At Walker, as is or was I suppose the case with most high schools, the parking lot was the social center in the mornings before the 8:20 bell rang. We would get to school about an hour early, and I don’t really remember leaning on the fenders or sitting on the hoods. That was what we did at McDonald’s and Dairy Queen. We would sit in our cars, usually in pairs or groups, drinking Cokes we had picked up at the store on the way in, eating honey buns, chips or some other nutritious breakfast, smoking cigarettes and listening to music on our eight track tape players or spun by Gary McKee on Quixie in Dixie. Some couples would steam up the windows in unsubtle PDAs, but that was generally reserved for date nights in places such as Cops Only.
Cops Only was an infamous parking spot off of Cecilia Drive. Someone had painted “Cops Only” in big white letters on the pavement. I don’t know what Cops Only meant, but there were no houses on the street back then and it was completely secluded. According to Google Maps, the name of the street is Whitehill Way. I never knew it by that, just Cops Only.
The car was, then as always, THE teenage status symbol. If you had a slick ride, you wanted to be seen in it. That’s why you would sit in your car. One of the most glorious feelings of that time was pulling into the parking lot in a brand new used car and parking it in a prominent place for all to see and admire. That was a moment I had anticipated for three long years while my father and I were building my Dune Buggy. I never got to realize the experience, however, as it was sold out from under me during my sixteenth summer.
After hanging out in the parking lot for a while, we would head up to the building. Once in the building, there were different spots where different groups of kids met and congregated while waiting for the bell to go to homeroom. Ours was around the air conditioning unit by the front hall side door. Outside the door was the steps that led to the top part of the parking lot. At the top of the parking lot was Smoke City.
Smoke City was called such because it evolved from a bunch of guys hanging out at the top of the parking lot. They would stop drivers pulling into the lot in muscle cars and encourage them to light up the back tires. The parking lot itself was a narrow strip less than a quarter mile long with a turnaround at the end. The spaces were marked on the side next to the school. Everybody backed into the spaces in the morning, because trying to back out of a space at the end of the school day was next to impossible. Others would parallel park along the opposite curb, as you can see from the attached image, c. 1968. Thus, the area of pavement between the parked cars was very narrow. How a car was never hit from a Smoke City participant, I will never know.
The heyday of Smoke City was the spring of ’71. This was nearing the end of the muscle car era, but you could buy a race car right off of the showroom floor. There would be a steady stream of cars pulling into the lot, stopping while the Pit Crew poured bleach on the ground in front of the tires. Then, revving up their monster mills, they would put on a screeching display of smoke and burning rubber, much to the delight of the cheering Pit Crew and spectators gathered on the hill between the school and the parking lot. Someone even painted “Smoke City” in big white letters on the pavement, ala “Cops Only.” Some of the cars I remember vividly were Mark Watkins’ burgundy 302 z28 Camaro, Rick Jones’ black SS Chevelle and Bob McWhorter’s green Cobra Torino.
The girls got in on the action, too. Peggy Frazier could light up the tires with the best of them in her yellow Comet GT, as well as Tina Ward in her beautiful silver Dodge Charger. But the car I remember the most and the true star of Smoke City was, at least to me, a kid named Bobby Miller. He had a red ’69 GTO that was an absolute beast. He would wave off the Pit Crew and the bleach and rev up his 400 cubic inch engine. The car would sit still for a few seconds with a cumulous cloud of bluish white smoke billowing up from the rear before the tires started to scream and the big red Pontiac roared down the parking lot.
My buddy Chip and I would walk out the side door of the building, watch the activity for a little bit. We would then go back in and take our place on the air conditioning unit, fifteen year old sophomores dreaming of the following year when we would have our drivers licenses and hot rods and be among the heroes of Smoke City.
That never happened, not because he got a Karmann Ghia and I got a Pinto, but because after the spring of ’71 Smoke City kind of went away. Maybe it was because the Muscle Car era was coming to a close. Maybe it was because of the times were changing. It certainly wasn’t because the faculty or the cops put a stop to it. There weren’t any turf wars from rival schools coming in. I’m sure the Pit Crew would have welcomed some of the ground pounders from Gordon and East Atlanta. As long as they could lay a double strip of rubber halfway down the parking lot, it didn’t matter where they were from. There were never any Principals, Assistant Principals, faculty members or coaches down there trying to break things up, either. I don’t remember any warnings or admonitions coming over the homeroom loudspeaker during the morning announcements. They were content to let a bunch of teenagers engage in what was really, in the grand scheme of things, a lot of harmless fun.
I remember the last time burned rubber. I have told this story before, but it never gets old so humor me. One day when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I picked my mother up from work, which was close to our house. We were sitting at the red light at Highway 42 and Rex Road in my black ’69 Mach 1. When the light turned green, something came over me. I stomped the gas and dumped the clutch. The car sat still for a couple of seconds boiling the tires, then took off down the road burning rubber with an ear piercing scream. Momma was beating me on the arm and hollering at me to “SLOW THIS DAMN THING DOWN!!!!,” which for her was very strong language. I hit second gear and the tires barked again, the four barrel carb growling and the glass packs roaring. About a mile down the road I slowed down and we rode home in silence. I think she was in shock and unable to speak. When we got home she got out of the car, slammed the door and stomped unsteadily into the house in a huff. About a half an hour later, she came into my room. She had regained her composure and could now talk. She told me she wasn’t going to tell my Daddy, but hoped I didn’t drive like that anymore because I could get a ticket, lose my license and Mr. Jones would have to cancel my insurance. I apologized, gave her a hug, and assured her that I would never drive like that again with her in the car.
It wasn’t long after that I sold my Mach 1 and bought a ’73 Super Beetle. I certainly wasn’t going to lay any rubber in a Beetle, Super or not. I drove that car for fifteen years before selling it after I inherited my father’s ’74 El Camino. The El Camino was an automatic and wouldn’t really burn the tires anyway. By the time rolled around that I finally got a car that would lay rubber, a Porsche 944, the urge to do so was long gone. I was more interested in hearing the growling hum of the the fine German engine, going through the gears and eating up the road like spaghetti… Still Cruisin’! –J.