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| Larry Crum and Paul Bishop |
Paul Bishop and Larry Crum were in Buzzy’s Country Store the other day when Jody McCoy walked in. I introduced them and it turns out that Paul and Jody attended Ryken High School together and graduated in 1965 but had not seem each other in the last 45 years. Jody then noted, “I remember you now. You were the one who pulled the guy out of the river at our graduation party.” Paul acknowledged it by saying “That’s right. And it still remains the scariest near death experience I’ve ever been around.”
Turns out that after their graduation they were partying at a place called the Pipeline which is a section of beach adjacent to what was then Steuart Petroleum now Nustar here in Piney Point. One of their class mates guzzled an entire fifth of Jack Daniels and immediately passed out. Other classmates, thinking that it would revive him, tossed him into the river. However, when he didn’t re-surface they began to panic and look for him and in the chaos had trouble finding him for quite awhile. Paul finally figured out where the boy was and managed to lug him back to shore. They walked him around some and then took him to his home in Park Hall.
Aside from an amazing story, what I find interesting is that here Paul and Jody are 45 years down the road and when they meet up, the first go-to recollection they have is this incident. Just shows how bad things tend to stay with you. Like Paul said though, it’s scary to think how really bad that particular incident could have ended up.
Speaking of other disasters, here’s a video of Black Friday at WalMart which sounds like a horror movie to me: