Ray Stevens – "The Streak" (1974)

I said, “Don’t look, Ethel!”

But it was too late

She’d already got a free shot!

Together, the Maryland counties of Wicomico and Worcester are home to only 150,000-odd residents.

But according to the folks at Eastern Shore Undercover, those 150,000 souls generate plenty of business for the local police departments and sheriff’s offices. 

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Eastern Shore Undercover (let’s call it “ESU” for short) is a social media-based news source for the good citizens of those counties – which are located on the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland, smack dab between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean:

Click here to visit ESU’s website, which has links you can use to follow Eastern Shore Undercover on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.

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The last 2 or 3 lines was about an ESU report concerning a lady [sic] who was recently spotted perambulating through the parking lot at the Irish Penny Pub & Grill in Salisbury, MD.  Despite the freezing temperatures that evening, she was nekkid as a jaybird: 

As you can see, the woman was eventually driven home by a responsible, non-intoxicated adult – hopefully a friend or family member of the woman, not just some random creeper who saw the ESU item and headed to the Irish Penny to take a peek.

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It seems that public nudity is an issue with some members of the male population of Salisbury as well:

One of my fellow ESU fans left the following comment concerning that report:

In case that comment doesn’t ring a bell, it’s a quote from the lyrics of the 1974 Ray Stevens novelty record, “The Streak.” 

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Stevens got the idea for that song from an article about streaking in a news magazine he read while on an airplane.  He started writing lyrics after he landed, but didn’t finish the song until later, after the streaking phenomenon (and news coverage of it) exploded.  

Stevens wasn’t the first to release a record about streaking – eventually there were some three dozen streaking records released – but “The Streak” was by far the most successful.  It was a #1 hit single in the U.S., the UK, and Canada, and sold over five million copies internationally.

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I was a senior at Rice University when streaking was a thing, and I participated in two or three group streaks.

The most memorable took place in broad daylight after a beer-bike team practice.  (I won’t go into all the details of the annual beer-bike race, which was a spring tradition at Rice.  Suffice it to say that I was a four-year letterman on my residential college’s beer-drinking team.)

The outdoor courtyard where we were practicing for the race by drinking 24-ounce containers of warm, flat beer as quickly as possible – my times were usually around five seconds –  was only a short distance from the Rice baseball field, where the Owls were taking on the powerhouse Texas Longhorns.  

(Some other dude streaking
at a Rice baseball game)

It was during the height of the streaking craze, and after a couple of practice rounds, it seemed as if all of my beer-drinking teammates had exactly the same idea at exactly the same moment.  

In the blink of an eye, a dozen or so of us had stripped naked (except for our shoes, of course) and started running toward the baseball field.  We carried our shorts and T-shirts with us as we ran – no one wanted to get back to the starting point of our little excursion and find that his clothes had been purloined by some merry prankster. 

We made a beeline for the baseball field, hopped the low fence that circled it, and then ran from 3rd base to 2nd base to 1st base while the game was in progress – after which we made our escape by hopping the fence on the other side of the field and running back to our jumping-off point.  We made it without incident, although it was a close call for me.

You see, I got a late start and was not the most fleet-footed member of the team.  I found myself bringing up the streak's rear (so to speak), running as hard as I could in hopes of catching up with the pack ahead of me before some Texas player or umpire decided to teach me a lesson by tripping or tackling me.  Fortunately, nothing like that happened.  

I may have streaked at night as part of large groups once or twice after that.  But this was by far the best streak I ever heard about at Rice.  After all, it was done during broad daylight, and there were a fair number of fans watching the game.  

The spectators included my college girlfriend and a high-school friend of hers who was visiting for the weekend.  (No doubt that my girlfriend had a happy smile on her face when she proudly pointed me out to her friend.)  

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Tune in to the next 2 or 3 lines for more shenanigans from Eastern Shore Undercover.

In the meantime, click here to watch the official music video of “The Streak.”

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: