"Up 'til Now, I''ve Never Been In A CarThat Did 120mph.!"

"we don't need no stinkin' badges!"

 Good "we don't need no stinkin' badges!"Sunday Morning, all bodies.

In between a Southshore birthday party, grocery shopping and other silly running around, I was able to resketch this Chevy badge from the Sixties. I started a sketch, months ago, of the badge as our mechanic was working on the van's brakes knowing full well that I probably wasn't gonna finish it. So, I took a photo of it and until just the other day, found both. I decided to clean up the original sketch. James, the mechanic, told me it was from a 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS.

I never could afford even the insurance on a car like that, but I sure did lust after it.

As it turns out, in my first semester in college, I hitched a ride after the weekends with a friend of a friend. This was in 1968/69 way before the Interstate was put in elevated over the swamp land from LaPlace through Pontchatoula and into Hammond.

Naturally, kids attending school with no parental guidance, know no rules. On one early Monday morning jaunt to school, driving the deadly swamp on one side of the road and even more swamp on the other, on LA#51, took about an hour or so.

I'd never been in a car, up until that point, that did 120mph.

At the time, I was in the passenger front seat when my high school football buddy decided he wanted to drive the owner's car and see just how much muscle it really had. I should have traded seats with someone in the back.

Raul Chavez got himself, along with other football players from that graduating class, a scholarship to play for SLC as a linebacker. Raul was really good with his intensity and mobility at that position. It gave me, the right side linebacker, full reign to go after the football basically disregarding all defensive strategies.

But, Raul was crazy... REALLY, especially if he had one too many at a bar... ANY bar.

We survived the speedy adventure. I don't think Raul was ever allowed back in that black two door beauty, but, in time, it really didn't matter. In our second semester of college, as I recall, Raul tried to walk, in the night, across the "expressway" at the Carrollton overpass. He never made it.

His funeral was the first I ever attended from my own generation... In time, there would be more, but the black Super Sport beauty was now always something special to me... even the badge!

Copyright 2023/Ben Bensen III