by Bob Foreman
© 2013
If Henry Ford had written the musical West Side Story, 19-year old Danny Payne (pictured above) would be the star. He was the leader of a four boy band who magnified drug store pinball to a grown-up scale here in January, 1948.
Dubbed “teenage thrill wreckers” by the local papers, the boys were reared in posh Druid Hills, sons of prominent parents.
The boys’ target: fancy automobiles, street-parked on steep inclines. The act: to release the parking brakes. The consequence: Wheee!
Twenty-eight vehicles were thusly relocated over a two-night spree which began on a Saturday in Virginia-Highlands and Morningside and ended up Sunday in Buckhead. The boys were apprehended within a day and signed a joint confession which began, “we started at 1 a.m. on Briarwood Road, where Danny Payne released the brakes on a 1936 Dodge, and it ran down the hill and into a garage.”
Of three Oldsmobiles, two rolled into telephone poles, and the other careened into the woods and struck a tree. A stone wall stopped a 1941 Buick, but a 1941 Studebaker rolled into a 1941 Olds.
Cars that disappeared from view over embankments included a 1941 Plymouth, a 1935 Packard coupe, and a 1940 Ford convertible which landed in a playground at Chastain Park.
A 1941 Nash rolled into a creek, and a Dodge of that same year glanced off a telephone pole, went over a bank and then into a creek.
“On Kentucky Avenue, Danny released the brakes on a 1946 Dodge convertible which struck a signpost, rolled down a driveway and into a garage where it smashed into a 1946 Dodge sedan.” “Then Danny released the brakes on a 1947 Buick coach, which ran into a fireplug, breaking the main and shooting water all over the place. We got out of there in a hurry and went over to Pasadena Avenue where we released the brakes on a 1946 Dodge which knocked down a high brick wall.”
The boys were ordered to make restitution for the damaged cars ($8,000) and were eventually tried and sentenced to three months at a juvenile detention home. A number of admiring “bobby-soxers” attended the trial, according to Herbert Jenkins’ book Atlanta and the Automobile.
There followed two years probation during which time the boys could ride in cars only to and from compulsory weekly Sunday School and Church “of their choice.”
Danny Payne told the Atlanta Journal, “I was an Eagle Scout when I was fourteen years old. I am an assistant scoutmaster. I am a sophomore at Georgia State studying business administration. I wish I understood why we did this. There must be a reason, but I haven’t been able to think of one.”
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