It was June 1974, and I had taken a respite from the summer session at the University of Mississippi Law School to come home for the weekend. I couldn’t think of a better way to shake off some academic cobwebs than to take my father’s 1967 Cherokee Six 300 up for some lazy Saturday afternoon sightseeing, and I invited my old high school buddy Jerry along for company.
By the time we arrived at the Grenada, Mississippi, airport it was mid-afternoon with the temperature hovering in the low 90s. A weak high had been hanging over the mid-South for weeks, with just enough energy to suck the inky moisture off the Gulf of Mexico but not enough to produce any air-cleansing rain for the murky sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, but neither was there any blue sky, just a thick haze with no definable horizon.
