As we progress through Catfish’s final semester, I sometimes reminisce some about my final semester before graduation at Ole Miss some 39 years ago. Catfish seems to be approaching graduation in a much more controlled and reasoned manner than I did. He goes out to pubs with friends. They drink beer and talk about job prospects and then they Uber safely home.

Some thirty-nine years ago at Ole Miss, we didn’t have Uber. We had Matt. Not my brother, Matt, but an entirely different Matt. Matt somehow became our designated driver. He usually drove when we went to ‘Abby’s Irish Rose’.  Abby’s was a bar located beneath an old building in Oxford. It’s only access was located in an alley way. Halfway down the alley, there was a tiny, almost but not quite hidden, parking lot.

Back in the day, we would all gather at Dave’s apartment for late afternoon or early evening libations before climbing into Matt’s Mercury Comet for the trip to Abby’s. For those who don’t know, a Mercury Comet was Lincoln Mercury’s take on a Ford Maverick. It was a large, ugly, slow, and cumbersome two door ‘swept back, sporty’ car. It was built to accomodate four people, two in front and two in back. This car was a sluggish, unbalanced monster to drive. It’s only redeeming characteristics were that it was built like a tank and we could stuff six people in that car. 

When I say the parking lot was ‘tiny’, I mean it held maybe five cars depending on the parking skills of the last driver.  I have seen bathroom stalls that were larger.

On Friday night (actually on just about any night) we would go to ‘Abby’s Irish Rose’. We usually tried to arrive early enough to guarantee a parking spot in the tiny ally parking lot. What that means is that sometimes we would arrive at 3:00 in the afternoon.  Better safe than sorry, I say.

Matt would carefully maneuver the beastly car into a tiny spot in the cramped lot.  Sometimes he had to back up, and pull forward several time to get, more or less, squarely in the parking space. We’d all trot into the pub for several hours of debauchery. Abby’s had pool tables and darts in the sub-basement room, and some of us would play for a while. It had a general bar room that opened up to an outdoor patio. After several hours of beer fueled socializing, we’d all stagger back to Matt’s sporty Comet for the return ride to Dave’s apartment.

One night, Matt was very nearly parked in.  We all had to engage in tortorous contortions just to get in the Comet.  Eventually, we all were  crammed in the mighty Comet and ready to repeat the ‘backing up a foot, pulling forward a foot’ maneuver to extract the car and go home. Matt started the car, and twisted around to see out of the tiny rear window in the back of the car.  He turned the steering wheel sharply. He gently pressed the accelerator.  The Ford 302 engine sputtered just a little louder and we began to gingerly ease back out of the tiny parking space. Just then, while he was applying pressure to the gas pedal, Matt hiccuped. Unfortunately, his foot hiccuped, too.The car lurched backward a couple of feet until we heard a solid crunch. We had found the Impala parked behind us. We had hit it right smack dab on the door. Being the assholes we were, we found this incredibly funny.  We all laughed like hell. Well, everyone except Matt.

“Shit!”, Matt whispered angerly under his breath, which we none the less heard.  We laughed even louder. Apparently, there is nothing funnier than a friend denting cars in a parking lot. In something of a minor panic, he grabbed the shifter and quickly put the car in drive as if putting in quickly in drive would remove the damage that had been done. He cut the steering wheel back some.  Still muttering, he began to ease forward just a bit. Just then, he hiccuped again. The car lurched forward, again.  There was a crunch and the sound of breaking glass.  This produced more howls of laughter. The car beside us was a Volkswagen. It was now sporting a slightly dented side. We, the assholes, were laughing so hard we were turning blue.

In the grip of a full blown panic attack, Matt repeatedly shouted “Oh shit!”  Again, he quickly jerked the shifter into reverse. Again, twisting about to look out the tiny rear window and just as he began to touch the accelerator, he hiccuped again. We were laughing even before we heard and felt the crunch which sent us deeper into shrieking hysterics. Matt was now experiencing a significant emotional event.  All reason is lost when in the grips of blind panic.  He quickly put the car in drive again.

Struggleing to compose himself, Matt quietly muttered “Oh shit Oh shit Oh shit.”

The impala now had a second dent in the door, about a foot away from the first one. Once more he maneuvered to extract the Comet from the parking place and once more a hiccup produced a crunch as we again hit the VW in front of us, adding a dented fender to the dented side. All of us in the car were about to lose bladder control.

This continued three or four more times with Matt becoming more vocal and more panicked and more agitated with each impact. Finally, Matt successfully extracted the Comet from the tiny parking lot, and inspite of our counsel to the contrary, left notes to the car owners.  Miraclously, we returned to Dave’s apartment without further incident.

As I think of this incident, I am grateful my son is much more mature than I was, and I thank God for Uber.

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Written by William Garner

5 Comments

Russell T McCarver

We used to go to Abbey’s all the time between 79 and 83. I always wondered what happened to that place, do you have an address I can search it out on Google Maps, for nostalgia sake? Thanks, Todd

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Larry Solanch

“The Abbey” was my favorite Oxford bar.. One of the bartenders at the Abbey, an undergraduate student who worked there (I don’t recall her name), was shot and killed by another student during the late 1970s. Shortly thereafter, it was reported in The Daily Mississippian” that he was caught by police following a high-speed chase, resulting in the single-vehicle accident in which he was severely injured.

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Joe Loftis

Loved playing Music There in the late 70s and early 80s. I was the original drummer of the White Animals at the time then started my own band Joe Loftis & The Pinks in the 80s. Great memories. Awesome place to play. Great people. Long Live the Rock Club memories!

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