13 Shepherd Hills Hoodlums

Shepherd Hills Hoodlums

Shepherd Hills is a hillside community on the side of Missionary Ridge; they had a lighting contest every year at Christmas. The area featured a natural open slope which made fine sledding on the occasional snows; it had a few tennis courts and a “bowl” at the bottom with a large stone-and-cement ditch, which lent itself to being driven by cars piloted by reckless youths.

The “Shepherd Hills Hoodlums” were so-named by a (young, unlicensed) car lover, who along with his older brother lived with their parents in Shepherd Hills and went to Baylor (oddly their parents’ car was never used on our capers); besides me there were about six other members of this loosely knit group.

We generally raised Cain on the ridge, and sometimes mildly harassed the blacks on Ninth Street (now Martin Luther King Boulevard). Often we harassed, by headlights or fireworks, romantic “parkers” on the ridge. Sometimes we drove our cars, at breakneck speed, to test the car’s power and its driver’s prowess, up the ridge, from bottom to top, doubtless alarming the residents along the way. Occasionally we “egged” cars off bridges; one morning I was questioned by a victim at our home about my activities of the previous night; that incident turned out to be of no consequence. Another night on North Crest Road I seriously cut my finger picking up a glass bottle to throw at a passing car; I still have the scar from that incident. Then there was the time on North Crest Road near the Civil War memorial when we hit the windshield of a passing car with a thrown rock; we fled gunfire by running down the hill in the trees. I remember once driving my mom’s car uphill on Shallowford Road and careening south onto Crest Road, narrowly missing another car coming up the other side; after that escapade I nervously scanned the newspaper for several days looking for reports of death or injury in the other car. We lived dangerously!