The High Dive Incident

When I was a kid, I spent a whole lot of time at the Leeds city pool. Every summer my mom bought season passes for me and my sisters, and we used every bit of them.

Our routine was simple. Get up, eat breakfast, and head straight to the pool. We’d stay there until the lifeguards practically ran us off at closing time… then show up the next morning and do it all over again.

Now somewhere along the way I decided I was pretty hot stuff on the diving board. I could do forward flips, back flips, and even a gainer now and then. At least in my mind I was putting on quite a show.

The pool was where all the neighborhood kids gathered, and we had more fun than ought to be legal.

One afternoon my friend Debbie decided she wanted to jump off the high dive. The only problem was… she had never done it before.

Now jumping off that high dive was a rite of passage, and Debbie asked me to help her. Since I already thought of myself as the neighborhood diving expert, I gladly accepted the job.

Up we went.

Debbie walked out onto that high board and looked down. Then she slowly turned around and started inching back toward the ladder.

“No, Debbie,” I said. “You’ve got to try it. It’s fun. The lifeguard’s watching. I’m right here. You’ll be fine.”

So she turned around and edged her way back out again… step by careful step… until she was standing at the very end of that board.

She looked down.

She looked back at me.

She looked down again.

Then she looked over at Bobby Talley, the lifeguard, who gave her a reassuring thumbs-up.

My sisters were down in the water yelling, “Go ahead Debbie! Jump!”

But Debbie wasn’t convinced.

So… being the helpful friend that I was…

I gave her a little shove.

Lord have mercy.

She hit that water with the loudest belly flop I have ever heard in my life. And let me tell you something—little people hitting water flat like that get hurt just like big people do.

She came up out of that pool screaming, gave me the most blistering look I’ve ever received, climbed out, grabbed her towel… and walked straight home.

Didn’t stop.

Didn’t look back.

Didn’t talk to me for quite a while either.

Years later Debbie turned that story into part of her stand-up comedy routine. The funny thing is, when she tells it she somehow forgets to mention that I pushed her.

So I figured it was about time the truth came out.

And Debbie, if we ever climb that high dive again… I promise I’ll try to show a little more patience.

Maybe.

Looking back now, those long summer days at the Leeds pool were about more than swimming and showing off on the diving board. They were about growing up with friends, laughing at our mistakes, and collecting the kinds of stories that somehow follow us through life. Funny how the things that seemed so ordinary back then—sunburned shoulders, wet towels, and a crowded pool deck—turn out to be some of the sweetest memories a fellow can carry with him.

A Saturday in 1966

It’s Saturday, May 14, 1966.

I wake up around seven in the morning to the wonderful smell of bacon frying in the kitchen. That aroma alone is enough to get a boy out of bed. I jump up, throw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and step into my canvas slip-ons. Just like that, I’m ready to hit the street.

But first, breakfast.

I slide into my seat at the dining room table where Mom already has a plate waiting—sunny-side-up eggs, two pieces of toast fresh from the oven, and a couple of strips of bacon. I wash it all down with a big glass of Nestlé’s Quick.

Life was good.

After breakfast, it’s time for cartoons. By now my sisters are up, and we gather around the television to watch Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and Bugs Bunny.

After a few cartoons I tell Mom I’m meeting up with my friends. She slips a dollar into my hand, reminds me to be careful, and tells me to be home before the streetlights come on. That dollar joins the change I earned from returning soft drink bottles to the grocery store, and I head out the door.

I jump on my bike and pedal as fast as I can down Montevallo Road, turn at the Catholic church, and head toward downtown Leeds and Spruiell’s Drug Store.

Just inside the door on the left is a rack full of comic books. My friends Bart, Leo, and Mark are already there reading the latest issues.

Bart always goes for Superman.
Leo grabs Spiderman.
Mark settles in with his favorite, Sgt. Rock.

I wanted the latest Superman too, but Bart had ridden downtown with his mom and beat me there, so I ended up with The Fantastic Four instead.

We’d sit right there in the store window reading our comics—for free—and when we finished, we’d just slide them back into the rack like nothing ever happened. Sometimes we’d even scrape together enough change for a malt or a milkshake from the soda fountain.

Eventually Leo waves goodbye and heads home, leaving the rest of us to make our next stop—V. J. Elmore’s Five and Dime.

If you walked into that store and went down the right side almost all the way to the back, you’d find the model section. That was our destination.

They had model cars, airplanes, and even monster figures.

Bart bought a ’64 Galaxie 500XL.
I picked up a Ford “Black Widow” T-bucket.
And Mark, being Mark, went for a creature model—The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Later that afternoon, when I got home, I hurriedly put my model together. I splashed on the paint and stuck the decals wherever they seemed to fit. I planned to enter it in V. J. Elmore’s monthly model car contest, and in my mind I was already imagining that blue ribbon.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t win.

Bart, on the other hand, treated model building like a science experiment. He carefully removed every piece from the card. He applied glue with a toothpick so there wouldn’t be any runs. Then he’d stretch rubber bands around the model to hold everything in place while it dried. After that he’d mask off sections before painting so his lines would come out perfectly straight.

If memory serves me right, Bart took first place in just about every contest I ever entered.

I did manage to win second place once.

When we weren’t building models, we spent most of our time outside.

We swam in the creek.
Built treehouses and rope swings.
And went on long hikes through the woods.

Being teenagers—or almost teenagers—didn’t stop us from exploring every creek, hill, and stretch of woods around Leeds. Sometimes we’d walk all the way over to the Coosa Mountain train tunnel, or sneak around the backside of the cement quarry. Other days we’d hike over to Elliott Lane to explore a cave that was there—if you knew where to look.

Growing up in the 1960s, life was good.

The world didn’t seem as dangerous back then, and parents didn’t hover over their kids. We were allowed to roam, to explore, and to figure things out for ourselves.

Kids were allowed to be kids.

I could go on and on about spending nearly every summer day at the city pool. Or sneaking down into the cement quarry on weekends when the workers were gone.

Nowadays when I see kids walking around with their heads down and their eyes glued to a phone, it makes me a little sad.

Sad because they may never know the thrill of jumping into a creek after a big rain, swinging out on a rope over a cliff, or wandering through the woods with no particular destination in mind.

I suppose I’ll stop there.

But you know what?

I may be getting older, but I think I might just go take a walk in the woods… or maybe go wading in the creek.

 

The Loss of Innocence

The Loss of Innocence

My seventh-grade year was the first time I knew I was going to be one of the cool people. Over the summer I’d bought a surfer’s cross at Panama City Beach, and my cousin Carole had bleached my hair blonde—something all the cool kids were doing that year. I was even getting close to the age when I hoped my dad would finally let me pick my own hairstyle.

Between sixth and seventh grade, he gave in and let me graduate from a GI cut to a flat top. I’d go down to Vernon Lovell’s barbershop, plop down in the chair, and say, “Give me a flat top!” Then I’d slick the front with a dab of butch wax to make it stand tall. Man, was I cool? Maybe—but not Shane Fox cool.

For the sake of honesty, I’ll admit that “Shane Fox” isn’t his real name, but it fits the story. Shane was a rebel straight out of a James Dean movie—jeans cuffed at the bottom, leather jacket over a white T-shirt, and an ever-present scowl that told the world he didn’t care. In seventh grade he even smoked Marlboros, hanging out in the school basement with the janitor, who, rumor had it, let him smoke down there.

I was never friends with Shane. He was one of those kids who carried an edge wherever he went, the kind of boy who looked like he had something to prove. I don’t recall him ever having any real friends.

 One morning, I decided to wear my surfer’s cross to school. As I passed my dad on the way out, he looked at it and said, “You ought to leave that at home, son. You’ll lose it if you take it to school.”

I told him not to worry—it wasn’t coming off my neck for anything. Confident and feeling just the right amount of cool, I headed to the bus stop.

Once I got to school, I met up with my buddies for a few rounds of marbles. Every day, a bunch of us boys would gather in the dirt before class, draw a circle, and toss in a marble apiece. That was the pot. From an outer ring—the lag line—we’d take turns shooting, trying to knock marbles out of the circle. If you hit one out, you kept it. Simple rules, high stakes.

I was pretty good at it, too. I’d built up quite the collection: Steelies, Oilies, Pearlies, Chinkies, Cat’s Eyes—you name it. I loved them all.

There was a younger kid named Jonathan who used to pester us. He’d run right through our games, kicking marbles every which way, then take off like a shot before we could grab him. He’d swing his metal lunchbox if you got close, and that thing hurt when it connected. We called him The Lunchbox Kid.

Anyway, that morning while we were playing, Shane spotted my surfer’s cross. He walked over, gave me that hard look of his, and said, “Hey, I want to wear that cross today. Give it to me.”

I told him my dad had said not to take it off, but Shane just leaned in close, tapped me on the forehead with his finger, and said, “I don’t care. I said I want it.”

So, I handed it over—nervously, reluctantly—and begged him not to lose it. He promised he’d give it back at the end of the day.

All day I worried about that cross. When the final bell rang, I made a beeline for Shane and told him I needed it back before catching the bus. He shrugged and said, “I lost it,” with no apology in his voice.

I told him I didn’t believe him, but he raised a fist and said, “Back off, punk. I told you I lost it.”

I spent the next hour combing the schoolyard, checking classrooms, even sneaking down into that basement where Shane liked to hang out. No luck. I missed my bus and had to walk home, already dreading the talk I’d have with Dad.

When he came home from work, I told him what had happened. He didn’t yell, just gave me that look that said, I told you so, and a few words to make sure the lesson sank in.

After that day, I think I truly hated Shane Fox. I kept my distance, though I never stopped watching for him to show up wearing that cross.

Then, several months later, tragedy struck Shane’s home. Word spread fast. His parents had been fighting again—worse than usual. One night his father came home drunk from Royster’s and started beating on his mother. When it looked like his dad was about to do real harm, Shane grabbed his father’s shotgun. He yelled for his mother to run—and then he pulled the trigger.

Killed him on the spot.

By the next morning, the whole town knew. The talk around school was a mix of shock and disbelief. The authorities ruled it justified, but we never saw Shane again.

Something changed in me after that. I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to kill your own father, no matter the reason. I didn’t hate him anymore. I just felt sorry for him—sorry that life had handed him something no kid should ever have to face.

I don’t know where Shane and his mother went after that. Maybe they moved away, maybe they just disappeared into another town, another life. The house they lived in has been gone for decades now, torn down long ago.

Sometimes, though, I still think about Shane Fox. I wonder if he ever found peace, if he managed to build a decent life after all that pain.

I’ll probably never know. But I do know that the day he took that surfer’s cross was the day I lost a little piece of my own innocence—and maybe, in a way, so did he.

Where Have All The June Bugs Gone?

 

Where Have All the June Bugs Gone?

Originally Inspired by a Blog Post from March 4, 2006
Reflected on Again—August 7, 2025

When I was a kid growing up in Alabama, catching June bugs was just about the most thrilling part of a summer day. They came buzzing through the humid mid-day heat like tiny, aimless helicopters, their wings humming, their flight paths unpredictable. We’d chase them through the backyard barefooted, laughing, dirt on our knees and twine in our pockets. And if we caught one—and we often did—we’d gently tie a piece of sewing thread around one of its legs and let it fly on a leash.

It was never cruel in our minds. It was joyful. The June bug danced in the air, tethered like a tiny kite, and we boys laughed and ran behind it as if we were somehow flying too. You could only keep one for a day, maybe less—before you had to let it go or watch it die. And yes, when one passed, we found a way to turn that into a prank, stiffened bug and all. We’d toss the dried body into some unsuspecting girl’s hair and laugh like fools as she shrieked and bolted for the porch, swatting wildly and calling for her mama. Mischievous? Sure. Harmless? Mostly. Memorable? Absolutely.

But this past weekend, Susan and I were working in the garden, pulling weeds and mowing the yard, and it struck me: I haven’t seen a June bug in years. Not a single one. No lazy buzz in the twilight, no telltale thump as one hits the porch light. Nothing. It’s as if they vanished when I wasn’t looking.

And so, I find myself asking: Where have all the June bugs gone?

Once they were everywhere, as much a part of summer as sweet tea and mosquito bites. I can’t say if they’ve moved on, if pesticides drove them out, or if time and climate have quietly erased them from the seasons. Maybe they’re still out there, just fewer in number. Maybe I’ve just stopped noticing.

What I do notice now, though, is how much I miss them—and the time they represented. Swimming in the creek, building forts in the woods, walking barefoot down a dirt road, catching lightning bugs in a mason jar. Life was slower then, simpler maybe, or at least it seemed that way through the eyes of a boy who had more curiosity than caution.

Today, I sometimes watch kids glued to their phones, indoors even on the finest summer day, and I wonder what their June bug will be. What memories will they chase in their later years? What harmless mischief will make them smile fifty years from now?

I suppose every generation mourns the fading sights and sounds of its own childhood. But I can’t help thinking we’ve lost something special when we lose the bugs, the creeks, the woods—and the freedom to roam.

So yes, I say it now with all the sincerity of a man who’s aged into nostalgia:
Save the June bugs.
Or at least remember them.

Cousins Make the Best Friends

 

Cousins Make the Best Friends

When you're a kid, cousins are more than just extended family—they’re your first best friends, your co-conspirators, your partners in crime. For me, time spent with the Barber cousins was golden, filled with scraped knees, laughter, and long summer days that seemed to stretch on forever.

I was still in elementary school when Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan moved their big family from Gate City out to Markeeta, Alabama. They settled into a house on the winding Markeeta Road between Moody and the far end of Lane Drive. Back then, that area was wide open for exploring—woods, fields, and the old strip mines that carved their way through the land like scars from another era. It was a boy's paradise.

Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan had six kids—seven, once Cindy arrived. Layne was the oldest, and I thought he was the coolest guy on earth. He played trumpet in the high school band and spent hours listening to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, working tirelessly to master “The Lonely Bull.” Next came Danny—quiet, thoughtful, and strong. He was into weightlifting and had a strange habit of inviting us to punch him in the stomach just to prove how tough his abs were. After watching a documentary about Houdini, I remember thinking that might not be the smartest challenge to offer.

Then there was Tony, the artist. He had a real gift and went on to become art director for a television station in Dothan before eventually answering a higher calling and becoming a pastor. Curtis was closest to me in age and probably the smartest of the bunch. He could identify every military aircraft by silhouette, sound, or shadow. No surprise, he ended up a teacher and later a school principal. Then came Stephen, the jokester and tagalong. He was always up for an adventure and usually the first to start laughing and the last to stop. Cindy, the first girl in the lineup, had to be a little tough growing up in that house full of boys, but she held her own with charm and a sharp wit. And finally, there was William—funny, energetic, and endlessly entertaining. He had this ridiculous trick where he’d tuck his ears into his ear canals, run up to you, and pop them out at just the right moment. It never failed to make us laugh.

Weekends and summer days were filled with adventures. We'd hike the strip mines behind their house, wade in creeks, and roam as far as the Cahaba River. Sometimes we’d end up at a place called Blue Hole, a swimming spot near the Trussville Golf Club, or clamber over the massive concrete ruins of the old Washer Camp from the coal mining days—remnants long since buried under layers of dirt and time. After a day out in the Alabama sun, we’d come back to Aunt Nell’s kitchen for a steaming bowl of her goulash with a slab of cornbread on the side. Looking back, I think I would’ve moved in with Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan if I’d had the chance.

Eventually, Uncle Dan answered the call to pastor at Markeeta Baptist Church, and later the family moved again, this time to Harpersville. They lived in a big two-story house we called “the Hill House,” perched behind a cotton field off Highway 280. It had a cellar—always a mysterious place to a curious boy. My sisters and I would visit, running wild through the cotton fields, walking the railroad tracks, and exploring every nook and cranny of that old house and town.

By the time they moved to their next house, Layne and Danny were both grown and married. Curtis had taken to showing off the model airplanes he built with painstaking care. One summer, Curtis took me fishing at a little stream that ran through a nearby pasture. I scoffed at the idea of catching anything in such a shallow trickle—until he pulled out a big bream with his first cast. After that, I was hooked—pun intended. We fished together many times after that, upstream at the spring-fed pond that fed the creek, often tying our rods to our bikes and pedaling off at first light.

It’s funny how vivid those memories are—fishing in the summer sun, climbing through woods and ruins, chasing each other around the mines, ending the day with a meal and a good laugh. Life was simpler, sweeter somehow. And even as time passed and we all grew up and scattered, those moments stayed tucked away in my heart like prized possessions.

Today, I’m on the downhill side of life, and I find myself thinking more and more about those days. We only seem to come together now for funerals, standing in quiet circles of grief, catching up in hushed voices. But I want to change that. We’re all retired now, or near enough to it. Wouldn’t a cousins reunion be something? We could sit around swapping stories—about the time Layne let us ride around the mines in his VW Beetle, or when someone stuck a dart in William’s head (we all remember it; no one knows how it happened), or that wild first car ride with our cousin Kenny.

There’s still time for laughter. Still time for stories. And if I close my eyes, I can still hear the cicadas buzzing over the pasture, smell the goulash in Aunt Nell’s kitchen, and see William running at me, ears tucked in tight, ready to pop.

Cousins really do make the best friends.

Tunnel Rats in the Rew Development

Tunnel Rats in the Rew Development

“Tunnel rat” usually refers to soldiers during the Vietnam War—men who volunteered to crawl through the tight, dangerous underground tunnel systems built by the Viet Cong. But in our little corner of the world, the Rew Development, “tunnel rats” had a whole different meaning.

This story is about me and my sisters Janet and Lisa. Dana had not yet been born and she missed out on a lot of our childhood exploits. But me, Janet, and Lisa, we were weird kids. Adventurous, fearless, and always on the hunt for n ways to have fun. If there was a sinkhole near the sewage plant or a treehouse in the woods across from Valley View Baptist, you could bet we knew about it. And we’d probably already explored it.

The Rew was laced with a stormwater drainage system—pipes big enough for a scrawny kid to crawl through on hands and knees. The hardest part was getting into the storm drain in the first place. Most of the openings were only about eight inches high, so if you weren’t small, you weren’t getting in.

Me, Janet, Lisa, and another neighborhood kid, Terry Penny, used to shimmy into the storm drain at the corner of President Street and Montevallo Road. From there, we’d crawl all the way down to Cleveland Street, then take a turn and head another block to Robert E. Lee Street.

At the intersection of Cleveland and Robert E. Lee—right in front of the Sisson house—there was a chamber where pipes came in from three different directions. There was even a manhole overhead in case you needed to get out. That spot was just big enough for four small kids to sit comfortably in a circle—and that’s exactly what we did. Most of the time, we never went farther. Only once did I go past that, up to the cul-de-sac where the Uptain family lived. The pipe seemed narrower up there, and I didn’t want to risk getting stuck with no room to turn around. Crawling backward for a whole block didn’t sound like a good time.

One afternoon after school, the four of us made our usual crawl into the chamber in front of the Sisson house. James Sisson, Ronald Uptain, Gary Holder, and Paul Thomas were all out in the yard playing around. We sat in our little hideout listening to them for a while. Eventually, we got bored—and that’s when the bright idea hit us: we’d shout up at them.

We pushed up on the manhole cover, peeked out, and started hollering silly stuff before slamming the lid shut again. At first, the boys couldn’t figure out where the voices were coming from. But it didn’t take long before they narrowed it down. They ran over and tried to pull the cover off, but it was harder to lift from above than to push from below.

We didn’t stick around to see if they could manage it—we turned and started crawling back toward Montevallo Road, planning to head home via President Street. But it didn’t take long before those guys figured out where we were going, and they followed us along the road, probably just a few feet above our heads the whole way.

When we finally reached our exit, we tried to shimmy out—only to find all four of them waiting. We were afraid to come out, so we just crouched there in the dark, hoping they’d get bored and leave. They eventually did, but our troubles weren’t over yet.

The commotion had attracted the attention of a couple of local bullies. Every time one of us tried to squeeze out of the drain, they’d hurl rocks at us. Not huge ones—just big enough to sting. This went on for ten or fifteen minutes, until even the bullies got tired of the game.

We finally crawled out, dirty and sore, and made it home just in time for dinner. That was the last time we ever climbed into that storm drain. We took it off our list of cool places to explore.

Years later, I walked down to take a look at that drain. It looked impossibly small—like something only a squirrel could fit into. I could hardly believe we’d ever managed to crawl through it, let alone sit down there for hours laughing and yelling and plotting our next move.

Still, it’s one of my favorite memories from childhood.

Treehouses, Cows, Swisher Sweets, and Playboy

 My adolescent and teenage years were spent in the Rew Development. When we first moved in, our street didn’t even have a real name—it was just called County Road. No number, no directional suffix, just County Road. It sounds odd now, but that’s how it was. Eventually, someone decided that wasn’t good enough and renamed it President Street, which sounds much more official, even if it didn’t change anything for us kids.

Right across from our house was a wide-open pasture with a small herd of cows. That field became one of our favorite places to fly kites. The cows usually stayed out of our way, meandering off to the far side of the pasture like we were more trouble than we were worth. Most of the time, anyway. I say that because one day I was cutting through the field on my way to my best friend’s house when I must’ve done something to offend the herd. Maybe it was the way I walked, or the sound of my lunchbox, but whatever it was, those cows suddenly took notice—and then took off after me.

There were maybe eight or ten of them, and when they started charging, I dropped everything and ran like my life depended on it. And maybe it did. I barely cleared the fence before they caught up. That little stampede kept me out of that pasture for quite a while. Eventually the cows were sold off, and the field became “ours” again. It was filled with broom sedge—some folks call it broom straw—a tall, rust-colored grass that grew about three feet high. It was perfect for playing hide and seek. You could drop flat on your stomach and disappear from sight in an instant. On the rare occasions when it snowed, that pasture turned into a snowy battlefield, the site of epic snowball fights that left us soaked, frozen, and grinning like idiots.

In time, the family that owned the land sold it off, and someone built a log cabin directly across the street from our house. One by one, more houses went up on that side of the road. For most people, that kind of development might seem like the end of the fun—but for us kids, it was just the beginning of a new kind of playground.

We made a daily habit of pestering the construction workers for scrap wood. Most of the time they were good-natured about it and would toss us whatever odds and ends they had lying around. We used every board, nail, and piece of plywood to build treehouses in the woods. When the workers left for the day, we’d sneak into the unfinished houses to explore. We’d climb through the rafters, crawl around under the foundations, and scavenge for anything useful to add to our forts. I swear we knew more about those houses than the people who eventually moved into them.

When I was in seventh or eighth grade, the Nelms brothers—who were a few years older than me, built the ultimate treehouse in a big oak tree right near the Leeds water treatment plant. That’s where the Leeds Memorial Park is now. Their treehouse was legendary. It sat high in that tree, just off the road that led to the sewage plant, and we knew it was off-limits. But that didn’t stop us from sneaking in when they weren’t around.

Me and a couple of my buddies would keep an eye on that treehouse like it was a military outpost. As soon as the Nelms boys rode off on their bikes or disappeared for the day, we’d make our move. We weren’t interested in the treehouse itself—we were after their stash. Swisher Sweet cigars and Playboy magazines. The holy grail of pre-teen rebellion. We thought we were living large: puffing on cheap cigars, flipping through glossy pages we barely understood, and laughing like fools.

One of my buddies even brought a bottle of English Leather cologne with him every time. After our little smoke session, we’d splash that stuff on like we were getting ready for a date with Raquel Welch. We genuinely believed the cologne would mask the smell of cigar smoke. It didn’t. But our parents never said anything, so either it worked—or they just figured there were bigger battles to fight.

Superman, Magnolia Trees, and Concussions

 ...I’ll get back to the bullies a little later, but for now, I need to touch on something I mentioned earlier—concussions. Seems like I was born to test the limits of how much damage a small boy could do to himself without actually dying. Looking back, it’s a wonder I made it out of childhood at all.

The first big scare came when we were still living in Midland City. We had this big ol’ magnolia tree in the yard, with low-hanging branches perfect for a five-year-old with no sense of self-preservation. This was during the golden age of Superman on TV, and I was absolutely obsessed. I wanted to fly so bad I could taste it. One day while Mama was in the kitchen cooking, I tied a beach towel around my neck like a cape and ran around the yard pretending to be the Man of Steel. But just running wasn’t cutting it—I needed to take flight.

So, up the magnolia tree I went, all full of courage and bad ideas. I don’t remember exactly what I thought would happen next, but the next thing I do remember is waking up in my bed, my mom and dad staring down at me like I’d just come back from the dead. Turns out I’d slipped and fallen from the tree. That towel I’d tied around my neck got snagged on a branch, and I was literally hanging there by my neck, limp and silent. By some miracle, Mama happened to glance out the kitchen window and saw me dangling there like a rag doll. She sprinted out, got me down, and somehow I lived to tell the tale.

But that wasn’t even the first time I got knocked out in that tree. Nope. That magnolia and I had a complicated relationship. I loved to climb, and I wasn’t afraid of heights—not then, anyway. One day I was way up in the branches again, probably higher than I had any business being, when the limb I was standing on just gave out. I came crashing down, limb to limb, like a pinball in a wooden machine. My head caught more than its fair share of branches on the way down, and I finally landed in the dirt, out cold.

Again, Mama was at the kitchen sink—our house must’ve been built so that she could keep one eye on dinner and the other on the backyard mayhem. She saw me fall and ran screaming out of the house, thinking I was dead for sure. Same scene: I woke up in bed with no memory of what happened, a goose egg on my head, and the worst case of nausea I’d ever had. Daddy had come home from work early and rushed me to the little hospital in town, where I spent most of the day in la-la land. That was my first real concussion.

The second one came years later when we were back in Leeds, living in the Rew Development. Our street was more like a shortcut for big rigs and delivery trucks than a quiet neighborhood road. We saw everything from poultry haulers to soft drink trucks rumbling past the house on a daily basis. It wasn’t unusual to find crates of live chickens spilled out on the roadside after a sharp turn or sudden stop. One time, my sister Lisa actually caught one and kept it as a pet for a while. That chicken lived in our yard like it belonged there.

Anyway, one summer afternoon, me and my sisters Janet and Lisa were out front when a Coca-Cola delivery truck rolled by and somehow dropped a large metal canister—one of those big compressed CO₂ tanks they use to carbonate soda. It just rolled off the truck and landed in the ditch like it was nothing. Well, it didn’t take long for us to drag it into our yard. The thing looked kind of like a scuba tank, with a heavy metal lid on top held in place by a big threaded collar.

Now, you’d think there’d be some kind of warning label on it, but if there was, I sure didn’t see it—or didn’t care. I stood it up, started turning that collar, and gas began to hiss out. No big deal, I figured. I kept unscrewing, and then—BAM—the lid blew off like a cannonball and smacked me right between the eyes. I flew backward and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

I wasn’t out for too long that time, but long enough to wake up to the sound of my sisters screaming and crying and talking about how much trouble we were all gonna be in. And they weren’t wrong. Daddy didn’t yell, but he gave me a long talk that stung worse than a spanking. Told me I “should’ve known better,” asked, “what were you thinking?” and reminded me just how easily I could’ve been killed—or worse, hurt one of my sisters.

Of course, that wasn’t the last time I did something stupid that ended with a hospital visit or a lecture about using my head. But those stories are for another day.

More Good Ole Days

 

Our time in Midland City didn’t last long, but before we packed up and left, there was one story that’s just too good not to tell.

Out on Highway 231, there was this old curb market—one of those roadside stops with fresh fruits, vegetables, boiled peanuts, and the kind of Southern charm that pulled folks in like flies to molasses. It was always busy, especially in the spring and summer, with travelers heading down to Panama City Beach. And to catch their eye, the market had one peculiar mascot: a big ol’ stuffed kangaroo parked right there at the edge of the road. Now, this kangaroo had seen better days—patched up with duct tape around the snout like some sad, silent rodeo clown. I’ll come back to that in a second.

You’d think that us kids would be thrilled about stopping at a place like that. Fruit, peanuts, and a big weird kangaroo? What’s not to like? But that market had a dark side too—something way more terrifying than a worn-out marsupial. They had a turkey. Not just any turkey either, but a big, mean, battle-hardened turkey that roamed the lot like it owned the joint. No pen, no leash—just free to roam and ruin a kid’s day.

From the first time we stopped there to the last, that turkey had it out for me. I’d step out of the car and that sucker would lock eyes and charge like a feathered freight train. If I didn’t make it to shelter in time, it’d jump on my back and start flogging me, wings beating like war drums, pecking the back of my head like it was digging for gold. After that first encounter, I stayed put in the car, thank you very much. Let Mama deal with the produce—I had no interest in another turkey brawl.

Now about that kangaroo... it was kind of a mystery. No sign, no story, no explanation. Just this out-of-place, duct-taped oddity standing sentinel by the roadside. The first time we saw it, we stared at it like it was some kind of roadside god. My sister Janet, with all the confidence of a four-year-old expert, said, “It’s alive. They’ve got its mouth taped shut so it can’t scream for help.” Honestly, that didn’t seem too far-fetched to us back then. We could come up with some wild stuff.

In 1960, we moved back to Leeds again and lived in a little garage apartment just a block from my grandmother’s shotgun house—the kind that rattled every time a train went by. Her place was right next to the tracks, and you could feel the floor tremble when the locomotives rolled past. There was a huge Great Dane that roamed the neighborhood—nobody knew who it belonged to, but it was gentle enough and so big we used to ride it around the yard like a horse. So, naturally, we called it “Horse.” Not very creative, but it fit.

One odd memory from that time: there was a family that lived around the block, and one of their kids had Down syndrome. Whenever he saw Janet, he’d point and laugh and shout, “Ha-ha! Old girl! Ha-ha!” We never knew his real name, but from then on, we just called him “Ha-Ha.” Even now, when we talk about that time in our lives, Janet and I always say, “Remember Ha-Ha?”

Next door to our little garage apartment was a small grocery store with a soda machine out front. Janet and I would go over there and shake the thing until it coughed up a Coke or two. Sometimes we’d jiggle the coin return and score a dime or maybe even two—jackpot. Back then, a dime bought you a cold bottle of pop, so when two dimes came out, we each got our own. Felt like hitting the lottery.

After a few months in that little apartment, my folks bought a house in a new area called the Rew Development. I had just started first grade, and that move kicked off a whole new chapter of life. Janet and I started exploring more on our own, going off in different directions. That’s a story for another time, but I will tell you about one moment from early on that’s seared into my memory.

The new house had a narrow brick ledge running around the front. Just wide enough for one foot, if you were brave—or stupid—enough. One day, with all the wisdom of a six-year-old, I climbed up there, pressed my back against the wall, and started shuffling along like I was Superman scaling a skyscraper. When I got to the corner, I stood up a little too proud and slammed my head right into a wasp nest. Those angry little suckers came at me like I'd declared war. I flailed, panicked, swatted, and in the process, fell off the ledge.

I didn’t break anything, but I did get a concussion—one of many I racked up during my childhood. That incident marked the true beginning of my life in the Rew Development. It was a wild, wonderful, and sometimes rough place to grow up. I had plenty of adventures there, did a whole lot of dumb stuff, and somehow managed to become a favorite target for the local bullies.

The Good Ole Days

"You don’t remember a damn thing!" That’s what my oldest sister Janet is always telling me. She’s got one of those minds like a steel trap—nothing gets past her, and nothing ever seems to rust. I don’t know how she keeps it all straight. Me? Not so much. My memories come and go like stray cats—sometimes they show up, sometimes they don’t. She acts like I oughta be able to remember every little thing like she does, but my brain just doesn’t work that way. Maybe the result of one too many concussions when I was a kid

My first real memory is burned into me, plain as day. I was three years and nine months old. Not exactly the warm-and-fuzzy kind either. We were at my grandparents’ house—me, Mom, and one of my cousins. There was a knock at the door, and when my grandmother opened it, I stood behind her, peeking around to see who it was. Two police officers were standing there. They came to tell us that my grandfather—Pappy—was dead.

Pappy had been a coal miner, but when the mines dried up, he started selling life insurance, going door to door in the evenings. That night, he’d just left a client’s house and was sitting in his car when he had a heart attack. Gone, just like that. You’d think I’d remember crying or feeling something big, but I don’t. What I do remember is the way Mom and my Grandmother and my cousin grieved. That’s what stuck. That whole night is locked in tight. Funny thing is, I don’t remember anything before that night. Is that normal? I don’t know. Janet seems to remember everything from the womb on.

The next couple years are kind of a blur. If I had to tell you the order of where we lived and when, I’d probably mix it all up. But I do remember moving to St. Augustine, Florida, when I was about five. Daddy had been laid off from Hayes Aircraft in Birmingham and took a job down there to keep the bills paid. His buddy, Jimmy Roy Johnson, moved his family down too, and we ended up living next door to each other. That’s where I first recall knowing Jenny Johnson—been friends ever since.

We were just regular kids, playing in the sand, chasing seagulls, flying little balsa wood airplanes. It was the 1950s—simple times. We didn’t have tablets or TikTok. We had dirt and sunlight and imaginations.

We didn’t stay in Florida long before we were back in Leeds. I couldn’t tell you for how long, but the next big move was to Midland City, Alabama. Now that, I do remember. Midland City was a kid’s paradise back then. The world was a different place—moms weren’t hovering like helicopters, and dads weren’t tracking us on their phones. As long as you didn’t get hurt, end up in jail, or miss supper, you were pretty much free to roam.

And roam we did. Me and Janet—me five, her four—had little bikes and a whole town to explore. We’d start out in the backyard and before you knew it, we were climbing into the hayloft at the feed store or sneaking into the Baptist church to splash around in the baptismal. We’d ride what felt like miles. Mom never quite believed us when we told her all the places we’d been. I think she thought we just had wild imaginations. Truth is, we were just living the kind of childhood that barely exists anymore.

NOT ALL DOGS WHO WANDER ARE LOST!

Foreword

I posted the title of this blog page on Facebook as a humorous response to someone’s concern over stray and/or lost dogs. Of course, things didn’t go well for me after that and I ended up deleting the entire message thread. It did have one good result; my oldest sister saw the post and we started to reminisce about childhood days gone by and one of our goofy dogs.

The Story

This is where I must clarify…. We say one of OUR dogs but, truth be known, we never bought or owned a single dog ever. Oh, don’t misunderstand. We had plenty of dogs. I’d just never say that we owned one.

Our dogs just seemed to wander up into the yard. One of my sisters would give them a snack or two and the stray would tend to hang around a bit; sometimes for years! They were always to come and go as they pleased. 

One of my favorite dogs during my junior high school years was Buster. He just wandered up one day. He was a friendly dog and we all enjoyed playing with him. My mom supplied table scraps for Buster which meant that he was always well fed. Buster followed us every where we went. We’d hike down to the creek and Buster was always right there with us. If we went for swim in the creek Buster went for a swim too! Buster even had a few odd talents (for a dog). He would bring things home. And I mean good things like hand tools, clothing, and cakes. Yes cakes. He once came home with a Dolly Madison Pound Cake, fresh in the un-broken wrapper. We eventually found out that he had discovered that one of our neighbors’ storage room doors didn’t latch properly and Buster would help himself (and us) to whatever he could get away with.

One fateful day when we were all playing in the front yard Buster walked out into the road in front of our house. He put his head down like a charging bull and did just that; charged a car and butted it head on. It knocked him through the air about 10 yards and he spent the next hour or so running around in crazy circles. He’d vanish for days at a time after that but always seemed to make it back to our house for one more snack. I have to say that I really don’t remember what eventually happened to Buster. I know that my sister Janet will tell me. She could make this story so much more interesting that I am able.

Anyway, the whole point of this story is this. When I see a stray dog, I don’t jump to the foregone conclusion that it is lost. I don’t think that it has escaped from its yard. I just assume that it’s a free spirit exploring its world. I know that there are people who feel distressed over this and feel that they must “rescue” the poor lost animal. I don’t, and I make no apologies for being this way.