How I Got This Way: The Last Real Farm Boy

By George Hampton Sr.

How I Got This Way chronicles the true story of growing up in the 1950s on a
primitive farm. With very little knowledge of his own ancestors history, the author
was inspired to record his own life history so that future generations of his family
would understand How I Got This Way. He also felt that it was important to preserve
a record of what it was like to grow up in a rural primitive farm setting so that a
unique and important time in American history would not be lost forever.
The lessons he learned throughout his childhood infl uenced the man he became
through his years in the Navy and later as a Telephone Man. While some may feel
that the farm life experienced was cruel and unforgiving, he would say that it taught
him the values of hard work, responsibility, and a sense of ethics that provided great
strength of character that served him well throughout his life.
His story telling is mixed with humor and honesty as it uniquely describes his
childhood experiences through the tender perspective of a child. It is the story
of overcoming and loving life amid sometimes great diffi culties and trials. How
I Got This Way is a poignant story of a life that few will have the opportunity to
experience in the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479731978

George Hampton Sr.

The author was born Paul George Hampton on August 2, 1941 in Hamilton, Ohio. Through age five he lived with his grandmother while his mother was away working on WW11 bombers. At age ten, his family moved to a primitive farm. It was the experiences of growing up on the farm that forever shaped his future life. His story continues through his Navy experiences and the many years he worked for Cincinnati Bell Telephone. When he retired, he was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis and decided to write the story of his life so his children and future generation would know, “How I Got This Way.”

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Copyright © 2012 by George Hampton Sr.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012919078

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-3196-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-3195-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-3197-8

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Contents

Notes

PART ONE

MY EARLIEST MEMMORIES

MY NAME IS?

THE KID

THE SUGER COOKIE

THE CITY KID

PART TWO

LIFE IN THE CITY

TWO-MILE CREEK

PART THREE

NEW HOME ~ NEW SCHOOL

PART FOUR

HISTORY OF THE FARM

OLD PAUL STORIES

CHORES

INJURIES

KICKS LIKE A MULE

THE PILES

WATER

THE RESERVOIR

THE POND

THE HORSES

THE CATTLE

DOGS AND CATS

THE CAT HUNT

THE CHICKENS

THE FEATHERED DEMON

THE GEESE, SHEEP, GOATS, PIGS—WHATEVER

BEE HIVES

THE GARDENS

FRUIT AND NUT TREES

PASTURES AND CROPS

HAY FOR SALE

THE FARM EQUIPMENT

THE BUILDINGS

THE PRIVY (OUTHOUSE)

THE WOODS

DEATH OF A TURTLE

HUNTING STORIES

VISITED

YALE HARVARD SCHALK SR.

PART FIVE

THE NAVY

PART SIX

THE TELEPHONE YEARS

PART SEVEN

THE FINAL YEARS

Notes

Ihave been thinking about writing this for a long time. But as with many things in my life, I have been waiting for just the right time to do it. I think they call this procrastinating, but that seems like a harsh word, so I would rather just say waiting for the right moment. This right moment never seems to come, and consequently many things in my life have slipped by undone. Remembering the old saying, There is no time like the present, I decided it was time to get with it and begin writing.

I have no idea if anyone will be interested in reading this narrative (if that is what this can be called). This point remains to be seen. I do, however, wish my ancestors had taken time to write down something of who they were, some of their thoughts, and something about their lives. Except for a few photographs, no knowledge of my relatives exists except for stories that have been told and retold many times. It is certain that these stories have been added to, or enhanced by those who have told them. As no first-hand accounts exist, much speculation abounds around the lives of many of my ancestors. Hopefully my children and future generations of my family will find this work useful, if and when they become interested in their ancestors.

Not wishing to perpetuate family myths, I will try to relate in this work only those things that I have personally seen or experienced. This may not be entirely possible, as I would like to convey as much of my family’s history as I know. It may at some point be necessary to draw on some family stories. However, I hope to keep this at a minimum. Keeping this in mind, some of the events I will write about will still seem incredible, and some of what I write may be hard to believe, but everything I write about here will be true.

Now would be a good time to relate one of the failures of my life. As a student in school I hated English class. I saw no reason or useful purpose whatsoever for the study English. After all, my friends had no trouble understanding what I said, and I had no trouble understanding them. Although there were times that I wasn’t so sure about my parents or other adult’s ability to understand me. However, I chalked this up to being a failure on their part.

One may not get smarter the older they get, but they do hopefully become more knowledgeable. The older I get, the more certain I am that the thoughts I had in my youth about the study of English were a serious miscalculation on my part. I am now convinced that the study of English is one of the most important subjects of all. You may possess all the knowledge in the world and have the grandest of thoughts, but if you can’t write it down or say it properly, you will not be heard. I would like to say this one more time, You will not be heard! Learn to say it properly, learn to write it properly, and people will listen. I did not learn to do this in my youth and it has haunted me my entire life. The whole purpose for bringing this up is to apologize in advance for any grammatical mistakes I have made in writing these, the stories that make up all the pieces of my life.

PART ONE

MY EARLIEST MEMMORIES

Many times people have laughed at me when I told them I could remember things that happened to me when I was a just a baby. They always say that no one can recall things that happen that early in your life. Well I can! Maybe not many, but I do have a few memories of things that happened to me while I was still a very young baby. These memories are like short clips of film that I can view in my mind.

The earliest one I can recall is of being in a dark room. There is just enough dim light that I can see near objects. I am lying on the floor with two big people. One of them is my mother, but I don’t know the other person. Both big people are asleep. Somehow I end up under a piece of furniture that has four long legs. There is an electric cord hanging down and I get tangled in it. I don’t know what clothes I’m wearing, but I have a bare chest. I can see and feel the cord on my chest, and I am afraid. This is all I remember of this incident. My mother told me this incident occurred before I could crawl or just about the time I learning to crawl.

The next memory I have is sitting fastened in some kind of chair. The chair is next to an open door to a room with no light. The lighting in the room where I am sitting is very dim. There is soft light that seems to be coming from a setting sun filtering through curtains hanging loosely over the windows. By leaning over to my side, I can see into another room that has a light on. There are two people doing dishes. One is bigger than the other, but I don’t know who they are. I am crying, but I don’t know why. I believe that the type of chair I was sitting in was a high chair.

The next memory I have occurred in this same room. In this memory, I am sitting on a rug on the floor. The room is well lit with sunlight shinning through the windows. I am playing with a Morton salt box. I must have cut my finger on the metal pour spout because all of a sudden I see a bright red, sticky liquid all over my hands, and I can’t rub it off. I don’t remember any pain, but I remember crying because I was scared of the red stuff. Years later when I was in grade school, I remember seeing a little scar on the middle finger of my right hand just below my fingernail. I asked my mother how I got that scar. She told me I cut myself when I was little. I said, Yeah, on a Morton salt box. She said, How did you know that? I told her it was because I remembered doing that. She insisted that someone must have told me about that happening because I was just a little baby. She was sure I could not possibly remember that far back. But, I do remember it! I believe these two things happened to me before I could walk. I also believe that these things happened when I was living with Mimi in her house on Belle Avenue in Lindenwald.

I can also remember some things that happened while we were living in the Victory Apartments off Main Street. I remember looking out a window that gave me a view of Filmore School playground. I could see kids playing there and I wanted to be out there playing with them. Another day, a big truck pulled up on the street in front of our apartment building. It was carrying an airplane fuselage on a long trailer. Many kids gathered around the trailer to look at the plane, and some of these kids were scrambling all over the fuselage of the plane. I longed to go outside and play on the plane, but no one would take me out to see the plane. I was far too little to go out there by myself. I didn’t even know that it was an airplane, but I remember someone telling me it was an airplane from the war. I must have been walking when this happened because I was standing looking out a window at the plane. I also have strong memories from this time in my life of colors and textures. One chair that really stands out in my memory was upholstered in red and white checkered fabric. I remember staring at the small squares in the fabric and running my fingers over the threads in the fabric covering the chair. This is my first memory of a sense of feel.

When I was about three years old, we moved from the Victory Apartments to a big house on Millville Avenue. I have many memories of that house and of the events that occurred while I lived there. From this time on in my life, my memory is extremely vivid. I clearly remember much of what happened in my life, with the exception of any events during my second and much of my third grades of school. For some reason, these two years in my life are almost a complete blank. These are not all the memories I have of my early years, but they are the clearest ones. I wanted to relate some of these early memories to establish the fact that young children can have vivid memories of things that happen to them very early in their life. I was one of those children who possess a good memory of events that occurred very early in my life.

MY NAME IS?

For a kid five years old, I was really enjoying myself. I had a grandmother who I only knew as Mimi. Of course I had no concept of relationships. Besides Mimi, there was my sister Ginger, and my Aunt Patty living in our house. The only other people I knew were Aunt Lelah and Uncle Ed, three older men who lived next door, and Aunt Rose, who was not really my aunt, but Mimi’s best friend. Still, we all called her Aunt Rose. I believe Aunt Rose’s husband’s name was Joe. Mimi would send me to stay at Aunt Rose’s house for what seemed like many days at a time. I was very fond of Aunt Rose and really enjoyed those stays. During one of those visits, I have my first memory of going to church. For me, this was a big day. Not only was this my first time to go to church, but the first time I had ever seen so many people. I had no idea there were so many people—and to hear them all singing! It was the first time in my life to hear live music. While we were walking home from church, I was left wondering what just went on, and why. I was quite overwhelmed by this whole experience and it was hurting my little brain trying to figure it out. I decided later would be a better time to sort all this out, so I went back to thinking about what Aunt Rose had that I could fix for her. I didn’t know exactly how I would accomplish this because I was not allowed to bring my hammer with me during these visits.

I didn’t know what a mother was but I did know I had a mother. I knew this was so because Mimi kept telling me, Your mother will be coming home soon. I don’t know whether she knew this as a fact or if it was wishful thinking on her part. In the meantime, I was having a wonderful time playing in the house, our big yard, and the barn. During this time, I also spent a lot of time visiting the three older men who lived next door. I believe these men were brothers. One was named Ray and another was Carl. I don’t remember the other brother’s name. Ray had a son named Lee who was away at the time serving in the army. He was later to become my Uncle Lee. I guess my Aunt Patty liked to date men who lived close. I had no idea why Aunt Patty moved from our house to their house, but I for one was pretty happy about it as it gave me an excuse to visit more often. Ray was by trade a mechanic and was always building or fixing something. I can’t tell you how many times in taking a step back to look over his work that he stepped right on me. One would think he would have had the courtesy to look where he was stepping, but I never held this against him. My life was never boring, as there was always something different happening next door. It seemed my opportunities to observe were endless. Quite often I was even able to participate in some of these activities, although, I suspect not always with the blessing of the other participants. Today no one would dream of letting a five-year-old spend so much time with three old single men. Other than an occasional raising of their voice, such as, Get out of there, Leave that alone, Don’t touch that, or, the one that really hurt my feelings, Go home. These men were always very tolerant of me except for that one instance which severely hurt my feelings. It seems that they were eating dinner. I was circling their dinner table like an Indian circling a wagon train, just waiting for an invitation to eat. One of the men asked me if I wanted something to eat. Naturally my answer was yes. He said for me to try this, and handed me something long and red. After eating it, my mouth started burning and it just wouldn’t quit. All three of the old men were instantly laughing hysterically. One of them handed me something else and told me to eat it, which I did. The burning in my mouth quit right away. One of the men asked me if I still wanted something to eat. I said I did but would not care for anymore of those long red things. They all laughed again. Then one of the men grabbed a chair for me, filled a big plate with food, and sat it in front of me. Before eating, I picked through the food with my fork. One of the men asked me what I was looking for on my plate. I told him something red. Everyone laughed again, except me. This was always a big treat for me to sit at the table and eat with all these older men. These three were the only men I really knew. I did know Uncle Ed, but I rarely saw him. These men I got to harass almost on a daily basis.

There was always something new going on at their house. I almost always was able to watch, and sometimes even participate in these activities. Whatever these men were doing, I always watched with great interest. Today, if a five-year-old watched, or worse yet, was involved with some of these activities, experts would claim the child would need years of counseling to undo the damage done. They would probably claim one of the worst things would have been me watching while the three old men slaughtered and butchered their pigs. I won’t go into how this was done or what the smell was like, as most of the kinder, gentler people of today would surely be nauseated at the very least. This was a good time to be standing around watching because sometimes, if I was lucky, they would even ask me to help with some small task. This meant I would be rewarded with a large brown paper bag full of greasy, salty, cracklings. Today, people would call them pork rinds. Let me tell you, the pork rinds of today are nothing like the cracklings back then. I don’t remember exactly how they were made, but I believe it had something to do with what was left over after the lard was rendered from the skin of the pig. The end result was small bits of deep-fried fat with a hard rind that was liberally salted. These things were so good I could hardly wait to dig into the bag. I wasn’t much of a diplomat at that age, but I did know it would be a good thing if I took the bag home and let Mimi have first choice. I had to keep in good stead with the person who supplied me with sugar cookies. If a dietician today would happen to open a bag like this, and take a quick sniff, they would probably gag for ten minutes, close their eyes, and scream at the top of their voice for an hour. After which they would have the bag fingerprinted by the local police, and swear out a warrant for the person who gave something like that to a five-year-old kid. All I know is that they were good.

Then of course there was the axing of the chickens, the wine making, and one of Carl’s favorite pastimes, shooting crows on the wing flying over his back field with a .22 caliber rifle. This also was much fun for me, as I actually got to participate. After shooting one, he would turn to me and say, Dukie! Go get it. When I ran back to Carl’s back porch and handed the dead crow over to him, I was flush with self-importance.

So it went day after day. Each day was usually more fun than the last, as I was at the very least (as Mimi called it) inventive about finding things to get into. Not all these things were to her liking, but after a brief tirade, she would always give me a big hug and tell me how much she loved me. But most importantly, I knew my name. My name was Dukie!

4-%20Beloved%20Grandmother%20Mimii.jpg

Beloved Grandmother Mimi

THE KID

I was born August 2, 1941. I have no memory of this event, but I do have a birth certificate saying that it did in fact happen on that date. I do have some very early memories of my life but nowhere near that early. I can remember small bits of things that happened to me when I was still what people would call a baby. I have told my mother about some of these memories, but she always would say, You can’t remember things when you’re a baby; someone must have told you about them. These memories are not like a story that someone told me, they are more like little short video clips in my mind. I can see the memory in my mind. In any case my point is that I have very vivid memories of parts of my young life. Things really started coming together in my mind after we moved to a house on Millville Ave. The most important person in my life at the time was my grandmother Dorothy May who I always knew as Mimi. My sister also lived with us but she was little at the time and I have very few memories of playing with her at this time. The longer we lived in the house on Millville Ave the more memories I have of my sister. I have been told that my Aunt Patty lived there with us also but I have very few memories of her at this time. My father was in the Army, and my mother worked in an aircraft factory in Connersville, Indiana. In addition to taking care of my sister and me, Mimi worked nights at Fashion Frock as a seamstress. This had to be hard for Mimi, taking care of a teenage daughter and two small children plus working nights at a very demanding job couldn’t have been easy, and especially with me being one of the small children. The house was a fairly large one. I think it had three large bedrooms, a bath, and a room we called Mimi’s sewing room on the second floor. The first floor had a very large living room with the back part of it raised at least one step higher than the rest. It had a very large hallway by the front entrance, a dining room, and a large kitchen, with a big pantry. In the basement was a large room with a big coal burning furnace in the middle of it. In the basement under the front of the house was a long narrow room that was used as a coal bin.

Behind the house was a large barn, and off to the right side of the lot was a chicken house. Little did I know at that time the part chickens and chicken houses were later going to play in my life. While we lived here, Mimi always kept some chickens for fresh eggs and an occasional chicken dinner. She also kept a few turkeys, the population of which was greatly diminished at certain times of the year. I was a pretty happy-go-lucky kid, considering my father and uncles were all at the time touring Europe, living in mud trenches and foxholes, and being shot at by the locals. My mother was working in a war plant as a Rosie the Riveter. I had never known a mother or father, but I did have a grandmother—and what a loving, caring, gentle, understanding grandmother she was! She was married to John Frank May (Daddy John). Together they had three daughters, Lelah, Veda, and Patty. Lelah was the oldest, Veda was my mother, and Patty was the youngest daughter. Daddy John worked at the Ford plant in Hamilton. Mimi and Daddy John were living separately at the time. Later in my life, my Aunt Lelah told me that, while they loved each other dearly and would never get a divorce, they just couldn’t stand to live together. As long as I knew them, they lived separately. I was told this had something to do with Mimi’s hatred of alcohol and unfortunately, Daddy John’s love of it. Another person who visited me on occasion was my father’s sister who I called Aunt Martha, and her husband Roy. I can remember going to their house to stay overnight at times which I thought was great fun. Mimi’s oldest daughter Lelah was married to a man named Edwin. Uncle Ed was a pharmacist and owned his own drug store. Uncle Ed’s family owned a bakery. About once a week, a bakery truck would stop by our house and Mimi would go out and pick out what she needed. I never saw her pay for any of this. I believe Uncle Ed was taking care of the bill. I always liked it when Aunt Lelah and Uncle Ed came to visit me visit because they always brought me a new toy or a book, to say nothing about getting smothered with hugs and kisses by Aunt Lelah. I suspect this was because Uncle Ed and Aunt Lelah did not have (and never had) any children of their own.

Next door lived three older men, who were brothers. One of them had a teenage son named Lee, who was later to become my Uncle Lee. Imagine that. So there I was at age three, the only boy in the family for several generations, the world in flames, living in a big house with my grandmother as my keeper. As my memory serves me, the word keeper best describes the situation. Day after day I laid down a path of destruction. I once heard Mimi say, There is not a toy made that boy can’t tear up. To hear Mimi say that was a great source of pride for me. While most kids my age were familiar with the three tools of the youngster’s art world (crayons, pencils, and paper), I had a good working knowledge of three other useful tools: pliers, screwdrivers, and my very favorite, the hammer. Using these tools, I modified all my toys and many useless objects I found lying around the house; some people today might call them priceless antiques. I’m sure Mimi shed more than a few tears over some of these items, but she never mentioned it to me. Only once do I ever remember Mimi raising her voice at me. One morning I got up early (no one else was up yet) and I just wandered around the house trying to be quiet. Let me tell you, just wandering around doing nothing makes one hungry. I decided that I needed to cook some eggs for breakfast. Still in my pajamas, out to the chicken house I went for some eggs. Now all that was needed to be done was to cook them. I found a big flat rock lying in the sun that felt hot to the touch. Perfect I thought! Of course, all I made was a mess, no breakfast. I decided the best thing to do was go back to bed and wait for Mimi to get up and make some breakfast for me, which I did. When I heard Mimi get up and go downstairs, I also went downstairs but for a different reason. I was looking for some breakfast. Well, Mimi took one look at me and said, How did you get egg on your pajamas? If you think being caught with egg on your face is bad, you ought to try explaining egg on your pajamas, especially when you are just four years old. Well, I owned up to what I had done. This is when I got a very stern lecture about how sinful it is to waste food. This is the only time I can remember Mimi raising her voice to me.

This was such a wonderful time in my life; I was one carefree kid just wandering around the yard, which at that time was my world. I passed the days lying in the grass looking at the blue sky, looking for four leaf clovers in the grass, walking through mud puddles, looking for things to do that I knew very well I should not do. I was always harassing the chickens and trying to avoid the big turkey gobbler that lived in our yard. This gobbler and I were both about the same height and weight. He always viewed me with about the same amount of suspicion as I viewed him. Whenever I went out in the yard, I tried to play in the opposite side of the yard from where the turkey was hanging out. If I went to the same side of the yard as the gobbler, he would usually move somewhere away from me into another part of the yard. This arrangement worked well for both of us. Eventually that turkey gobbler gave me a life lesson on how the world worked. I walked into the yard with something in my possession that the gobbler wanted and that I did not want to give up. The object in question happened to be a scrumptious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When he spied the sandwich, he ever so slowly started working his way toward me. I was kneeling down watching the ants crawling around on the sidewalk. When I stood up and turned around, I found myself nose to beak with the big turkey gobbler. We circled; he scratched the dirt; I stomped my foot. This was the final straw for him. The turkey made it perfectly clear that he would have no more of this by soundly flogging me, after which he was in possession of the sandwich. I can assure you that for a kid of four who believes he is king of the yard, it is very humiliating experience, to say nothing about painful, being flogged by a turkey who is your equal in size. This flogging didn’t go unnoticed be the chickens. After the turkey had flogged me to his satisfaction and had made off with my sandwich, I ran into the house crying. Mimi wiped my tears away with her apron, hugged me, and told me everything would be okay. Without being asked, Mimi made me another big peanut butter and jelly sandwich which I ate while sitting on the back porch steps. Between every bite of the delicious sandwich, I glared at the big turkey gobbler who was standing out in our yard near the side fence. He was pecking on my sandwich with a satisfied look in his beady little eyes. I wondered if it would be possible for me to talk one of the men living next door into let me borrow their 22 rifle so I could extract my vengeance on that big turkey who was now my enemy. Before I was able to implement any plan, and although I don’t remember a big turkey dinner, the big turkey mysteriously disappeared from my yard, never to be seen by me again. After I put the chickens back in their place, I was again the king of the yard. For The Kid, life was again good.

THE SUGER COOKIE

Awakening early one morning, I laid in my bed looking at the ceiling and listening for any sound that might indicate that anyone else in the house was awake. I heard no noise at all except for the soft rustle of the breeze blowing through the tree outside of my window and the chirps of little birds as they flew by. Cool, fresh, sweet air of a new summer day flowed through the screens of the open windows in my bedroom. Staring out the window at the light blue sky full of powder puff clouds, an adventure began to take form in my day-dreaming little mind. No wait! I mean thinking, not day dreaming. Many times before Mimi had scolded me for day dreaming, claiming that too much day dreaming was bad for a person. She hadn’t told me why it was bad, but I believed her and I did my best not to let my mind drift off to some pleasant far off place. Okay—maybe not my best! I have to admit that I did let my mind occasionally drift off into another dimension.

At the time, I was five years old. Due to World War II, my grandmother Mimi had raised me for most of my young life. My mother had been away from home working in an aircraft factory as a Rosy the riveter and had just recently returned home. By this time in my life, I had already on several occasions taken unauthorized excursions out of my yard and into the forbidden areas on the far side of the fence around my yard. That morning as I laid there in my bed gazing out my window watching the puffy white clouds drift lazily by through the blue sky, a plan for an adventure took shape in a void in my mind. I jumped out of my bed and quietly crept along the hallway, checking each of the bedrooms in turn for any signs of activity. I found everyone in them still sleeping soundly. My adventure was a go. Still in my pajamas, I picked up my shoes and slowly crept down the steps to the first floor of the house. Standing at the bottom of the steps, I listened for a couple of minutes just to make sure I had not awakened anyone. Hearing not a sound from the upstairs bedrooms, my plan was all set to go. Not wanting to embark on an adventure on an empty stomach, I decided to stop by the kitchen and see what I could rustle up to eat. Being alone in the kitchen was something I had dreamed of ever since I had learned about the butter plate and the sugar dish. There in the middle of the table sat the little porcelain sugar bowl. It was painted with beautiful flowers and little green leaves. I silently pulled out a chair and climbed up in it. I lifted the top off the sugar bowl and sat it gently on the table. Looking inside the bowl, I saw that it was nearly full with little sparkling white grains of sugar. I crawled quietly off the chair and crept over to the drawer where the silverware was kept. Pulling out a teaspoon, I quietly made my way back to the chair. I climbed back up and pulled the sugar bowl close to me. I dipped the spoon in the sugar bowl pulling out a big spoonful of the sparkling white crystals. I put the whole spoonful of the crystals in my mouth, and with closed eyes, felt them slowly dissolve. The sweet liquid flowed over my tongue and trickled down the back of my throat. I had dreamed—no wait! I mean thought about doing this for a long time but never had the opportunity until now. It tasted even better than I thought it would. After the last of the sweet liquid had trickled down my throat, I moved on to the next course of my meal. I slipped off my chair and crept ever so slowly across the room to the refrigerator. I opened the door and immediately saw the long covered dish I wanted. It was decorated with the same little flowers as the sugar bowl. I pulled the dish out of the refrigerator and carried it to the table. Up in the chair I went and lifted the cover off the dish revealing a long yellow stick of butter. I ran a finger along the long stick of butter, scraping a greasy blob of butter onto the end of my finger. I put my finger in my mouth and sucked the butter off. The butter felt greasy in my mouth but it tasted sweet and salty. It was wonderful. I repeated dragging my finger along the stick of butter several more times interchanging with spoonfuls of sugar. Very shortly, my stomach told me that I had eaten about all I could stand of these forbidden delights. I put the top back on the sugar bowl, placed the top on the butter dish, and carried it back to the refrigerator. I replaced it exactly where I had found it. Thinking back, I probably should have done this in reverse, as I completely forgot that I had left the spoon lying on the table next to the sugar bowl. Although, it probably wouldn’t have mattered as there was still the little matter of the finger marks along the long stick of butter and the hundreds of grains of sugar I had spilled on the table, not to mention the ones all over the floor. My mother latter concluded that this was all the evidence she needed to convict me of a crime even before she had noticed grease and mud on my pajamas.

Having eaten my fill of sugar and butter, I slipped out the back door making certain not to let the screen door slam shut. For several minutes I stood on the porch looking over the yard. It had rained that night washing the dust from every leaf of the trees and from all the blades of grass, giving the yard a fresh and clean look. I looked over a big puddle of water that had formed in the middle of the driveway. I made plans for the mud puddle, but decided it would have to wait as a more interesting plan began to take form in my fertile little mind. On a recent trip to town with my mother, I had seen a man standing in the middle of the street waving his arms and blowing a whistle. He wore a dark blue uniform, a white shirt, and a black tie. The uniform coat had silver buttons as well as other decorations on it. He had a belt and holster with a real gun in it. Parked by the side of the street was a motorcycle with red lights and lots of chrome that surely belonged to this man. I had asked my mother what he was doing and why. She told me that he was called a traffic cop and that his job was to direct traffic so cars would not run into each other. I stood up in the back seat of the car peering out the rear window. I watched that traffic cop standing there waving his arms until we turned a corner and I could no longer see him. I thought wow! That’s a job I would love to have.

Thinking that now would be a good time for me to try out being a traffic cop, I ran down the driveway to the edge of the street. Looking both ways for any traffic, I stood there with great expectations waiting for a car to come along the road. While standing by the side of the road, I was struck by the thought that I was not armed. I turned around and walked through the yard toward the house keeping my eyes peeled for anything I could use as a gun. I spotted a small branch lying in the grass under a large tree. I broke a stick off the branch that was curved enough that it resembled a gun. I shoved the stick in the waistband of my pajamas. Considering myself to be properly armed, I walked back to the side of the road. It wasn’t long before I heard the noise of a loud motor. I glared down the street toward the noise and saw a big truck coming my way. I strutted out to the middle of the street and spread my legs as far apart as I could get them. I raised my arms up to shoulder height and stood there waiting for the truck to come closer. I heard the motor of the truck slowing down. The truck came to a halt right in front of me. I was flushed with a sense of power that I had never felt before. However, this was to be short lived. The driver of the truck stuck his arm and head out of the truck window. He shook his fist and yelled at me, telling me to get out of the street. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was very angry with me. I had never before heard some of the words he was bellowing in my direction. Fear rushed over me and I ran as fast as I could all the way back up the driveway and onto the back porch of the house. I can tell you that this was a very humiliating experience for a young aspiring traffic cop. I listened to the engine of the truck rev up. Peeping through the morning-glory covered lattice that stood beside the porch, I watched the truck drive off. Until that moment, I hadn’t known why a traffic cop needed a gun, but now I knew. I decided that I would have to be properly armed before attempting to direct traffic again. I already had a request in for a fifty-shot repeating cap pistol, but it had not as yet been filled. I was sure that had I been armed with that gun instead of a stick, I would have gained the respect of that truck driver.

I wandered around the yard for a little while trying to think of some other activity in which to become involved. Then I remembered the big puddle of water in the driveway. My first thoughts were of fishing in the pool, but not possessing any fishing equipment, that thought was soon abandoned. Then the thought occurred to me that even though I wasn’t properly armed to direct traffic, there was certainly no reason why I could not practice riding a motorcycle. I walked around the yard until I found my tricycle. I couldn’t for the life of me think of why anyone would put my tricycle behind the bushes in the front of our house, but after much searching, that is where I found it. I pulled it out of the bushes, grabbed the handlebars, and swung onto the seat wishing as I did that I had thought to remove the stick gun from the waistband of my pajamas. If that truck driver had only known the pain that stick gun could inflict, he surely would have treated the inspiring young traffic cop with greater respect. When I pulled up on the handle bars to peddle away, they came out of the tricycle fork. I had forgotten all about fixing this earlier in the week. I guided the stem of the handlebars back into the fork and pushed them down. Hardly noticing the grease mark on my pajamas that had been made by the stem of the handlebars, I pedaled down and around the driveway. Circling the driveway, I lined up the big puddle of water with the front fender of my tricycle. I pumped the pedals with all my strength and as fast as I could, aimed the front fender at the middle of the puddle. With a huge splash, I rolled right through the middle of the puddle. I was so pleased with the results that I turned my tricycle around and rolled through the puddle from the opposite direction. I rode thru the puddle in circles first one way and then the other until I tired of