I put my redhead on the ground and clicked open her traveling case. I looked up when I heard the sound of a car engine. I saw Cliff’s familiar souped-up black and white sedan pulling into park. I took a moment to admire his 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. The advertising for it proclaimed, "Sweet, Smooth and Sassy!” and for once those advertisers told the truth. It had a V-8 engine and something they called Turboglide. It made the car quick and responsive. Did I mention Ramjet fuel injection and 1 h.p. per cubic inch? The overall frame was strengthened and ball joints redesigned to complement the heavier body. For better handling, the rear springs were located further outboard. The inside was impressive, but the outside was more so. For this model, Chevrolet switched from 15 to 14 inch wheels making it longer and lower. It looked sexy. The front bumpers extended over the headlights and then there were these rear fins that really gave it its unique silhouette. The new ventilation system kept passengers cool as the car looked. Add to that the Twin Rockets, the unified bumper with its fine mesh background and you had a complete winner. If I had to pick another car to drive and had all the choices in the world, it would have been Cliff’s. The only thing cooler than his car was Cliff himself.

I was sort of was surprised to see Cliff since he had mentioned last week about going to visit some relatives in Detroit. I didn’t know he’d be back so soon, but he was and I was glad to see him. He got out of his car and flexed his muscular arms. He had on a short-sleeved shirt that allowed him to flash his biceps at will – and a pair of black, studded jeans that had some leather trimming. If you needed to learn the latest in male fashion trends, you just needed to find Cliff and take a look at what he was wearing. He was like, like, the black Elvis or something. Didn’t I mention that he’s black? Well, he is and everyone in Shucktown adores him. I’m no exception. Cliff is everyone’s hero.

Cliff’s only two-years older than me, but seems way more mature. He always has. Course now he seemed downright sage for last year he just back from a tour of duty in which he had nobly served his country overseas. No offense to anyone, but that was an honor that I wanted to avoid and yet it loomed in front of most of us as pretty much a certainty. I had been classified 4F for my asthmatic condition that was pretty well non-existent, but there it was in my medical records. It was thanks to my overprotective momma and a doctor that was willing to go along with her hysteria for fear of making her even more hysterical. The birth of this illness happened as a result of my playing with my cousin Rusty when I was 10. I coughed a few times and it didn’t take long for my mom to deduce that I had asthma. The next day, she whisked me off to the doctor and told him my actual symptoms – which was coughing 10 times – and then embellished the rest by taking medical details straight out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The doctor never even examined me or asked me why I was coughing. I could have told him that Rusty and I were playing Dead Man – a game that as far as we knew – we had invented. I was doing my best to hide and play dead in the dining room when Rusty entered. He hadn’t seen me because I turned the lights out so he wouldn’t see me. Because my plan had worked so well and because I was playing dead and therefore couldn’t move – it was part of the rules of our game – he stepped right on my stomach. Rusty was a light as a feather so it tickled more than knocked the wind out of me. The way he reacted – like a girl stepping in doo-doo – got me to laughing and caused me to swallow a bit of saliva that had accumulated in my mouth. This series of events caused the brief coughing fit. That and the fact I had a cold the previous week and wasn’t all the way over it. Two coughs in the doctor’s office seemed to seal the deal as my momma gave him that, “I told you so” look. He promptly diagnosed me with asthma and growing up, I rode that puppy for everything it was worth. It got me out of family picnics and gym. No smelly gym shorts for me. Never even broke a sweat cause I was always sitting on a bench watching my fellow school monkeys perform gymnastical stunts, but Cliff didn’t have any physical anomalies so instead of just waiting for the inevitable, he enlisted in the marines. That made him an ex-marine and that was tantamount to having carte blanche around these parts.