Men Grow up to Be Boys

By Allan C. Stover

MEN GROW UP TO BE BOYS
By Allan C. Stover

Men are boys until you bury em. . . . Rowena, in the movie Decoration Day.

Men take a long time to grow up. When they finally do, life gets infinitely more complicated and a lot less fun . . . . Uncle Sammy (mumbled to Tanya Tata in Hummer's Topless Bar).

Men Grow Up to Be Boys is a novel of both comedy and tragedy in the life of Roger Murphy, who just may grow up and find out what is important in life. Imagine Holden Caulfields tragicomic life in Catcher in the Rye spread across a messy childhood, messier teens, and even messier adulthood. Add scheming Sammy Glick as his best friend and an untamed shrew as his first love and wife. End it with a slima very slimchance at happiness, success, and true love with an angel.
Roger Murphy begins life with everything against him. His parents divorce when he is a child. His embittered mother accuses his father of molesting him, which makes his life a living hell when everyone in the neighborhood finds out about it. His mother never admits to anyone that shed made up the molestation story after prodding from her divorce lawyer. Roger pleads with her to tell his friends parents that nothing had happened, but she refuses. I want everyone to know how rotten he is, she told him. Im glad everyone thinks that bastard is a monster.
Mom, its making things so hard for me, he pleads. No one can play with me without getting into trouble. Please tell them nothing happened. Please.
She doesnt listen. She looks out the window and smiles. Do you know he cant come into the neighborhood? The men here would beat him to a pulp. Thats why he has to meet you in the park. Serves the bastard right. She told everyone shed dropped the charges only to spare Roger the trauma of testifying. She even begins to believe her story. It would all complicate Rogers life for a long, long time.
Rogers best friend, Bob, might dominate him, but Roger has no one else who cares. His secret love, Madge, loves Bob and acts as though Roger doesnt even exist on this planet. From there, Rogers life goes downhill over a lot of rough road.
The book gets funny even when life gets serious. In Chapter 1, Bob, Madge, and Roger play show me yours and Ill show you mine. When its Bobs turn, he says, Ive seen yours, so why show mine? and runs from the park.
In Chapter 3, Bob and Roger play the Urinal Game to extort money from students. They drop a dime into the urinal then hide. When they hear water run, they know the student is washing off the dime because boys never wash their hands after they pee. (Some just lick their fingers.) They threaten to tell the other students that the boy stuck his hand in a urinal to get a lousy dime. For a quarter, theyll keep quiet.
In Chapter 4, Roger has a chance of realizing his dream of owning a Schwinn, the Cadillac of bikes. Bob helps out by extorting raffle tickets from local store owners.
In Chapter 5, when the school imposes a rule that all boys have to wear a tie every Friday. Roger and Bob form the Anti-Tie Society to fight repression and to guarantee freedom from stiflement. Roger, of course, does all the work.
In Chapter 7, Rogers dad remarries an Ice Queen who hates the idea of her new husband having a son by another woman. Roger has to struggle to maintain a relationship.
In Chapter 8, Roget and Bob go to the ocean to try to pick up some girls. Bob hooks them up with two girls in a scene that has Roger wondering why some guys can say anything to a girl, but guys like him cant say shit without creating an international incident.
Every guy in the neighborhood wants to lose his virginity as soon as he can. After that, they still want to get laid, mainly to run up the score so they can brag to the other guys. Roger finally has his chance with Aggie Sue at a school dance in the gymnasium, where the bright lights and lingering scent of gym socks hardly create a romantic atmosphere. In Chapter 1

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 15, 2004
• ISBN: 9781462834556

Allan C. Stover

Allan C. Stover’s first book (Dodd, Mead) received the National Science Teachers Association award as Outstanding Science Book. His next book (McGraw-Hill) was republished in Mandarin for Mainland China. His novels, The Evil Ones and Men Grow Up to be Boys were critically received. Writer’s Digest has awarded him five fiction and nonfiction awards. His works have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. He is a member of Authors Guild. Mr. Stover received his Master’s degree from Vanderbilt University as Orrin Henry Ingram Scholar. He worked abroad twenty years in Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East; survived a terrorist attack in Sri Lanka; and lived in the Philippines when President Marcos became dictator.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Men are boys until you bury ’em, . . . The character Rowena in the movie Decoration Day.

Men take a long time to grow up. When they finally do, life gets infinitely more complicated and boring and a lot less fun… . Uncle Sammy (mumbled to Tanya Tata in Hummer’s Topless Bar).

An ancient and wise Mexican alcoholic who claimed his ancestors were Mayan high priests sat with me in the first bar on the road into Guadalajara and listened to my life’s story. I told it because I had nothing better to do at the time, and he listened because I was buying the drinks. When I finished, the old man leaned back in his rickety rattan barstool, fingered his tequila-and-Coke-stained white beard, and pronounced judgment: You sure screwed up your life, Señor Murphy.

I protested and explained and bought him another tequila and Coke, which he dribbled again on his beard, but he was adamant. You just screwed it up, amigo. You were your own worst enemy. There’s a few things you could’ve done to make things right along the way, but you didn’t. You screwed up big time.

As he spoke, I heard a car approaching. A familiar sky-blue Toyota Celica with a red racing stripe along the side pulled in next to my old Chevy with the rust holes. How many people in the world drive a sky-blue Celica with a red racing stripe? I didn’t screw everything up, amigo, I said, and headed toward the parking lot.

It took me a long time to figure out what I could have done to make things right. With the people in my life—dominating Bob, bitchy Madge, wimpy Dad, hysterical Mom, crazy Uncle Sammy, and asshole Cal, among others—things had to get screwed up from the beginning. I didn’t have an owner’s manual or the right tools to fix the things that broke down in my life, I’d told the old man, so where could I have gone wrong?

I figured I’d screwed up with Bob and Madge, beginning when we were kids, but I was really lonely after Mom got hysterical and Dad moved out. The loneliness ate at me until I craved someone, anyone, to soothe the emptiness and fear that used to burn in my gut like I’d taken a gulp of too-hot chocolate. It’s a wonder I never had ulcers. I’d always wanted Bob and Madge to be my best friends, but things never work out in life exactly the way you want.

Bob always reminded me of that kid in Catcher in the Rye, someone really neat whose setbacks in life always seem temporary, who always ends up with the best things in the end. I just knew that Bob would grow up to be smarter and richer, own a better car, marry Madge, and do a lot of other great and cool things I would never do. I considered Bob my best friend. It took me a long time to figure out what Bob thought of me.

Besides Dad, Bob and Uncle Sammy were the most important males in my life while I was growing up. They were different from anyone else in the world. And they differed from each other as though they were two entirely different species of animals, one a young fox, the other a lumbering old buffalo.

The best way to understand them is to consider how they handled their farts. It’s not a pleasant subject, but you can sometimes learn a lot about a guy by the way he handles his farts. Bob was the kind of kid who would ease out a fart as quietly as he could then blame it on the guy next to him. He’d hold his nose and say, Eewww! What’d you eat last night? He used to embarrass me a lot in front of the guys on the corner of Hough Avenue and 88th because I was usually standing next to him.

Uncle Sammy, on the other hand, never eased out a quiet fart in his life. He’d raise his leg in the middle of a conversation, let out a loud one, and go on with the conversation as though nothing had happened. Dad called them foghorn farts. Uncle Sammy used to embarrass me a lot in public, especially during the supervised visits Dad was allowed with me.

The supervised visits were part of the reason I was so lonely. When Mom and Dad were going through their divorce, Mom accused Dad of molesting me. Her lawyer had hinted to her that such an accusation would assure her of full custody and child support, and limit Dad’s visitation rights. Lawyers never directly tell their clients to lie to gain some legal advantage. They just ask questions and hint around until the client finally gets it. The court refused to allow Dad to see me for a long time after the divorce for reasons I didn’t understand then.

I also didn’t understand why the kids at school taunted me about the molestation thing. It’s doubtful they understood any of it either. They just picked up the terms eavesdropping on their parents’ whispered conversations. Their parents heard it from Mom, who made sure everyone in the neighborhood knew about her former husband’s disgraceful and vile acts. I tried to explain to the kids that nothing had happened, but they just taunted me more.

In those days, people weren’t as sensitive and politically correct as they supposedly are now. Kids, of course, are never very sensitive, especially boys, so I caught hell at school. The only kids who didn’t bother me were Bob and Madge. Madge never paid much attention to me anyway. It’s doubtful she was aware I lived on the same planet she did.

I also didn’t understand why some people seemed to apportion part of the blame to me. They acted as though I was disgraceful and vile by association with the acts, just as people in those days apportioned some blame to rape victims. ("She must’ve done something to tempt him to do it. She probably wanted it.) Some parents worried that I had learned" to molest and told their kids to stay away from me. Later, the story grew into my actually molesting some kids, so my isolation grew even worse. It was never clear to me whom I was supposed to have molested, boys or girls or both. Each household had a different version. Rumors have a way of mushrooming out of control, kind of like crabgrass in a lawn, only there’s no magic chemical you can apply to stop a rumor, even a false one.

In a divorce, each parent supposedly had an equal shot at custody, but judges in those days seldom awarded custody to fathers, and never to a father accused of molesting his kid. Judges wouldn’t even risk allowing unsupervised visits. They’d worry that the charges might have some grain of truth to them, so they avoided any possible political fallout by taking the safest route. I could see Dad only once a month for a couple of hours, and then only if Uncle Sammy accompanied us.

Sammy and Dad were brothers. Both had been short and wiry in their youth, but Sammy had gained weight with each passing year until he’d grown a sizeable paunch. Dad stayed wiry for as long as I knew him. Both brothers had hair almost too thick to comb. Sammy was older, so his hair had started to turn gray. Dad’s hair was dark brown, and he always kept it neatly groomed. I guess it also turned gray when he got older. I inherited their brown hair and blue eyes, but I got my height from Mom’s side. Her father had been tall, she said.

Sammy’s hair never looked neatly groomed, nor did the rest of him. He had stains on his shirt even on the rare occasion when he wore a new one. Although I saw him monthly, Sammy always looked as though he was two months overdue for a haircut and two days overdue for a shave.

Sammy usually showed up before Dad and told me stories about the war, the women he’d known, and all kinds of other interesting things. He talked about moving to Mexico when his ship came in. With his luck, if his ship ever came in, he’d be waiting at the airport. Lots of retired Americans live down there, he said, especially around Guadalajara. It’s like an American community in some places, I hear. The retirement check goes further there because things are cheaper. The booze and food are cheap. You can get some sweet, young Mexican lady to do the housework for a few dollars a week.

Guadalajara sounded like the most exotic place in the world. I promised myself that I’d visit there someday. I told Bob about Mexico, but he just scoffed. Naw, that’s not a nice place to go. My father was in North Africa when he was in the Army, and he said that’s the place to visit. I believed most of what Bob said, so I decided then I’d visit both Guadalajara and North Africa someday. As things worked out, I never bothered with North Africa.

Mom had a sister, my Aunt Margaret, who was my favorite person. I didn’t see her very often because she traveled a lot to places like Paris and Nepal. She was a freelance photographer who sold pictures to magazines, and I heard she even published a book of pictures, but Mom wouldn’t keep a copy in the house. A couple of the pictures are obscene, she claimed. Years later, I tried to find a copy, but even Barnes & Noble’s used book section couldn’t locate one. Anyway, when Aunt Margaret visited, she’d take me places and do things with me. You know, she sometimes said, you’re my favorite nephew. We’d both laugh because I was her only nephew. I loved Aunt Margaret and wished she could’ve visited more often. She loosened Mom up a little when she visited. Bob liked her, but Madge said her mother had called Margaret too hyper.

I considered Bob and Madge my best friends as far back as I could remember. In one of my earliest memories, I played hide-and-seek with them in Madison Memorial Park, the local cemetery and the closest thing they had to a park in the area. I loved that park because it was so clean and green, with clusters of oaks and pines scattered around the open spaces. Headstones stood in long rows like silent gray ranks of soldiers. An occasional headstone leaned to the left or right, and many were stained green with ancient moss.

The park was a haven from our dirty and cluttered neighborhood, with its sooty shop fronts and dingy houses crammed up against each other. Each house possessed a few square yards of lawn, but they were lawns in name only, with more weeds and crabgrass than grass.

When I first heard of the old movie How Green Was My Valley, I felt it had to be about a place like my park because our park was so green and surrounded by a dingy neighborhood. I was disappointed that the movie took place in a dingy coal-mining town nestled in a green valley, kind of the opposite.

I will always cherish memories of the wildflowers and fresh-mown grass, the songs of birds on brilliant summer afternoons, the cool shade under trees that we imagined was a wild forest. The park was a child’s sanctuary, free from the eyes and restrictions of adults. There we could run free. It was a great place to play hide-and-seek, with lots of bushes to hide in, and trees and headstones to hide behind. During the day, when the lovers and perverts were away at work, we had a private playground.

When I was It that day, I actually found Bob. He always cheated and hid in places forbidden by their rules, so catching him would represent a victory I could savor long afterward. I glimpsed Bob’s bright blue pants behind the guard’s station, a forbidden place to hide because it risked making the old man who policed the area angry enough to throw us out of our beloved park. Bob stuck his head out to see what was happening, and I recognized the narrow face and neatly combed black hair. Bob always kept himself neat even when he played hard. I ran over toward him. Victory was but a tag away.

But victory was snatched from me that day. Bob held up his hand and stopped me. Let’s play a different game.

Madge, her body still plump with baby fat, emerged from her hiding place behind a juniper bush. What’s wrong with hide-and-seek? she asked. Her silky black hair was pulled back into the god-awful tight bun her mother forced on her.

At that age, I didn’t notice things like bodies and hair. I guessed she was pretty even then, and her skin was smooth even for a child. I just liked being around her, although I stammered and did dumb things when she was around. Y-yeah, I said, w-w-what’s wrong with hide-and-seek?

Well, ‘Show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ is more fun.

Show what? Madge asked.

Show me your cunt. Bob almost shouted the new word we’d learned, a word that made us feel grown up. It made pee-pee a word of the past.

Madge stared at Bob. All right, she said, her voice quavering, but you go first.

It was my idea, Bob said. You go first. That’s the rule.

She hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, then grabbed her pink shorts and began to ease them downward. My head felt light and my mouth went dry. I had an abrupt urge to urinate, the closest thing to an orgasm I could experience at that age. All of a sudden, she turned away and pulled her shorts down and up in a flash. I didn’t see anything, but I broke out in a sweat all the same.

Bob’s thin, crooked smile reminded me of the bad guys in the movies I saw at the Avalon Theater every Saturday. Your turn, dummy, Bob said. He sometimes called me dummy when someone else was around. I never complained.

Why me? I complained, It was your idea.

That’s why you’re next. It’s the rule, dummy.

Yeah, Madge said. You’re not chicken, are you?

Every boy hates being called chicken, but when the love of his life does it, the pain is excruciating. I shook my head. I’m not chicken. I dropped my pants, dangled my pecker a bit, then pulled up my parts. I don’t think Madge even looked. It’s your turn now, Bob, I said.

Bob looked at us a moment, his evil smile forming again. No, I already saw you both. Why should I show you anything now? He turned and ran away, laughing.

I ran after him. You sonnabitch, you gotta show your thing, too. No fair!

Bob ran to our street, with its ramshackle houses, decaying porches, and peeling gray paint that had started out white decades before. He made it home before I could catch him. I could have gone home, too, but I headed back toward the park to find Madge. On the way, I daydreamed that she’d hold my hand and say nice things to me as I walked her home.

She gave me an icy stare as she walked right by me. Just leave me alone, you animal. I followed her like a beaten puppy dog. She slowed down when she passed Bob’s house and kept looking toward it.

I shuffled home and tiptoed up to my tiny bedroom. Mom was on the phone with Madge’s mother. Mom talked to Madge’s mother a lot, but I sensed trouble with that call. My instinct for sensing trouble with Mom was well honed.

He did what? she shouted. Uh, yes, I know, that thing with his father might’ve affected him. Is she all right? No, he hasn’t done anything to other children. She’s still crying? Poor thing. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he doesn’t do it again.

She hung up and marched up the stairs to my room. Even though I’d tried to sneak in, she knew exactly where I was. Her ability to track me down when I was in trouble was also well honed. She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She had on her usual stained housedress, and her dark hair hung in unkempt strands across her face. I remembered how pretty and neat she’d looked just the year before when she was still married to Dad. She had long flowing black hair, a bright smile, and an easy laugh. Then something happened to her, and she aged and got hysterical. Tiny wrinkles formed around her eyes, and she let herself go. And she filed for divorce.

She grabbed me and paddled my bottom. You little monster, making that sweet girl undress for you, then showing her your pee-pee. That poor little girl! You vile creature! You’re nasty, simply nasty. And rotten. You’re just rotten to the core! She used the same words when she talked about Dad, who never seemed rotten to me. To me, Dad was the greatest man alive.

I’d have given anything then to have Mom and Dad back together, and I worked on them every chance I could. Mom’s eyes would mist up when I talked about Dad, but then she’d snap out of it and say nasty things about him again. Dad would just sigh when I talked about Mom. He never said anything bad about her.

That spanking was the second worst I ever got from her. The worst occurred just before Dad left. She and Dad stood in the front yard and bickered, as they did a lot before she filed for divorce, so I guess she was in a bad mood. I walked toward them from the empty lot across the street. Dad flashed the bright smile that always made me feel special. She frowned, as she did a lot around that time. What’s that bulge in your pocket? she asked.

I patted it proudly and said, That’s dirt. Bob gave it to me.

Dad smiled and focused his soft blue eyes on me. He looked as though he knew what I was going to say next, maybe because he’d done the same thing as a boy.

Mom shook her head. I could see she was already angry with me. All right, Mr. Twenty Questions, why do you have Bob’s dirt in your pocket?

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of worms. The dirt’s for Bob’s worms. His mother won’t let him keep them, so he had me save them for him. They need the dirt to live in so I— I stopped. I could sense I was in trouble.

Dad leaned back and closed his eyes and laughed, so he didn’t see what happened next. Mom grabbed me and started to clobber me as hard as she could. You little beast, she shouted. You’ve ruined your clothes for a few slimy worms. Dad recovered enough to stop her, but he couldn’t stop laughing, and that only made her madder. My butt hurt for two days after that.

The day after my Great Exposure in the park, I told Bob what had happened. So Madge ratted on you, he said. She never said a word about me. My mother doesn’t even know.

But it was your idea! You told us about the game.

Yeah, but I didn’t show my pecker like you did. You’re the bad one. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just talked. There’s no law against talking. But there’re laws against showing your pecker in public.

I wonder whether Bob was right, that I really was nasty and vile and all of those other things.

I figured Madge didn’t tell on Bob because she had a crush on him. The only other explanation was that Bob had a father who wouldn’t put up with any false accusations. Bob’s father thought the world of him. Like me, Bob was an only child. If Madge had accused Bob, her mother might have hesitated to call Bob’s parents because Bob’s father would tell her to kiss his ass, and might even go over and kick Madge’s wimpy father’s ass just for being married to some bitch who’d dare accuse his son.

Bob’s father was a dork, but he was there. My dad would’ve stood up for me, but he wasn’t around anymore. It was painful for me in the years after the divorce to hear Bob and the guys talk about their fathers. I would have traded Bob, my baseball card collection, my marbles (including my favorite aggie), any chance I had for Madge’s affections, and all of my other priceless treasures to have Dad back home. I dreamed of living with Dad, if not at home, then anywhere else. Heck, a mountaintop in Nepal would’ve been fine with me. I didn’t realize then how impossible that would be.

CHAPTER 2

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child… . 

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

When I was about eight, we guys started a secret club. Only four guys in the neighborhood would play with me: Bob, Pee Wee, Bucky, and Scabs, all of them against the orders of their parents, who worried about the child molestation thing. I guess they thought I might either molest their kids or teach them how to do it.

Mom never admitted to anyone that she’d made up the molestation story. I pleaded with her to tell the parents that nothing had happened, but she refused. I want everyone to know how rotten he is, she said. I’m glad everyone thinks that bastard is a monster.

Mom, it’s making things so hard for me, I cried. No one can play with me without getting into trouble. Please tell them nothing happened. Please.

She didn’t listen. She looked out the window with a smile that I remember being as evil as Bob’s when he was being sneaky. Do you know he can’t come into the neighborhood? she said. Her voice rang with triumph. The men here would beat him to a pulp. That’s why he has to meet you in the park. Serves the bastard right. She told everyone she’d dropped the charges only to spare me the trauma of testifying. I think she even began to believe her story.

Anyway, the club had to be secret because the guys would get into trouble if their parents knew they were playing with me. We excluded girls because we didn’t understand them or feel comfortable around them. If we hadn’t known that our mothers had once been girls in an earlier life, we’d have believed that girls really did come from Venus or some other planet. Actually, I’d have liked to have had a mother who was Venusian, but I had to accept that she was an Earthling, and that girls were, too—at least most of them.

Adults didn’t care what secrets we kept from them in our secret club unless we planned something serious, like robbing a store. We never planned to do that, but we did draft a plan to conquer the world and distribute free candy to all children. I wrote out the plan using crayons and notebook paper. We never carried out the mission because, as someone pointed out, if all adults in the world were killed, who’d cook supper and operate the movie projector at the Avalon Theater?

Our first debate centered on a name. Let’s call it the GAG Club, I suggested. It could stand for almost anything, like Guys Are Great or Girls Are Gruesome or Gorillas are Good or anything like that. No one will ever know what it means. It’ll be our secret. Gag also accurately described how we reacted to girls at that age: we felt nauseous when we got too close to them. The guys muttered their approval.

I think we ought to call it the Roman Runner Club, plump Bucky Windfield said. His real name was Buckminster, which he hated, so we didn’t call him that because we liked him. He had a favorite toy soldier in a white winter uniform with one leg missing. He called the soldier the Roman Runner for reasons lost in the vagaries of childhood logic. The guys rejected that name without debate.

Scabs Morton stood up. He was taller than the rest of us, but as skinny as a broomstick. He’d suffered from chicken pox before any of the rest of us and scratched the itchy blisters until they bled and left scabs, then he scratched off the scabs. The scabs left round pink scars that pockmarked his legs, arms, and chest. At the beach, I swear he looked like he was wearing a polka-dotted shirt. Why not Fearless Fosdick Secret and Dangerous Club? he asked in the Georgia drawl he’d brought with him when he moved into the neighborhood the year before. It’s got everything in it. And we all think Fearless Fosdick is the funniest cartoon.

We all nodded and grunted, which meant we approved it. I even switched my vote because I liked the Secret and Dangerous part, and Fearless Fosdick was one of my favorite cartoon characters.

We already had a headquarters for our Secret and Dangerous Club, my garage. Dad had taken the car with him to use to drive to work, so the garage was empty, bare of anything except a patched inner tube and a rusty shovel hanging from hooks on the wall. The garage seemed as cavernous to me as a convention hall. I’d have given anything back then to see Dad’s car parked there.

I hadn’t ridden in Dad’s car since the divorce. He hardly ever cleaned it inside, so it was always messy. I always used to find interesting stuff to read or play with in the mess when I did ride in it. It smelled dusty and a little funny, but it didn’t smell yucky like Madge’s dad’s jalopy. His car was always neat and clean, without a single piece of dirt or paper anywhere, but there was an odor inside that was a blend of urine and rotting food. Shows what happens when you keep your car clean inside.

Madge said her mother made her dad clean it every day after work. Her mother said she wouldn’t ride in a dirty car. She didn’t mind a stinky one, I guess. Maybe she was the one who let some urine leak out onto the seats or threw food under the seat to rot.

I used to retreat to the garage when I got lonely or sad and just think about things. I’d sit on the floor and look through the tiny windows atop the garage door and watch the sky and the birds flying. Sometimes, for no particular reason, I’d stare at the oil spot from Dad’s car in the middle of the floor. I don’t know why the garage was the only place where I felt a sense of peace and security, where I wasn’t so scared all the time.

Dad had once raised chickens in a coop he’d built against the far wall before I was born, so the place had the kind of smell boys like. The wire fencing was gone, and all that was left was a raised platform where the coop had been. We used it as a stage and pretended we were acting in a play. The garage was gloomy inside and had a packed dirt floor and lots of spider webs along the rough wooden walls. It was our kind of place, a great headquarters for our secret and dangerous club.

We’re going to need money to start, Bob said. Put everything you’ve got into this bag. I’ll handle the money. He collected thirty-two cents. In addition to his position as treasurer, he also assumed the title of Great Leader.

We felt great. We’d established our Fearless Fosdick Secret and Dangerous Club, had a leader and treasurer, and set up our headquarters. When the Avalon Theater showed a spy movie that Saturday, we went in a group to see it. We imagined that someday we’d spy on the Nazis, too. No one told us that World War II had ended years before.

Once we’d formed our club dedicated to secret and dangerous missions, we took an oath that required us under penalty of death to keep it secret from everyone we considered enemies, including adults, jerks (all boys besides us), and girls.