We learn the rules long before we know the reasons.
Fort Mill was a small town as I was growing up. The town is wedged in a corner with Lancaster County, South Carolina, to the east and Pineville, North Carolina, to the North. At that time there were fewer students in the entire Fort Mill school system than in one of the current high schools. Pineville was seven miles away as the crow flies and even smaller than Fort Mill. We joked about how places were “no bigger than Pineville.”
Saturday afternoon was movie time for me and my friends. The Center Theater was the only show in town and we were there for westerns and science fiction,
My movie taste tended toward science fiction and movies like Creature from the Black Lagoon or The Day the Earth Stood Still were the matinee fare of the era. My friend Chipper and I paid our quarter and saw what would become my favorite sci fi adventure, Forbidden Planet.
On the way back to Gregg Street, we stopped in Martin’s Drug Store to buy a soft drink. I had spent all my money at the movies on a Coke and a pack of Sugar Babies so Chip let me borrow enough to get a Nehi Orange. When I got home, I asked Dad for the money to pay Chip back and got a long lecture about the evils of a life of debt. My father was a proud man and always tried to instill a portion of that pride into his children. The lecture stuck… but the timing was unfortunate.
A twelve-year-old boy is an explorer by nature. Any patch of woods can provide endless hours of discovery and railroad tracks lead to mysterious worlds far away. Butch Duncan and Gary Kimbrell, who were a year older, were looking to fill a summer Saturday and I was right there with them. Gary was a former Fort Mill native visiting for the weekend and Butch lived a few houses behind me. As the older guys, they should have had better judgement. That’s my story anyway.
Summer was at full burn when we decided to walk the railroad tracks north toward Pineville. The tracks were not far from my house on Gregg Street and my friends and I spent hours collecting spikes and exploring along the rails. Now and then we had to scramble from the tracks up a red mud bank to watch a freight roll by.
On this Saturday we filled our army surplus canteens with tepid water from the outside spigot and started to walk the tracks north with no destination in mind. There was no plan at the beginning, we just kept walking “a little farther.” A couple of miles up the track, we crossed the first trestle. It stood probably thirty feet off the ground at its highest point over Sugaw Creek (always called Sugar Creek) and was not hard to negotiate. A couple of miles more and we came to the second trestle. Everything was going well until half way across when we heard the whistle. Since the sound was behind us we ran at full speed to the north end and we made it to solid ground as the train came around the curve on the other side of the trestle.
Any sensible boys would have walked home and counted their blessings but there were no sensible boys with us. We soldiered on, now believing we were close to Pineville. Thank goodness we were right. Our canteens were empty and our throats dry as we reached the gray wooden rectangle that served as the Pineville Railroad Station. We walked on to the little Main Street feeling like the great explorers we knew ourselves to be. One of the first stores on the main street was a little grocery market, much like Luke’s or the Pyramid in Fort Mill.
We were, I am sure, close to dehydration and at the back of the store stood an old-fashioned tin-lined drink cooler. Gary and Butch had money with them but once again, I didn’t. My hindsight has always been better than my foresight. Gary produced dime from his pocket and asked me what I wanted.
This is where my perverse sense of honor took hold of me. I remembered the previous week, when Dad had extoled the evils of a life of debt and delivered the fatherly lecture complete with, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Dad was not there to help with this decision but, combining my Mother’s literal nature and my Father’s stubbornness, I stuck to the letter of the law.
I was never afraid of what my father would do to punish me but my greatest dread was disappointing him. Both boys got two drinks, one to drink and one to carry on the way back. I had to be content to fill my canteen from a water spigot on the side of the railway station.
There were concerned adults at the store who offered to call our parents to come pick us up but we still had every intention of concealing the full scope of our journey from them. We began the walk and, by putting one foot in front of the other, made it back to the Sugaw Creek trestle. The afternoon heat was torturous and my canteen was dry. Despite my better instincts, I could not resist the water from the creek. (Sugar Creek is a great misnomer as it runs through Charlotte and has always been polluted). I filled my canteen from the creek and we braved our way back to my house.
I remember staggering into my back yard. My parents and Gary’s parents were sitting in the shade drinking lemonade and we must have looked horrible. They sent Butch to his parents and questioned Gary and me. We cracked like a robin’s egg and told them the whole story. I drank lots of water and lay down in my room. By the next day I was throwing up and Mom and Dad took me to York General Hospital. I was diagnosed with amoebic dysentery from the filthy water of the creek. I was in for two days and Gary was admitted suffering from appendicitis. Only Butch was able to come through unscathed.
All of the suffering was worthwhile when the story leaked out about my refusal to borrow money for a drink. (I am pretty sure I was the source of the leak.) Rarely does a twelve-year-old get the upper hand on an ex-Marine, but my father winced to the end of his days at the mention of the unborrowed dime. Eventually the guilt wore off but I never left the house again, even as an adult, without him asking, “Have you got some money?”
And a Poem on the Lesson Learned
Home is Never What It Seemed on Leaving
“A visual perception,” they said,
“This narrowing of roads.”
But the boy knew, if he
Could reach the hilltop
He could stand astride the street.
And so, the long forbidden walk began,
His surplus canvas knapsack stuffed in pirate haste
With apple and sandwich,
Enough, he hoped, to make the journey
And return with the truth.
Mid-morning, the boy
Sat upon the summit
Of the hill, took the sandwich
From the bag, and ate while musing
Over his discovery.
The road was just as wide
And continued far beyond
The hilltop.
Turning to the downhill walk,
The boy was not surprised
To feel the pavement narrow
As he neared his home.
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