Boys Fighting and the Bridge Party Part 4

My childhood friend Kenny Williams lived on the corner of Estacado Dr. and Fuller Dr. His home was a very foreign place to me—a seeming well lighted place where both parents created a very structured life for their three children. As Kenny’s chum, I accompanied him to many activities—-Sunday school, church summer day camp, Cub and Boy Scouts, church baseball and basketball leagues, and Demolay. Most of the time, Kenny’s mom did the driving though my mom did some of the time and Kenny’s dad did some of the chores for the young manhood activity of Wednesday night Demolay meetings. Kenny’s parents, unlike mine, were deeply involved in all these activities. For the most part, I didn’t or wasn’t made to feel as a tag-along, except maybe to church. The scouts and the teams were just as much mine as Kenny’s. I felt a bit uncomfortable one time when Kenny told me his mother [or perhaps his father] resented driving more than my Mom, but that passed soon. In retrospect, I think Kenny’s mother was always kind to me because she was a kind person but also because she was focused on cultivating her first born son, her son wanted his best friend to accompany him, and it was just easier for everyone if I came and no one complained.

While Kenny’s well lighted home was perplexing to me and no place I wanted to spend much time, across the street from Kenny's house on the parkway somehow not part of any residential yard, the older boys gathered at the Dallas Times Herald delivery point. Six afternoons a week and early Sunday mornings, the truck dropped off all the bundles for Mr. Kuhn’s district. My brother, five years older than me and probably about 15 at the time, worked hard to gain a route that included Fuller, Eastwood, Naylor, Pinecrest, and Sylvia. It was one of the smaller and less income-producing routes, but my brother felt it fit him because he was a small teenager, and the pivotal factor in being a paperboy was if you were strong enough to carry all your folded and banded papers in your bag for the entire route, Thursdays and Sundays being the most heavyweight days and Saturdays the lightest.
















Other big boys hung out at the paper corner and did a lot of big boy things like smoke, talk about sex, and ride motorcycles and even drive hot rods. So I was fairly cooperative in helping my brother and hanging out with the big boys, even if my brother abused me by not paying me and making me do all the work.

So on a schoolday afternoon, as I was walking along the sidewalk on the east end of Eastwood toward the paper corner, Kenny walks up and offers me a piece of candy. It was a plate of hard candy, maybe three by three inches and on first taste I didn’t find it very sweet or easy to handle. As we licked our candy, here comes one of the big boy paperboys on a Moped. He stops beside us and asks if I can help him by giving him some of my brother’s rubber bands from our house. I’m flattered and also excited to get a first-time ride on the back of a motorcycle. As I climb on the back behind him, I’m not sure what to do with the big piece of candy. It is too big and sticky to put in a pocket, so I throw it to the concrete, clutch the big boy's waist with my two free hands, and accelerate behind the big boy down towards home.

Later that afternoon, as I walk back up to the paper corner, Kenny confronts me. He’s pissed off because I threw the candy to the ground. I’m not real proud of doing it but also not going to apologize or anything. So we get into one of those interminable wrestling matches which ended, as usual, in a draw with both of us exhausted but neither giving in. What I did not know at the time was that the next afternoon, my Mom had been invited to Mrs. Williams’ afternoon bridge party.

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To Be Continued