Stealing Home: Summer of 1958

By Roger Rule

“STEALING HOME” tells the story of 13-year-old William Martin, a child born in a white middle class family in Kansas City in 1958 when segregation was prevalent. After William’s tolerant father discovers that peer pressure has given William a prejudice worldview, maliciously believing everything he has ever heard about black people, Mr. Martin brings home a black orphan, Alex, hoping that getting to know Alex will remedy it. The two teenagers strike up an unlikely friendship. William’s life takes an unexpected turn when he and his mischievous friend, Robert, scheme to sneak Alex into a public segregated pool where Alex ends up saving a girl from drowning. William and Alex’s friendship is challenged when William’s prized possession, his baseball signed for him by the New York Yankees, turns up missing when Alex leaves his home. Alex is suspected of the theft and William finds his prejudiced feelings once again reinforced. He becomes a detective to find out the truth. Nowhere in the story is the “N” word used. The climax consists of a G-rated fight with Alex saving his white friends through his Judo training.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665537131

Roger Rule

The New York Times listed Stealing Home as one of thirty on their “Bookshelf Must-Have.” From Kirkus Reviews, September 3, 2021 “Rule offers a sensitive, if muted, depiction of Eisenhower-era racial tensions.” [About the main character] “William’s character arc is more fully explored in limpid prose that exposes his conflicting impulses, which are sometimes not at all admirable. Young readers will find his struggle with his attitudes believable and perhaps inspiring.” From The U.S.Review of Books, reviewer Mari Carlson writes: “Intended for middle readers, the book’s subject, form, and style are age-appropriate. The book highlights boys’ lives away from supervision. Scenes of swimming, bike riding, riding horses, and shooting guns make for a wholesome and historical read. Feelings are honest, handled with able adult guidance, and described in accessible language. The moral experience is couched in a personal narrative that is touching and easily applicable to others’ lives.” From Pacific Book Review, reviewer Allison Walker writes: Stealing Home: Summer of 1958, written by Roger Rule, is a sweet boyhood story with themes age-appropriate for middle schoolers. Rule does an admirable job writing about complex issues in ways which are easy for children to understand. Most of all, his book is interesting and exciting for children to read. Parents will be impressed by the lessons about empathy that Rule writes. The relationships between the characters really serve to deliver the main message of the book: that people, regardless of race, are complex. Good people can perform dishonest acts and cruel people can behave compassionately. Stealing Home is everything a child, and their parent, could want from a chapter book. Rule does an excellent job keeping the themes age-appropriate. … a book children will enjoy and parents will approve of.”

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Clean up your room. This is the last time I’m going to tell you! Mom said.

It was summer 1958, I was out of school, and my mother had been after my younger sister and me. I didn’t know about Karon’s room, but I hadn’t cleaned mine for days. While my mother continued looking sternly at me, I left the kitchen and went upstairs to my room.

Karon was in hers across the hall messing with her stuffed animals. She didn’t appear to be cleaning anything. I looked around my room and quickly picked up a pair of shoes and some dirty clothes and tossed them in my closet and slammed the door before anything could fall back out. The bed was next. I pitched the covers up to the pillows and smoothed out the top blanket – done! I next tiptoed across the floor to my window, opened it quietly, and reached for the big limb of the ash tree and swung out holding tightly. I spooked a sparrow that fluttered and took off in flight that startled me for a moment. Then I shimmied down the trunk.

I overheard Karon say, He snuck out again, Mom!

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My bike was in the garage and the garage door was always open. I jumped on my 26" Schwinn and peddled down the hill to Robert’s house. It was hot, two days after we had celebrated the Fourth. The sky was blue and clear and the sun was not quite directly overhead,

Robert Newcomb, my best friend, had been very young when his dad was killed in a work accident. He lived with two older sisters and his mother in a small house – smaller than mine. He often told me I was lucky to have both my mom and my dad. We both agreed sisters were a pain.

When I arrived at his house, I jumped off my bike and let it fall over. I rang the doorbell and waited.

When the door opened, Robert greeted me. What’s happenin’, William?

Robert had a stocky build, and stood a bit shorter than me, but the girls all thought he was cute with his dark wavy hair, unlike my blond flattop. At twelve, a year younger than me, he seemed mature for his age. He wore shorts and a tee shirt, like me, but instead of sneakers, he was barefoot.

Are you home alone?

Yeah, Mom’s at work. I don’t know where Carol and Kate are.

You want to ride up to Hillsborough?

Wow, that’s a long ride.

You got anything better to do?

Nope, already watched the best cartoons.

Well, let’s go.

Okay, let me grab my shoes.

Robert rode a hand-me-down 24" girl’s bike from one of his sisters. To make it not look like a girl’s bike, he’d had a friend – who worked on cars – weld a crossbar and re-paint the whole bike white from its original pink color. The white paint had chipped in some places, though, showing the old pink color underneath. He’d wrapped a bike cable lock around the new crossbar.

I kept my cable lock in the saddle bag behind my seat.

This being Saturday, there would be little traffic. As we peddled off, I began to sweat from the high temperature combined with the heat radiating off the pavement. I could see beads of perspiration on Robert’s forehead too. It took us about an hour to get to Hillsborough, riding mostly single file and trying to stay on shoulders, off the roads as much as possible.

We came to the first parking lot on the south side of the shopping center, parked our bikes in the bike rack, and locked them with our cable locks. Hillsborough Shopping Center served as our neighborhood shopping center, containing about forty businesses, including three dime stores where nothing cost a dime anymore.

Let’s go in TG&Y, I said.

You just want to look at coins.

So? They have the new 1958 model cars in. I saw them last week with my mom. I know you want to see those.

We entered the lower level across from where our bikes were racked and climbed the stairway. Inside, it seemed dark when we entered but our eyes soon adjusted from the bright sunlight. A smell in the air reminded me of the stuff our janitor used to clean the floor at school. Robert headed off toward the models while I went to the one place there that always drew me: the collectable coins counter. Usually, no one manned it, so I could only look at the coins on the glass shelves behind glass. Today, I was looking at the Jefferson nickels since I already had most of the Lincoln cents.

Suddenly, a loud commotion caught my attention—people yelling, and maybe even a fight. I left the coin counter and walked toward the noise, and met Robert coming from the other side of the store—he’d clearly heard the ruckus too.

Outside in the hallway, Larry Miller and two guys were picking on a Negro boy. Miller was two years older than me, but for some crazy reason we’d had seventh grade wood shop together last year. He’d been in trouble nearly every day. Once, my shop teacher and he almost came to blows. He wasn’t big in the sense of size, but he was overly well built for his age with developed biceps, as if he lifted weights, and the reddish birthmark on his forehead somehow added to his dangerous persona. The two other teens with him both looked older than Miller. One had long, dirty blond hair, and the other one, a huge guy with a barrel of a chest, looked bigger than my dad.

It seemed they’d just run through the hall and shoved a black boy out of their way. As we watched, Miller knocked the boy down, and when he tried to get up, the big guy with Miller put his foot on the boy’s chest and held him down.

Whatcha doing in this shopping center, boy? said Miller.

You know ain’t no place for your kind? said the one with the dirty, long blond hair.

Looky there, he’s got new Buster Brown boots. About your size, ain’t they? said Miller to his blond companion.

Zackly my size. He done bought ‘em for me. The blond hoodlum jerked off the boy’s shoes while the big guy held him down. The blond then removed his own old shoes and put on the new shoes.

The black boy said something, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

The blond answered, What’d you call me? He then stomped his foot into the stomach of the boy, who moaned loudly.

I looked around, and other people were watching, but no one lifted a finger to help, probably because this black kid shouldn’t be here.

The three hoodlums ran off down the sidewalk laughing and pushing people out of their way, moving farther away from where we stood, and from the injured boy still lying on the sidewalk writhing in pain without his shoes.

Robert said, What is he doing here? Never saw one here before!

I have once or twice, I said, but they don’t belong here. One of them comes, and pretty soon they’d be everywhere, and you know they’ll steal you blind.

I don’t know nothin’ about ’em, said Robert. "Never seen one up close like this before, only on Amos and Andy, and some of them are pretty funny."

I was confused and had an empty feeling in my stomach. I knew those teenage hoodlums were in the wrong, but I hadn’t considered getting involved, partly because I was worried about my own safety, and partly because I didn’t want to help the black kid.

When the hurt boy squirmed and got to his feet, we left and went out of TG&Y the other direction. We walked toward Woolworths, and didn’t see Larry Miller and his buddies again.

What do you think about what just happened? I said.

What do you mean?

If Robert was feeling any sympathy for that black boy, he was doing a good job of not showing it.

Did you feel like someone should have helped that colored kid?

Not us, said Robert. I know that one, Larry Miller, and he can lick any kid in school.

Yeah, I know him too. I had seventh grade woodshop with him last year, and he was always causing trouble for Mr. Davis.

The shop teacher? said Robert. Oh, I seen him at open house. He’s a bull. No, there wasn’t no one there could help that colored fella even if they wanted.

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Robert and I continued looking at Woolworths and Grants dime stores. By afternoon, we were both hungry but didn’t have any money, so we walked down to our bikes, unlocked them, mounted up, and rode home.

On the way back, I was still thinking about the black boy and what had happened this morning.

Apparently, Robert was too, because while we were riding he said, How come Larry Miller was in your seventh grade shop class? He was a ninth grader?

I don’t know, maybe ‘cause he transferred and they didn’t have shop where he came from.

Those two other guys were in high school, weren’t they?

Or dropouts. I could see the incident was still playing in Robert’s head, and it was for me as well.

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When we arrived at my house, we both said, See ya, and he rode on down the hill to his house as I put my bike in the garage.

Dad was at work, but I found my mother in the kitchen and told her what had happened.

My sister Karon heard me talking and came from the front room to listen.

We had moved here about five years ago. We lived in a small, two-story frame house, white with a red composition roof. Common for the days before central air conditioning, it had red awnings over every window to block out the hot sun rays—their red color matched our roof, and the front windows were trimmed with decorative shutters of the same color.

We also had a single-car detached garage, painted and roofed to match the house, but we never used it for the car, as it was always full, used for storage of something.

After I finished telling the story of the black boy and the thugs, Karon said, Why was he at Hillsborough, anyway?

Karon! my mother said in a scolding tone. You should be concerned about the boy and wondering if he is okay. I know we don’t have many colored out north, but they have every right to be here.

My mother turned back to me. What did you and Robert do?

Before I could answer, we heard my dad pull into the driveway in his station wagon. It was last year’s model, a 1957 Fairlane Five Hundred, white with the wood panel treatment on the sides.

My mother went to greet him.

As Dad came in the front door, they kissed a good-afternoon peck, and my mother said, William saw something bad at Hillsborough today.

My folks were both thirty-four years old. My dad, average in height and build, had kind eyes, a pleasant smile that showed his dimpled cheeks, and sandy hair. My mother, a slight woman, had auburn hair, and blue eyes that didn’t miss a thing. My dad was wearing his usual Lacoste shirt and khakis, and my mother had on a sundress with a blue flower print.

My dad and his business partner owned an insulation company. Insulation was the new thing, and while every new house was required to have it, their company was also busy retrofitting older homes with blown insulation in the walls and attics. We had a station wagon because my dad often put the rear seat down to carry several bags of insulation out to his customers, who were nearly all small builders. For the same reason, our garage remained full, loaded with bags of insulation for these local trips, to save my dad from driving clear across town to his plant for a few bags.

His company policy was to have his salesmen find a new foundation, and leave free insulation rolls for the plate line with their business cards. They would nearly always get the job to insulate the whole house. Their company rarely had competition, and because of it, their business was dominating the insulation industry citywide. Although it caused him to work long hours, and spend evenings on the phone, he had a good income compared to my friends’ and neighbors’ families.

Son, he said, what’d you see at the shopping center today?

I described the whole thing in detail.

Karon said, That colored boy shouldn’t have been there.

My dad frowned, as if he had not wanted to hear that.

My mother’s face showed worry, maybe because of my father’s concern.

Dad sighed and said, When I was young, growing up in Kansas, I had two friends that were colored boys. One of them is still my friend, but I don’t have a chance to see him anymore. William, did you try to help that boy today?

No, Dad, those three were all bigger than me and Robert.

Were you concerned about the colored boy?

I just shrugged my shoulders.

Then he directed his remarks