Growing up rural, Overture: Stay in the lines

Not actually from back home, but fairly representative of most county roads

Rural Ohio in the early 90's was a pretty orderly backdrop for a teen's life. Roads that connected the places you started from with the places you were going to all ran in straight lines, north-south or east-west, letters one way and numbers the other starting from the northeast corner of the county.  This orderly grid system made navigating very simple for 16 year old me, as I only had to know that there was a party on, say, Road 5 between G and H, in order to find my way there with about 8 friends in tow.

The occasional diagonal road was given a bottom-of-the-alphabet letter, and short spur roads (sometimes paved, but often only gravel) got an alphanumeric designation (F-6, I-9, you sunk my Battleship) depending on where they fell on the county grid. Those spurs were where we ended up many nights; thirty-odd cars on the roadside with knots of kids standing, talking, drinking, smoking, dancing, kissing, and occasionally fighting under dark skies to the tune of car stereos blasting from open trunks. We lived our nights on the straight lines between other straight lines.

When we got to the night's designated spot, we drank cheap beer that our older siblings bought for us, grocery store liquor either pilfered or paid for by classmate employees under the supervision of classmate night managers, and the occasional bottle of cheap hard stuff whose method of purchase I didn't know and didn't ask about.  Knowing who could get you drunk was good, being someone who could get others drunk was better, and there was never a shortage of beer, ever. I had a job at a grocery store, so "$10 to the cashier and a case of Old Milwaukee out to the loading dock" was a common transaction in my teens. The legal drinking age had raised from 18 to 21 at some point in the 80's, but back home we considered that more a recommendation that a rule, and most of the parents were fine with that so long as we didn't do anything too stupid.

We drove beater cars with balding tires and rusting exhaust pipes; Cutlass Supremes, so many Cutlass Supremes, Delta 88s, Monte Carlos, Thunderbirds, LTDs, my 1977 Chevy Impala station wagon with its Corvette engine, as well as a growing number of Grands (Am and Prix), Luminas, and the occasional Honda or Toyota.  The nicest cars were usually parents' cars, though they rarely had a stocked cooler in the trunk and were therefore not better, just cleaner.

Paint it black, add a red pinstripe, and you have my first car.  Way better in practice than it sounds.

We had friends, acquaintances, girl and boyfriends from the surrounding towns, and we all got along for the most part.  We went to each other's parties and behaved ourselves for the most part, didn't bust up other folks' houses or show up looking to start fights. Those who did were known, and would usually have trouble finding a ride to the party. We would drive 15 miles on country roads to stand in a field behind a barn around a pallet fire, dancing and singing along to music provided by a DJ powered with a portable generator.  We would all groan as one when the generator ran out of gas, and cheer as one when the tank was refilled and the music resumed.  When the sheriff's deputies would eventually show up, no one would get arrested, we'd all just drop the drink we were holding, file off to our cars and leave while deciding which side road we'd be heading to for the rest of the night. 

A large, open fire was the sign of a good party.  Get bored? Throw something unexpected on the fire.

We were, by and large, farm folk, or very recently descended from farm folk. Everyone's parents knew everyone else's parents, or knew someone who knew them, so there was a very strong sense of community, and with that came the invisible governing force of knowing that if anyone got too far out of line, everyone would know.  So long as you lived within a standard deviation of the norm, stayed close to the straight lines as I did, it was a hell of a nice place to grow up.