First Spring Break - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

First Spring Break

Some friends of ours drove down to Florida recently and had to detour around a major rock slide that closed I-75 in Tennessee as shown in the aerial photo above. The detour took them an 4 extra hours, which reminded me of my first spring break with three other guys from college during my sophomore year (going on spring break in high school was unheard of!). At the time, I-75 was still under construction though the mountains in Tennessee about where the recent rock slide occurred and there were similar detours down narrow and curvy two lane highways. As we came up to the detour in the middle of the night, it was my turn to drive. The car was a red ‘65 Malibu that supposedly had “brand new tires”, which was good since it was raining cats and dogs during the entire length of the detour that took several hours. However, the windshield wipers were shot so the visibility was terrible. But we eventually made it back onto I-75, arriving at Daytona around mid-day and immediately hit the beach, literally driving the red Malibu right on the sand.

And what fun we had! Somehow we managed to find a place to stay on the beach where the very next day, as part of some promotion, a large refrigerated semi full of cold Busch beer pulled onto the beach, selling beer right out of the back of the truck for only 5 cents a can! We were in seventh heaven!

Later that week, the muffler blew on the Malibu and to no one's surprise, a ticket was issued. But the cop said if the muffler was fixed, the ticket would be rescinded. So off we headed to the local muffler shop to have it repaired. While the car was on the hoist, we noticed stamped on the inside of each tire was a label that read “Farm Use Only”. Those “brand new tires” were retreads and were only to be used on slow moving vehicles, not at highway speeds. Needless to say, we mercilessly razzed the car’s owner, who of course had no money, so we had to split the cost of the muffler to boot!

After Daytona, we went across the state to catch a Red’s Spring Training game at Al Lopez Field in Tampa, where the Big Red Machine was being assembled. According to Wikipedia, during a spring training game that season, rookie Johnny Bench was catching eight-year veteran right-hander Jim Maloney. Once a noted hard thrower, injuries had reduced Maloney's fastball's speed dramatically by that time. However, Maloney insisted on repeatedly "shaking off" his younger catcher and throwing the fastball instead of the breaking balls Bench called for. An exasperated Bench bluntly told Maloney, "Your fastball's not popping". Maloney replied with an epithet. To prove to Maloney that his fastball wasn't effective anymore, Bench called for a fastball, and after Maloney released the ball, Bench dropped his catcher's mitt and comfortably caught the fastball barehanded! Maloney got the last laugh though as he went 16-10 and had a no hitter that year.

After the Reds game, we headed north to go back home, never going above 50 mph the entire way. We made it back safely, but the Malibu owner (whom I haven't seen since cause he flunked out) had two flat tires after dropping us off on his way home to Ft. Wayne. Serves him right!