While watching the local news one morning before going to work I heard one of the anchors use a word that I haven't heard anyone use for years, in fact about forty years. A friend that lived in Monroeville used the “made up word” one night while we were going to Bonifay to a Century Blackcat football game. Our plan was to go to Bonifay in my Mercury Montego, but the water pump was leaking on it so we decided to go in a friends Ford Maverick. T
his was sometime during the mid to late 1970's because I had a ham radio walkie talkie with me and I was first licensed in 1976. The radio worked on the 2 meter band which used repeaters, and the one in Brewton on 146.97 mhz gave good coverage over a large area of southwest Alabama and northwest Florida. The first sign of bad luck was when we stopped at the Diamond station at highway 4 and 29 to get gas. One of us was going to pump gas while the others went in the store and paid for it. This person had never pump gas in this car and the fill was behind the tag.
He didn't know that there was a large hole in the fill tube and just continued to pump gas, not knowing he had a pretty good size creek of gas running down the parking lot to highway 29. I guess we were lucky we didn't blow up the world when we started the car and headed to Bonifay. I was driving and put out a general call on the Brewton repeater, a friend in Monroeville answered and we started talking. We had got through Jay and were going down the small hill to Coldwater creek where the roadside park is when we heard a all to familiar sound, the right front tire just blew out. I pulled off the road and ask the man that owned the car if he had a spare tire, he said, “he didn't know but we could check.”
We opened the trunk of the car and fortunately for us all he had was spare tires, four of them. I told the man I was talking to on the radio I had to get out and change a flat tire. I got on the ground and started to change the tire when something, probably a dog from one of the nearby houses ran behind us in the dry leaves. The three stooges with me did just like you would think they would, they spend several seconds pulling each other back around the corner of the car trying to be the first one to get to the other side, and when they did, the one in front realized he was in front and jumped up and went to the back of the line.
They swapped positions several times while I was on the other side of the car rolling on the ground laughing at them, this was better than the three stooges, this was real life. We checked the other three tires and decided due to the condition of the tires we should probably turn around and go back to Century. After getting back on the road headed west instead of east I called my friend on the radio and told him what had happen. Just as we got back into Jay we heard that all to familiar sound, another tire going flat. I told the friend on the radio what had happen and would get back with him when I had the tire changed. This time since we were in town the tire was changed without incident. As we got started back toward to Century I called my friend in Monroeville and told him what had happen.
He told me, Jim I'm going to have to reevaluate the credit I've given you the past few years. I ask him, why is that. He told me, it sounds like you have let someone send you off in a “rollscanhardly” with all “maypops” on it. I said, a what? He said a “rollscanhardly” a vehicle that you let roll down the hill, and it can hardly make it up the hill. I told him, I didn't let him send me off, he is in the car with us, my friend told me he would give me a half a point back since the owner was in the car with us. Just as we made it back to Century the third tire went flat, I told them let's change it and go straight to my house and I would put water in my car and take everyone home. We were sure glad he had those four spare tires, we used three of them just to get back to Century from Jay.
The Alger Sullivan Historical Society meets the third Tuesday of the month at the Leach House Museum in Century at the corner of 4th street and Jefferson Avenue, come join us and consider becoming a member.
