Team Captain [458]
TigerPulse: 100%
Posts: 402
Joined: 4/23/04
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Chicken Shack, Seneca, SC...(long)
Feb 14, 2014, 9:02 AM
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Snow day post yesterday brought back some dark freshman memories. For those of us venturing out from the Pee Dee in the rat season of '68, Clemson seemed like an outpost on the edge. Mostly, we just didn't know our way around and not having wheels complicated the whole thing. Our parents probably wanted it that way. Come Friday nights, there was no equivalent for the Coachman in Bennettsville, the Pad, the Barrel or the Beach Club in OD, and even if there had been, our shaved heads and orange beanie caps were a drag, we thought, to attracting prospective women. But when someone told us about the Chicken Shack off 123 on the near side of Seneca, we were easily all in. As I recall, it was an old poultry barn, served nothing but soft drinks and was usually packed tight with high schoolers from the tri-county area. A couple of us decided to give it a try and sure enough, before the night was over we had been offered a ride to a later, better party up the road in Pickens. We knew only that it was Clemson’s county seat, but nothing beyond that, including how far from Tillman. The girls giggled all the way to somewhere up in the country near Pickens, pulled into a driveway, said goodnight and walked up onto the porch. Then, to our great surprise, they went inside, locked the door and turned out the lights, leaving us two expectant, bewildered rats standing in the yard. We wisely decided to cut our losses and soon had walked through downtown Pickens, turned right and headed south past the sign that said “Clemson 20 mi”. It was 2 am. I asked my cousin, for in the Pee Dee we are nearly all related back a few generations, what we ought to do when the dogs got after us. “Not to worry,” he said, and picked up a swirl Pepsi bottle from beside the highway. Thus armed we started the long trudge back to school. We had only covered a couple of miles when a highway patrolman pulled up and asked if we needed a ride. He must have reckoned that stupidity wasn’t really illegal and about an hour later he rolled around behind Tom Clemson, said goodnight and put us out for the second time that night. As autumn advanced our hair grew back, we got legitimate dates for rat hop and an allegiance to Clemson football was formed that has continued to this day. My cousin rat was killed a few months later during Christmas break, binding forever our connection to that time and place. Like the man says, “Old Clemson College, It was a Hell of a Place!”
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