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For years my parents would warn me sternly, “Fred, you have to be careful.  You can’t be running around doing these pranks.  One day, someone could come out and shoot you or you could get yourself into a lot of trouble”.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Parents always seemed to say something like that.  As usual, I didn’t listen.  Parents come up with things like that all the time – to scare you, to make you obey.  They don’t really mean it.  (Now, as a 40-year old parent of four, I see how crazy we really were and know how sincere my parents really were).

Since our buddy Chad introduced us to the concept of forking yards the whole town had become aware of this tomfoolery.  Many-a-homeowner would wake up on Saturday mornings to peek out their window and breathe a deep, slow, sigh of relief to see a clean lawn instead of a plastic cemetery.  Some were not so lucky.

Our crew successfully forked yards for weeks before our identity started to leak into the town.  What made things worse was the other kids – lower classmen – who wanted to emulate our canny, dextrous works – yet; whose standards were not up to par.  Their escapades would lessen the impact of our beautiful work and worse, constantly jeopardized our plans and secret identities.  As with any prank, it wasn’t long before the infamous R&R circle was in full motion.

R&R Circle?  The never-ending cycle of “revenge and restitution”.

There was this one school of chicks (I used the word school, as it refers to a group of fish … potential explanation to come in a future story) that really had it out for us.  They not only retaliated but would proactively plan ambushes on our camp outs, sleepovers, and parties.  We’d hit them a number of times and they’d successfully penetrated our defenses once or twice.  It was their time.

Word in the halls of grand ole’ Telfair County High School was that the Fish were gathering for a sleep over on Graham Street.  This could be our chance.

Whether it was a Friday or Saturday evening I don’t recall, but the sun was setting and we’d just cleared out the shelves at Piggly Wiggly and Winn Dixie.   Thankfully, the Patriot Act was far from anyone’s imagination.  You know how the F.B.I. is supposed to notified by storeowners if somebody comes in and buys a bunch of fertilizer or bomb-making materials?  Well,  we weren’t too concerned about tipping off anyone except maybe Mr. Purvis and Mr. Yawn, the managers at the W/D.

I suppose the first thing we did wrong was choosing the Hardees parking lot as our meetup point.  Not only did this bring undue attention to the gathering of the crew, it sucked in a few underclassmen who had no business being a part of our exploits.  To make matters worse, our public gathering was like a Billboard of Shenanigans and attracted the presence of McRae’s finest, Officer Jimmy Joines.

For some ludicrous reason, I never really could see Jimmy as a real law officer – he was just Tommy‘s big brother.  That gun couldn’t be real, much less that shiny badge and patrol car.  I’d grown up with Jimmy stomping around mine and TJ’s playground – so, I never could quite get used to him driving around with such authority in his squad car.

Still a catastrophic weakness for me as an adult, my exuberance for the adventure at hand trumped my ability to keep my stupid mouth shut and I started running it loosely, forgetting that Officer Joines was not just TJ’s big brother … he was a sworn-in Officer of the Law.  I’m clueless as to why some of my buddies didn’t stop me from revealing our agenda.  Come to think of it, they were probably hitting the Hardees restroom once more and stocking up on a few “Hot Ham’n Cheese” sandwiches.

Nevertheless, it was done.  We were poised for attack and I’d just left our destination and mission details in the hands of Officer Joines, our Foe … or Friend?

(to be continued)

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“Small Town Stories” is a departure from my typical blog content on worship, faith, and leadership and presents short stories about my memories of growing up in a small town.  As always, memories are that … memories.  Names will be substituted where appropriate, and facts will be blended with fiction, or half-memories.  That’s what makes them fun.  If you enjoy this series, please let me know by commenting.

(Dear Reader:  today’s “Small Town Stories” post was meant to be another humorous story of the mischievous journeys of our crew of boys, yet, I realized I couldn’t possibly begin the story without first introducing you to one of our greatest weapons of choice:  plastic cutlery.  This seemingly innocent box of utensils sets up numerous stories …  legends like “Mrs. G and the Midnight Holdup”, “Don’t Leave the Grand-Am Exposed”, “Where Are My Keys”, and “Deputy Dixon’s D-Day”.  So, before we get into those stories, let’s go back to the origin of the infamous, plastic forks, spoons, and knives).

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Plastic forks, spoons, and knives.  These “Small Town Stories” wouldn’t be complete without their honorable mention.

At any given time, given the moment to slow things down a bit and ease into reminiscing about childhood, these darling cutlery utensils appear.

It all started when this new kid showed up in high school.  His Dad was a doctor of sorts, something most of us kids had never heard of … an “Internist”.  I wasn’t sure if that was somebody who looked inside of you, or if was like a Junior Doctor or something (Intern) trying to catch up and get a real job.

Word spread quickly down the streets about the new family’s arrival.  Word spread even more quickly that there were four kids.  FOUR KIDS.  That’s a score for us.  To top that, one of them was MY AGE.

As if things couldn’t get better, this family bought the mansion.  No, not just any house in McRae, GA — they bought THE MANSION — The Max & Emma Sue McRae House of 1897.

© All rights reserved by Brian Brown (Dirt Road Cowboy)

The Mansion was this massive, white, colonial home with this huge wrap around porch, towering balconies, and stone chimneys that would come to serve as brute force protection from bottle rockets, roman candles, and police car search lights.

Though Presbyterians from Baltimore, this new family somehow found a home on the pews of good ole’ McRae United Methodist Church.  Just about everybody in our crew went there – as far as we concerned, Baptists were as much a cult as any other weird religion.  It was there that we first met our new found pal, Chad.

It didn’t take long for Chad to become a fixture in our crew.  He was funny, smart, the chicks liked him, and he’d come from the city — so he knew things that were a bit foreign to us small towners.

One such thing?  Forking.

Forking (as in, forking a yard) is a stunt where you sneak out in the middle of the night and stick plastic forks in someone’s yard.  They wake up to a mini-graveyard of plastic forks poking out of the earth and the cleanup is a real … well, let’s say “nuisance”, but you thought the word, most likely.

Now I’d heard of some kids “rolling” a house or trees with toilet paper, but forking?  This seemed kind of strange.  Soon, we’d have our first opportunity.

So here’s the catch.  You can’t really just go up to your folks and say “Mom, Dad, could you please pickup several hundred boxes of plastic forks for me at the Piggly Wiggly today?”.  That’s like planning your own funeral.  As a result, we were stuck buying our own cutlery.  The only problem with that is there is limited shelf space in Dickie Rich’s Quick-Stops, so instead of giving us a choice of forks, spoons, or knives, you had to get a big combo box with all three.

I’m still not quite sure what these late-night cashiers thought when a group of hormonal, silly, clumsy guys strolled in grabbing every box of plastic cutlery in the store.  You’d think we were buying some serious contraband they way we checked out.

Soon enough, “forking” became known not just for forks – but for forks, spoons, knives, and whatever else could be had.

Forking wasn’t  a passing fad.  It became part of our ritual.  A calling card of sorts.  Others adopted our evil practices but none were as eloquent as “The Crew”.  Forking would soon give way to some of the funniest (and scariest) stories of our adolescence.

(Stay tuned over the coming Saturdays for more stories, including forking stories like the ones mentioned above).

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“Truth … or Dare”?

As a kid, this phrase could be the embodiment of pure joy or the cupped hands of fear.  This phrase of options was the default go-to when you had a clever crew of guys (or guys and girls) together in a private place.

Playing this game revealed endless confessions that should probably never be revealed on the pages of “Small Town Stories“.  Confessions spewed frequently from the balcony of Fort Montgomery, the many rooms of Ridley Mansion, and from the circles of sleeping bags on tent floors – from small McRae, GA backyards to the vast wilderness of Canada.

Truth wasn’t the only thing that came out with our crew.  Bravery was the other solider that emerged in this battle of choices.  Bravery to tackle some of the craziest, riskiest, most insane dares on the planet … at least, for a young kid.

I’ll never forget this one night that a bunch of us were camping in my backyard.  These campouts were regular occurrences during the Summer months and weekends.  At least a handful of the chapters in “Small Town Stories” come from the mischief that happened on those nights.

It was my buddy, Tommy’s turn.  To our surprise, he manned up and proclaimed to the world his answer:

“Dare”.

My memory doesn’t recall the foggy details of who came up with this intricate plan.  I was still reeling in laughter from Wyatt’s order to go boof a tree.  I’m pretty sure this kid who introduced us to this new urban slang came up with this dare.

The dare was something like this:

1.  Sneak down to the big curve by yourself with no flashlight.
2.  Take this metal bat.
3.  Bang on the stop sign as hard as you can five times
4.  Then, scream at the top of your lungs, “Love That Chicken from Popeyes“.

This was a great dare, but the addition of singing a commercial jingle pushed it into a fantastic dare. I’d guess this was probably early-mid 1980′s.  This new jingle was on TV all the time … with a catchy phrase about Popeye’s Fried Chicken, and we were constantly singing it.  Of course, none of us had ever eaten Popeyes chicken.  You’d have to go to a big city for that.  We had the Dairy Queen and the Tastee’ Freeze, which regularly changed names.  I’m not sure if the Chik-King counted as Popeyes, but it was good enough.

Now the big curve was only a few blocks away, but it was probably 3:00 AM by now.  It was overcast and dark – no stars, no moon, no light.  Pitch blackness engulfed us on every side, pierced only by our single flashlight and the embers of what was left of our campfire.

Tommy stood up with a look of fear, defiance, and a touch of boldness.  He exited the tent and disappeared into the darkness.  And we waited.  Waited.  And waited.

On any other day a kid could make it from my backyard to the big curve in a few minutes.  We waited for what seemed to be hours.  Occasionally a dog would bark and we’d all get quiet and listen … and nothing.  Before long we began to throw out our ideas of what may have happened to our dear friend.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.  He’d fallen into one of those big ditches in the dark.  He’d been picked up by the police.  Or worse, he’d never really left and was lingering somewhere off the perimeter waiting for his chance to prank us.

Although reality says it was only 10-15 minutes, what seemed like an eternity passed.  We’d all given up on Tommy and gone back to our game.

Well, “when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter” does no justice for this 3:30 AM instance.  Out of nowhere, the still black darkness was fractured into a million pieces.  That bat hitting that stop sign several blocks away was louder than any contraband M-80 we’d ever purchased from Livingston’s back room. It dwarfed the sound of any secret firework you could get from the secret closet at Rawlin’s Zmart.  I’d never heard such a loud sound in my entire life.

Perhaps sound travels better in the darkness.  Perhaps everything else is just quiet.  All I can say is that bat hitting that stop sign made every single one of us jump through the roof of that tent.  It echoed across the south side of McRae, GA like a bomb blast.  It was the 1980′s version of “shock and awe”.

Then, as if Danny Treadway himself were directing the vocals, you hear this loud, clear, gleeful melody soaring through the night:
LOVE THAT CHICKEN FROM POPEYES.

Not just once … OVER and OVER.  It was as if the adrenaline pumping through Tommy’s veins somehow got the repeat button stuck on his internal CD player.  LOVE THAT CHICKEN FROM POPEYES.

By now, every dog on the south side of McRae, GA was barking up a storm.  I’m pretty sure the lights came on in the Pierce’s house across the street.  And before the echo of that blast stopped rippling through the Great Woods, Tommy was back in the tent.

Homeboy was gasping for breath.  Sweating bullets.  We were laughing so hard I thought we’d each pass out.

And with that, our game of Truth or Dare came to an end, at least, for that night.  We’d awakened the Canine Choir and half the town.  I can only imagine that most parents stirred awake briefly and said to themselves, “those boys must be camping out tonight at the McKinnon’s”.

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*personal note:  this is another post in a series called “Small Town Stories”.  I alluded to this in my New Years Day post but never followed through.  The content of this category is totally different than the focus of the blog.  It’s not about worship or leadership, it’s fun, life stories and memories of growing up in a small town.  As always, memories are that … memories.  Names will be substituted where appropriate, and facts will be blended with fiction, or half-memories.  That’s what makes them fun.  If you enjoy this series, please let me know by commenting.

The Sea Cloud (see The Sea Cloud’s Maiden Voyage) quickly became a neighborhood hit.  Carrying a manifest of two humans and one golden retriever became standard.  Of course, that was only the passenger manifest.  There was never an official cargo manifest as having the contents of our cargo in written fashion could easily become evidence in the wrong hands.

Our days were full of mischief.  The Great Woods behind the pond held the promise of hidden protection from prying eyes and nosy parents.  Older kids had better things to do and younger kids, though they may try, would seldom make it across our hidden booby traps.

One such trap was a deep hole filled with homemade spears sticking out of the ground.  It was covered with light twigs and leaves so that the trespasser trying to sneak towards our beloved Fort Montgomery would be sure to fall to their doom.  I’m still not quite sure how those Cliett kids kept themselves from being impaled.

On a particular lazy Sunday afternoon our cargo manifest was especially top secret.   My buddy Sim, and I had just discovered one of grandest treasures awaiting kid-exploration:  a big box of primers used as the firing mechanism in reloaded shotgun shells.  My Dad had a corner of the big white barn dedicated to his ammunition and reloading.  Primers.  Gun powder.  Bullets.

Sim was the kid who always unwrapped his Christmas presents under the tree while his parents were away to discover what he’d be receiving on Christmas Day, and then would wrap them back up.  There was no way he was going to allow this treasure to be left undisturbed despite the warnings I’d received from Dad.  We grabbed a few boxes of primers, our trusty Daisy pellet gun (trust me, we’d long since graduated from the “official Red Rider 250-shot air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time”) and a role of black electrical tape.

McKinnon Pond was especially smooth and peaceful this Sunday afternoon.  The Sea Cloud whisked across the waters ever so quickly and before you knew it, we were in the safety of Fort Montgomery.  We’d discovered that shotgun shell primers really offered no joy unless they were struck with something.  We may have been kids, but we weren’t so stupid as to try to strike them while holding them in our hands.  That’s what the pellet gun and electrical tape was for.  We discovered that if you centered the primer right on the end of the barrel and taped it on, the BB would shoot down the barrel, striking the primer and making an intense firing, just like shooting a .22.

I suppose we shot primers for hours.  I specifically remember that my grandparents had come over from Cordele, GA that day so Mom and Dad were thoroughly preoccupied with visiting.  It was just the two of us.  We were in kid-bliss, taking turns firing off our new weapon.

On the far back side of the Great Woods was a paved road called “Montgomery Circle”.  A vast drainage ditch separated the road from the Great Woods.  We’d often built rickety bridges across the ditch but any cool kid could simply run and jump over it.  That’s exactly what Sim did when he decided it was about time to wrap things up.  He’d left his bike parked off Montgomery Circle and had originally entered the Fort from the Montgomery Circle/Great Woods entrance.  Since he’d helped create all the booby traps, he knew where to go.

Jumping the expanse of this ditch was an everyday occurrence.  But this day was different.  Just as Sim began his leaping approach over the ditch to retrieve his bike he noticed movement from the bottom of the ditch.

It was dark.

It was big.

And it stood up and with a deep voice and screamed “Hey Kid.  Stop!”

No kid could ever jump the ditch backwards but no sooner than Sim’s feet hit the pavement he jumped backwards over the ditch into the Great Woods and began running like a bat out of hell towards Fort Montgomery.  He yelled one word, and one word only:

“POLICE”.

This word evoked two instincts in our crew:
#1.  Run like Hell.
#2.  DLH.  DLH was an acronym that we created and we still use it today.  It meant, simply:  “Deny Like Hell”.

I suppose we liked the word “hell” a little too much.  It seemed appropriate as it could be the doom awaiting us if we were caught.

Wasting no time, I met Sim at the dock.  We flew across those boards as if our feet never really touched the ground.  As I began flailing the oars in the murky waters of McKinnon Pond I remember saying “Sim, what about your bike”?  His eyes were as big as the moon and he said “forget the bike,

go …

Go …

GO!”

I think we were about a third of the way across the pond when it happened.  There was this horrific jerk – a shove of sorts that nearly toppled us right out of the Sea Cloud.  We’d stopped.  I could tell by the look on Sim’s face that he figured things out as quickly as I did.

WE HAD FORGOTTEN TO UNTIE THE ANCHOR ROPE FROM THE DOCK.

As our eyes followed this dripping rope from the bow of the Sea Cloud to that willow branch by the dock, we saw it.  The huge, black, muscular arm of our adversary, Sargent Jonas Tobler of the McRae Police Department.  It was literally the strong arm of the law.

With a chuckle he dropped to his knees, grabbed the rope, and towed us in.

He’d received a call that “those boys” were at it again – this time shooting a firearm in the woods.  I suppose he’d been observing us from the ditch.  I honestly don’t remember much of the discussion.  I remember saying “yes sir, yes sir”.  Just as we’d convinced him that we weren’t bank robbers or terrorists, we came under fire.

My older brother, Rob, completely oblivious to the fact that we were being interrogated dock side by Sgt. Tobler, decided it would be fun to sneak through the Wooley Swamp, lighting and throwing firecrackers in our general direction.

After considerable yelling and screaming, he knocked it off and disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.  We concluded the receiving end of our lecture from McRae’s finest, untied our anchor rope, tucked our heads down, and eased back home.

As I turned my head and looked over my shoulder back towards the house, I saw my Mom, standing on the deck.  I suppose she’d witnessed the entire episode.  Her arms were crossed and she had … that look.

That was one of the last voyages on the Sea Cloud and was perhaps one of the most memorable Sunday afternoons of my life.

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*personal note:  this is the first post of what I call “Small Town Stories”.  I alluded to this in my New Years Day post but never followed through.  The content of this category is totally different than the focus of the blog.  It’s not about worship or leadership, it’s fun, life stories and memories of growing up in a small town.  As always, memories are that … memories.  Names will be substituted where appropriate, and facts will be blended with fiction, or half-memories.  That’s what makes them fun.  If you enjoy this series, please let me know by commenting.

I was always the kid entrepreneur.  If it wasn’t Christmas cards, it was All-Occasion cards.  If it wasn’t cards, it was gift wrap or a plea for money to some good cause.  My favorite product to peddle was those decadent chocolate bars in the mouth-watering options of “Krunch”, “Almond”, or “Caramel”.  These were the easiest products to move, as all I really had to do is buy a truck load of them and leave them in our fridge for my Dad to devour.  And he did.  Thankfully, he was good to pay for them.

This time around, it was cards.  But not for the money – no, this kid had a much bigger prize.  It would take my selling more boxes of Christmas cards than there were people in Telfair County, but I was ambitious and had my eyes set on the grandest prize of all:  The blue and yellow Sea Cloud inflatable boat with matching oars and pump.

After weeks of my hands peddling cards to neighbors and my feet pedaling my Huffy Bandit throughout the town, the Sea Cloud arrived.  She was beautiful.  It didn’t take long for all the kids to start arriving … the Sea Cloud became the Saturday talk of Montgomery Circle.

Brandy, my faithful golden retriever, was there, lips-smacking and tail-wagging, when I took the maiden voyage.  A kid like me couldn’t buy a bottle of champagne.  Besides, Wild Turkey or Boone’s Farm was the drink of the elite there in McRae.  Alas, I’m just a kid so I was forced to resort to shaking up a can of Winn Dixie’s “Chek” Cream Soda to anoint the bow of our sea-worthy vessel.  She may not have been ready for the Atlantic Ocean, but this boat was definitely ready to cross over the big pond in our back yard.

Our back yard was a kid’s dream; vast, and surrounded by everything a kid needs for growing up.  The ditch by the road was wide and deep and filled waste high with water after a summer gusher.  The thick green grass ended with a rather large pond surrounded by the vast woods in the back (by vast, I mean, a couple of residential lots) and the Wooley Swamp that Charlie Daniels sung about on the side.  There had once been a metal wire suspended across the pond for us to zip line across but that ended when too many kids dropped off in the middle with their school clothes on.

The pond teemed with life – minnows, fish, turtles, and “Big Mama”, an albino catfish that we all thought was immortal.   There were big willows that wept over the water leaving opportune spots for bream beds …. and snakes and wasp nests.

Without question, the pinnacle of delight on this block of McRae, GA real estate was the secret, yet well-known hideout called “Fort Montgomery”.  This epic fort was built to withstand everything from alien attacks to nosy parents wondering what happened to that pack of Salem Light Ultra 100s on their dashboard.  The addition of the Sea Cloud gave a whole new level of access (and regress) to Fort Montgomery so we began construction on a state-of-the-art pier.

The pier was any flat piece of board we could find from neighboring construction sites.   The board would be nailed in the middle to the biggest branch of one of those willows extending into the water.  It was as good as one of New York Harbor’s piers unless you happened to step on either side of the board.  You had to be careful to never have both feet down at once and always keep one foot in front of the other.

But who cared.  This was the bomb.  Despite the reality that you could simply walk on the path around the pond to enter those dark woods to Fort Montgomery, the new route via Sea Cloud was really the ONLY way to go.  I don’t recall, but I’m pretty sure I came up with a fare of sorts and charged neighbor kids for rides to and from the fort.

The maiden voyage was flawless.  She graced through the water with only the sound of the water drops dripping off the plastic paddles and the occasional slap of water when I’d be forced to shake off that nasty green, slimy mossy stuff off the oar.  I made several laps around the pond and knew I was born for the water.  I was the Captain.  She was my vessel.

I was in kid ecstasy.

Little did I know that the Sea Cloud would soon be involved in crime.
(stay tuned for “The Strong Arm of the Law”)

*personal note:  this is the first post of what I call “Small Town Stories”.  I alluded to this in my New Years Day post but never followed through.  The content of this category is totally different than the focus of the blog.  It’s not about worship or leadership, it’s fun, life stories and memories of growing up in a small town.  As always, memories are that … memories.  Names will be substituted where appropriate, and facts will be blended with fiction, or half-memories.  That’s what makes them fun.  If you enjoy this series, please let me know by commenting.