Summer of 1955

Right now, the only carving I was doing was taking the leaves off the switch. I angled my knife and slid it down the branch, stripping the leaves off as I went. The leaves caused the switch to drag through the air as you were whipped, so they had to be removed. You didn’t get a good enough whipping when the leaves slowed the swing down. Besides, I think my dad rather enjyoyed the nice snap a clean switch made as it quickly hit your bottom.

Of course, I got those switches often, so the way I figured, my dad must be one of the happiest dad’s on earth. That was mostly due to the fact that Kevin was constantly getting into fights, or stealing. Whatever it was that he did, I had to take the blame, because as my dad said, “It’s your responsibility to look after your brother. If you’d keep a better eye on him, he wouldn’t get into nonsense, and you wouldn’t have to get spanked.”

If I didn’t have Uncle Tom and Aunt Mae’s to go to, I believe school was better than home. But it didn’t compare to hanging out with my best buds. There was Gary Nelson who was fifteen and driving. He had been held back and instead of being in high school, he was still stuck back in middle school with us.

We liked him because he was cool, but mostly because he was the only eighth grader who could actually drive himself to school. That is, if his dad would let him. So he didn’t really get to drive to school much but he had lots of stories abut what happened or what he did while driving.

I think a lot of it was just a bunch of bull. He was always hanging out with us, so I don’t know when he found the time to do all that driving and stunts he claimed he did, but he swore it was all true.

Then there was Stubby. His real name was Steve Matthews, but we all called him Stubby because he was a little short for his age, which was fourteen just like me. Gary and I let him hang around us, because no one else would. They all picked on him because after his mom died when he was ten, his dad became the town drunk.

Stubby was really shy when he was around others and one day when some kids were ragging on him about his dad, Gary and I jumped ‘em. After that, we started to look after Stubby and everyone knew not to pick on him anymore, or they would have to deal with us. He was shy at first, but soon, he would out talk me and Gary. Some days, he wouldn’t say anything at all.

We assumed that those were the days when his dad had come home late drinking again, and we just kind of gave him some space. Stubby wasn’t much fun on those days.

I guess it was a good thing that we had plenty of other things to get into. School was about out and there would be watermelons to raid from Mr. O’dell’s garden and swimming down at the river. The raid at Mr. O’dell’s had become a yearly tradition. When the watermelons were nice and ripe, we would sneak down there and snatch a great big juicy one.

We were all excited at the beginning of the Summer of 1955, little did we know, it was the summer that would change each of our lives and we would see one another in a whole new light.

~2~

The last day of the school year was always the longest. From the time the school bell rung that morning, to the one in the afternoon dismissing us, we eagerly waited on the edge of our seats. Every year we would joke about skipping school that last day, but none of us really dared to. It was rumored that Principal Garrett had stationed a truant officer in his office to seek out students who ditched school on the last day, and purposely had them held back.

We didn’t really believe it, but just in case, we decided to show up for the last day anyhow. When the bell rang that morning, Gary and I were seated in our seats before it had the chance to stop. We high fived each other for beating the rush and turned to high five Stubby and noticed that his seat was empty.