       (Translate this site) |
|
Site map
|
(Translate this site) |
|
Site map
|
| BACK to The journals of Jerry Staute: Crossroads | Illustrated story index |
I guess I felt like I had one foot in hell and one in heaven for many of my years prior to high school.
On the one hand, I had a pretty decent family, even if money was always short, and tempers (due to frequent frustration and financial worries) often high. And we had our own home. My parents having built a house during my first grade year, and we being moved into it by my second.
My new home was also surrounded by a fabulous woodsy paradise: many square miles of undeveloped, gently hilled woodlands. In the early days, our house sat at the end of a quarter-mile long dead end road in the woods, with just a handful of other houses along its length.
Though that meant a quarter mile walk each morning and another each afternoon from the school bus stop at the far end, I didn't much mind it.
On the other hand, despite being the oldest of my parents' brood, I always felt like a little guy at school. Mostly because there were so many bullies there who were taller and heavier and stronger than me.
And my in-some-ways idyllic woodlands home also came with its own resident bully: one of the biggest and dumbest bullies at my school also happened to live at the far end of our dead end road from us, only tens of yards from the bus stop. Let's call him Rodney (not his actual name), so as to better protect everyone's privacy here.
Being the eldest meant I also had to purposely go into harm's way to protect my siblings from such people. So that likely helped double my frequency of painful encounters.
Once, some childless neighbors of ours gave us an old junk bike to play with. The bike was way too tall for us kids to ride-- our feet couldn't touch the ground when we sat on it. And the bike had no brakes of any kind. In fact, it was the most dangerous bike I ever personally dealt with. Besides there being no way to stop the thing when riding it, it also boasted powerful springs which, in combination with the bumpy, pot-holed dirt road we lived on, frequently would cause a rider to be violently bucked off the bike entirely.
A massive bar ran atop the bike frame too, in the perfect place to nearly castrate any young men in the throes of puberty or beyond, who dared to ride the beast.
Our neighbors told us it was an old racing bike (which made it sound intriguing to a young boy like myself). I tried it out, and quickly learned of its deadly nature.
After that I simply had no choice but to trick Rodney into riding it. And riding it in such a way as to maximize his personal injuries.
After all, when someone purposely hurts you over and over again for no apparent reason but to see you suffer, you tend to want some payback if you can ever get it.
My scheme worked. I got immense pleasure from seeing this huge guy who regularly tortured me finally get his, as he struggled mightily to master the strange bike. It was almost like watching a cartoon, but with blood and cursing. He got repeatedly thrown off at high speeds, skidding for yards along our gravel road. Banged his crotch over and over again against the man-eating metal bar. Was forced to crash into roadside ditches to stop due to no brakes, and then be flung into trees and briars off the road. It was exquisite. Especially since Rodney never learned from his experiences. In the end, I had to persuade him to stop hurting himself and give up riding it (after I'd gotten my own malevolent fill).
I think in my earliest days being bullied at the rural school, I was baffled by it. Thought I'd somehow brought it on myself, via some cultural faux pas on my part.
For I hadn't experienced anything like that at my previous school in the city.
So for a while I meekly took the abuse, while I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong with these new kids.
Of course, it turned out I was doing nothing wrong at all. I was just dealing with bullies, plain and simple.
But even after realizing that, I was somewhat ham-strung by my raising. For my parents were steadfastly against violence. Plus, being the oldest, I'd learned the hard way it was far too easy for me to hurt other kids. Kids like my little brothers and sisters, I mean. So I was in the habit of holding back in order to avoid injuring anyone.
That aspect of my personality though only served to strengthen any bully's hand against me.
Don't get me wrong though: there seemed to be about as much good in my childhood as bad.
My dad worked at a canning factory only a block away from a good-sized grocery store which sold sandwiches-- thereby making itself a natural spot for dad and his co-workers to eat on breaks. The store also sold comic books. So the workers would buy comics to read during breaks, and often discard them around the factory afterwards.
Dad would collect up the discards, and bring them home to me.
I loved that! The books were often DC Superboy, Batman, Green Lantern, and Action Comics. Legion of Superheroes. As well as westerns, like the Rawhide Kid and Ghost Rider, I think. Etc.
Around the third grade my mom insisted she and dad buy a Worldbook Encyclopedia set for us kids-- despite its enormous expense. I loved that too. And did my best to read through the entire set within only a year or so of getting it. The collection also included a full set of Childcraft books, which offered short stories and various handicraft ideas designed to fascinate kids like me.
Another huge highlight of my childhood was getting a five-speed banana seat bicycle for Christmas one year. I would plain wear that thing out over the next few years or so, eventually riding it regularly all the way to the city park which lay a few miles away through the woods, and still farther, like into town itself, which was another mile or two distant.
Last and best of all though, was my best friend from those days. But accounts of later years already on-site deal with that subject.
My folks sent me to 4-H summer camp a couple times during these years.
Each annual camp lasted two weeks, I think. And may have been situated in otherwise undeveloped countryside in the vicinity of Greeneville TN (I'm guessing there).
In my first camp stay I endured more violence, similar to that found at school and home. The next year, I played entrepreneur there, and happened to meet someone who'd become a big part of my life in the years to follow.
In my first 4-H camp experience I found the camp counselors liked to run the place as their own private fiefdoms, with their charges as their serfs.
If we serfs (the younger boys) didn't strictly follow their every order and whim, the counselors would gang up on one of us, and beat us into submission.
I recall once being horrified by the sight of four or five counselors carrying an unhinged door atop their shoulders down a hill one day, upon which lay sprawled the body of one of us little guys. They were using the door as a stretcher, to bring the guy back from where he'd received his punishment.
I can't recall the exact sequence of events now, so long after the fact. But at some point during that two week span I used the resources available in the crafts-making areas of the camp to assemble myself something like a nine-tailed bull whip for a weapon. From some sort of narrow, flattened vinyl strips or straps from the crafts store, which I braided together according to some handy instructions-- only with my own improvised changes to the design. The whip ended up being blue and white in color I think, and maybe six feet long or more. With a metal clip embedded in the handle's end, by which I could attach it to a pants belt loop for easy access, like a holstered gun.
Of course, I could also wad the whole thing up and stuff it into a pocket for concealment.
The business end of my whip was unbraided, with several of the vinyl strips hanging loosely there, in lengths of maybe a foot or so.
It was a formidable and wickedly effective device, and served me well. At one point allowing me to hold off several camp counselors at once while scrambling about in the rafters of our barrack building to escape.
I never did end up being carried on a door like that other kid.
POSTSCRIPT: The real-life Rodney from this story grew up to eventually go to prison for murder. However, he did surprise me by not getting charged with murder lots sooner than he did. He managed to stay out of prison for whole decades after the days described here!
| BACK to The journals of Jerry Staute: Crossroads | 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 supercar site map |
