Legendtorial ~ Follow That Dream
by: Tim Leeming
Forty-three years ago, this date, August 21st, fell on a Thursday. In Columbia, South Carolina, it was a typical August day weather-wise, with high humidity and temperature somewhere in the 90s. My mother would have called that date one of the “Dog Days of Summer”, although I was never quite sure what she meant by that. I remember the sky was almost Petty Blue that Thursday with the occasional cotton candy puffy white cloud floating across from West to East. Believe it or not, I have very vivid memories of that particular Thursday of my life, as if I’m watching it on video at this very moment.
I had gotten up at 7:00 a.m., had breakfast and went into my office job at a bank. I had prearranged to get off work at 1:00, so when the final grain of sand dropped through the hour glass marking that time, I bolted out of the door as if being chased by the bank examiner from “It’s A Wonderful Life”. It was a straight shot down 10 miles of Interstate 20 from the bank to my exit and I was most fortunate that afternoon that The South Carolina Highway Patrol Racing Team was all at lunch somewhere. I made it from my desk to my house in less than 15 minutes. My driveway, indeed my yard, was filled with cars and boys all waxing a white 1959 Plymouth. The object of their intense efforts was completely white and had blue numbers 83 painted on the doors and roof. My memory recalls at least 15 of the neighborhood boys and several friends of mine all working to make this the most sparkling car in the State of South Carolina. For, you see, the car would be towed to a half-mile clay oval called Columbia Speedway where I would, for the first time in my 22 years, climb into a race car to actually race. A dream of mine since I was 6 years old was going to come true that night, August 21, 1969.
