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Southern memoir: Parking
by Thomas Givens
Parking. When you think of the word nowadays, you mean putting your car in a place designated for that purpose, whether it is the mall, shopping center, or downtown. But back in the 50's when I was in high school and college, PARKING had another meaning--using any motorized vehicle available to you for whatever romantic activities you had in mind.
I don't even want to think about what young people do these days when they feel amorous. Do any youngsters live in dorms anymore? My youngest, while still in undergraduate school, moved out of the frat house into an apartment. Not enough privacy. So I suppose that satisfaction of base desires is done with more ease and comfort than in my day.
Back then, the only way two young people could seclude themselves from those bothersome adults and other prying eyes, was the automobile. Unless you double-dated, you and your best gal or date were completely alone in those confines. After the movie or dance, drive-in for burgers and coke, you went to a secluded place and parked to take care of whatever business you had in mind, whether preplanned or impromptu.
Now, my area of expertise in that area is confined to Sunflower and Bolivar counties in Mississippi. I went to Linn School, which was a country school, through all 12 grades. We could park anywhere out there.
I wasted my freshman year in college at Sunflower Junior College, now Mississippi Delta Community College. There, female students were not allowed in automobiles other than those owned and driven by their parents. If you had a date for the movies you had to walk with her to downtown Moorhead. God forbid if you tried to hold her hand and got caught. You could not hold hands or sit on a bench together on campus. You could sit together in the student center.
I transferred to Delta State my sophomore year, November l956. There, a whole new world opened up. Had my own car then, and the only restriction concerning the opposite sex with regard to campus rules was a 10:00 curfew week nights and 12:00 on weekends. Course the young ladies got around that by saying they were staying with friends in town.
The common place for parking when I was in college was "Hatchery Road." Odd name, but supposedly there was a chicken hatchery out there at one time. Anyway, the road was gravel with ditches on both sides amongst cotton and soybean fields.
Hatchery Road (now Bishop Road) was bumper-to-bumper on Friday and Saturday nights, semi-private, but not really private. Try parking there now.
We also had the Chief Drive-in. Some people actually went there to see the movies. Common name then for all drive-ins was "passion pits." This was OK, but still semi-private--while engrossed you never knew if some guy on the way to the refreshment stand might stop for a peek. Fogging up the windows was the only solution.
The most private place for young amorous couples in the Delta back then was the turnrow. For the uninitiated, a turnrow is actually a small road at the end of a row of cotton or soy beans where a tractor turns around after having plowed a row. This was just about as private as you could get. You could access the fields from any farm to market road and drive just as far back as you wanted.
Now, I spent quite a bit of time on Hatchery and at the Chief Drive-in, but my Daddy rented what is known as the Wiley place on Old Ruleville Road, right south of Dockery. Excellent access from Ruleville Road and very private, depending on how far back you drove. I frequented this spot so often the tenant farmer who lived there turned me in. He reported to my dad that a car kept driving back there and he thought they was up to something.
He was right.
Contact Judge Tom at Delta Judge
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Judge, you did not tell all the story. WHAT DID YOU DO WHILE YOU WERE THERE? Like most writers, you left out the best part. See, nowday you can express yourself and use a few words like hell or damn. Tom, just kidding I too had some good times on that road and now I live one house off that road.
FROM: Tom Fisher of Indiana
Great article! And we Yankees also referred to the drive in movies as the "passion pit." We also engaged in another somewhat nefarious practice we called "bushwacking." This involved sneaking up on people parking with the intent of spoiling the fun! Yeah -- as I think about it now, that was a rotten thing to do. Good way to get killed, too!
FROM: Don Drane
Hatchery Road, so named after Mr. Cork's Hatchery, which later became a dairy barn, was also Hot and Heavy (pun intended) 10 years later when I was in high school and college. The best memory, well not exactly, but the one I can publish, is that one night all of us were hanging out in front of the Varsity Drive-In, and somebody came screechin' into the parking lot screaming, "Follow Me!"
We all jumped in 5 cars and followed him to Hatchery Road. He stopped short of 'the scene' and shined his lights on what appeared to be a fully nude body laid up against a phone pole right beside the ditch alongside Hatchery. Scared the living daylights out of every one of us and we slung gravel halfway back to Cleveland.
Later we found out that the guy had carefully posed a department store mannekin upside the pole knowing we would all be scared to death. I suppose we got even with him. I think that phone pole had 'Tom Givens' carved in it, but I don't remember there being any notches beside the name.
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