Author’s Note: The names in this column have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent and the outright guilty. This column may or may not be a true story. Thankfully no cell phone cameras existed at the time…
Let’s start with three friends, we’ll call them Jim, Dan and Eric. They were all students at Penn State sometime in the late 1980s.
Jim was dating a girl, we’ll call her Kim, who went to school in South Carolina. So, dangling a road trip to a warmer climate and the chance to stay in an apartment with four girls who went to the University of South Carolina, Jim talked Dan and Eric into a spring break road trip.
As luck would have it, Dan’s dad, we’ll call him Chaz, was the proud owner of an Oldsmobile 98. It was spacious and roomy enough for the road trip, and with serious street cred.
You may be asking about the “street cred” of an Oldsmobile 98 in the 1980s. In the spring of 1987 Jim and Dan drove to Bethlehem to see the Beastie Boys in Stabler Arena. The opening act was a still largely unknown group Public Enemy—with Chuck D and Flavor Flav. Within a day Jim was in City Lights Records in State College to buy Public Enemy’s debut album “Yo! Bum Rush the Show.”
The opening song was “You’re Gonna Get Yours” with Chuck D rapping about his Oldsmobile 98 and a refrain that repeated “Suckas to the side, I know you hate my Ninety-eight. You’re gonna get yours.”
The three lads, all 19 years old, packed up the Oldsmobile with their clothes and a lot of contraband: copious amounts of alcoholic beverages they would be transporting across state lines. To avoid breakage, they packed bottles by wrapping them in shirts, towels and sweatshirts in their duffel bags.
In the 1980s navigation meant paper maps and no cellphones. So armed with a bunch of maps, a cooler of sodas and snacks and their suitcases, they set off on the trek.
Hoping to make friends with the girls they’d be staying with in South Carolina, the boys were also taking a large posterboard that Eric had designed to make fake IDs—Pennsylvania drivers’ licenses.
In the 1980s it was very easy to produce fake Pennsylvania IDs. There were no holograms or bar codes to scan. Eric was an engineering student, among the top 1% at Penn State. Using calipers and precise ratio measurements Eric designed a perfect board to stand next to for the ID picture. He’d also gotten the book used by bouncers that gave the keys to codes, driver’s license numbers and how to spot fake IDs. His design was nearly flawless.
Jim was a non-drinker but was underage drinking-adjacent enough to know the risks involved in this trip. But heading down it would be important to arrive bearing gifts of both alcohol and fake IDs for them.
They started out early on the long trip. Around 9 a.m. they crossed the Maryland border at a rest area where Dan and Eric decided to start drinking vodka and orange juice. Non-drinking Jim was often the designated driver in the road trip lineup.
It was slow-going in the era of the 55 mph speed limit. But a few states had upped it to 65. Not far from the destination of Columbia they zipped past a South Carolina state trooper on I-20 near Camden going 75, not realizing the limit had dropped from 65 to 55.
Given that Dan and Eric had been drinking since the Maryland border, this was a tense situation.
Officer Cassidy approached the vehicle and asked Jim to get out of the car and come back to his cruiser. As Jim sat in the passenger seat, the trooper asked him where they were heading and why they were there.
In a thick southern accent, he asked “Do y’all drive like that up there in Pennsylvania?”
Jim, mindful that a respectful tone might be critical in avoiding a night in jail, answered, “No sir.”
Officer Cassidy then asked, “Do you boys have any beer or li-quor in your car.” He slowly stressed the second syllable of the word liquor.
Not wanting to lie to an officer, and having plausible deniability, Jim said, “I don’t believe so sir.”
Officer Cassidy said, “Then you won’t mind if I look around.”
He got the three guys out of the car and lined them up. One by one he put his face about 12 inches from their faces and asked “Have you been drinking any beer or li-quor” with that same slow emphasis on the second syllable again.
Jim was clean and did not flinch when saying “No.” Eric did the same. Dan, fearing he may have smelled like vodka, slyly turned his head to the side and answered “no.”
Officer Cassidy then opened the trunk. There on top was the poster board to make fake IDs wrapped in garbage bags. Thankfully he didn’t take it out of the bag.
Crisis number one averted.
Then he picked up the duffel bags to look around. Because they’d wrapped the bottles to avoid breakage, there was not a single sound to give away the contraband cargo in the bags. The officer told Jim if he paid $65 in cash for the ticket right away it would not go back to his insurance in Pennsylvania. They could not pay the fine fast enough and shut the trunk.
When they pulled into Olympia Mill Apartments in Columbia the guys unloaded the alcohol and started taking pictures to make fake IDs for pretty much any girl that walked through the door.
The IDs worked, as they and their new friends got into every bar they went to on that trip. On one of their nights there Dan and Eric were debating which of the girls they were staying with they should be chasing. One we’ll call Nicole, who had gone to high school in Bucks County, PA. The other two we’ll call Diane and Becky.
Before you judge the debate that ensued, keep in mind that the 1980s were a different time. Becky was a beautiful blonde who was curvier than Diane, who was not as pretty but had an athletic build. While the two guys debated, Nicole was within earshot. It became obvious after a few days that Diane and Becky were long shots for the guys.
Nicole was attractive in her own right. Dan had decided to take a shot and asked her to dance. Having heard the previous night’s debate and not content to be seen as a consolation prize, she responded “I don’t think so.” It was a sharp snub that killed all hope.
At the end of the night, they ended up in a place called Group Therapy. There was a sign “Please don’t throw bottles.” On the floor were the remnants of broken glass bottles, proving that the patrons either could not read or simply saw that sign as encouragement to do just the opposite.
The trip then proceeded to Charleston, South Carolina, where Jim would be meeting Kim‘s mother for the first time. Kim‘s mom took them to eat at Bowen’s Island where back then fried fish meant tails, scales and eyeballs still attached. She’d even gotten them beer and the four of them headed out to Folly Beach to sing songs on the beach and drink beer on the last night of the trip.
The next morning before the three boys headed home, they’d decided to destroy the fake ID evidence by burning it in the backyard. What a first impression Jim and his friend made showing up and then burning evidence in the back yard.
Driving home from Spring Break is rarely happy or eventful, and long trips then were boring. However, let’s just say one of the three guys had an occasional penchant for mooning people. To break the boredom, he decided to moon a car they were passing.
This was no amateur moon. This was an open window, bare behind outside in broad daylight. As they drove by, they realized they’d passed a husband and wife with two kids in the back of the car.
About five minutes later, they saw that same car gaining on them at light speed. There was some real concern as to what would happen next.
As the car sped alongside them, the driver passed on the inside on the right and rolled down his window and started yelling. As they rolled down the window to apologize, the dad pulled out his young son’s plastic sword.
Laughing he yelled “Hey stick that butt out again and I’ll show you where this goes!”
Several hours later the boys had gotten home with great memories. With the passage of time and the proliferation of technology, consequence-free hijinks are probably a thing of the past forever.
That may be a good thing…or maybe not.
