The Summer Wind

Dickie Massey and his two friends didn't show up for school Monday morning and students were speculating about it something fierce. The teachers couldn't care less if they were out sick since they were troublemakers and were never found on the school's honor roll. The fact was that all three members of Dickie and company were rather poor students academically. Although they weren't really poor economically, they were far from well-off. Still, it was common for a good number of high school juniors and seniors to have their own cars. Very few of them were new, but they were usually quite decent, and after a few adaptations and decorations on the part of the student-owners, they became treasured objects of pride and joy. The fact that the cars provided a hitherto never-comtemplated degree of student freedom didn't hurt any.

The long and seemingly-endless county roads that are straight as a line and boast little traffic in many states of the U.S. can be thrilling to young people, especially on warm summer nights with plenty of an ice-cold beverage of some sort on hand. The car windows are down, the refreshing wind is blowing through the car and keeping its occupants cheerful, and whatever rock music popular at the time is blasting away on the radio. If life isn't good right now, one thinks, it never will be.

So that's what Dickie and those two friends of his were doing on that Saturday night, we learned”flying across half the county with the summer wind blowing through their wild hair and the music on the radio blaring. They guzzled down cold Pabsts or Buds and sang and screamed. It was their home county, but they weren't entirely familiar with every single blacktop. Obviously, it turned out.

Dennis Pate was the student with the real information and the school crowds formed round him all day Monday. The incident had occurred on a paved county road that passed the front of his house. When his mom and dad and he heard the sirens of the police cruisers and ambulances, they got in their dark-green Ford pickup and followed.

The scene of the macabre accident was far from the town so the police officers didn't bother always to put up the yellow tape that kept on-lookers at a boring distance. Besides, everybody knows everybody else practically in small communities. It was dark that Saturday night. It was partly cloudy and there hadn't been any bright moon shining. The boys in the vehicle had been flying, going approximately 110 mph at 10 p.m. it was estimated. What they didn't realize was how close they were to another county road that ran perpendicular. Or that the "runway they were joyously speeding on ended at that other county road where there was a high earthen embankment at the end.

They slammed into that steep embankment at 110 mph that dark, cloudy Saturday night. Head on. It was the last night on this earth for all three of them, Dickie Massey and his two friends. Their last summer wind. Their last troubled grade in school. For us with our "better brains, it was a lesson: We weren't immortal after all. A little faulty judgement or sheer carelessness and we, too, could be bound for glory. Or, horrors, infamy.

THE END of The Summer Wind