Growing Up Roxton

Here is another story of my growing up. I wrote it for The Roxton Progress many years ago. Our nearest neighbors were the Fraziers; It was about a mile to their house by walking, but nearly 5 miles by car. Their oldest child, Helen, moved back after retirement to be near where she grew up and eventually became the editor of The Roxton Progress. She encouraged me to write these stories. Many years later, the Progress is running the stories as originally printed

The Night I Outran Clark Frazier

I was the youngest member of my family, Alfred was 5 years older, and Walter was 2 years older than Alfred. The Fraziers lived on a farm next to ours, and the two Frazier boys, Clark and Grady, were near Walter’s and Alfred’s ages. Many events brought the Owens and Frazier families together, especially during winter evenings when we played games such as 42. In summer months we visited mostly on Sunday afternoons, as summer nights were not long enough to allow us to visit at night and get out to the fields before sunup the next morning. Other occasions brought more families together, such as at hog killing time. At the first hard freeze in the late fall, the neighbors would gather to slaughter hogs. Since none of us had telephones, communication relied on other means. An approximate date and place were agreed on in advance, and when the neighbors saw the smoke rising from the fire under the scalding vat at first light of day, they knew hog killing was upon us, so they showed up with freshly sharpened knives. This would usually bring the Fraziers, the Winns, Mr. Schaeffer, Clyde Helms, and perhaps the Weatherfords and the Goldens.

The Goldens lived further away, but they often were part of our social gatherings, especially the boys. Charles Hugh and Tommy Golden were always involved when the boys planned an outing such as a fishing or hunting trip Not a week went by without the group of Walter, Alfred, Clark, Grady, Charles Hugh and Tommy setting out on some sort of adventure. It might have been a walk down the creek, shooting at cans and bottles with a rifle, shooting crows with a shotgun, frog gigging, or rabbit hunting (including riding on a car fender on a dirt road at night, shooting at the rabbits that jumped up in the car headlights) Often a hunting trip consisted of gathering up everyone’s dogs and heading for some local woods at night, seeing how many possums they could catch. If they thought they could catch several, they took them to Tom Peyton’s store, and he gave them each an RC cola in exchange for the possums. At other times they brought wieners and marshmallows with them and stopped after a while in a dry creek bed to build a fire, toast the food over the coals, and tell stories.

Sometimes I got to go along with them on some of their outings, but it was always a struggle to be allowed to go. Grady and Tommy were younger than Alfred but about 3 years older than I. They had an established place in the group, but my belonging was very tenuous. Age must have been a factor--they did not want any little kid tagging along after them. A more important factor probably was that I tried to be a policeman and prevent any wrongdoings. Of course, since I did not have the power of enforcement myself, I had to rely on the adults to mete out the discipline and punishment. All I did was to provide them with the facts of the indiscretions of the other boys. As it turns out, I was always without blame in any of these incidents. Anyway, I somehow got this reputation of being a tattle tale, and nobody wanted me to tag along.

These were not bad boys, nor were they even unusually spirited. About the worst thing they would do is throw a couple of .22 caliber shells in the bonfire when things got a little dull. That always broke up the party and everyone had to leave whether or not he was ready. They were also sneaking around and smoking, often with home made corncob pipes. They had grown beyond the stage of smoking a dried grape vine (which usually blistered the tip of the tongue), dried corn silk rolled in brown paper, mullen leaf, crumbled dried cotton leaf, or fresh coffee grounds. They were experimenting with the real thing, and Alfred sometimes carried around loose tobacco in his jacket pocket, probably taken from my dad’s Prince Albert can. Since Alfred was a dedicated hunter, he also carried a few .22 caliber shells in his jacket as well, along with a few special rocks or arrowheads that he may have found.

One night we were at the Fraziers, where most of the adults were busy with a 42 game. I did not know how to play 42, so Mr. Schaeffer, Virginia Frazier’s father, would play checkers with me if he was present. The older boys were back in the kitchen, where it was cold in the winter after supper was cooked and the dishes washed because there was no heat in the room. They preferred the cold kitchen because they had less supervision, less interference there. We suddenly heard a loud bang from the kitchen and Mrs. Frazier, hardly missing a beat in her spirited 42 playing, shouted, “You boys stop shooting firecrackers in the house!” I needed to investigate this malfeasance and, with some difficulty, managed to push my way into the kitchen. The room smelled of tobacco smoke, not the black powder smell of a firecracker. The boys giggled nervously and glanced up at the ceiling occasionally. I don’t remember who was smoking the pipe at the time it happened, but a .22 shell had been loaded into it accidentally when it was filled with tobacco, and the heat finally ignited the shell and sent the casing flying straight up where it imbedded itself into the ceiling. The lead bullet stayed in the pipe.

The boys had several techniques to keep me from tagging along with them. One effective approach used in the summer time was simply to wear shoes. It was always clear when the group was ready to depart on an adventure, but I never knew where they were headed or what they were going to do. I knew only that I wanted to be there, too. They would start out walking, and I was right alongside them. They would head down the tractor lane past the barn, over the electric fence, and I would be right beside them, confident I could keep up with them this time. Suddenly, they would veer off, climb through a 4 wire barbed wire fence, and head through the pasture. In the summer time, I never wore shoes, and they walked through the thickest clumps of cockle burrs they could find. I would try to go around the cockle burrs, or slowly pick my way through them, but the boys suddenly started into a fast walk, and they quickly left me behind.

We had the usual sibling rivalry in our household, but since there were so many of us. it probably seemed more than usual to an outsider. For me, the rivalry was between Alfred and me. (But Alfred had the distinction of rivalry with both Walter and me, and Walter and I sometimes ganged up together.) As I got more adept at defending my turf, I began to make small inroads to damaging Alfred’s shell of invincibility. One early success happened one morning as we got ready to go to school. The memory of what the dispute was about is long gone, but the result is evident today every time Alfred smiles. That gold crown on his incisor (put in place years later when Alfred was able to earn the money to pay for it) was not the result of tooth decay, but was caused by a well-aimed roll of adhesive tape in its metal case.

As I got older, Alfred seemed to get more cantankerous. He was strong and solidly built, and I could not make much headway with him. I got stronger though, and when I was about 14, we were eating watermelon under the locust tree near the firewood pile. I was nearly through with my watermelon when Alfred smashed the rind with a big hammer, splashing me with the juice. There was no damage to anything except my pride, which was sorely injured since some of the older boys were sitting around taking in the show. We fought and struggled for a while and I could tell I was holding my own with him. Alfred finally stopped in disgust, as if he had something better to do. Charles Golden announced, “I think that was about a tie.” You know what? Alfred and I never fought again after that. I guess he can say that I never beat him!

This business of growing up and establishing your place with the older boys is a long and sometimes painful process, so each little success is memorable. Such was the night that I outran Clark Frazier, when I was 10 or 12 years old. I think the usual crew was at our house and Clark was one of the older boys, someone to look up to. After it got dark, they headed out. They didn’t have any hunting equipment and they didn’t call up the dogs. To this day I don’t know what they were up to, but I knew I wanted to be there and see it. I think it was Tommy or Grady who asked, “What are you going to do about Joe?” and Alfred replied, “Aw, we’ll just outrun him.” It was a moonless night, and I think no one even had a flashlight. You could see pretty well by the starlight, so it was easy to get past the electric fence down by the barn without getting shocked. After they got through the fence and I was getting set to crawl under it, one of them shouted, “Let’s go!” and they started running. They got a head start on me, of course, but I found myself catching up to some of them very easily. Their problem was that they did not know the route as well as we Owens boys. Walter and Alfred were way ahead, and I felt familiar ruts and rocks under my shoes. (It was autumn and I was wearing shoes. No cockle burr patch would deter me this time.) The other boys were a little cautious and slowed down, making it an easy jog for me to keep up and even to pass some of them. After we ran down into the creek on the tractor road crossing and started up the other bank and with Walter’s and Alfred’s urging call, “C’mon, you can run right through here,” some of them sped up a little recklessly and passed me. I was keeping right up with Clark, though, and realized I was going to have an easy time since I was in the middle of the road and he was getting off the road and higher up the side of the bank. “Come on, Clark, you’re lagging behind. Outrun him!” someone yelled. Clark tried to speed up a little and I wondered how well he could see the obstacles up there. Suddenly there was a “Whumph” as Clark’s breath exploded out of his mouth when he was stopped cold in near full gallop by an old barbed wire fence across his path.

That was the end of the outing for that night. The other boys came back to patch him up a little. No serious damage was done, just a few deep scratches, some bruises, and torn clothes. We didn’t even have to put the fence back up since it was not in use anyway. They sat around laughing and retelling what Clark had done to the fence, not paying much attention to me. But I felt I had accomplished something important and I sensed that I had taken a step closer to being one of them.