During the next two summers we hit the race tracks when we could afford it, but mostly we just hung out and partied. There were three events that hit us all very hard over this period of time. The first involved one of my co-conspirators in the ‘blue movie’ caper in high school. Of the other likely suspects was a lovable character by the name of David Barham. He and I did a lot of things together during our high school years. One was splicing about ten seconds into a geography movie. Everyone knew we were involved as we had been showing the movie in his basement, for a fee, for a whole weekend. Nearly every guy that played sports in our school and several others had seen the movie, yet no one said a thing to the powers that be when it accidentally ended up in an assembly one Friday morning. Needless to say they tried very hard to discover the creators of the excitement, but it eventually faded away. David played right behind me on the defensive line in football. At the time I was the left defensive end. Barney, as he was known, played corner linebacker. Every time there was a play that came around our end there was a blood curdling scream as he came hurtling through the line to make or assist in a tackle. He scared the shit out of me every time it happened! If I went to the Capital Theater on a Friday night you could tell Barney was there by his high distinctive laugh that just went on and on. We skied together in the winter and water skied in the summer. We chased girls together all year long. Barney was also a first class musician. He played bassoon in the school orchestra and sang and played bass in his own group that played all the local high school dances and any other gig they could find. It was on the road trip of one of these gigs that Barney, two of the band members and one of their girlfriends were killed on the way home in Barney’s new Chevy convertible. It was very early on a Sunday morning. They were returning from Gravenhurst where they had played a dance the night before. Just south of Trout Creek, the same town that I had found my three-window-coupe, Barney pulled out to pass several cars. At the end of the line was a yellow school bus. As Barney pulled past the bus it turned left into a side road. The left front fender of the bus caught the right rear bumper of Barney’s car. The slight impact caused Barney to lose control. The car swerved then dove for the left ditch. It stopped dead when it hit a steep culvert next to a driveway. My Mother woke me early the next morning to tell me of the accident. She had heard about it on the radio. It did not take me long to find out Barney was involved. Several of us drove down to the crash site where there was still wreckage in the ditch. We saw the car in a local wrecker’s yard. I could never figure out what a school bus was doing out at two in the morning on a Sunday. The ride home was long and lonely.
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