My aunt and uncle, also my legal guardians for my teen years, bought me my very first vehicle when I was seventeen years old. It was an old beat up tan Chevrolet Cavalier station wagon with a generous helping of bondo. Uncle Keith was a body man and had been for two decades, working at St. John’s Auto Body in Palatka, Florida. Sometimes vehicles would be “totaled” or surrendered after accidents, providing opportunities to buy used vehicles for next to nothing. One such vehicle was gifted to me, a month after I began my first job. For the first few weeks my aunt would drive me back and forth to work, but since we lived in East Palatka, and work was in Palatka, getting dressed and going out at 9 o’clock every night and losing 30 minutes of her leisure time to be my chauffeur got really old, really quick. They got the car for a steal, $200, and while it might have spontaneously combusted if I took it on the interstate, it was plenty sufficient to get me back and forth from work.
Aunt Terri and Uncle Keith had a routine. Every day, they had the same lunch hour, 1 p.m., and they frequented a small number of restaurants where they became friends with the staff and owners. Their favorite place to eat was Jerry’s Drive-In, and they could be spotted there three days a week. Myrtie usually met them at the table with their sweet tea before they even sat down, and they always sat in a booth up front. The first two sections were smoking sections, part of why they loved it there; they could still smoke during their lunch break.
Jerry’s Drive-In began as the Freezete in 1954, and according to his wife’s obituary, the owner Martin Renau changed the name to Martin’s Drive-In in 1956, where it maintained that title until it was sold to Jerry Doan in 1969, when he renamed it to reflect the new ownership to “Jerry’s Drive-In”. In 1993, Jerry had been retired for quite some time, and the business was being owned and operated by his daughter Debbie and her husband Joey Faulkner. One day, likely Veteran’s Day, I was out of school, and Aunt Terri invited me to lunch with her and Uncle Keith. She had arranged a job interview for me to become a bus girl, cleaning off tables after patrons have finished eating. There wasn’t much to the interview with Debbie, other than an introduction and some information about my school schedule. She wanted to make it clear that Friday nights were her busiest nights, as people often ate there before going to the football games, which meant that I would not be able to attend them or any other social events. She wanted to make sure I understood what I was giving up, and also more likely that I wasn’t going to flake on her when she needed me most.
My new car and my new job gave me a sense of freedom and independence I had never experienced before, and even though all I did was go to school, work, and come home, it felt amazing to have money to buy my own things and not have to ask for them.
After a few months, I got a promotion, and began waiting tables. This meant longer hours, which I didn’t mind, because it also meant a lot more money. Most nights, I finished work around 10 o’clock, and drove straight home. On one occasion I was low on gas, so I stopped at the gas station, which is now a furniture store and Mexican Tienda, to fill her up. This was before you could pay at the pump, and cash was king. While pumping and making my walk to and from the cashier, I noticed a large older car parked on the edge of the lot by the air compressor. It was parked facing the road, just a few feet from it, as though it was ready to make a quick getaway. Even though the car was parked by the compressor, no one got out or in the entire time I was there. It had easily been dark for a few hours, and the dim lighting over the gas pumps didn’t extend far enough to be able to see if there was a driver sitting in it. Something about this made me uneasy. I wondered in my head if “he” was waiting, watching, for an opportunity...like me. No, I was being paranoid and silly. I got in my car and pulled out of the parking lot onto Highway 17, a short block or two before I had to turn onto Putnam County Boulevard, a winding road a few miles long with no shoulders.
Only a few seconds went by, and even though I was on the road, and out of harm's way, my gut wouldn’t settle. I glanced in the rear view mirror, chastising myself for being so ridiculous, when I saw his headlights come on, and his vehicle pull out behind me. It was just a coincidence. He wasn’t following me, or at least that is the story I started to tell myself, until I made my left turn onto the road home and he immediately made the same turn behind me.
At this moment, panic overcame me, and I was stricken with a consuming fear I had never felt. I began to speed up from the speed limit of 35 miles per hour to 45, trying to get some distance between us. He immediately sped up, his engine revving, maintaining the length and distance he had from me. I went 5 faster. He went 5 faster. My heart started to race and my stomach was weak. I knew I would be safe if I made it home because even if everyone was asleep, I should still be able to get into the house before he could get to me.
The first mile of Putnam County Boulevard is a straight shot, but from there the winding road can be sharp and dangerous and is too rural for streetlights, making it possible to see only what is right in front of you. While I was accelerating, I realized that if he saw me pull in with those other cars and that I didn’t live alone, he might keep driving, but then he would also know where I live. I never saw his face, how would I know if I ever saw him again? He could literally knock on my door one day, and I would never know it was him. Self-preservation kicked in, and in a risky move I made the decision to try and outrun him. Even though the road was winding and my car was nothing more than a hooptie, I knew that I was intimately familiar with this road, and made the decision that he was likely not, giving me the slightest edge I would need.
I sped up to 70 miles per hour accelerating through the first curve opening up that engine like it had never been driven, keeping an one eye on the rear view mirror. When my impromptu stalker quickly sped up to catch me, I knew I was in serious danger, and there could be no other plausible explanation for what was happening to me. From that point, we engaged in a high speed chase. While on open stretches of road I accelerated to 90 miles per hour, where my car began to shake. “Come on baby, don’t fail me now!” I knew the exact speed I needed to decelerate in order to make the curves, having driven them day in and day out for months, testing my limits of speed as most teenagers do. My gut instinct was right. After I put the pedal to the metal and took that first curve, he easily lost 50 yards, and with every curve, he lost 50 to 100 more. By the time I made it to the final curve right before my house, I could see him just emerging from the last curve, a good quarter of a mile behind me.
At this point the road comes to a fork. You can turn left onto a dirt road, Dog Branch Road, where I lived in the first house on the right, and you can turn right to get onto 207a, a much larger paved road. I zipped into my driveway and pulled around to my back door, making it quicker to get to it, but also concealing my vehicle so that if he eeny-meeny-miney-moed in the right direction, he wouldn’t see where I landed. My hand shook, trembling with fear, trying to get the key in the lock quick enough. What seemed like minutes, was only mere seconds. Once behind the door, I slunk to the floor, adrenaline still pumping through my veins. Everyone was in bed asleep. Without waking them, I crawled into bed fully clothed, where I stared at the ceiling most of that night.
When I woke up the next morning, I kept the horror from the night before to myself. I was afraid of getting into trouble for speeding, but more so I was worried about losing my newfound freedom. Eventually, I would share about that one time that I was followed, but my one sentence retelling would never come close to describing what actually occurred that night.
Over the years, I have watched so many Dateline episodes where the girl is followed and never seen alive again. When I see those scenes, I always wonder what would have happened to me if I had never taken notice of that old car parked that night or trusted my instincts when they told me I wasn’t safe. I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to find out.
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