Those were the days, my friend, when growing up white and poor in the South meant that you were sure to do some moonshining of whiskey in your time... when your fourteenth birthday meant that you could drive a car... and when summer was the time to get together enough money to own your very own Hudson. Anyway, that's how it was for two latter-day Huck Finns named Coley Simms and Earl Edge in Columbia, South Carolina, in the 1940s. Coley and Earl were full of wild ideas, but as zany as their escapades were, they were nothing compared to the characters the boys met along the way.
There was Wilson Wade Hampton Peeler, the barbecue king, who lived in mortal fear that someone would steal his sauce recipe; Jack Driscoll, the short-order cook who handled a deck of poker cards like a magician; and Cowboy Strickland, a 41-year-old who still did whe
