The brief, golden season of being truly young

Images from the summer of 1976 still swirl in my brain, vivid and fresh, despite the passing of five decades.

The setting summer sunbathing the front of High Peak Mountain in yellow and gold as the boys from Drexel First Baptist took the softball field at the Drexel Community Center.

The panoramic views from Mt. Mitchell, the highest point in the eastern United States, on a crystal-clear morning in early June.

The towering skyline of Atlanta sparkling at 1 in the morning after the completion of a doubleheader between the Braves and the Chicago Cubs.

The July moon, hanging rich and low and yellow in the southeast, as I drove home from Morganton to Drexel after a late date with a lovely young woman.

As I noted in my column last week, 1976 marked the summer between my junior and senior years at Chapel Hill. I was 20 years old. Change the age in the Bob Seger lyric, and you got me:

“I was 20, didn’t have a care.

Working for peanuts, not a dime to spare.

But I was lean and solid everywhere.

Like a rock.”

My job at Drexel Furniture took up 42 and a half hours per week. The remaining 126.5 hours each week belonged to me.

Some of those hours were spent practicing and playing softball for Drexel First Baptist in the Drexel Community Center church league.

This marked the first and only time I shared a field with my older brothers, Robert and Johnny.

They were skilled athletes. I was not. Robert played shortstop. Johnny patrolled centerfield. I was the catcher, the traditional weak spot on any softball squad, unless we had a shortage of players, and then I shifted to right field.

In my two or three games in the outfield, I remember only one fly ball hit my way. More importantly, I remember that I caught it.

I remember too a night when the game was tied in the final inning. I led off with a double (something of a miracle) and the next man up singled. Brother Johnny was coaching third base, and he was waving to me to stop and yelling, “Hold up, hold up!”

Little brother did not listen. I was fast back then and plowed on, executing a graceful tumble, slide, roll at home plate. “Safe!” Never again played an organized sport, but what better way to end my career?

Some of those hours were spent helping out my friend Kevin Rector as an assistant scout master for the Drexel Boy Scout Troop.

Nope, I had never been in Scouts. Never tied a knot. Never helped an old lady across the street. But Kevin, scout master at age 21, needed help managing a herd of wild boys. I was tall and had a beard. Qualifications enough.

The highlight of our summer was taking that howling rabble on a hike up Mt. Mitchell.

The Mt. Mitchell Trail, which stretches from the Black Mountain Campground to the summit of the tallest peak in eastern America, at 6,684 feet, is noted to be “steep, rooty, rocky, and extremely strenuous.”

The elevation gain in just under 6 miles — 3,700 feet. That be steep. Getting those boys up and down that mountain alive, as well as camping near the summit, ranks as one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of Scouting.

Kevin was a key figure in another memory from that long-ago summer, the sort of road trip that only two young rubes would attempt.

We left Drexel at 9 a.m. on a perfect Saturday morning in June in Kevin’s 1974 Oldsmobile 442. Muscle car. Fast. Sleek.

Destination One was Stone Mountain State Park, where we rambled for a few hours.

Destination Two was the Atlanta Zoo on a blistering summer afternoon. It was so hot, even the monkeys behaved.

Destination Three was the real reason for the trip. A doubleheader between the hapless Braves and the Chicago Cubs. The first game began at 6. Braves won. The second game started around 9:30. Braves won again — after midnight.

Sensible lads would have gotten in that fast car and driven straight home. But ain’t no such thing as sensible lads at that age. We stopped for a full and heavy meal at a Waffle House on the north side of the city.

We pulled out of the parking lot of said Waffle House at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday morning. Rolled back into Drexel just as the sun was coming up. Ain’t no way a 70-year-old geezer is going to attempt something like that.

And finally, some of those hours were spent courting a young woman who was also working at Drexel Furniture that summer. She was between her junior and senior years at UNC-Greensboro.

She was pretty and intelligent and had a wonderfully sarcastic sense of humor. Seemed like a match made in heaven to me.

We hiked that summer at Crabtree Falls and picnicked beside Wilson Creek. We went to movies in Hickory and dined at upscale restaurants where she let me order for her, as in, “The lady will have …”

We also sat on the glider on her parents’ front porch and talked and laughed for hours. More than once, I was chased home by her mother when the clock passed 2 a.m.

It was a match made in heaven except for one tiny consideration. I was serious about this summer romance and she wasn’t. But when the time came to break my heart, she did it so gently and so sweetly that no bitterness or hard feelings lingered.

Funny thing about memory. The details fade — the scores of the softball games, the miles we drove, the names of the movies, even some of the faces. But the feeling remains.

Fifty years later, I can still feel the cool mountain air atop Mitchell, hear the laughter of friends on a summer night, see Atlanta glittering against the darkness, and watch that yellow full moon hanging low over Burke County.

Most of all, I remember what it felt like to be 20 years old, standing at the edge of a future that seemed as wide and endless as a Carolina summer.

Looking back now, I realize those three short months were never really about softball or road trips or romance. They were about being young, and for one brief, golden season, that was more than enough.