The Circle

By Daniel Herbert

"Written as a Memoir of adolescence an adulthood, as it's written Herbert's work tell the story of a group of young men who bond together in an "us" against the "world" friendship. Laughing together, fighting together, getting into trouble together, they come to moments of decision about the Vietnam war- and go."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483559421

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Epilogue

Prologue

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever known anyone who you just couldn’t say no to? And if you did, you felt bad? Well, try to imagine having six people who you couldn’t just say no to. In telling this story, I hope to share some life’s lessons that I’ve learned the hard way and maybe try to explain why we did some of the things people will never forget. Like the first time we decided to cut class, that wasn’t the best or brightest decision that we ever made. I am convinced that without doing this one act of pure stupidity, there would be no story to tell. I am not encouraging cutting class, but it might be the one thing that changed our lives forever. It wouldn’t be the last thing we ever did either. But for the six of us that one decision made all the difference….

Most of my adult life has been spent wondering through the past. I often find myself asking and re-asking the same old question. If I could change something in my life, would I do it? When I find myself questioning any decision that I’ve made in my life, I think of my friends and try to imagine what they would have told me to do. For whenever we had a problem in life, be it personal, a relationship, school, or family; we turned to each other for strength and guidance. For this, I was and I still am eternally grateful. We were always there for each other and that is my definition of the term friend.

But in order to do this right, we probably should start from the beginning….. The year was 1956 and ever since grade school we were referred to as The Circle. The first time we ever formed the circle we were just freezing, so we huddled up to keep warm. But for some reason it really caught on and everyone seemed to want to be in The Circle. At the time I really couldn’t understand it, it seemed to be just a simple circle. However, I realize now that it was always more than just a circle.

For some reason we were transformed from kids to small town icons. I never truly could understand all the fuss. We all played sports. But only one of us had even had a shot at a college scholarship. It seems when you’re in a small town, surrounded by other small towns like ours.

One or two state championships, in various sports, and you become the talk of a few towns. Added together, the teams that won all had one of us on it, and that’s what helped spread our legend. We were the group that most everyone looked up to, and the ones that others just seemed to want to start trouble with.

Our first real fight was after the little league World Series, which was won 4/3 in the bottom of the ninth by a grand slam. After winning we all headed to Ralphs which was a classics 50’s burger/shake stand, and it set just off the main road that ran through all four small towns. Its location made it a hot spot for the kids.

After winning the fight, my friends and I found ourselves fighting more and more often. I do not believe we necessarily set out to be bad kids. But without a doubt, we were always the first ones questioned or blamed if anything strange or unusual happened in any of the four towns.

Chapter One

Introductions

I remember when and where we all met. Louis has been my best friend since grade school. Even being a grade younger than me, and in my opinion he was the only one of us who truly didn’t fit the profile of The Circle. Then I met Jimmy, Louis’s older brother, at a sleep over. He truly was a nice guy, but man……. What a war freak. He could tell you anything about war, from who fought, to the battle tactics used during that altercation. Yet Jimmy probably didn’t even know who Babe Ruth was.

I met Shawn Thompson surely through fate. You see, he was going to fight Louis for some reason. So I did what any kid does when he knows that his friend can’t fight. I challenged Shawn that day on the playground. He just smiled and said, The name’s Shawn as he extended his hand for mine. There are two things to always remember about Shawn, he was born with a short fuse and he’d do anything for a friend. Shawn always ran with two other guys. Anthony Parker, who we called Tony, and Erick Sanderson. Tony had to move when we all started high school and none of us, including Shawn, knew that much about Erick. All we knew was he was from Michigan and that he didn’t talk much.

Finally there was Wud (wood). We were all in the grocery store when he got caught trying to steal a playboy, which of course explains his nickname. His given name was Steven Wilkins, but after Shawn started calling him Wood it just stuck. Instead of it making him mad, he wore his nickname like a badge of honor. He even shortened it to Wud after looking in the dictionary and deciding to go by the pronunciation. These are my friends, but I always knew we were much more.

For some reason I was the leader of The Circle. Of course my mom would always tell me, You always have the ability to lead or follow, so why not lead? At least if you’re leading, you get to choose. Although I didn’t expect this great honor, I gladly accepted because the guys and I were family. I still don’t understand why anyone would want to follow me. But if anyone asked we all went no matter the consequences.

Like when we started Gate Night. We were only about nine or ten years old at the time and we never really liked trick or treating. One Halloween I had an idea for a gag. Trick or treating was over around eight or nine o’clock. Then the small town that we lived in would gather at the church for a sermon. While the town was in prayer we would swipe my dad’s truck keys and go to the house’s with a screw driver, and pop out the hinges of the front gate and put the gate in back of the truck then drive two or three houses down and exchange their gate for someone else’s.

We were almost confident that we wouldn’t get into too much trouble, because the nearest police station was approximately two small towns away. Not to mention that everyone knew we weren’t setting out to be malicious, we were just kids.

The next day is when we got caught. Not because someone told on us or had seen us switching the gates. But simply because it was just too funny the next morning when people started noticing that their fences didn’t match their gates. I think the main thing that gave us away was when old man Clemons came flying around the corner in his Caddy screaming, Where the Hell’s my damned gate? he was sipping on his moonshine, or the white lighting as he called it. We just couldn’t stop laughing, out there on my porch. It was just so funny watching everyone ask, Have you seen my gate?

Instead of the beatings that we thought we were going to get, it became a town tradition. Every Halloween the kids of our town would try to even harder to mix up the town’s gate. Though still to this day we don’t get recognition for starting this tradition. We all know that it was our will to challenge authority that started us off on our crazy adventures.

My grandfather always told me, You and your friends never like being told what you could or could not do. That was the way of it from the time you could walk and talk. He died a few years later in an auto accident.

After we buried Pops, Dad started thinking more and more about his life. He would always say, My dad never lived, so I’m going to. To which I would reply, Go for it. I never realized those few words would change my life forever. The next day dad quit his job that he had for the last seven years and decided to become a traveling salesman. He would always go on these long trips and return with a gift and a story to tell. He would tell me about the places he’d seen and tell me about the way people acted in the places he’d visited. Like when he told me about his trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday. Once he traveled as far as the capital of our nation, Washington D.C.

I later discovered my dad’s trips and stories I had always enjoyed were just elaborated lies. All of it had been staged for my benefit, I can still remember that day like it was yesterday. The snow had really fallen hard and heavy the night before. This meant that the guys would be by sometime in the morning so that we could go sledding. Before Mom would let me go with the guys I had to help her decorate the house and the Christmas tree. After we decorated the house, Mom let me go