I drove my cars fast when I was a boy. Vroom, vroom.

Whether it was my orange 1969 Dodge Charger named “The General” driven by the Duke cousins Bo and Luke in the television series The Dukes of Hazard or my black 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit, I was a bona fide collector of miniature Hot Wheels.

Every day after the big yellow school bus number 21 dropped me at home, I raced inside to gather my hot rods, stick them in my pockets, and pedal my blue bicycle down the hill to play with my friends, Mark, Tracey, and Little Man.

We spent hours in Mawmaw Bell’s yard creating make-believe roads around old-fashioned rose bushes, through gravel walkways, and over puddles that magically became lakes. It was our playground, and it might as well have been the Indianapolis 500. We laughed together until we heard the frogs get louder, signaling that it was almost too dark to play any longer.

Mark crashed his Ferrari into my BMW. Tracey waved the flag telling us when to start our engines racing toward the finish line. When Mawmaw Bell was preoccupied with her hand-rolled cigarettes or Gilligan’s Island, we climbed on top of her storm pit.

That old rusty tin roof made for the best race car driving stunts ever, at least until we had to explain why the knees of our jeans were so dirty. It was the best of times with the best of friends back then.

When we were not playing with little cars, we were dangling upside down in giant Mimosa trees, making forts in the woods, or pretending to drive the old junk cars that were long abandoned in the pasture.

I especially loved when it would come a big downpour. We took shelter in one of those junker cars nestled in tall grass, climbing over the seats and laughing innocent kid laughter about Bobbie Jean’s hairdos or Uncle Wayne’s awkward clothes until we heard Mama calling us from the screen door.

We grew up, as we knew one day we would. Mark is serving a life sentence in the penitentiary. Little Man, who we now call by his given name, Brian, I don’t see much anymore. Tracey is still my best friend and recently became a pretty amazing grandma. Time stands still when you are a kid playing with little cars on Dykes Chapel Road; then you grow up and life presents real roads to unknown places, any one of us capable of taking any turn under the right, or wrong, circumstances.

The memories never slow down, even when the curves are hard to handle or the mountains rise in the distance. Someone, often a ghost from the past, is always riding shotgun.

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David Creel is a Vicksburg resident and syndicated columnist. You may reach him at beautifulwithdavid@gmail.com.