Old West Tales - Road Trips

For an introduction to Old West Tales, click here: Old West Tales - Introduction

Old West Tales focuses on events that occurred in Old West dorm, but I did occasionally get out of Chapel Hill the year that I lived in Old West. Each road trip could be an entire post, but after Sinbad-ing(link) each story, only a paragraph remained.

Once a week Joe Perry and I would drive to his Momma's house in Siler City to do laundry. It was a nice 30 minute drive through the country. This trip would usually be on Friday so that we could watch The Young & The Restless (for those not familiar with Soap Operas, stuff happens on Friday). We would then get a cheesburger at Johnson's or Chris's.


Freshman year Joe had been was my suitemate and Joe's roomate, also from Siler City, had been Lon Griffin. Lon transferred to Elon College Sophomore year to play baseball. Lon was a good pitcher. Every month or so, Joe and I would drive about 45 minutes to Elon to see Lon. Not much happening in Elon.

My best Elon memory = We were partying in a dorm room in Elon when a very young, very drunk, very NC country sounding girl came stumbling into the room in a panick asking "Is it true? Is it true? Have ya'll heard?...

... Axle Rose Is Dead."

Joe and Lon and I would go camping every few months, either at Jordan Lake or at a place called Major Hill that Lon said was an Indian burial ground. Lon also said that these indians were buried standing up and a circle of rocks would be around their heads. One time at Major Hill, we parked and hiked all the way to where we wanted to camp. When we arrived at the campsite, at dusk, Lon bent over, and the half-gallon of "Triple A" (Ancient Ancient Age bourbon) slipped out of Lon's back-pack and busted onto the ground. Of course we unspokenly agreed and hiked back to the car and drove to the liquor store where we only had enough money for "Double A" (Ancient Age bourbon). By the time we set up our tents, it was pitch black.

I would occasionally go home to Columbia, SC where many of my friends were at USC (see this post(link)). When I went home for Thanksgiving dinner my Sophomore year, my parents had become vegetarians and served Thanksgiving Shrimp Scampi for the first time.

Twice while at Old West I made a road trip, with some of the old Irmo gang, all the way to Sewanee, Tennesse to Fall and Spring Party Weekend at University of The South where Beattie was in school. These parties were pretty fun and you had to try really hard to get in trouble in Sewanee. I wouldn't call the students Southern Snobs, but they have a tradition of tapping the roof of the car when entering Sewanee to let the Angel know they don't need him/her anymore. Beattie was a gownsman and wore a robe around to class. There was a little bus that drove around Sewanee at night that would pick up drunk students and drive them wherever they wanted to go.

Joe and I went to "Bud Fest" in Myrtle Beach over Easter weekend. This was a huge party and the beach would get so crowded with college kids that you couldn't see the sand. What more need I say other than that Budweiser sponsored the event. One interesting phenomena that I observed at Bud Fest was what I called a "wrestling circle". There was a huge circle of guys and two of roughly the same size would step into the circle and wrestle in the sand. It was brutal. A lot of football players squared off but by far the best wrestler was someone that I knew. My friend Tony Maas' older brother David, who was at the time a wrestler at Appalachain State University, got into the circle and could not be beaten by like five or six guys until a much larger guy finally beat him.



Spring Break, Joe and I made a week long road trip to Florida. I financed the entire trip by delivering pizzas for Gumby's on both Friday and Saturday night the weekend before Spring Break. It snowed all weekend and everyone was ordering pizzas and giving huge tips. There was a private dorm called Granville Towers and for some reason Gumby's managers made the kids at Granville meet the delivery guy in the lobby. One night that weekend I walked into the lobby of Granville South with 6 different orders and the kids walked up and got their pizzas and tipped me, one by one. I made $100 each night. To start Spring Break, we drove to Jacksonville and stayed with the very nice family of our friend Scott Bain for a few days. Then we drove on down to Daytona and crashed at the Thunderbird hotel on the floor of the hotel room of some friends. The friends were cool girls with boyfriends. We payed nothing for the room except buying the maid a hot dog across the street at T.C.'s Top Dog in exchange for not reporting us to management. I have never seen so many cars. At least two people got killed every night crossing the main street. Every week was biker week. They let cars drive on the beach during the day and the cars would just cruise back and forth, up and down the beach. MTV was there. I watched it in the Hotel room even though it was only a few blocks away.