APPALACHIAN TALES: REMEMBERING AN OLD FRIEND

By Grant McGee

                I saw a 1972 Dodge Demon the other day.  It reminded me of an old high school friend, Mark Woolferd.

                Woolferd was more my buddy Catfish’s friend than mine.  On any given Saturday night during those high school years he and Catfish would roll up to my house in the Woolferd’s shiny, black Demon with its glossy silver mag wheels, jacked-up rear-end and racing slicks.  Then we’d drive off looking for girls in cars to talk to.

I hardly ever got to talk to the girls.  I think my buds had me along for comic relief.

                Woolferd liked his car seats to be as shiny as the paint job on his Demon so he would treat the seats with a silicone spray.  Every time Woolferd turned left or right I’d skitter across the back seat and slam into a side of the interior.

                I had my very first big-time crush during those days; on Rhonda Sue, the preacher’s daughter.

                “McGee has a crush on Rhonda Sue,” Catfish told Woolferd while we were out one night.

                Woolferd hit the brakes.

                “Swar to God,” said Woolferd.  If you don’t understand Southern, “swar” means “swear.”  He said “Swar to God” in about every sentence.  “Swar to God, McGee, a crush?  On ‘Monster Woman’?”

                “Monster Woman?” I asked.

                “Swar to God,” Woolferd continued.  “Sixth grade, I’m mowing a lawn and Monster Woman comes runnin’ out of a house with an iron skillet and wangs me upside the head, swar to God.”

                Well, much like the dog that chases the pickup and wouldn’t know what to do with it if he caught it, I never went out with Rhonda Sue.  But I did get to talk to her.  I asked her about what Woolferd said.

                “He deserved it,” she said.  “When we were in elementary school I developed faster than the other girls and he was always making fun of me.  So here he is mowing the lawn next door to this house where I’m babysitting and he’s yelling things at me.  I got madder and madder so I grabbed a skillet, went outside and smacked him upside the head.”

                Woolferd isn’t around anymore.  Through “The Great and Powerful Internet” I’ve learned that Woolferd has “gone on to Glory.”

                But I remember those days when I see a Dodge Demon.

    Or an iron skillet.

                                                          -30-