When I was 15 years old, in 1976 there was a friend of a friend of mine I knew named Doug. He was from Texas with a southern accent; a funny, cool guy who was a couple years older than me. He had a beautiful car, a Chevrolet Malibu Classic, painted cherry red. It had a big engine and it was fast!
On the summer weekends we used to go to a popular spot for cars to cruise at near us. It was a huge shopping center and every weekend it was jammed with teenagers driving. Back and forth in both directions in a big circle. One night me, Doug and two of my other friends went there. People went there just to be seen and show off their cars and if you were very lucky, you might talk to some girls. Doug was driving and we were there for about half an hour when a car going in the opposite lane of traffic yelled something at us. I don’t know why. Well, Doug yelled back and we kept going. In about 10 minutes we saw them again, There was three people in their car and this time they yelled and they were giving us dirty looks and we stared back. But then me and my friends recognized them, they were these older kids who had gone to our high school and they were the toughest guys in school. Small time hoods, rough people. Doug wanted to fight them but we told him to shut up. They were guys you didn’t mess with. So we kept cruising and the car with those guys pulled up to us and one if them was brandishing a club and they looked very serious. We just told Doug,“Lets get the hell out of here”, so we drove out the street. But they followed us. It had been raining so the roads were slick but both cars were driving about 45 mph on this city street. It was a two lane road and we were in the right lane and they were in the left, about two car lengths back. They were trying to pull up even with us but all of a sudden Doug just swerved over to the left about ten feet in front them! They had to avoid us and I looked out our back window and I saw them do three 360’s on the wet pavement. Their car turned completely around three times. Doug had pulled such a cool move, I had never seen anything like it. But we just kept going and got away. Doug had never seen them before but the rest of us were praying they didn’t recognize us.
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