N early 35 years after the hit film Thelma and Louise premiered in theaters, another pair of ladies with the same moniker find themselves in the middle of a pursuit of their own.

Granted, theirs may not involve police sirens or criminal activity but instead chasing the best of times in life and maintaining a friendship almost eight decades old.

Rachel Merriman, “Thelma,” and Gladys Tucker, “Louise,” grew up next to each other in Cannon County.

“We’ve been friends since we were little bitty girls,” explained Merriman. “My mother made chocolate gravy for her and her brothers years ago. They’d be in the field in front of our house working and my mother would holler for them and then here they’d come to get the gravy and then go back to work.”

The pair would spend time playing outside together as little girls with both noting a particular favorite activity.

“We wore out many a pair of underwear sliding in the mud down a bank,” Merriman said with a laugh.

Both women were schoolmates all the way through high school and attended grammar school at the old schoolhouse in Center Hill.

“We just had two teachers, one for the little room and one for the big room,” recalled Tucker. “Mrs. Eunice Parton taught the little room and Mr. Taylor Lance taught the big room. We had an old coal stove in the wintertime, and we just had a small lunchroom, and they had a wash basin in a little hall where we all washed our hands as we went to the lunchroom to eat.”

“We got to carry the coal bucket every so often,” added Merriman.

“The girls would carry it the same as the boys would, of course it would be two of us carrying it,” continued Tucker. “It was a treat to get out of school, and we had to go out and wash the toilets ourselves with a bucket of water and detergent.”

The two remained friends after their school careers were over and added their husbands to their group.

“We married friends when we got married the first time, and we run around together, but she had babies, twin boys, not long after she got married and had to settle down,” said Merriman. “Of course, I was settled down and married shortly after she did.”

Tucker has three sons, eight granddaughters, one grandson, seven great grandchildren and one on the way. Merriman has a son, a daughter, three grandsons and two granddaughters.

Before she fully settled down, though, Merriman admits that she and her husband did enjoy the occasional drag race in their Chevy Chevelle.

Both Merriman and Tucker enjoyed working before their eventual retirement.

Merriman started as a receptionist at the old hospital in Woodbury, a supervisor, an instructor, a parts handler, in home health and even as a forklift driver at Powermatic in McMinnville before retiring from Heatcraft in Murfreesboro.

“I’m one of those tough girls,” she said with pride.

Tucker on the other hand spent 30 years as a bus driver in Cannon County. She noted that the children she drove were “wonderful” and aren’t given enough credit from the adults around them.

“They would come and talk to me better than they would their mother and daddy about personal things,” she explained. “I would tell them what I thought was best and on Friday when I let them off, I told them, ‘There’s more than drinking and doing drugs, so y’all be careful, and I love yuns.’” She noted that she only ever had to go in the office three times in regard to the children on her bus.

“I always took care of the problems myself,” she added. “I never went to their parents for anything, but I knew the principal was there when I needed him or her and same thing with the parents.”

After both ladies retired, they found themselves dealing with a loss that drew them closer to each other.

“She lost her second husband three years ago in March, and I lost my husband three years ago in July,” remembered Merriman. “We live a mile apart now, so we just connect and go every day. We eat at Hardees most of the time and then we go to AJ’s.”

They enjoy riding the roads both in Woodbury and surrounding cities like Manchester, McMinnville and Shelbyville as well as walking. While a lot of folks know them by their given names, they say that more know them by their nicknames “Thelma” and “Louise,” which Merriman came up with.

“We were coming to Mc-Minnville one day cutting up and acting a fool, and I said, ‘Well if people saw us, they’d think we was Thelma and Louise the way we act,” she recalled.

Not only do the two go by their nicknames, but they also have shirts with them airbrushed on, they have a sign painted by Rachel Parker that they carry with them and they each have a scarf and sunglasses to wear.

To top it all off, they’ve also been known to ride around in a Ford Thunderbird convertible furnished by Tucker’s son Gary Hibdon, even winning a blue ribbon in Woodbury’s Good Ole Day’s parade for their get up.

“Since I retired and my last husband passed away, I’ve really enjoyed life,” said Tucker. “I know what it’s about now. Someone said to my youngest son, “Well, what do you think about your mother doing this and doing that,’ and he said, ‘I don’t care what she does as long as she enjoys herself.’” “Our kids know that we look out for each other,” added Merriman. “My son said ‘Mom, I don’t care where you go or what you do but stay off of River Road and hold it between the mayonnaise and mustard.’” The pair see each other nearly every day and on special occasions. They come as a package deal in all aspects of life.

“If one of us goes, the other one’s going,” explained Merriman. “If we meet a guy, he’s going to take two in order to get one. We’ve said that plain to them. You buy one, you get one free.”

“We just say that for a joke,” she added with a smile.

Both ladies say that they love everybody, enjoy being around people and are grateful for their friendship and the chance to have some fun.

“We just enjoy life, that’s all I can say,” said Tucker. “I’m thankful that the Lord let us live this long.”

This story originally ran in the Cannon Courier and reprinted in the Manchester Times with permission.