society. We grew up, got old, and started to run things. It’s amazing we survived.
The 1970s were a different time, unusual in many ways. But it was a good time to live and be in high school. We had some of the best music – Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, Aretha and Stevie, Chicago, Elton and Eagles. Sure, we had turbulence – Vietnam, Watergate, the big oil embargo, and the perilous administration of Jimmy Carter. But overall, those were pretty good years, until we met John Travolta and disco took over.
One recurring episode that I well remember from these high school days was bowling in P.E. class. This story may offend the safety conscious sensibilities of some readers, but as I said before, the 70s were a different time.
Prior to the beginning of our bowling adventures, our school administrators, for some undisclosed reason, had made the decision to buy a large, used panel van. Not a regular van, but one of those large, walk-in step vans, kind of like a UPS truck. It was an old Chevy or GMC model from the late 50s or early 60s. Under peeling white paint, you could read the faded letters on the side revealing that it had been a Tom’s Peanut delivery van in its former life. We called it the Peanut Van.
I was in a very small P.E. class at the time. There were only seven or eight of us miscreants in this group. We were a bit of a motley crew, and maybe not the students you would want to leave unsupervised.
On occasion, our teacher, Mr. King, needed a break. I’m not sure what he did on these days off, maybe he just put his feet up with a bag of Cheetos in the breakroom, we were never sure. But here is what would happen. As we poured out of the locker room, clad only in our blue gym shorts and white tee shirts, running towards the basketball courts, Mr. King would casually toss the keys to the Peanut Van at one kid in our group and instruct us to go bowling…by ourselves. He would send us, this group of 15 and 16-year-old boys, driving a beat-up used van, by ourselves in the big city (okay, pretty big town – we weren’t out in the country), to the bowling alley across town. Most often, Dave Faulk was the driver. I think he was 16 then and probably had his driver’s license. He was fearless. He drove a Corvair to school, those cars that Ralph Nader warned us about. They were “unsafe at any speed” and would blow up and burn all the occupants alive inside if you hit anything. You had to be brave to drive a Corvair (the entire Faulk family drove those cars).
At Mr. King’s command we piled in the Peanut Van and Dave would take the wheel. We were off like drunken sailors on shore leave. Dave was a good driver, but I can remember being thrown around quite a bit in the back of the van (no seats) as we weaved through traffic at high speed.
At the bowling alley, we needed $1.25. You could bowl three games for a dollar. Shoe rental cost 25 cents. Sometimes we were able to score some nachos or chili fries, if any of the guys had extra money. And the bowling was fun, especially unsupervised. We had to keep score manually and use those small golf pencils.
All too soon our games were finished. We headed back to school, racing through traffic to beat the bell. We had nary an accident or issue during any of our bowling trips. We were never pulled over by the police. We never received a speeding ticket. Pedestrians were avoided and no accidents reported. I think we kept the sliding side doors open on these bowling runs, but none of us fell out of the van, not even once. We all survived. And school was fun.
I still like to bowl… © 2024 Jody Dyer
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