There was a place out of town on the old highway 90 where sporting events took place on steamy summer Friday nights. Not like football or baseball or golf. Like drag racing. The old highway was a two-laner made from concrete and it was straight for a long way. Miles of empty concrete. The new highway took all the traffic a few miles away and kids with hot rods took the quarter-mile of the ready-built drag strip, with a marked quarter mile.

Usually, there were bets, sometimes deep. I heard of kids racing for pink slips. And there was rivalry between groups and home territories. And there were fans. I was out there one night when a friend was going to race some kid from Biloxi. Most of us gathered at the start line. It was easy to find the start. Rubber marks on top of rubber marks across the width of the road marked the staging area. And all of our cars were there pulled off the side of the highway. It was quite a party of kids, drinking beer, smoking, (all manner of smokeables), and blasting car radios all the way up to ten.

We watched and cheered as our boy won the first race. Bets got bigger, and tension rose a notch anticipating the second pass of a scheduled three rounds, of quarter-mile contests. And we all kept an ear and eye out for unwanted cars to invade the drag strip. We were especially cognizant of sirens and flashing lights of a State Trooper or local cop.

They raced again and our guy got smoked at the line and lost. On to round three. As they were staging for the last run, someone yelled, “Blah, blah, blah, COPS!” Kids scattered all back to their rides to escape, The two kids racing did again, blasting off, not to see who won, but who could get away. I jumped in the ride I came in as we were slinging roadside gravel hitting the concrete to get away figuring whoever was the last to get away would be the one got caught. I didn’t want to be the one got caught and we made it. We drove to Gautier as fast as we could, then went to the new highway and drove back to town as sedately as an 18-year kid can.

I don’t know if anyone got busted that night, but I heard of kids getting busted out at the Quarter Mile. Later I got surprised. I was at a party quite a few miles from the race track we had, and we heard some guys out there doing burnouts and then racing. It was loud! How did we ever get away with any racing? It was loud and left marks on the road. There was no way to explain that away. But kids have serious tunnel vision and can’t see the whole picture.

I always wondered how my mom and dad knew when I was bad. Later on, the signs were clear to me. Our world is comprised of our immediate surroundings when we are little, and only experience shows me that the outside world will step in sometimes, and many times it’s not a pleasant experience.