Palmetto Cruisers Car Club, Florence, SC

"The Sky View Drive-In Restaurant" opened in 1958 and featured car hops and an annual car show. Their sign, featuring a Sputnik ball, lit up night sky. The Sky View was the place to hang out for high school students in the Florence area. A fire devastated the building in 2008, but the sign is still there. "John's Drive-In Restaurant" was built in the 1950s and featured canopies in front of and behind the restaurant. This was the usual hangout for Florence high school graduates. By 2009, it was gone. "The 301 Drive-In Restaurant" opened in 1957 and was named after U.S. Highway 301 where it was located. It featured a folded plate canopy and car hops. If you weren't hanging out at the Sky View or John's, you were probably an adult, and hanging out the 301. In 2006, the canopy was demolished and a larger building was constructed. Highway 301 has been rerouted, so they have reopened as just "The Drive-In", but have kept their vintage sign.

Hot Date

    On one particular night in 1963, my first time out with an especially hot date, I begged my Mom to let me drive her '61 metallic blue, 390 CID, three-speed automatic on the column, with A/C and full power Ford Galaxie; sweet! She finally relented after I had washed and waxed it and had sworn not to dent it, scratch it or spill anything in it.
    My date looked great and commented on my nice car. Having gotten used to the six cylinder Studebaker, I burned a little rubber in front of her house. Oops. But she liked it! Cool.
    We were going to a movie, but if you were a high school student in Florence, SC in 1963, you drove a car, and you were out after dark, you had to at least cruise the Sky View Drive-In Restaurant, if not eat and hang out for a while - before you did anything else. Pulling in to the Sky View, a good impression required that I also offer my date food and drink before the movie. "Just a drink, a Clarinet" was fine with her, and I picked as conspicuous a place as possible, making sure the VIPs saw me with my especially hot date.
    A Clarinet. Excellent. It’s one of my favorites, a concoction of sodas and juices available exclusively at the Sky View. I have no idea what was in it.
    All of the carhops back then were guys and they all had aliases, I got the Lone Ranger. As he approached the car, I rolled down the window and suavely hung my arm out the window. "Lone Ranger, my man! Two large Clarinets, please," I said, like knowing his alias was cool, too.
    Our Clarinets arrived, I'd done my duty, and it was off to the movie. With my arm hanging out of the window, I put the large Clarinet in front of me on the dash so I could, as sophisticatedly as possible, shift the Galaxie into reverse. So far, so good, but then I shifted into drive and gave it a little gas. The large Clarinet came off the dash, right through the steering wheel and into my lap. Drinks at the Sky View back then did not come with a straw... or a top.

Bob Liger

Golddigger

    This is a true story. I will not even change the names to protect the innocent. Remember, in last month's column, the 1963 "hot date" I impressed (NOT!) by spilling the large drink in my lap at the Sky View? Later that night, to further impress her, I drove her past the Dodge dealership on South Irby Street, pointed to a black 1960 Austin-Healey "3000" Mark 1 I had seen earlier that day and told her I was going to buy that car (whoa, big lie!). Apparently it didn't impress her enough; that was our first and last date.
    My dad loved me, though, and to prove it, to my total shock and joy, he bought me the car the very next day (and that's a whole other story).
    Around that time, I began dating a girl I had met while working as a bagboy at Harvey's Thriftway Supermarket on Cheves Street. It seemed that every time I went to see that girl, one particular girl friend of hers was always there, too. So, when my girlfriend and I broke up, I called, who else, HER girlfriend.
    "Hi, this is Bobby Liger. I was wondering if you would like to cruise the Sky View with me tonight."
    "Um... I don't know. Are you going to drive that little sports car?"
    Well, that little golddigger!
    "No," I said, taken aback. "I'm going to drive my dad's old Studebaker."
    "Well, okay, I guess I'll go with you anyway"
    Now, that's more like it. I did drive the "little sports car," and "that little golddigger" is now my wife of forty-six years, Linda.

Bob Liger

1937 Chevy Coupe

    In 1961, at age sixteen, I was working evenings as a bagboy at the Winn-Dixie store on Cherokee Road (now a Piggly Wiggly). "The Florence Rods and Customs Club" met to work on their cars, every night except Sunday, in a row of four or five double garages facing Irby Street and directly behind the Winn-Dixie Store.
    I joined the club and bought a six cylinder with three in the floor 1937 Chevrolet Coupe from one of the members. It had no rust, dents or dings and the previous owner had sanded and primed it with red oxide primer. The interior was a little worn, but it was clean and had no rips or tears in the cloth upholstery. I paid him $50 for it; cheap, but a lot of money to a bagboy.
    I never did anything to it and kept it in one of the club garages. Every evening after the Winn-Dixie store closed and I got off work, I drove it, with no tags or insurance on it, around the store parking lot for a while, and then worked with some of the other members on their cars, sometimes until 11:00 or 12:00 at night.
    A year later, the owner of the garages sold out, and the club disbanded. I managed to drive the car home without getting pulled, and parked the car in a spot in our back yard. When Mom and Dad were not home, I drove the car to a nearby dirt road and cruised up and down the dirt road, then parked it precisely in the same spot in the back yard, to avoid any suspicions from Mom and Dad.
    One day an Army Private noticed the car sitting in the yard and offered me $75 for it. A 50% profit! Sure! It was one of the worst decisions of my life; I never even got to cruise the Sky View in it!

Bob Liger

The Whiff Test

    This is my first classic car although I have accumulated years of anticipation and desire for one sooner. I have very fond memories as a young child of driving around in my grandfathers ‘63 Ford Falcon Ranchero as he ran errands around town. When he would go inside a store I would stay outside and play with his CB radio, turn all the knobs and inevitably slip behind the huge steering wheel and go on a quick day dream drive while making motoring noises through my flapping lips. On occasion I would unknowingly flood the carburetor from pushing on the gas pedal. Grandpa took it in stride as he got back in and tried to start the car. As he turned the key and the engine cranked and cranked the blinker came on, the wipers whooshed back and forth, the heater fan was blowing and he would just look over and give me a wink and a half smile. I remember going to A&W for a root beer float and if I was lucky he would let me order through the window. I remember him opening the glove box and thinking how neat it was to have a handy place to put my drink in those little round dips behind the glove box door.
    Many years later when I first started looking for a classic car of my own, I can recall sticking my head in various cars and being instantly taken back to my child hood with a whiff of the interior. The familiar smell of the interior of an older car is something I just can’t get enough of. I would look at a car from the outside, checking for rust and dents, pop the hood and check out the engine and then the last step would be the whiff test. It had to have that familiar smell. Some smelled like dirty socks or cigarette smoke, or had a moldy kind of funk. No, my first classic car had to have that right smell.
    I was in no hurry to buy. I took my time and read up on classic car stories and attended car shows. I found myself starting to get very interested in ‘57 Chevys. I started to read more and more about them and became fascinated with the following that they had. They had a legendary status like James Dean and Elvis and I liked that. The more I read and studied, the more I found my interest shift to the’ 55 Chevy. I guess because it was so groundbreaking at the time and I became more interested how the legendary golden years of Chevy started rather than just the acclaim of the highly sought after ‘57. More and more I became immersed in the ‘55. I just couldn’t get enough information on them. I read books and built plastic models, stared at photos and got my fix any way that I could.
    One day years later while at a car show with the family I saw a ‘55 Chevy from a distance that caught my eye. It had a different color paint that I had not seen before and a very stock look to it. As I got closer and started looking the car over I saw a for sale ad in the back seat and I had a very strange feeling come over me. It was almost as if the car was telling me that this was the one I had been looking for. I wasn’t even sure it was for sale since the ad was lying on the back seat. Maybe they had just bought the car and tossed the ad in the back, maybe it wasn’t for sale anymore and they took the ad down. I didn’t know. I walked away taking glimpses over my shoulder to see the car from increasing distances and I could swear the car seemed sad that I was walking away. It was like walking away from a puppy at the pound.
    I walked around the show some more, with the car on my mind the entire time. The wife was with me and she thought I seemed distant. I told her I was fine and little did she know I was steering her back to the car. I saw it in the distance and I started to get butterflies in my stomach. I was about to put the feelers out to the wife and see how receptive she was to owning a classic car. We got closer and I noticed some exhaust steam puttering out the exhaust pipes...the car was running! I picked up the pace almost leaving the wife and kids behind and when I got to the car, the owner was just popping the hood. I listened to the exhaust note as the owner wiped down the car with a rag and I listened as he talked with passersby. The car had everything I was looking for. All original inside and out, a unique color scheme, in showroom condition but this one also had something the others didn’t. There was that weird feeling in my stomach, an unconscious tugging at my being telling me that this car was meant for me. As I listened to the owner talk about the car to others, I could tell he was very passionate about the car. He really cared about it and I heard him say that it was indeed for sale. My heart skipped and I felt the oddest feeling I have ever felt before, kind of like fear but not a bad fear. More of a fear you get before going on a roller coaster. It was a fear surrounded by excitement. I asked the owner if I could have a seat behind the wheel and reluctantly said yes. As soon as I sat down I was 8 years old all over again. The familiar smell was there and I think I left the present for a few moments as I took a day dream drive. Memories flooded my head of me and my grandfather and made me smile without me even knowing it. I was gleaming behind the wheel and when I came back to reality my wife was smiling back. I looked up to her from the driver’s seat and said to her with as much confidence in my heart and voice of anything I had ever told her before, "Honey, I think this is the one."
    I drove the car home with my 10 year old daughter in the passenger’s seat, with the wife trailing in our car behind me. As I sat behind the wheel I thought of my grandfather. Thinking this is how he must have felt as he drove me around town. I looked over at my daughter and could see in her eyes that she was taking it all in. She was studying the dash and knobs and she took a deep breath and said, "Dad, I really like how it smells in here." "I know honey, me too...me too."

John Ralph

A Charmed Life

    Remember in a previous installment, I had sold my '37 Chevy coupe. Truth is I didn't really miss it much, until I got older... and wiser. In the meantime, I finally got my driver's license, but had little to drive except my dad's old 1949 Studebaker. It was an ugly faded-blue six-cylinder Champion. It got me where I wanted to go, but I wouldn't have been caught dead dating in it. Through a stroke of luck though, (Boy, I led a charmed life!) not long after getting my license, my sister married her high school sweetheart, a soldier stationed in Pennsylvania, who just happened to own a gorgeous black 1957 V8 Ford 2-door coupe. When my sister got pregnant, she moved back to Florence to stay with us, bringing the '57 with her. Having nowhere to go herself, she let me drive the car just about anytime I wanted. I couldn't drive it to school, but I could cruise the Sky View every night if I wanted to.
    After a few months, my brother-in-law came home for a couple of weeks on leave and traded the '57 for a bronze 348 CID Tri-Powered 1959 Chevy Impala, and took the bus back to Pennsylvania. I was in Chevy Heaven! A few more months and he was back, trading the '59 for a white 348 big block 4-barrel automatic Chevy Impala, and heading back to Pennsylvania by bus. Ah, but a few months later he was home for good and they moved to their own place. Oh, well, only a year of hot cars..., but what a year!
    Digressing a bit, late for a New Years Eve party, my brother-in-law swore he drove the '57 Ford from Florence, SC to John's Island, SC (125 miles, mostly on U.S. 52) in one hour flat! My sister was with him and she backs up his story, though I didn't doubt it for a minute to begin with. Driving the bronze '59 Impala, I got beat from a stop light on Irby Street by a black '59 Chevy Biscayne! It was so embarrassing, I gave up drag racing forever. I got my first ticket, in Darlington, in the '61 Impala on my way home from a date in Hartsville doing 73 (according to Patrolman Holloman) in a 55 mph zone. More about that in my next installment, maybe.

Bob Liger

The First Mobile Phone in Florence?

    In the old days before cell phones, people used non-portable "telephones" to talk to each other. The telephone in 1964 consisted of a "handset" that was held to the ear and mouth to listen and talk. The handset was connected by a wired "cord" to a "base" containing a "dial" and a "switch hook." The base, in turn, was connected by a wired cord to a "connecting block" attached to the wall. (Weird, huh?) I was an Installer-Repairman for Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph in 1964, and one Friday I had replaced an old black telephone handset with a nice new one.
    Throwing the old handset into the seat of my SBT&T truck, I had an idea. I had heard of mobile phones, but had never seen one. There certainly weren't any in Florence, so wouldn't it be really cool to have the first one! I took the old handset home and rigged a cradle for it on the dash of my Austin-Healey "3000" convertible, tying the cord to a knob on the dash. I wired a buzzer through a button to the car battery to use as a "ringtone."
    That evening, with clear skies and temperatures in the upper 80s, my date and I sat in the Austin-Healey, top down, at the Sky View Drive-In Restaurant, she drinking her Clarinet and I my Trumpet (Or was it her Trumpet and my Clarinet?), planning the "introduction" of Florence's first "mobile phone."
    Florence had two drive-in movie theaters in '64, the Palmetto Drive-In Theater and the Circle Drive-In Theater. A drive-in theater seemed an excellent place for our introduction and it was a perfect night for a drive-in movie in a top-down convertible. We chose the Circle that night because that new Alfred Hitchcock movie, Marnie, was playing.
    A quiet scene came up about thirty minutes into the movie, and we made our move. I pressed the buzzer button. It seemed like the loudest buzz in the world that emanated and echoed out over the theater lot! We both nearly jumped out of our seats.
    I picked up the handset and carried on a maybe thirty-second conversation with nobody while my date looked around to see if anybody noticed. The grin on her face when I hung up the handset told it all. According to her, everybody was watching and half were pointing as I carried on the conversation. It was a serious movie, but my date giggled through the whole last hour of it. Okay, I did, too.
    As a footnote: I couldn't tell you what year it was, but my co-worker, Ray Godwin, and I did install the very first mobile phone in South Carolina... in old Eb Willis' brand new Cadillac Convertible. The power supply and transmitter/receiver took up nearly his whole trunk!

Bob Liger

My First Ticket

    At 17 years old, in 1962, I got my first traffic ticket, in Darlington, in a White 1961 348 CID 4 BBL automatic Chevy Impala on my way home from a date in Hartsville about 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, doing 73, according to Patrolman Holloman, in a 55 mph zone.
    Patrolman Holloman, sitting in the passenger side of the Impala filling out the ticket, asked, "You know how fast you were going?"
    "No sir." I answered truthfully. "The dash lights are out and I can't see the speedometer."
    "Seventy-three!" he shouted and he paused... for effect, I guess. "You know  I'm going to have to give you a ticket, don't you?"
    "No, Sir, you don't have to." I said, hoping a little humor might assuage his demeanor.
    "Yes, I do!" he shouted.
    I paid the $15 fine the next day.
    Time passed on, I finished school, got a job, got my own car and got married. In the summer of 1965, my employer sent me to Charleston for a two-week assignment. Linda and I had only been married for about a year and I couldn't leave her behind alone (pun intended), so she went with me.
    Although my employer would pay for a hotel room, we elected to stay with my grandparents, who lived in "West Ashley" across the Ashley River from Charleston proper.
    Having been born and raised in uptown Charleston and having attended the College of Charleston, I was intimately familiar with the "Holy City," so, when the weekend rolled around, there being no Sky View to cruise in Charleston, Linda and I set out to cruise the Piggy Park. Melvin Bessinger's Piggy Park Drive-In Restaurant was Charleston's equivalent of Florence's Sky View at that time, where the coolest guys and gals hung out with the coolest (and usually fastest) cars in town.
    We still had the Austin-Healey 3000 at the time, it was after dark and we had not gone far on our quest for the Piggy Park, when we were pulled over by a West Ashley patrolman. I showed him my license and registration, as requested, and he informed me that he had stopped us because our brake lights were out.
    "I see by your license that you're from Florence." he said.
    I concurred.
    "Then you might know my brother," he said, "Patrolman Holloman."
    Oh, yes sir, I know your brother!

Bob Liger

Bye-Bye Healey

    In the spring of 1965, my wife, Linda, was pretty far along in her pregnancy with our first child. We still had the little 1960 Austin-Healey 3000 that I had when we went on our first date.
    For those of you who aren't familiar with the Austin-Healey, ours was just a couple of inches over four feet in height to the very top of the windshield. Road clearance was a mere three inches. (We had to enter the drive at the Sky View slowly and at an angle to keep from scraping the chassis on the concrete ramp.)
    Needless to say, it was a small car, especially for a pregnant woman, and it should have been no surprise when Linda informed me she couldn't get behind the steering wheel to go to work. She had to have a bigger car!
So, for a small down payment and a not-so-small monthly payment, I bought her a five-year-old Ford Falcon, a cute little light-blue metallic 2-door with 40,000 miles on it, which fit her fine.
    Unfortunately, a house payment and a car payment were a bit much at the time, so the Austin-Healey, which was paid for, had to be sacrificed. A young man from Darlington bought it for a promise to love it as much as we did and enough money to pay off the loan on the Falcon. Bye-bye Healey. Oh, well, maybe we could buy it back from him some day.
    A couple of weeks later, he called to let us know he'd wrecked it. However, it was okay, and he'd already had it repaired and had a 327 CID Chevy V8 engine installed in it. Two more weeks later and he'd totaled it. Bye-bye forever.
    The good news... maybe in a later installment.

Bob Liger

Hurricane Hugo Horror

    The Pontiac Firebird I purchased new just months before had only 3,000 miles on it when hurricane Hugo's eye passed directly between Florence and Columbia as a category 2 hurricane one night in September of 1989. The storm did a lot of damage in Florence, but spared the Sky View Drive-In Restaurant, thank goodness. I was a thousand miles away, literally, in Kansas City, Missouri, in the middle of a two-week training class with AT&T. My wife Linda was in Florence and rode out the hurricane at her parent’s house, only a couple of miles from our own. When I called her after the storm, she was already back at our house, and the conversation went something like this:
    I asked, "Hey, are you okay?"
    "Yes, I'm fine, and our parents are fine." she answered. Well, that's a relief.
    "Was there much damage?"
    "Not too bad. Our parents' houses are okay, but those two maple trees in our front yard are down."
    "What about my car? Is my car okay?" The Firebird was parked in the driveway at the side of the house, and I had covered it before I left.
    "The picture window in the living room is cracked, but there's no water coming in."
    "Okay, well that can be easily fixed. Tape the crack until we can get the glass replaced. How's my car?"
    "There is a bunch of shingles missing in the middle of the roof. Dad says he'll get someone to throw a sheet of plastic over where they're missing until someone can get out here to replace them."
    "How about my car?" I'm getting a bit concerned, now.
    "One of the pecan trees in the back yard was blown over, but it didn't hit anything, so that's no big deal."
    "Okay, but how's my car?" Now I'm getting a little panicky.
    "Um."
    "Yes?"
    "Well, you know those two maple trees that blew down?"
    Okay, now I'm panicking! "Yes?"
    "Well, they blew down on top of your car."
    "WHAT? Ohmygod! How bad is it?"
    "I don't know, all you can see is a little bit of the front fender..., but it looks okay."
    After a week of worrying, when I finally got back to Florence, it looked as though the hurricane had spawned a small twister, which went straight up the middle of our property. As it turned out, the twister had apparently picked the two trees up out of the ground and placed them on top of the Firebird, one tree on each side, leaving a small dent in the top of each rear fender. Other than that, amazingly, probably due to the cover, it didn't even scratch the rest of the car. A couple of weeks later the car was good as new and we were back to cruisin' "the View" in it.

Bob Liger

Sweet Little Plymouth

    My cousin Robert did two tours with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam. When he came home from his first tour, he purchased a used 2.8L slant-6 bronze 1967 (second-generation) "notchback" Plymouth Barracuda.
    Robert and I grew up together and are to this day more like brothers than cousins, so it came as no surprise that before leaving for his second tour, he asked me to take care of the Barracuda for him while he was gone.
    It was a sweet little car. I didn't want to put a lot of miles on it, but didn't want to just let it sit, either. I mean, after all, the gas might go bad, gaskets could dry rot, the battery would certainly die, the tires would probably go flat, rodents might chew up the wiring and upholstery, and so on, right? With all those horrors in mind, I decided it was imperative that I, at least, cruise the Sky View Drive-In Restaurant in it on the weekends.
    By the end of Robert's tour, I was practically in love with the little car. Before he got home to claim it again, in respect to the car and Robert's service in Vietnam, I took it in for a complete tune-up and detailing. It cost me almost a hundred dollars... no small piece of change at the time, but it was worth it. About a week after taking it home to his parents house in Charlotte, he sold it. Had I known, I'd have bought it from him. Oh, well, as Steven Wright once said, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

Bob Liger

Finally!

    In 1967 my wife, Linda, and I were struck with the need for another car. We found a low-mileage 1964˝ Mustang six-cylinder automatic. Linda loved it, I hated it. She drove it while I drove our worn out 1961 Falcon. We eventually traded the Falcon in on a new car for Linda, and I inherited the Mustang. I didn't like it, but it was pretty popular with the younger crowd and we had three daughters who'd be driving soon, so I decided to hang on to it for them. The eldest daughter didn't want it, got a job and bought herself a late model Mustang convertible. The second daughter didn't want it, got a job and bought herself a Toyota Celica GT. The third daughter didn't want it, got a job and bought herself a little BMW 2002. Linda didn't want it and traded the Falcon in for a brand new 1987 Chevy Cavalier RS. I didn't want the Mustang, either, but until the Cavalier was paid for, I was stuck with it. Finally in 1989, the Cavalier was paid for, it was my turn and, after cruisin' the View in the Mustang for 21 years,  I traded it in for a brand new Pontiac Firebird. Finally!
    I learned a few years later that one of the used car salesmen at the Pontiac dealership had wanted my Mustang to restore for his daughter, who would be driving in a few years. Curious about it, I tracked down the the salesman and asked if he still had it. He said no, he didn't have it, but I wouldn't believe what happen to it... He had parked the Mustang in his garage and bought a wrecked one to use for parts to restore my old one. Still in the garage, he had restored all of the worn parts, repainted it, put brand new tires on it and was about to have it reupholstered, when a man lost control of his car, left the highway, went through the side of the salesman's garage and totaled the Mustang right there in the garage. A most unusual way to go, and I felt sorry for the salesman, but, just between you and me, I don't think his daughter would've wanted it, either... and I don't miss it at all.

Bob Liger

Dream On

    I'd dreamed of owning a '57 Chevy since I was about sixteen. Around October of 2001, I was offered a good deal on a 1957 Chevy BelAir 2-Dr Hardtop. But before my wife would agree to us purchasing it, I had to convince her it was a good investment and that we could make a few bucks off of it sometime in the future.
    The body was completely stock, Larkspur Blue with an India Ivory top, but it had a suped-up 400 CID small block Chevy engine under the hood with an upgraded drivetrain to match and disc brakes all around. Still, the car had a hundred little things wrong with it. Correcting the hundred little things gave me something to do in my spare time, but the real fun was seeing all the heads turn when my wife and I were in it, cruising the Sky View.
    It wasn't long before my wife grew tired of it and reminded me often that it was an investment, and she was anxious to realize a profit from it. Growing tired of the reminders, I decided to run an ad for it, just to calm her anxiety, though I didn't tell her that to ensure that it didn't sell, I set the price at double what we had in it.
    Got a call the next day from a man who lived a hundred miles away. He wanted to see the car. This was not good. He was not familiar with my hometown, so I agreed to meet him with the car the next day at a shopping center just off the main highway coming into town. He brought his wife with him and it was obvious that she was not happy. So, with the unhappy wife and the price set high, I was fairly confident there would be no sale. He made no commitment and said he'd be in touch. Yeah, right.
    I was first in line in the "straight" lane at the stop light leaving the shopping center, when a car full of teenaged girls pulled up in the "left turn" lane next to me. The girl riding shotgun leaned out of the window and said, "We like your car." ...I said to myself right then, "Man, I do not want to sell this car!"
    The man called me that night to arrange the purchase. In a fit of conscience, I knocked a thousand dollars off of the price, and two days later he drove away with it. Oh, well, I've dreamed of owning a Model A hotrod since I was twelve...

Bob Liger

Three on the Corner

    One day in 1965, as I arrived home from my work as a member of a Southern Bell Tel &Tel Company construction crew, filthy from head to steel-toed boot, my wife greeted me at the door. She, being very pregnant with our first child and unable to sit comfortably behind the steering wheel of our only car, a 1960 Austin-Healey, pleaded with me to take her to the Florence Mall right then to pick up something there that she desperately needed. I assented, but on condition she allow me to make a quick change out of my foul work clothes into some clean ones, which I did, and we were off. It was a familiar route to the Mall (usually right on our way to the Sky View, a mere block away), east on West Palmetto Street, with a left turn onto West Evans Street then a right into the Mall parking lot.
    The return trip was equally as familiar... with one exception. In 1965, West Evans Street dead-ended at West Palmetto Street, where we had always had to stop at the STOP sign before making a left turn or yield-right-of-way at the YIELD sign if turning to the right. As I made my right and passed the sign, I got a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye, and in that instant, two things became shockingly apparent: the first was that the YIELD sign had been replaced since my last visit, to a STOP sign, and the second was that there were, I kid you not, three South Carolina Highway Patrolmen, apparently on some sort of a break, standing outside of their cars in the front of the closed-for-the-day service station on the very street corner I was skirting. Three!
    Apprising my wife of the situation, I continued, "...And Honey, they are drawing straws to see which one gets to ticket me." And the winner was - on my bumper faster than John Force's funny car - a very young and polite patrolman, who asked for my license and registration (and observed that I "had a lot of nerve.") As I reached for my wallet, two things became shockingly apparent: the first was that my wallet was not in my pocket, and the second was that it was in the pants I had hurriedly changed out of, before heading out for the Mall.
    After explaining the situation to the officer, i.e., my wife being very pregnant with our first child and unable to comfortably sit behind the steering wheel, blah, blah, blah, he (after observing that I "had a lot of nerve") let me off with a warning. That's right, he let me off with a warning. After running a stop sign in front of three patrolmen and having no license and registration on me at the time, I personally would have thrown myself under the jail, but he assured me that he would look me up in their records and that if I didn't have a license and registration, he would personally find me and throw me under the jail.

Bob Liger

Too Rough

    It crouched three inches from the ground, so you had to enter the Sky View Drive-In Restaurant at an angle to keep from scraping the bottom. It had a 130 horsepower inline six with twin carbs and a four-speed transmission with electric overdrive. Yep, my little Austin-Healey 3000 was no slouch, and I drove the heck out of it. Little did I know, I was being a little too rough on it.
    It was about this time of the year early one morning in 1966 I was commuting from Florence to Hartsville, about twenty-five miles of paved country roads, scenic white-columned farm houses, shiny silver grain silos, red tractors, green and yellow farm equipment and endless fields of snow-white cotton ready for harvest on a beautiful balmy day, in my fabled Healey, cruising, top down, radio blasting, unsuspecting.
    Just a few miles short of my destination, I came upon a stopped school bus. You cannot legally pass a stopped school bus in South Carolina, so I waited patiently while it picked up a few students. When it took off, I put the pedal to the metal and popped the clutch. The engine revved, but the Healey just sat there. I tried changing gears and pumping the clutch, but it still did not budge. I switched off the motor and pushed the car onto the side of the road and was standing there scratching my head, when one of my work buddies also commuting to Hartsville spotted me and pulled over.
    My buddy and I decided that rather than be late for work, I would go on to the office with him and call someone to tow the car to a garage for repair. Ever leave your car on the side of a country road? Scary! Anyway, we called the garage of a gentleman who had just returned from U.S. military service where he was trained as a diesel mechanic and had just recently opened a garage on the other side of town.
    He called back an hour later to let me know he had the Healey in his garage. I did not expect the car to be ready by the time I got off work that day, but I called before bumming a ride back to Florence and it was ready. When I asked what had been repaired, he said, "You will not believe it. I will show you when you come to pick up the car."
    When I got to the garage, he showed me my Healey's old clutch plate; I had wrung the middle out of it, popping the clutch one time too many, I guess. He confessed he could not find an OEM replacement clutch plate, but had installed a brand new heavy-duty truck clutch instead. "Let me see you break that!" he quipped.
    The real shocker was the low price tag: $25. That's right, pick up, tow across town, parts and labor, never had any more trouble with it... $25. Okay, that was 1966, but $25 was still quite a bargain, even then.

Bob Liger

Beach Race

    It was the summer of 1960 at the Blaney Drag Strip in Elgin, SC, the only NHRA-sanctioned quarter mile strip in South Carolina at the time, that I attended my first drag racing event as a member of the Florence Rods and Customs Club. I was not old enough to cruise The Sky View Drive-In Restaurant on my own, only fifteen, so I couldn't drive and had to bum a ride with another member. I ended up attending every Saturday race they had that summer, never saw a professional driver, just regular guys, and I loved every minute of it.
    I can't remember now, when I last went to a real dragstrip, but about ten years ago, my grandson, Jackson, brought all of the excitement back to me by a purely serendipitous act, drag racing two little cars of the type you pull back to wind up, then let go to run. He was three years old and had no idea what drag racing was. I joined him. We were on our annual family vacation at the beach at the time, my wife, three daughters and their husbands, five grandchildren and me. Jackson had about twenty of the little pull-back cars, so pretty soon, the whole family had joined in. We had so much fun with it that it became a tradition, we improved on it each year and in a few years, "Beach Race Computerized HO Scale Drag Racing" was born...
    We have a 1/64 scale quarter mile drag strip consisting of twenty sections of AFX HO scale slot car track (set up and take down in ten minutes) and thirty-two Johnny Lightning X-Traction® slot cars, so far. With Start switches we built into the first section, and MPH and Finish switches we built into the eighteeth section, the switches are connected to a laptop computer that sits over the track facing the "drivers." The laptop screen has the usual drag racing "Christmas tree" staging lights; when the green lights light, the drivers trigger their cars, the cars trip the switches and the computer displays the drivers' Reaction Times (RT), Elapsed Times (ET) and their scale miles-per-hour (MPH). We developed the computer program ourselves. The car bodies get switched every year, so nobody knows which car is the fastest until race day. We hold double eliminations and the winner gets to take the Beach Race trophy home to display on his mantle until the next year. This year, the trophy is MINE!... maybe.

Bob Liger

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Got an interesting or amusing true story about your car(s) you'd like us to publish in CRUISIN' "THE VIEW"? E-mail it to us at cruisersall@palmettocruisers.org.

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