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"THE POSSUM"

Spring 1972

By Mark Hopkins 2006

One Friday night, Johnny Newberry and I were returning from a bar in Normal Town, Athens Georgia and we pulled up to a red light two cars back in downtown Athens. We were just sitting there waiting on the light to change when I noticed this huge possum cornered up in the doorway of a building. I said, Newberry, look at that damn possum! Where? he asked. Right there in that doorway! Without hesitation Johnny threw his Mustang in park and jumped out. Damn, what are you doing? I'm going to get the sob! The light changes and the two cars move on, I'm sitting in the car in the middle of the road and Johnny is approaching a hissing 15 lb possum. Johnny is crouching over this wild animal and it has it's mouth open brandishing sharp fangs making a scsscscscscscs, scscscscscsc sound. Like a snake strike Johnny grabs it by the neck and yells "open the trunk" which I did. Johnny throws the animal in and we haul ass. After about 10 minutes of uncontrolled laughter, I asked what in the hell are we going to do with a possum. Hell if I know was his response.

We get back to Washington about 10:30 pm and the Tastee Freeze was hopping. We pull around back and park, get out and figure we will scare a few folks (don't remember who) by opening the trunk and have a frantic possum leap out. Johnny pops the trunk and the possum didn't leap out. It was dead, blip. We figured gas fumes from the exhaust. Well, plan (a) didn't work so we went to plan (b). Johnny had about 10 feet of rope in his trunk which he tied around the possums neck and snuck up behind Bobby "dog-bite" Armour's car and tied the other end to a bumper support and then shoved the possum under his car out of view. We were laughing like hell.

Eventually, Bobby decides to do a little cruising, so he fires up and slowly pulls off with the possum in tow. Everybody is now laughing hysterically and Bobby doesn't know why. He eases over the speed bump real slow. The possum's limp body followed the contour of the bump as it went over. Bobby pulls out onto hwy 78 towards the square and the possum slings wide right like a water skier crossing the wake, then realigns itself behind the car as it goes out of sight. Naw, we aint laughing.

Well, in true cruise form, Bobby pulls back through dragging the possum slowly around the Freeze again and again and again, and he never could figure out why everyone was laughing. Later, Bobby told us that the next morning his mother woke him up and said, or he thought she said, Bobby, "YOU HAVE POSSUM TIRES ON YOUR CAR"! Half asleep and hung over he replied, no mom, I have Goodyear tires, all the while wondering why she would wake him up at the crack of dawn to tell him what kind of tires was on his car. She said no Bobby, you have a possum TIED to your car. Bobby finally gets up to appease his mother and walks out to his car to find what was left of a dead possum in his driveway, tied to his car, with his mother standing there, with a "what the heck you been doing" stare in her eye.