Mr. and Mrs. Lowe lived on the school campus. Mr. Lowe had a certain air about him that quickly let us know he was not one to be trifled with. One recess my friend Tommy Joe and I were comparing our bean-flips (some call them slingshots). As we looked for a likely target, Mr. Lowe's shed behind the house proved to be an inviting target, especially the window about half way back. I took careful aim and fired. The stone flew straight and true, and glass from the window exploded and fell to the ground. Flushed with success, I turned to Tommy to get my well-earned praise. Then a tall shadow fell across us, and my flushed face turned chalky white. It was going to be a bad day. The key phrase, as I remember it, was “I'm gonna get your pappy up here, and he's going to tear you up like a sow's bed.” I was sitting on the gym steps, and a schoolmate was playing golf with a stick and rocks, out by the well shed. He was hitting in my general direction, and someone said, “You better stop that, you're gonna hit someone.” He hit another hard drive. I saw the rock come off the stick, but it never seemed to move, it just got bigger and bigger. I sat mesmerized by it, and it raised a big knot on my forehead. Slow reflexes can be a real headache.
It snowed. That was rare in Fourche Valley, and us boys took advantage of it by throwing snowballs at the girls coming to and from the bathroom building. I packed one good and hard and made a long throw at the open door, but nobody was in sight. There was a small space between the top of the door and the top of the partition behind it, and the snowball arched toward the door. Just as it reached the door, I saw a head rise up over the partition, and the snowball hit her square in the eye. The next day she had a black eye, and I realized I fully deserved the rock in the head.
In PE class, we sometimes did tumbling the hard way, on the floor. I once hurt my back. Never wanting to be a whiner, I went ahead and helped Dad unload the 100 pound bags of cotton seed meal that afternoon. I never said anything about it, and neither did Dad. Later, Mom said (Dad often funneled his comments to me through Mom), “Your dad said you are just not as strong as you should be, at your age.” That bothered me a long time. I never realized HOW long, until Years later, my doctor x-rayed that area of my back. He said, “What happened here? You got significant damage to your spine there, a long time ago.” My first thought was, I need to go tell Dad. Then I remembered. Dad had been dead 30 years.
Somehow, with a lot of grace, I made it to the twelfth grade. I had just decided I would go to college, and I suddenly turned from a lifelong "C" student to a straight “A” student. Nobody could believe it. Things were looking up on the political front also. I was elected class President. Actually, that was a little bit less than it appeared on the surface. There were 12 students in my grade, and my time had finally come.
The Yell County Free Fair rolled around, and I was entered in the calf scramble. One boy from each school was entered, seven in all, and two calves were released at the other end of the Danville football field. Once a boy got his hand on it, nobody could touch it unless it got away. If you could get your lead rope on it, it was yours. Stripped down to my jeans and track shoes, I quickly shot out to the lead. When I reached the calves, I made a poor decision. One was small, the other nearly grown. Figuring bigger was better, I grabbed the tail of the big one with both hands. I had watched in the previous scramble while larger, stronger boys than me had worn themselves down trying to out-muscle smaller calves, then were too worn out to get a rope on it, eventually losing it. I reasoned that if I just held on, letting the calf pull me around, it would eventually wear itself out, and my chances were better. I was long on endurance, short on strength. So, round and round the football field we went. On about the third lap, the calf made a sharp turn, and down I went. I hung on for dear life, and the calf dragged me some more laps. Gradually, I realized to my horror, my pants were slipping lower and lower. I began to realize I would soon have to make a horrible decision between my modesty and the calf. The crowd, seemed like everyone in Yell County, began to realize the drama that was being played out before them, and the interest grew. We were reaching, rapidly, the point of no return. I made the agonizing decision that my modesty was not as valuable as that calf. Suddenly, fate stepped in. The calf stopped, allowing me to regain my feet and my pants. Then we were off again, leaving the football field far behind as we ran through back yards and into a big field. Finally, the calf could go no more. When I, at long last, led MY calf back to the fair, the lights were off and the crowd had gone home. But I had my calf! Later, I learned that a spectator, at the peak of the action, was heard to say, “That skinny kid will never hold that calf!” The person next to him said, “That kid is a Gillum, and a Gillum would give up his life before he would give up a hundred dollar calf!” “The Gillums are not like other people.” Just a chip off the old block! My final post on Fourche Valley School will be made in a couple of days. Thanks for reading!
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