MY FRIEND CHARLEY
Introduction
Oh, those hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer. My Friend Charley will be incorporated into “The Hallowed Spot” and it is one boy’s recollection of his childhood summer days while he was growing up. It was a time when America was young and innocent. Kidnappings and rape were unheard of, and if they did occur somewhere far away, it was talked about only in hushed whispers. ‘There’s no use in frightening the children,’ parents would tell one another. Murder was something that only happened in fiction novels, not in real life, so we thought.
Summer days seemed endless, almost a lifetime to a small boy full of awe and wonder at the world around him. Those carefree summer days were days that would never be forgotten. The simple pleasure of sitting on a creek bank and dangling his feet in the cool water was enough to keep him occupied for hours as he skipped flat stones across the water. Summer days were days filled with playing marbles, trying to learn to skip a rope and just doing nothing, just being a boy. Some days he would go fishing and if the fish weren’t biting, he would just simply jump in the water and go for a swim.
He was alive and life was full of too much to do to get bored; he didn’t even know the meaning of the word.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, we dare Charley over” was a game Charley and I would play with other friends and it would keep us busy for hours. It seemed about the time we got the nerve to take the dare and cross over the swinging rope; it would mysteriously begin to swing faster.
“London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady.” Hide and go seek—“One, two, three, here I come and no Mother may I. Anyone caught within 20 feet of base is automatically it.”
“My bike will go faster than your bike!”
“No it won’t!
“Bet cha!”
“Put up or shut up!”
And who can forget ‘nap time?’ It always seemed to happen about the same time every day in the middle of the afternoon. Just about the time Charley and I got smack dab in the middle of playin’ something real fun, my mother would call out, “Come on home now, it’s time for your nap.” When I would object and tell her Charley’s mom never made him take a nap she would say, “I don’t care what Charley’s mom does, it’s time for your nap. It you don’t take your nap, you’ll get ‘fussy’ and hard to live with!”
It seems to me there would be whole lot less trouble in this world and people wouldn’t be so fussy if their moms just made them take their naps
“Charley, Charley. Come on home now, it’s time for supper!”
“Oh gee whiz mom! We just got started playing.”
“Put that sling shot up! Your supper’s getting cold. You can play again tomorrow!”
Chapter I
I don’t think Charley liked school much because it seemed like he never went very often. But when it came to climbing a tree or catching night crawlers and lightening bugs, Charley was the best. Charley was my best friend and from the time I was able to remember anything, it seemed I had always known Charley. From my earliest recollection, Charley and I always played together and our summers were one long adventure. The summer days seemed to last forever and yet they went by much too fast. Our day started when the first one of us would get up out of bed and run to the other one’s house. It seemed we no sooner got to playing than we would be interrupted by one of our mothers coming to the door and hollering, ‘Dinner’s ready.’
Charley and I spent almost one whole summer playing in an old abandoned trailer which set way back in a field on his parent’s property. Well, at least it seemed to be way back in a field because outlaws and bandits would surround the trailer and shoot at us. The trailer was our train and Charley was the engineer while I was the conductor. We would be minding our own business trying to get our loaded train to a station way out west when robbers would appear out of nowhere. Charley and I put up a pretty good fight though. Charley would stick his rifle, which looked much like a crooked stick, out one of the windows in the front of the train, and I would fire at the bandits with my pistol from the back of the train.
“Hurry up Charley! They’re catching up with us,” I would holler from the back of the train.
“We’re going as fast as we can go!” Charley would shout back. Many times Charley and I barely escaped with our lives. No matter how bad a fight we were in, we never abandoned our train—except when someone would holler, “You boys come on home now, it’s time for supper. It’ll be getting dark soon and you have to get your baths and get ready for bed.
“We can’t leave the train now. If we do, we’ll be shot in the back!” we yelled as we tried to reason with our mothers. Surely they will understand the position we are in.
“We said to come home now!”
“Aw shucks, can’t we play a little longer?” one of us would plead and the answer was always the same.
“You can play again tomorrow.” Reluctantly we obeyed as we slowed the train down and let it coast into the train station. As we slowly got off the train we would look from side to side to make sure there were no more outlaws hiding behind some bushes, waiting to take a shot at us.
That night visions of robbers and bandits would flash through my mind. I would hear the old steam engine chugging and I would see the smoke puffing out of the smoke stack as we speeded up trying to outrun our night time bandits. I would hear myself calling out, “Hurry up Charley!” but the words seemed to come out of my mouth very slowly and it sounded as if they came from a distance.
About the time they were ready to overtake us I would wake up and a new day would begin. I don’t think children have enough time today to just play and explore their new world. To a child every day is different and everything is brand new. I learned many lessons just playing with my friend Charley that can’t be taught in textbooks. Lessons such as—sharing my favorite toys and also sharing his with him. I learned that if I didn’t play fair with others they wouldn’t play fair with me. It seems to me many adults today could benefit by learning what I learned as a child. After many falls, bumps and bruises, and against my mother’s approval, I had the thrill of learning to ride my bike with no hands. I felt as if I had accomplished a great feat and I was only too happy to show off my newly acquired skill. This was something that wasn’t taught in the ‘How To’ manuals.
Today, Charley and I are going to spend some time in our fort. It was as much fun climbing the steps to get in the fort as it was to defend our fort from the Indians. Our fort sat in a fork in the top of an old oak tree, which was also way back in a pasture field. Many was the time we had to kill half a dozen poisonous snakes, wrestle a grisly bear and outrun a whole tribe of Indians just to get to the wooden steps so that we could climb up to our fort. The steps were nailed on the side of the old oak tree and we had to climb straight up to get to the top of the tree where our fort was. It’s amazing how fast a boy can climb straight up, especially when something is chasing him. Once we were in our fort we were safe, unless, some giant eagles flew over us and decided they wanted to use the fort for a nest. These imaginary, dangerous birds would swoop over Charley and me and try to push us out of our fort. We would be literally fighting for our lives because if just one of those birds nudged us just a little bit, it would mean certain death. Our fort was about a mile high in the air, and if we fell, it would not only kill us, but we would get a scolding from our moms as well when we got home.
Charley’s house was right across the alley from our house. I loved to go and play in Charley’s yard because there was so much more to do than there was in our yard. There was an old hammock tied between two trees in Charley’s yard. Charley and I spent many hours swinging in that old hammock and daydreaming. Some days we would pretend we were pirates searching for lost treasure. On other days we would take turns being Robin Hood and one of us would be one of his merry men. The most fun we would have was when the ‘big kids’ got out of school for the day and swing us real high in that hammock. It felt like we were flying as we swung toward the sky, stopped for a split second, and then came back down toward the earth. Once we were at the bottom we began flying up again, only backwards. We watched as our feet left the earth and our bellies would begin to tickle. We would laugh and giggle which only encouraged the kids to swing us higher than before.
On one occasion, while we were in this helpless condition, we felt something go ‘splat’ as an over-ripe tomato began to run down our backs. The fight was on until Charley’s mother called a halt to the contest stating that Charley’s dad wasn’t going to be too happy when he came home. After that, the tomato patch was off limits unless we were going to eat them instead of throwing them at one another.
There was a large pasture field behind Charley’s house where my mother and Charley’s mother would pick ‘greens’ together. I can still see them as they each had sun bonnets on their heads, a big bowl in one hand and a paring knife in the other hand. Although my father and Charley’s father loved fresh picked greens, looking back, I think just being together and the fellowship they had with one another outweighed the joy they had in cutting greens for the supper table.
One time during my preschool years, (there was no kindergarten back then, first grade was it) I had woke up from my much dreaded nap. The house was quiet and I wondered where my mother was. I was not used to waking up and her being gone. I began to call out for her. She must have had it timed so that she would be back about the time I usually woke up. After calling out a couple of times she came in the back door to our house. She had been cutting greens with Charley’s mom. I was not only frightened but I was bull headed as well. I never told my mother but I purposed then and there that since she didn’t answer me the first time I called for her, I wouldn’t answer the first time she called me to take my nap! Ha—oh she must have had a time raising me.
Sometimes Charley and I would tag along when our mothers went to pick a ‘mess of greens’ as they called them. It seemed they knew what they were looking for as they walked through that pasture field looking this way and that way. When they would spot the plant they were looking for, they would take their paring knives and cut it off as close to the ground as they could and put in into one of the bowls they were each carrying. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why someone would want to eat them; they looked like grass to me. However, my father seemed to love them after mom had prepared them and set them on the supper table. It was a mystery to me why he liked them but you would have thought he was eating a gourmet meal.
I think one of the greatest pleasures we had as kids growing up is when our mothers let us go bare-footed for the summer. It usually was in the month of May after all the frost had left the ground. All the mothers in our neighborhood must have gotten together and decided when that day was because it seemed we all took our shoes off the same day. That first day was a day of celebration because now we were really free! No more struggling to put our socks on and no more lacing our shoes up while our friends waited for us to come outside and play. It didn’t take long for our feet to toughen up and get calloused. We were soon able to run down a gravel driveway as fast as we could on a grass-covered lawn.
We went everywhere bare-footed and no one raised their eyebrows because we were not properly dressed, as they call it today. We went to the grocery store down the block, around the corner and even to the barbershop uptown without any shoes on. Going bare-footed came ‘second nature’ to us, and when we did have our shoes on, like when we went to church on Sundays, it was then that we felt out of place.
Regardless of what date was on the calendar, being allowed to go bare-footed marked the real beginning of summer for Charley and me. We stayed bare-footed as late in the fall as we possibly could. School would always start the day after Labor Day, and as soon as we got home from school, off would come our shoes. During one cool day, which was on the border line of being cold, I put my coat on and walked to the corner grocery store bare-footed. The grocer shook his head and laughed. “Where’s your shoes at?” he asked.
“They’re at home. It’s not time to put em’ on yet!” I replied, figuring everyone ought to know that.
