Together the three of us had the best of times and seen the worst of times, Jimmy Packer, Ronnie Guest and me, good ol reliable Frankie Turner, Frankie always had the money for beer, Frankie always had a way to get the wheels, Frankie always had cigarettes or whatever else we needed, and when it came down to it Frankie wasn’t afraid to throw hands with anybody.. Don’t get me wrong or nothing Jimmy and Ronnie were great guys to hang out with an all, its just that I tended to get into more trouble when they were around, but man the chicks loved them to death, especially Jimmy, he was dark complexioned with big blue eyes, and slicked back jet black hair, and lean too lots of muscles. Ronnie was the soft spoken blonde Bomber he was pretty lean too, but me? Frankie Turner was mr every guy, the guy who took your daughter to the prom, the guy who never brought her home late, and could yes sir and yes ma’am you to death. And when it came time Frankie Turner was the guy who scored the tickets to go see “The King” in Las Vegas, that’s right we were going to see the King Of Rock and Roll “Elvis in Vegas” we had my old mans beat up old 1955 Studebaker Champion 4 door sedan, the thing looked like shit but the old man knew how to turn a wrench and he kept it runnin like a top, we were Driving from Reno to Vegas across the desert, the only tunes we had was Ronnie’s old acoustic Kay guitar and His bad Elvis impersonation, and he made sure that we had our fill of both.. Jimmy and Ronnie were both Elvis freaks they loved the guy, anything he sang was top notch even though Rock and roll was changing in the Sixties, there were these newer bands like the Doors and Cream and then there was a guy named Jimi Hendrix, but we still looked like a bunch of Fifties rejects, A bunch of twenty something’s with greased back hair, peg legged blue jeans,
And white tee shirts with a pack of Camels rolled up in the sleeves.
So we’re cruising like about sixty five, and Ronnie and Jimmy are arguing about the words to Jail House Rock, and Ronnie keeps tryin but he ain’t hit one note yet, and Jimmy is just about to lose his mind, “will ya shut the hell up already Ronnie?? Ya can’t sing that shit like him anyways!” He stopped strumming long enough to Look over the top of his shades at Jimmy, “What are ya talkin about? That almost sounded just like him!! So how about you shutin up Jimmy?” and almost on cue the right rear tire blew out,pow!! Man.. I thought those two yard eggs were going to jump through the roof.. “Aw man! Frankie? Tell me you can Fix it??” Jimmy and Ronnie both were afraid of work especially Jimmy. I pulled it over to the shoulder and got out to take a look and they both got out to stretch their legs, it was getting dark so I was going to have to work fast, and when I openned the trunk we all could’ve about died when we didn’t see a spare, so there we were, a hundred miles from nowhere, one hour till dark and no wheels, life was about to get interesting. We pushed the Studebaker to the side of the road and Locked it up, we figured we were at least sixty or seventy miles from the nearest town so either way we were gonna have to try to hitch a ride to go find another tire. We had just fixed that damn spare before we left Reno too, only Ronnie who was loading everything was more worried about his guitar and left the spare sitting in the old mans garage right next to the lug wrench. My fault though, my old man always told me “Son always make sure to check and see if ya got the spare before you drive long distance’s, ya can get a blow out anywhere!” Damn.. I forgot to check the spare. So the three of us started to walkin to Las Vegas.. We were goin to see the king..
Scratch…© 2006.
