"Ask TEP to tell you about Daytona Beach in the late 50's."
All the really cool guys had chopped '49 Fords or '50 Mercs, dechromed with naughahyde white upholstery and their girlfriend's name on the passenger door.
There were "Drive-ins" everywhere with cool cars with their hoods up and waitresses on white rollerskates. Drive-in movies everywhere too. If that got too boring you could always meet on the deserted beach way down near the old beach/road track in South Daytona and drink purple passion in the middle of the night (although I was a little young for that kind of thing then but to my mother's horror apparently my sister wasn't).
And then one lonely weekend morning I spotted a truck with a trailor cruising over the Main Street bridge to the mainland with a '40 Ford on it with the number M1 on the sides and Fish Carburetor on the back. Across the top of the driver's door was painted Glenn "Fireball" Roberts-----little did I know it on that lonely weekend morn but I was entering the beginning of history and my world would never be the same again!
I went to funky little Seabreeze Private School with my sister (total students about 60). My sister and her friends used to run across the school yard at lunch and through a narrow alley to the drugstore soda fountain, get a float and go next door to the record store to listen (OVER AND OVER AGAIN) to the first few records of this new instant record star by the then odd name of Elvis Presley.
At that point there was a little kid in my class named Jimmy France. His brother Billy France was two grades up in my sister's class. Their dad owned the gas station on Main Street.
Then one day in the late 1950s in the middle of the year the school was introduced to two young Cuban kids, a girl and a boy. Their dad had bought the ten acre old mansion of Barney Olds (Oldsmobile) down the street. Apparently they'd all come into Daytona on a private plane in the middle of the night. The guy was the President of Cuba, their name was Battista and their country had just fallen to revolutionary Fidel Castro.
By the way, as the heirs to NASCAR little Jimmy and Billy France are worth about 2 billion each today.
Those were the days, boy----those were the days.
Oh yeah, the golf courses? Well, my Dad played at the Daytona Beach CC over on the mainland. It was a Ross and a pretty plain one at that.
Dad was a real player and nobody could ever beat him over there. (Actually young college kid Doug Sanders sunk a bunker shot on the last hole of the Florida State Amateur to beat dad).
Our next door neighbor was a dentist---Dr Regan. He had a son who was a really good player as a kid, and then at 15 he beat dad in the finals of the club championship. That was a bit of a shock to me everyone else. Dave Regan went to U of F or Florida State and when he got out Dad and Mr Stevens, the Daytona Pontiac dealer, and some other guys put him out on tour.
Dave Regan could hit it a country mile and if some of you younger guys today could have seen him from a distance you'd think he was Hal Sutton.
Dave married young to Joan Dann, hot blond daughter of Carl Dann of Dubsdread in Dunedin fame in the middle of the state. Dave did well, he made some Ryder Cups but he couldn't putt all that well and he sure couldn't finish off the deal if and when Joannie joined him when he was at or near the lead. (actually young Dave and Joannie when they first got married lived next door with Dr and Mrs Regan. Joannie was so hot when I was about eight I'd sneak outta the house at night and go up on the hill behind the Regan house to see if I could see her getting undressed for bed. The timing of this kind of thing could be a little tricky and it sort of pissed me off I couldn't exactly figure out what was going on after she got undressed. At least once I just fell dead asleep up there on that hill and got bitten by a herd of red ants
My sister's burro, Chilli Pepper, lived up there on that hill and sometimes he would start honking and scare the tar outta me and get me worried that somebody would catch me up there spying on stripping Joannie Regan).
Those were the days, Boy---those were the days!