Dicky

Dicky was one of those that wasn't in a big old money family - certainly not old money and not as big as some of the old money was - the old man had plenty. He had the OTASCO store there, similar to Western Auto, and if you had one of those in a small town in the sixties you was in good shape. Unless you had the Western Auto store in this particular town and was a dumbass crook. Being a crook was one thing because it was generally profitable as long as you weren't getting caught and going to prison but being a dumbass is not compatible with long-term profitability. Dicky's dad was a pretty good businessman and the store made good money and he did the usual deals that people do with their cronies - investments in this and that usually and Dicky had whatever he wanted. His kid sister too but she was a cutie and was not gonna have any trouble marrying well if she didn't choose to work or wasn't good at some kind of work.

The 1970 Camaro came along about, well, 1970. I was in the eighth grade then and we thought it was the coolest thing in a while. I still consider it and the next couple of years among the best-looking Camaros. Near everybody that got one got the 350 with either an auto or four-speed tranny. Dicky was a couple of years older than me and like the other rich kids got a new car when he was old enough to drive. His was a blue '71 or '72, probably a '72 as he graduated that year. He was dating one of the hottest girls in school, a majorette and the hottest cheerleaders had nothing on them although there was generally one or two that was close. Back then there were quite a few of those couples that got together in high school and graduated together or maybe a year apart and got married. A surprising number of them stayed that way if you look at statistics from a couple of decades later but then a lot of them were what a century or two ago would be arranged marriages - a rich guy got good-looking gals for his sons to marry and if they weren't from wealthy families and married into one they generally stayed around.

And Dicky was from a pretty well off family. Sure his old man ran a hardware store but it was pretty profitable and being in the local version of the big club there were other opportunities to make money. He was one of several I knew - from working at the bank - that went out to Vegas once of twice a year and blew of fifty thousand or so gambling and the other stuff. So Dicky was set up pretty good and the hot majorette was on her way to a good life.

Dicky took his Camaro out to the local Chevy dealer and had some high-performance mods - manifold, carb, headers, stuff like that and of course Cragar SS wheels with big tires. I had geometry class with Mr. Parsons in a classroom where we could look out the window and see Jackson street. It was just a regular two-lane street that ran by the school, maybe a quarter mile long as one end was on State Street - the main drag - and the other end was - just the end. Another street crossed it there, and beyond it was a practice football field. You could count on Dicky coming by in that Camaro at least once or maybe twice a week, as fast as he could go in that short stretch. It probably wasn't that fast - in driver's ed we practiced some on that street and we practiced did panic stops from about forty or so in a '70 Chevy Impala. So he might of been going sixty or so but it was a school zone so he shouldn't of been going over twenty. Of course he had glass packs on there so it was pretty loud. We'd all look out as he went by and Mr. Parsons would look and shake his head and tell us to stop gawking. Finally someone in authority got the police to tell him to stop cut it out and that was all of that.

He married the hot gal but they didn't stay married as long as she probably planned on because about four or five years after they got married he got himself killed. He was a UPS driver and managed to wreck one of those big brown trucks good enough to kill himself in the process. She taught little girls to dance and twirl batons and stuff, not just little but up through teens, so they could be majorettes and dancers and such. I seem to remember she was Miss Clay County and went to the state contest. The reason I remember is that she was a local celebrity for a while because of it and a dude from California that had moved to Twin Falls and fancied himself in show business because he had lived in Los Angeles and he had a show on the local radio station where he interviewed people.

He and his wife had moved there and bought a high-end clothing store such as there was in little towns back then and the owners were an older couple that was retiring. So he and his wife bought the high-dollar clothing store and was automagically prominent citizens as they were called because they apparently had money and was part of the business community. And Bill - his name was Bill and his wife was named Val (maybe short for Valerie but I don't remember for sure) and they renamed the Steinberg store Val and Bill's. And Bill got the local radio station to give him a program at night when they otherwise would have been playing some kind of music or other and he would interview people. Being as he was from LA and knew people in showbiz and all.

He had the voice down, the interviewer style, and he'd have somebody local that was presumably interesting and interview them. It didn't last long, like his store and his residency in Twin Falls, and I only remember a couple of them. One was a state trooper tha lived there, and he talked about cop stuff I suppose, don't remember. And he interviewed Deanna (that was Dickie's girlfriend's name) about her being in the beauty pageants and all. And he kept calling her Dee-Anna (which is the way you'd expect on account of it being spelled that way) but we all called her Dee-huh. Us small-town southerners being so polite nobody corrected him and she was a quiet reserved type so she didn't either.

Wasn't long before Val and Bill's was out of business. Val and Bill had already left town when the going out of business sale was done and I was probably about fifteen and Mom bought me a coupld of things, a shirt and pair of slacks as I recollect, fancier than the stuff at Van-Atkins but cost less because they were being liquidated. Dunno what happened to Bill and Val (the people not the store) but guessed they went somewhere else to con people, maybe even back to California. And that's all I remember about Dicky and Deanna and Bill and Val.