The Maidens' Dilemma

BY BILLY SNEAD

In recent years I have read with some interest about all the furor over sex education in our public schools and could not understand just what the arguments against it were all about.

After all, I finished high school in 1954 and we had sex education classes way back then. Sex was a word then that was not used so everyday as it is now, thus the title of our classes was Biology 5 for boys and Biology 6 for girls, but nevertheless the curriculum focused on sex education. The classes were only offered to seniors, they were electives (not mandatory), and the boys' class was segregated from the girls.

The textbooks were distributed at the beginning of each class and collected at the end of each class. I guess so that this advanced sensitive material didn't fall into the hands of the immature underclassmen. When the books were distributed, the guys would quickly shuffle the pages looking for the "dirty pictures" which were no more than cross section drawings of the male and female anatomy, most prior knowledge having been acquired from the National Geographic Magazine. The teacher allowed this for about a minute before he ordered "books closed" and then he went on with his lecture.

Most of the semester was devoted to anatomy, hygiene, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Toward the end of the semester we got into the real thing...intercourse. These lectures brought lots of knowing snickers from guys, most of whom, in fact knew nothing and certainly knew nothing from their own experience.

We were taught that there were three steps to making love...preliminary love play, the act, and the contented sleep thereafter. Now what more could you possibly need to know about sex? And why would modern day parents be offended by this being taught in the schools.

It was only after I heard and read in more depth that I knew the answer. Our sex education focused only on marital sex between heterosexual men and women. It was the only kind discussed and indeed the only kind acknowledged. Nowadays education focuses on sex of any and all kinds without regard to genders or marital status or commitment between the participants. And that was the thrust of the parents' furor. That pre-marital and so called deviant sex was not only acknowledged, it was, by teaching about it, sanctioned.

Now all this discussion on sex education is to put a certain story in its proper context because if it happened in today's society it would hardly be worth telling. The story involves four fine upstanding young people and unfolds in late September of 1954 in Charlottesville. The characters are a bride, a groom, and two maidens fair. They all were graduates of the same high school.

The groom had finished a year earlier and was at UVA on a football scholarship. The three girls had all been high school cheerleaders and finished school that past June. The marriage vows were said in August with the two maidens in attendance as bridesmaids. The bride was living with her groom in a small apartment just off the UVA campus. They invited the maidens, who eagerly agreed to come, up for a football weekend.

What follows was told to me in strict confidence by the blue-eyed maiden (the other one having brown eyes) some forty-seven years ago. Certainly the statute of limitations on that confidence has expired after all these years. The story has three parts… the situation, the predicament, and the dilemma.|

The situation. The maidens with a late start decided to finesse the game on that chilly, rainy Saturday and instead went straight to the apartment arriving at around half time.

They found the key where they were told it would be, entered, and returned the key to its hiding place outside. They explored the apartment with eager curiosity at how newly married couples lived, probably with their own future marriages in mind. Two tickets and a note left in the kitchen by the bride gave them instructions as to how to get to the stadium and apologized for having left without them.

The girls relaxed in the living room waiting out the game, hearing the stadium crowd roars clearly from time to time. Finally the noise stopped and they looked out the front window seeing the crowds meandering through the street on their way home. "The game's over, they'll be here soon". "No they won't, she's going to wait for him to change and shower. It'll be at least another half hour".

They waited, peeking out the front window from time to time until, finally, blue eyes announced that they were coming down the street. It was brown eyes, with a fiendish grin, who spoke next. "They don't know we're here. Let's hide under their bed and scare them". "No we can't". Yeah, let's do it, come on it'll be fun". And so they did, quickly moving to the bedroom and slipping underneath, the dust ruffle concealing them. They had about a two-inch view of the room from their position on the floor. Webster defines a "situation" as a location or position with reference to environment. They had placed themselves, deliberately, in a situation.

The predicament. The girls were on their backs side by side with their heads turned toward each other, wide eyed, with broad wicked grins on their pretty faces and their hearts pounding with anticipation.

They heard the front door open and the groom's voice, "I told you they weren't here, they're not coming until the game traffic has cleared out. We've got plenty of time. Bring the key in so they'll have to knock when they get here".

He was moving quickly, entered the bedroom, ran into the bathroom, which was just to the left of the bed, and without closing the door, started urinating loudly and right in the middle of the bowl.

Meanwhile, the bride walked into the bedroom to the right of the bed and quickly started undressing.

Now the maidens thinking that they had the element of surprise, were instead themselves surprised at this sudden action and their eyes got wider and their wicked smiles turned into mortified frowns. They knew what was happening from their two-inch floor view. Referring again to Webster, who defines a predicament as an unpleasant, trying, or dangerous situation. The maidens were now facing a predicament.

The dilemma. The groom was shedding his clothes and now standing next to the bed, his bare feet inches from blue eyes while on the other side, feminine articles were dropping rapidly at the feet of the bride, her bare feet inches from brown eyes.

The maidens' faces now staring out, could only gasp in horror. They turned their heads to face each other as the married couple pounced on the mattress above, the box springs and slats bending downward with their weight. Step one, preliminary love play, was in full swing. The first words the maidens learned in lip reading were, "Oh my God". They were to learn many more, their eyes now wide in horror.

Let's get out now", brown eyes mouthed. "No wait a minute". Would there be a more opportune time?

"Yes, yes, let's do it now", she mouthed in more exaggerated silence. "Wait a minute." "Why"? Their heads now turned upwards as the entire bed above was bending, bouncing, and creaking, dust falling lightly on the witnesses below. Preliminary love play had run its course and step two, the act, was in full progress.

Webster writes that a dilemma is a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives, an embarrassing situation. And that was exactly the fix the maidens were in. They knew that now was probably not a good time to reveal themselves. They could do nothing but wait, but until when, they were not at all sure. The act was over rather quickly as the bed at last ceased its movement and came to a calm stop.

Brown eyes started to laugh at their plight, silently of course. Her stomach was heaving and her hand was clasped tightly over her mouth, her eyes were squenched closed. What thoughts were going through this maiden's head and why were things so much funnier when laughter was restricted. Blue eyes saw no humor at all.

Step three, the contented sleep thereafter, was taking place as had been taught. The girls realized that something had to happen. Brown eyes made it happen. Her uncontrollable laughter blew out of the sides of her hand pressed over her mouth, and they both rolled out from under the bed on each side laughing, stood up, and yelled "Surprise"!

And indeed surprised the contented sleepers were, leaping up in the middle of the bed, stripped naked, and clutching each other in tight embrace.

The maidens, at least had the good taste to quickly exit the bedroom leaving the astonished couple time to recover. It took a while as you might imagine. Conversation was contrived at dinner that night and eyes avoided eyes. The maidens slept on a pull-out couch in the living room and heard no sounds at all from the bedroom.

Especially the sounds of contented sleep thereafter.

The Jujitsu Artist

BY BILLY SNEAD

To call yourself an artist of any sort, I have always thought to be a little bit presumptuous. If you paint, call yourself a painter and the viewers of your paintings will decide whether or not you are in fact an artist. The same with writing, only the readers may decide whether a person is a writer or not.

But if somebody tells me they are a jujitsu artist, I will readily accept and believe that, because I simply don’t care. You hardly ever hear about jujitsu anymore, have you noticed?

There’s karate and kung fu and I think something like tai chi, but the art of jujitsu seems to be a lost one. These other arts might disappear too if the adversaries ever get together and decide to all rush the artist at once instead of one at a time like they do in the movies.

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that "artist" is an earned title and before you can call yourself one, somebody else has to call you one first.

I learned all I needed to know about jujitsu in the late spring of 1954 about a month before I was to graduate from TJ High School.

Now in those years at TJ, smoking was allowed in the back bathrooms, but not in the front ones. The reason for this was that it would be unsightly for the general public to see smoke pouring from the front bathroom windows. They could not see it in the back as the windows faced the school yard surrounded by an eight-foot concrete wall.

Also in those days no one had even heard of a Surgeon General or any of his or her warnings. The teachers didn’t even know. No students went into those back bathrooms unless they smoked, for obvious reasons, they knew what second hand smoke smelled like even before it had been discovered.

One day during recess after lunch, I headed for the first floor bathroom for a smoke and there was a guy in there who introduced himself as Aubrey. He was a little guy; even I towered over him.

Aubrey was not a student. He was 25 years old, about 5’2", weighed in at no more than 120 pounds with all of his features being proportionally small.

Aubrey was talking and everyone was listening. He made these three claims – he was a Korean War Veteran (we didn’t doubt him because we didn’t care), he was a jujitsu artist (again we didn’t doubt him because we didn’t care), he was "intimate" with a TJ girl (this we doubted and we cared).

Aubrey proceeded to give us a demonstration, a dry run, of his "art."

His most heard line was "a good blow here could kill a man".

And with that said, he would, in slow motion, spread his little hand and give a mock chop to one of the guy’s neck or temple. Quite convincingly!

Now Aubrey said that he would only use his abilities in a defensive posture.

"All I want to do is keep you from hurting me."

He then demonstrated how to render an adversary helpless by flipping them over his shoulder. He would ask one of us to "come at me with a knife" and I, as his chosen mock attacker, would raise my arm and try to stab him, again in slow motion.

He would reach up and grab my right wrist with his right hand, then grab my fist with his left hand, step between my legs, turn his back and pretend to flip me over his shoulder. It looked like it would work. He gave us several reasons, secrets, as to why it would in fact work using words and phrases like momentum and centrifugal force. "

Use the other man’s weight and speed to your own advantage."

We liked Aubrey and no body messed with him, besides you could always bum a smoke from him.

Several days later again during recess, I walked into the bathroom and noticed it was extra noisy and soon discovered why. Aubrey had produced a photograph, black and white, from his wallet and was passing it around the room. I was astounded. It was a clear picture of Aubrey and sure enough his TJ girlfriend sitting on a sofa, stark naked, and grinning at the camera and Aubrey was pointing with a bayonet at one of her "zones" that we weren’t to read about until the seventies.

Aubrey’s credibility skyrocketed! We no longer doubted any of his claims and believed and cared about everything he said.

He was not just an ordinary Korean War Vet, he was a decorated war hero having single handedly captured several of those hills in Korea named after meat cuts. He was the world’s greatest jujitsu artist, but best of all, Aubrey was a proven lover!

Now it is time to introduce the other main character into this drama – one-play Dave, as he was known in school, and not endearingly so, as I will explain. Dave was six foot tall and weighed almost three hundred pounds. Most of his weight was around his mid section and even in the wintertime he had wet side burns and ears, and there always seemed to be beads of sweat on the sides of his rosy cheeks.

Dave was about third string on the football team. Back in November when TJ was playing John Marshall at the stadium, the left defensive end for JM was just wrecking TJ’s offense.

Play after play, he was in the backfield before TJ could execute, causing general commotion and havoc with our boys. Nobody could stop him.

The TJ coach, in search of a remedy, was pacing the sidelines in front of the bench when his eyes focused on Dave. An idea came to the bewildered man, which should work. Put Dave opposite that end and by the time the end negotiates Dave’s girth, the play would long since have developed. The plan was brilliant – on paper.

Dave, astonished, was inserted into the game. They were out of the huddle, Dave was set, the ball was snapped, but the end didn’t cooperate. He came straight at Dave, elbow first, crushing his nose. Down went Dave, out went Dave, onto the field came a stretcher and he was laboriously whisked away to the hospital. Hence the nickname – one-play Dave.

Now it’s another day and we are all back in the bathroom listening to Aubrey expand on his favorite and by this time pretty worn out subject to some latter day smokers, when in walks Dave.

Dave didn’t smoke, but this day he was in a trot, with zipper already down headed for the urinal. Dave had to go! Bad! An ominous silence fell over the room. All you could hear was Dave’s now final trickle.

All of us were staring at Dave’s big backside, including Aubrey. All of us were thinking the same thing, except Aubrey.

What better situation could an "artist" conjure up to back his boasts. One of the bigger boys had the temerity to express our collective thoughts.

"Think you could flip Dave, Aubrey?" Aubrey winced and I thought I could see cold beads of sweat on his upper lip.

"Hey Dave, come here. Aubrey’s a jujitsu artist and he wants to flip you."

"Huh", said Dave pulling up his fly and noticing us for the first time since his hasty entry.

"Aubrey here wants to flip you over his back."

Aubrey didn’t speak. Now you see poor Dave’s dilemma here?

If he says no, it will only add to his already tarnished image from the football thing; on the other hand, if he agrees, and Aubrey succeeds, he will be even more of a loser, adding to his tarnish. Perhaps, one-flip Dave.

He had no choice and he knew it.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Wait a minute," another now emboldened guy said, "we can’t do it in here, this is a marble floor, somebody could get hurt."

To the school yard we shouted. Aubrey was not looking good. His reputation thus far had made him seem larger, but now he looked like what he was, a real little guy.

Rolling out of the boys’ room, we turned left down the hall pass three classrooms to the back door and by this time about fifteen more guys had joined the march.

When we exited the back door and went down the three or four steps, everybody sitting on the steps followed. We were drawing a crowd. It was like a rolling snowball.

Out past the concrete, we started looking for some grass, but found something even better--the pit where the track guys did their long jumps. It was filled with sawdust. Perfect!

Now Aubrey and Dave were standing face to face. Dave, of course looking down at the "artist."

Both of them wanted this thing over. I felt sorry for them with the pressure of their large audience.

"Now what do I do?" Aubrey explained it all to Dave and they did three or four dry runs. "Come at me with a knife", he said. Now it was time and the crowd held its breath. Aubrey and Dave didn’t look like they had much breath, but their pulses were almost visible.

And then it began. Dave was slightly crouched with his "knife" hand raised menacingly. Aubrey was braced for the thrust. Dave lunged. Aubrey’s right hand clasped around Dave’s big wrist, his left hand expertly grabbed Dave’s big fist, he planted his feet and turned as he had demonstrated to us so many times before.

Dave came on – momentum!

Now daylight could be seen under Dave’s shoes. It was happening and Dave could sense it as his eyes widened in woe. And now Dave was completely off the ground and rising fast — centrifugal force!

And now he is up in the air on top of Aubrey’s back. And here is where the theories all went wrong. Aubrey’s knees were vibrating and his legs looked like a small set of parenthesis. His little feet were sinking into the sawdust. Down came Dave and Aubrey disappeared beneath him — gravity !

Aubrey knew about jujitsu, but he was no artist.

It was over. The smokers all strolled back to the bathroom for one last puff before the recess bell rang. It was hard to light up because we were all laughing so hard.

A couple of the physics class guys said they knew what was going to happen but didn’t want to spoil it for us. Even Dave came back and took a puff or two, his reputation now somewhat restored.

By graduation, he had lost his ill-gotten nickname. As for Aubrey, the last look I had of him was a quick glance back before we went into the school. He had his shoes off, cleaning out the sawdust.

No one ever saw or heard of him again, but his girlfriend suddenly became real popular, and probably never knew why.

Helen's Dishonor

BY BILLY SNEAD

I enrolled at Binford Junior High School in February of 1948, having completed my elementary education at Fox, where I knew most everyone from the 6th grade down to the 1st.

But Binford drew from a much larger area, which included Gamble's Hill, Oregon Hill, the Boy's Home, and Maymont area, the Swan Lake and Fountain Lake, all of the Fan up to the Boulevard, and West Avenue. Diversity. Of course, "the Fan" didn't get it's geographically descriptive name until many years later.

At Binford, the students from all of those areas were split up into different homerooms and it took a while to meet new people and make new friends, and foes. Fist fights occurred almost daily on the school yard, much more frequently than I was use to.

By early June I had met many new friends and had even ventured into strange parts of the city to see them on weekends, mainly to see the girls. After all, I was thirteen. I had made the baseball team that spring and although I got very little playing time, it had allowed me to become, so to speak, one of the boys.

I was comfortable in my new environment and I was having fun, managing to avoid confrontations with the school toughs. And Binford had plenty of them seeming to all fit the same mold...they cussed a lot, smoked cigarettes, had bad teeth, and were loud, rude, and usually ugly. They would start a fight at the least provocation and sometimes with none. One of those guys was named Jimmy and I had been told of how mean he was, although none had ever really seen him in action.

About a week before school was out for the summer, I was standing out front of the school talking to some of my Fox School friends, waiting for the first bell to ring, when a surly looking bunch of guys came out of the front door led by Jimmy. They were headed our way, and Jimmy was glaring right at me.

"I wanta talk to him a minute," he said, still glaring, as my buddies eased away and into the school.

"Imo beat your little ass after school for what you said about my girlfriend, and don't say you didn't say it."

Say what, I wondered not even knowing that he had a girlfriend. I was stunned and not just a little bit afraid. "I don't even know your girlfriend, Jimmy", I stammered. Fear, I'm sure, apparent on my face.

"I knew he'd lie about it, the little chicken", Jimmy said to his entourage who all agreed with chuckles.

"Bobby Morgan said that you told him some stuff about me and Helen, and you're gonna pay for it."

I knew Bobby but I didn't know Helen and I knew that I was innocent of these charges.

"Meet me over there by the bike racks after school and you better show up or Imo come after you."

The first bell rang and they all went back in the front door leaving me standing there stunned, like a little boy lost, which indeed, I was. But I knew that nothing on Earth could have kept me from showing up. Not that I was brave, it was that I just wanted this thing to end and to end quickly.

The impending showdown completely consumed me for the rest of the school day. I could think of nothing else...I rehearsed it over and over in my mind.

My main goal was to confront Bobby. Bobby was small and meek, always smiling, and always seen hanging around with the girls. Everybody liked him, even the bullies.

I saw him in the hall going to second period, but when I yelled his name, he glanced my way, quickly averted my eyes, and lost himself in the crowd. I knew he had lied and he had just proved it.

I waited in the cafeteria at lunch until I saw him taking up his tray and I cornered him at the window.

"Bobby, what did you tell Jimmy that I said about his girl?"

He started to tear up. "It wasn't you, it was Holland. I told Helen what he said and she made me tell her who told me. I couldn't tell her the truth because Holland would beat me up, so I said it was you. It was the only name I could think of."

"Well you've got to tell him it won't me", I argued.

"I can't, then both of them will beat me up and Helen will be mad at me."

"Who is Helen?"

"Right there, I was sitting next to her," Bobby said.

I turned and saw Helen who was looking my way and not smiling. Helen was a beauty! Small boned, but budding, large grey eyes and curly hair that she had peroxided in all the right places, and a wide mouth with pretty white teeth. She always wore bright red lipstick on her perty lips, and bright colored beads around her long thin neck. I did know her, but only through seeing her in the halls. She was in her second year and very popular with the boys as well as the girls. I didn't really know her but I was a secret admirer and could never say anything bad about her even if I was privileged to know anything bad.

She turned and said something to the other girls and now they were scowling my way. I wanted to scream out my innocence, but I didn't and when I turned back to plead again with Bobby, he had vanished.

As the day went on, it only got worse. Every time I turned around, Jimmy was there with his crew. They, all with mean looks in their eyes. It was terrorism and it was working. I was, quite simply, scared to death of my unknown fate.

My buddies from that morning had asked me what Jimmy had wanted.

"Nothing, just something about some girl."

I had already decided to see this through alone and so I told no one of my impending doom. I guess because I didn't want them to see me humiliated. When the bell rang ending the school day, I tarried in my seat, wanting as many kids to leave as possible, thus reducing the size of the audience, which by now, must be gathering on the side yard.

I was the last to leave my homeroom and when I got to the steps, the halls were almost clear. At the bottom of the steps was the side door, maybe the last door I would ever exit. It was showtime!

As I came out of the door and the semi-darkness of the hall, I was temporarily blinded by the afternoon sun, but my eyes quickly focused on the view to my left.

There were about thirty or forty people in a semi-circle, mostly girls, most of the boys viewing this as a one-punch event and therefore not worthy of attendance. My heart was pounding like it would soon break from my chest and it seemed like I could feel the blood racing at breakneck speed through my veins. My stomach was knotted solid and my mouth was bone dry. The crowd stopped jabbering when they saw me, and Jimmy, with his back to me talking to Helen, turned in disbelief.

"Well, I'll be damned, I sure didn't think you'd show up. I thought sure you'd be too chicken."

"You're gonna get your little ass beat for what you said", Helen reminded me.

Oh please don't curse me. I'm innocent, but most of all please don't curse at all and spoil my image of you, I said, but only to myself.

"Go on and hit him, Jimmy", the crowd said. But Jimmy was now giving me a different look. A puzzled look, a look like, "How dare you show up, you're suppose to be chicken."

I was tensing up all over in fear, when Jimmy made an astonishing announcement.

"Naw, I ain't gonna fight him, he's too little. Imo wait ‘til Jeff gets here and let him do it."

Jeff? Who was Jeff? I didn't know him and wasn't being accused of saying bad things about his girl. And besides, how could someone who didn't even know me want to beat me up.

"Comah, Jimmy, we want you to do it, you said you would," the crowd said.

"Let's just wait for Jeff."

I simply could not stand the wait and started sobbing uncontrollably. I think it was now more anger than fear.

"I want to fight you", I mustered through tears – the waiting becoming more and more unbearable.

Jimmy turned sideways to the crowd, "Look at the lil' cry baby, I told y'all he was a sissy."

He was no longer calling me a chicken, I noticed, even through all my fear. My dread could wait no longer and when he turned back around to face me, I advanced and shoved him in his chest making him lose his balance slightly.

Hush went the crowd as the air was heavy with silence. I pushed him again. Now all eyes were on Jimmy expecting him to uncoil at any second, but he didn't. When I went to push him again, he quickly moved behind Helen. The crowd knew that it was Jimmy, who was chicken.

"I'm leaving", Helen announced as she turned and walked right by him saying nothing.

And it was over, just like that. The crowd turned and started walking south across the playground with Jimmy trailing behind hanging his ugly head.

By the time they got to Main Street, Helen already had a new boyfriend.

I went to the rack and got my bike and headed as fast as I could down Floyd Avenue. I was late for carrying my papers.

What just happened? I wondered. I had won a battle, having never been in a fight. Whatever it was, I knew I would sleep good that night. My knots were gone.

Jimmy left school for good when the semester was over and took a job delivering telegrams for Western Union on his bike.

Later that summer, Bobby was hit by a city bus and killed at the corner of Meadow and Main. I went to the funeral...sat next to Helen and held her hand when she cried.

The Fish Hook

BY BILLY SNEAD

No one can be exactly sure as to when their childhood ended. It was the summer of 1946 and although I had just turned 11, I was going on 12! I had just gotten my first pair of long pants --dark, blue, thick, denim dungarees.

Before that it was short pants in summer and knickers in winter. It was the last time I wore short pants until I was about 25 when Bermudas were fashionable and it was the last time I wore those dreaded knickers.

The dungarees were a little long on me, I being of short statue for my age. They gathered in a clump at my ankles even after folding them over two or three times which was not a problem. The problem was trying to walk in them.

They were so stiff that I could hardly bend my knees and they made loud, ruffling noises with every step I took, but I was no longer a child.

All of the other boys that I played with had gotten their dungarees the year before so when I got to Fox School playground that morning, I knew I was in for a lot of aggs.

And sure enough they were thrown at me for about 10 minutes, which was the outer limit of their collective attention spans.

The word "agg" requires some explanation as to its origin.

There was a younger kid who hung outside the playground fence and he was constantly making snide remarks about our clothes, bikes, and athletic abilities. He was mostly ignored but he persisted. One of our boys said, "That kid is simply aggravating," and so, we started calling him the "agg." To tease someone is to "agg" them. Hence, the coining of the word.

Now that my new pants were initiated, we could get on with the business of the day, which usually was either playing baseball or football in season.

There were about ten or twelve boys, all close in age, who hung around that playground and each day started and ended sitting on the west steps, which faced Stafford Avenue.

But there were no sports this morning. Doody and I needed bicycle tires and we were headed for Agee’s on Cary Street to make the purchase.

Two of the guys offered to give us a ride but we would have to pump while they rode the handlebars. The ride was uneventful and the guys with bikes abandoned us at the shop and went off in other pursuits.

We bought the tires and started walking east on Cary headed back home. About a block and a half down Cary we came to Lorraine Hardware. This was a really neat place with all the fascinating tools and equipment and smells that I had experienced before with my Daddy who shopped there all the time. I, never in his life told him, what occurred next.

There were all kinds of merchandise out on the sidewalk making it not easy to just walk by, especially for us with a bicycle tire over our shoulders. When we got to just in front of the doorway we came up on a large wooden barrel filled with odd looking things that Doody had never before seen, but I had.

They were large fishing hooks – lures – about a three-inch-long piece of wood, shaped sort of fish body-like and painted in various colors with the bottom half always white.

On the top middle was a brass eyelet where the fishing line was tied. On each end and the bottom were steel three-pronged fish hooks with barbs. I explained how they worked as I had been saltwater fishing with my Daddy for several years.

He was absolutely fascinated. You could not pick up one lure from the barrel; when you tried, five or six others came with it all clinging together by the hooks.

I picked a pretty green and white one up and carefully pulled off the others and handed it to Doody and I instantly knew that he was going to have it. His blue eyes quickly darted around as I instinctively moved around to block the view from the doorway.

My abetting was all he needed. He opened wide the lips of his tire and encased the fish hook. We then casually drifted away from the barrel and after a few paces walked briskly for a block or so and then on back to the school yard without so much as a peek inside the tire.

Back on the school yard steps the lure was the thing. Everybody had to touch and admire its beauty as it was passed carefully from hand to hand until its fascination had waned and other subjects entered the conversations.

Doody was sitting on the top step just left of me as my attention was turned to one of the guys on my right when I felt a tugging on my lower left pants leg. I turned and looked down as Doody was trying to penetrate my pants leg with one of the prongs at one end of the lure. My reflex was to jerk my leg, and I did, which set the hook in my pants leg up to the bend past the barb.

Oh, the man who designed this piece of equipment would have been proud because with the first cast of his invention, it had caught my new pants on one end and Doody’s left thumb on the other, set in the fleshly part and buried to the bend past the barb — one lure, two fish.

It seemed like a long time, but couldn’t have been before the situation was fully appreciated. Doody’s scream brought it all to reality. At first high pitched, then low and guttural, then high again but there was no mistaking the pain that triggered it.

I, on the other hand, saw my solution to the problem as simple, just pull out the hook and I’m out of the link. Alas, it was not to be, for the strong barb of the hook and the thick denim of my new pants would not part as hard as I pulled nor as others tried who were stronger.

If it would not come out of my pants, it certainly would not come out of his thumb without more pain than he could stand and he now knew it! The screams grew more stronger and now they were not only from pain but from utter despair. What was the possible solution? We needed, and readily admitted, an adult.

Doody lived upstairs in the second house from the alley behind the school. Upstairs!

We knew that his mother was at home and besides, where else would we go. As we started down the steps we soon realized that I could walk but he had to crawl on his left elbow and for him to crawl forward, I had to walk backwards and so I did. We got down the steps and started the twenty-yard trek to the street trying in vain to establish some sort of cadence or rhythm, but he would stop sometimes in mid crawl and I wouldn’t so you can see that it would jerk that hook in his thumb and his eye balls would disappear in agony.

Now he had stopped screaming and started low mournful moans and hopeless sobs.

I think he really wanted to just die and me and the boys thought surely that he would.

When we finally reached the sidewalk, the hook had churned up enough flesh in his thumb for it to start for the first time, bleeding. Not much, but at the first sight, he collapsed in hopelessness and at the wrong time, for I was not quick enough to stop in mid step giving his thumb a strong yank, to add to his misery.

Now we turned right, down Stafford, we had to go past the playground, across the alley, two row houses and up the steps to the second floor.

That was one of the longest walks I have ever taken. Across the street was a small grocery store, James Market, and next to that to the right was an alley and several row houses.

By this time, besides the playground boys, we were starting to draw a small crowd. The neighborhood girls arrived from the playground on the other side of the school. Shoppers in James Market came out of the store including Mr. James and Bruce, the bicycle delivery boy.

As we moved down the street, the people in the houses came out. Some of them crossed the street for a better view. Now the whole neighborhood, it seemed, was there trying to see through the crowd as the low moans now became long wails almost animalistic in nature.

The crowd, all watching in total disbelief, had expressions on their faces as if they had many questions to ask but could not muster a single one that made any sense, given what they were witnessing.

It was like a comic strip with a whole crowd giving blank stares with those big question marks over their furrowed brows.

I had plenty of time to think on this slow voyage and although my friend crawling and crying below on his now raw and bloody left elbow was in it for the worst, I too was feeling his pain and not just a little bit selfishly.

I simply saw no solution! What would happen? The phrase "crime does not pay" kept coming to me, but this was worse.

This was none other than God himself in an out of control rage. Only He could have devised such a just punishment and He was bound to be up there laughing at his cleverness. Probably even told Mr. James about it when he died a few years later.

Well, we were getting close and when I could not see how things could get any worse, they got much worse.

The boy started puking but still we kept moving. Some of it splattered on my shoes and new pants and he had to crawl through it as we proceeded. The only good part here was at least the screams had stopped, if only briefly.

One of the boys had the foresight to run ahead and warn Doody’s mother of the caravan headed her way, and right in the middle of her "soaps".

Of course, no twelve-year-old could possibly have properly described to her what she beheld as she came running down the front steps. Who knows what went through her mind when she was told what had happened. Now she was running towards us and must have surmised from the size of the throng around us that this was not going to be good because she started screaming and poor Doody, hearing her screaming, screamed even louder in answer.

Her eyes were wide and her mouth was wide open and once she stopped in mid scream, and stared hard at our feet to make sure that she was really seeing what she was really seeing. Then she just collapsed up against the chain link fence surrounding the school yard.

Now we were inside the house and trying to negotiate that narrow stairway. It was terrible. The jerking had his thumb bleeding hard and his screaming sounded as if he were in an echo chamber.

Behind us and pushing were the other boys, the girls, and several neighbors and shoppers. They saw no solution either. I was now lying on the floor and Doody who by now was voiceless with cold sweat pouring from his head, was lying in the opposite direction. We were very still as his mother called the family doctor on the telephone.

Although the good doctor had been in practice for a long time, I’m guessing this was the first time he was called for this particular situation.

What in the world could he have been thinking on his ride over and what kind of expression was on his face as the mother was screaming the predicament to him over the phone. Anyway, he got there quickly and took control. But not before the mother had jumped all over me for hurting her son. The son said nothing.

Now, the doctor was a genius. What had seemed so hopeless a few minutes before was solved in a matter of seconds.

First, he cleared the crowd out except for two of the boys whom he instructed one to sit on my leg and the other to sit on Doody’s arm, which they did. All the while Doody’s Mom was asking what was he going to do. I looked down at Doody and he did not look like he wanted to know, and he didn’t.

Thus, with both of us stabilized, he reached in his black bag and pulled out a gleaming pair of chrome-plated scissors. All five of us gasped. Was he going to cut off his thumb, but wait he was looking at my leg! And that’s when the horror hit me. He was going to cut off my new dungarees! He then grabbed the denim and cut a three-inch circle around the hook and I was free at last, except for that gaping hole in my new pants.

I knew that I was going to be in trouble when I got home, but I was now all attentive as to the next step. It was Doody’s turn. His eyes widened and I have never seen a more pitiful look. The Mom was still asking the doctor what he was going to do when, in a flash, he did it. Suddenly a pair of snip nose pliers appeared in his hand as he grabbed the end of the hook with his other hand, pushed on the hook until the barb popped out of the other side of Doody’s thumb. He then cut the barb off with the pliers and reversed the push on the hook and the now pointless end popped free from its point of entry. Doody fainted!

That’s the last fish hook I ever helped steal. My parents did not notice the hole in my pants until about a month later which was the first washing. (I stayed on their left side) When my Momma asked what happened, in front of my Daddy, I could not tell the truth and I was not smart enough to make up a believable lie.

I really don’t think they wanted to know but my Daddy did tell me I was not going to get any more dungarees that summer. I did not go back to short pants and after a while people just stopped asking about the hole.

It was not completely over for Doody that day. He got a tetanus shot after I left and broke out with a horrible

case of hives. He was bedridden for three days that summer.