At the outset, I have an admission and a confession:   I will admit that I have been obsessed with telling this story … these stories … for a long time now.  I will confess that I don’t understand all the reasons why that is so.  I would work on it, then put it aside for long periods of time.   I told some friends from my home-town about it, and they started to laugh about it and call me …… well … you’ll meet *that* guy in Part II.  It has taken me a long, long time to come to a point where I have felt the following two stories (blog posts) were ready to share.   I don’t know that I’m finished with this yet.  I may never be completely finished with it.  

What follows is written in two parts, and yes, both parts are rather lengthy.   This first part weighs in at over 9000 words.   The second part is longer at a little over 10,000.   Nevertheless, I really hope you find it intriguing enough to stay with.

Together, they comprise a look back at two different boys who grew up in the same place, but at two different times in history.

The place is Mexico, Missouri.

The first of those boys is me.

The other, you’ll meet along the way if you stick with the story.   He isn’t related to me.  But I find his story utterly remarkable, and I happened upon it entirely by chance, and the more I learned about him, the more fascinated …. And yes, obsessed … I have become.   At this point, I may be the world’s foremost expert on his life.   Everybody needs a hobby.

I hope that in some small way, you are as struck by some of the more intriguing aspects of his life as I have become.  As far as this first part that is about me, I can only say that while it may or may not be interesting, it is at least a partial narrative of my life growing up as a kid in a small town.  Too, it’s a bit of a look at something that I’ve felt for a long time.  That is, that “moms and dads” are often largely (and perhaps luckily) clueless about the adventures, wanderings and shenanigans their children find themselves involved in while growing up.   Actually, I think that was likely as true about the other boy decades ago, as it was about me.  And I hope above all that either one or both of these stories gives you reason to think back on your OWN remarkable life …. your own wild and crazy beautiful life …. and to remember your own amazing stories of childhood, and how you were formed by the people, places and events you experienced in those wondrous times.

My obsession with this all began with the discovery of a random historical fact, to be revealed later. It fascinated me.  In searching out additional information on the other boy, who lived in a completely different era than the one in which I grew up, I was struck over and over along the way by more than a few parallels between his story and mine.   This led me to wonder about the “power of place” we experience as kids, and how much our roots shape who we are and who we become.

As I learned more about him, I recalled many things about my own childhood.   I could imagine him as a young boy, walking the streets of Mexico, Missouri.  Going into the stores on “The Square” for penny candy, where the merchants all knew his dad and his family.   I envisioned him walking the halls of the schools of his day.  Sitting in class and dreaming of the world out beyond the classroom window. I could imagine him going on “adventures” around town in the surrounding countryside with his friends.  In fact, some few of those adventures of his are recounted here.  They certainly are, at best, due to the lens of years only vague hints of the more grand and extraordinary adventures that he might have had.  I could imagine him sitting around his family dinner table with mom and dad, brothers and sister.   I could imagine him listening to his mom and dad as they visited with neighbors, talking about the issues of the day. (taxes, advancements in science, transportation, politics, foreign wars, the rapid expansion of the town with new construction and new neighborhoods, and a burgeoning fire-brick industry).  I could imagine him going to church and being seen by folks there as “a nice boy”.  I could imagine him seeking out books and magazines from those downtown stores, and from Audrain County’s Carnegie Library, which of course was MUCH newer when he was a kid than it was in MY day.   I did almost every one of those same things too, including spending a lot of time in that same beloved old library.

Now, I am not suggesting that his story and mine share any mystical connection, or even that they are really all that parallel.  In fact, I’m certain there are far more differences than similarities.   But we did grow up in the same small town and walked the same brick streets. We swam or fished in the same lakes. He was a precocious kid.  I’ve been told that I was a precocious kid as well.  He loved to make people laugh.  I spent too many of my school hours concentrating on doing the same thing.  He did science experiments.  I did science experiments.  He was a boy scout.  I was a boy scout.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to draw too many conclusions.

Most of all, I just hope that both stories are somewhat entertaining, and that you enjoy reading my musings.   If you make it through either or both parts, I’d love to hear your thoughts.   Thanks.

When I was a boy in the early 1960’s in Mexico, Missouri, summers were always a time of great adventures. For a young boy with an active imagination, the next adventure was literally always right around the corner, or just down the street.  In talking about memories of childhood, my many old and new friends from Mexico agree on one thing … it seemed to be, in many ways, very nearly the perfect place to grow up.  Wherever you’re from, I hope you feel that way about your town too.

The Mexico of my youth was a town that was big enough to not be tiny, and yet small enough to not be the “big city”.  For those of us who lived in town, it wasn’t exactly rural, but we all had good friends from school and maybe even relatives who were growing up on family farms.   It was much more than a wide-spot in the road, but still small enough to know you would at least recognize many of the folks walking the sidewalks downtown on Friday night.  And nearly ALL of us seemed to go downtown on Friday night. Friday was the one night each week when all the stores stayed open late.  Friday night downtown was as much a social event as it was an opportunity for “shopping”.

Mexico of my youth was big enough to have a fairly large number of small, independent grocery stores scattered around town (probably close to two dozen at one point), and also a couple of “supermarkets”.   One reason for all the small markets in local neighborhoods was that it was relatively rare that a family had two cars in those days, and many women did not drive, nor work outside the home.   So it was not uncommon that when “the man of the house” was out in his role as breadwinner, some women would do the family shopping by walking to the nearest neighborhood market, picking up groceries and walking home with them.    Of course, this abundance of small markets in town meant that neighborhood kids had plenty of easy access to places to go for candy, sodas or treats.  Often on the way home from school, but also as part of a typical summer day’s rituals.    For me it was either Smiley’s Market, right across from my elementary School, Eugene Field, or Quisenberry’s Market a few blocks closer to town, or the West Side Market which may have been geographically closer, but in a neighborhood I didn’t frequent that often. We had cultural lines then too that were seldom crossed … even in a small friendly town.

There were a thriving and diverse group of downtown merchants, including a handful of big department stores … big by Mexico standards anyway.  We had our share of the “chain” stores, FW Woolworth, JC Penny, Montgomery Ward.  But the majority of the merchants were home-town, local folks.  One of these stores … selling primarily clothing but also furniture, and “dry-goods” was a real marvel and a treat to go into.  Fredendall-Wilkins.  The thing that made a treat out of any trip when I was about eight years old to Fredendall-Wilkins with mom for a stiff, dark-blue, too-long pair of brand-new Levi jeans was their method of handling money.   They had this amazing trolley system with little metal cash boxes that zipped around through the store.    So when mom paid for the purchase the clerk at the desk where you were standing would put her cash into a little metal trolley-car, attach it to the moving system of cables, pulleys, brackets and braces and ZOOM, off it would go zipping around the store.    It would eventually make its way to the mezzanine level (also the location of the millinery department (Lady’s Hats). It was called “The Frances Horton Hat Shop at Fredendall-Wilkins”.   I never knew who Frances Horton was, but I do remember the women walking out with big round hat boxes.  Or seeing those boxes in some friends houses, stored on an upper shelf in mom’s closet.  And seeing those hats on “church corner” on Sundays, as families would arrive or exit the three church buildings on those corners. (the Phone Company was on the fourth corner).    But I digress … back at Fredendall-Wilkins, the accounting office was also on that same second level too.  So the little trolley car of cash from the point-of-sale would zip around the store and into the accounting office window.  I’d wait below with mom, with my eyes glued on that window, until a short time later a hand would emerge, attach the trolley-car back onto the cable where it would again zoom around the store, clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety …. then descend right to the correct desk where the clerk would open it, hand mom her change and a hand-written receipt, and we’d be on our way.    It always amazed me that the little trolley car always knew exactly where to go.    Years later as an engineer, I looked that thing up online, and I believe I found the company that made it (Lamson Cash Railway Carriers of Syracuse, NY), and read how it worked (coding pins).   Such was the power of fascination it held for me.    If you’ll recall that other boy I mentioned back a the outset …   well, Fredendall-Wilkins opened, with that new-fangled cash-carrier system when he was about eight-years old.   His dad’s business was just a scant block away.  It isn’t hard to imagine how much of a fascination it might have been for his inquisitive mind as well.  Of ALL the boys his age in town at the time.  But I get ahead of my story here ….

In addition to the locally owned businesses in town with familiar neighbors working and shopping there, even the chain stores in town were managed and staffed by local folks.  We knew many of the merchants in town by name, and when you went in a store with your parents, the odds are pretty good the merchants knew you too.   They were your neighbors, your fellow-church goers, and their kids were in school with you.

We had four public elementary schools (Eugene Field, Macmillan, Hawthorne, an Garfield.   Garfield was known in the pre-integration sixties of my youth as the “colored school”) which fed into the one public Junior High, and then into the one High School.  There was a K-8 Catholic school that fed into High School as well.    And many, many small (typically one-room) country schools that also fed into Junior High or High School.

There were many, maybe even a majority, of our neighbors and friends whose families had been Mexicoans for at least two or even more generations, and few people ever seemed to move away … so it was not simply our hometown, but a place where many of us felt extraordinarily rooted.

Mexico, Missouri was, quite simply, a GREAT place to be a kid growing up.  Like many of my friends, my world was as big as the limits of how ever far I dared to ride my bike without alarming my parents … and with each passing year, my pedal-powered range would grow just a bit, and the adventures that came with that expanded range would get correspondingly bigger.

As I said before, I was mostly seen as a “good kid”, and yes … I think I was.  I know I was.  I helped old ladies with chores.  I did responsible things that responsible kids are expected to do.  I was in Sunday School at the Methodist Church almost every week.  Now, I wasn’t there as much as my friend Rob.  Rob … we called him “Robbie” back then … had a string of “Perfect Attendance” pins stretching down the entire length of his lapel.  It was most impressive. Nobody beat Robbie for Sunday School attendance.   Even so, I was there far more weeks than not, and eventually become one of the “Acolytes” (candle-lighters) for worship service after Sunday School, and then one of the go-to “Bible Bearers”.    That is, for Sunday worship, I held the big gold-leaf bible out majestically in front of me on my outstretched hands, and carried it down the aisle, ahead of everything (even the American Flag and Methodist flags) and placed it lovingly upon the altar-stand, and opened it to the passage that the preacher would use that day … that he had carefully bookmarked for me with a big velvet bookmark to match the colors of the liturgical calendar.   Like I said….. I was a “good kid”.  That does not mean I didn’t find my share of adventures that were just a bit beyond the “good kid” envelope.   Some were so far out of the envelope as to have completely lost sight of the mailbox.

One of the things I always enjoyed was the time I’d spend with friend or two “down at the track”.  That is, the railroad tracks.  It was so much fun to be there, in and around the local railroad passenger depot and the freight switching yard.   Sometimes we would just sit and watch the trains coming and going, the freight cars switching tracks, or adding and releasing cars. In my mind, if I just close my eyes and think about it, I can still hear the sounds as those big cars would bang together, hitching, un-hitching, squeaking, groaning and straining to move as the locomotives pushed them around.   I can remember the smell inside the train station … the smell of old well-worn leather seat chairs, a few pew-type wooden benches around the walls, the tile floor with tiny hexagonal tiles and the grime and dirt of years pushed into the corners by a janitor’s mop or broom, and reams of the carbon paper that were used for tickets and other official railroad documents.  And of course, the smell of tobacco.   Smoking or chewing was a de-facto part of life at the train station.  Everywhere else too.

There was an old cracked and discolored porcelain bubbler at which we could snag a cold gulp of water to relieve the parched throats that had come from the frenetic peddling of our bikes the 5 or 6 blocks from home, usually on a hot summer day.

More magically, there was a coke machine there in the depot, just calling out to me, if I was lucky enough to have a dime. It did indeed seem like magic, because when you put in the coin and pulled the lever, there would be the sound of gears whirring and motors buzzing from deep within the bowels of the machine. It would bump and shake and grind and growl, and when it stopped, you knew it was time to lift the vertical sliding door on front.  There, inside, just behind that door would stand a glistening, dripping bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola, with fine wisps of water vapor swirling around it.  If I was TRULY wealthy on any given day, I could also take advantage of the adjacent snack machine to buy a small bag of salted Tom’s Peanuts to dump into the Coke.  Don’t ask me why, but odds are if you’re close to my age or older, you did the “Peanuts-in-the-Coke” ritual too.

However, our adventures at “the tracks” were far from limited to inside of the depot.  Often times we would play under the nearby “Overhead Bridge”, where US Highway 54, the main road that went through our town, passed over the railroad tracks.  This was long before the days of the current “bypass” that worked to isolate our town from hurried travelers on the highway, (as has also happened with countless other small towns across America).   It was even before the modern and wide “Green Boulevard” (an inside the city-limits “bypass” of the downtown, of sorts) that was built not only to ease the route for the big trucks passing through town, but also to provide additional ease of access to “The Plant”.    It passed right in front of A.P. Green Refractories and Firebrick Company, the town’s largest factory and number-one employer.

So before Green Boulevard, the “Overhead Bridge” got basically ALL the traffic that was passing through Mexico from north to south or vice-versa.

Underneath the bridge (or somewhere in the overgrowth nearby) was a place where the transients (or to use the word that was current then … hobos), would often crash for the night while waiting for another freight train to come through to take them to parts unknown.    I also hopped one of those freights with a friend one time … and rode it to the next town, where we had to jump off when it slowed down just a bit … but that’s another story for another day.

It was always fun when my friends and I would find the empty whiskey, beer, or wine bottles that were strewn in the area probably MOSTLY by the hobos, but possibly by some locals.  Who knew?  There were often quite a few of them. Sometimes we would sit them on a rail and throw rocks at them to break them.  But just as often, we would toss them up as high as we could against the concrete bridge abutment, and then laugh and cover our heads with our hands and scatter as the glass rained down around us.  Yes, our mothers and our teachers and Sunday School teachers would have been appalled … the nice girls that we were starting to notice and flirt with would have been appalled … but fun is fun when you’re a boy of nine or ten.

We would put pennies or dimes on the tracks and wait for a train to roll through give you a nice shiny paper-thin souvenir, assuming you could find the coin afterward, which more often than not, you couldn’t.  Still, I did have my share of train-flattened pennies in a little box in my dresser drawer.   Never put a nickel on the tracks though.  Everybody knows that a nickel might DE-RAIL a train.    Some kid told me, and I believed him.   He’d seen it happen.

Other times we would pedal our bikes up to the top of the big nearby mound of coal that fired the power plant that supplied electricity to our town. The coal pile was immediately adjacent to the bridge and the tracks.    Zooming down the coal mountain at breakneck speed, we would slam on the brakes at the bottom and fish-tail to a stop, raising huge clouds of coal dust which would choke anyone in vicinity. The coal dust would get in your eyes, and generally turn your ankles, lets, arms, neck, face … any bit of exposed skin … as black as a blackbird’s wing.  It was also turning our clothes black, but kids don’t notice those things.  On those “coal pile” days, I would usually try to find a garden hose somewhere to spray off the worst of the grime before going home, or better yet, a creek to “bathe” in.  There was a creek on the Green Estate that more than once was the scene of one of those impromptu “baths”.    Otherwise, I’d risk certain wrath from mom, who had an uncanny ability to read the telltale signs of the grime I was covered in, and know exactly what I’d been up to.  “Please tell you me you haven’t been down at the tracks again!!”

I think moms just come pre-equipped with some kind of sophisticated “dirt radar”. For example, my mom could always tell the difference between dirt from the lake, dirt from the ball field, dirt from the clay pits (being a brick town, there were clay pits EVERYWHERE), dirt from a construction site, and dirt from the railroad tracks.  All dirt was bad.  Railroad dirt was EXTRA bad.   And she always knew.

One of my buddies who accompanied me on those trips to “the tracks” was Marty Hamilton.  Marty was my age, also went to school with me at Eugene Field Elementary. He and I were in the same class each year from Kindergarten all the way through Sixth grade.  We were also in many of the same classes in subsequent years as well, including band.  When I recollect my adventures from those years from third or fourth grade up through our time at Hardin Junior High School, Marty is in many of the most vivid memories.

Of all the adventures to be had “down at the tracks”, I always thought the best thing there were the passenger trains.

It is not lost on me that I am a part of the last generation of small-town kids to remember these grand old powerhouse diesel locomotives regularly rolling through town … with Pullman cars for passengers, dining cars, and mail cars, and always the red caboose bringing up the rear.  It was just mesmerizing to watch the man who had the coolest job I could imagine…. the Conductor … in his crisp uniform, starched white shirt, and conductor’s cap, making sure tickets were punched as the passengers exited or boarded, and then to hear him singing out “Allllll …Aboard” as the train prepared to leave the station.   I get goosebumps all over again now just imagining that call.   Some kids wanted to be firemen or astronauts or policemen.   I remember wanting to be a Conductor.

Mostly though, I wanted to be ON that train.  I wanted so badly just to get on that train and see where it would take me.  Every single time I was down at the tracks, and saw the train pull out, I imagined I was on it, watching the station and eventually the town, fade into the distance.  Every single time.  No telling how many times I stood outside the depot and watched the train pull out, chug down the tracks, and disappear into the distance.   I didn’t get on my bike and ride off until the train was out of sight.

In the early 1960’s we were still close enough to WWII that some kids had fathers or uncles who had fought in the war. Some even had grandfathers who had fought in WWI.  And of course, we had those great old TV shows for reference …. Combat!, Rat Patrol!, etc., and plenty of comic books and movies.  So when we played “army” there were never any doubts:  We had the Germans or Japanese conveniently available to abuse as the “bad guys” they were … because that’s just the way it was.

When you played with your little plastic army men, the green ones were “good guys” … Americans.  And each one was a potential war hero, leading his platoon to liberate a village, or ready to jump on a “potato masher” grenade tossed by some stinking Nazi soldier, and sacrifice himself to save his company.

But the GRAY ones were German, and the TAN ones were Japanese. Evil. Sinister looking. Expendable.  Yes, VERY “expendable”.

Not only did we kill these guys without remorse in our mock combat, we also didn’t mind eliminating them quite literally.  By blowing them up with fireworks, melting with a magnifying glass, flaming them into a mass of foul smelling goo from a lighter-fluid fueled “napalm” inferno, or seeing them wash away in a garden-hose-assisted tidal wave.

What can I say?  War is hell.  Especially if you’re gray or tan.

Another thing we did regularly was ride our bikes to the “Lumber Company”, also down near the railroad tracks, and right across from the depot. I can still remember the smell of the freshly cut wood, with sawdust scattered everywhere. In the back, where the lumber was cut to order for their customers, there was a big scrap pile of odds and ends, and the men who worked back there didn’t mind if we kids would come in through the back entrance on our bikes (as long as we stayed out of their way) and help ourselves to scraps from this heap.

I can remember many, many times riding down there, filling the basket on my bike with interesting-looking lumber scraps, and riding home to create something essential for one of our adventures.    I used that wood to build countless “battleships”.   That is, a few blocks nailed together into a very rough semblance of a battleship, scaled for those little plastic men.  Or an aircraft carrier.  Or a PT boat.  On the decks of those ships, those plastic army men could fight epic naval battles (in the “sea” of the gravel driveway).   Alternately a small block of that wood, with an even smaller block on top, with a large spike nail angled out of this top block would become a tank. Tanks could (and often would) mow down legions of Germans (gray) or Japanese (tan) by plowing right over them, no need to even engage the cannon.

Or I would use other pieces of that wood to make “bridges” which could easily be blown up (kicked to pieces) to prevent the Germans from accessing some critical and strategic piece of land or a munitions factory. (My pile of firecrackers).  As the culmination of the day’s warfare, blowing up a bridge might entail soaking the lumber in gasoline or lighter fluid, then tossing a match or even a firecracker onto it.   Then I’d rain down a barrage of gravel on it as it burned.    General Blackjack Pershing (like me, another famous and brilliant Missouri military leader) had nothing on me.  But had my MOM found out, she surely WOULD have had “something on me” … or shall I say, something on a particular PART of me.

I also was able to salvage enough scrap lumber of sufficient size and length from that big heap of wood at the Lumber Co., to cobble together the start of a framework of a tree house.   Seeing my efforts, my dad (the best dad ever) helped by getting the “REAL” lumber for the floor. But the “ladder” up the tree, and at least some of the supporting truss-work, etc., I built with the scraps from the lumber company.   We built that treehouse, way up in a mulberry tree on the edge of my parent’s garden in the back of our back yard.  I can remember helping with the nailing and measuring and getting everything ready so that dad could install the flooring… which he did by liberating some old electric motor shipping crates from A.P. Green, where he worked in the Electric Shop.  Mom made him install a railing for “safety”.  He very likely might also have gotten some of the supplies from my “lumber company” down by the tracks.  Another of my friends from those years, Johnny Beebee, who lived right around the corner from me, had a tree house back there already, across the fence in his back yard … adjacent to ours.

Our plan was to build my tree house close enough to his that we could install a rope swing to go from one to the other.  This plan worked pretty well too… right up until Johnny B. fell out of the swing while trying to dismount from the tire onto his treehouse’s platform. He fell the 10 feet or so to the ground and dislocated his shoulder.  The shoulder on his pitching arm.  The fact that this put a severe crimp in his Little League career and may in fact have ended his slow but sure march to become the next starting pitcher in the rotation right after Bob Gibson … Gibby… for our beloved St. Louis Cardinals, did not make his folks very happy.

Johnny Beebee and I were in Cub Scouts together, with our blue uniforms and yellow neckerchiefs.  His mom and my mom were the “Den Mothers” for our Cub Scout Den.  We also had Monroe Smith, Ranny Trainor, and of course Marty Hamilton was there too.   There were other boys in our Den too, but their names escape my memory now.

When time came for us to transition from Cubs to Boy Scouts, Marty and I were in the same troop.   Troop 36, sponsored by the Christian Church. My Methodist Church did not yet have a troop, though they would get one only a year or two later.   Along with Marty and I were our friends Monty Safford, John Rolfes, Louis Whittaker, & Mike Neill.  We had older kids as well, including Lon Ellis, who was a year older than the rest of us and was just the coolest guy ever.  If there was something new and cool and exciting, it seems like it was always Lon who knew about it first. There was Jerry Potts and David Sublette.  There was Bill Adams, whose dad Harold … “Mr. Adams”… was our Scoutmaster.  Bill, though several years older, was another one of the “cool guys”.   And there was Marc Jarvis and Neil Enslen who were two of the neighbors on my block.  They were both four years older than me.  Neil was the first Eagle Scout I ever knew, and I really looked up to him, because I had seen the dedication and commitment it took to reach that level.

Our scout adventures were just so much fun.   We went on many, many campouts all over the area, including many at Mike’s dad’s farm.  Mikes’ dad Holoway …. “Holly” … was our County Assessor.  The Neill’s had a farm out on Route FF, with rolling hills, and a small stand of woods.   Our scout troop often had overnight campouts in the woods on Neill’s farm.   One year we even held a winter campout, scheduled against the better judgement of many of the mothers, in the face of an impending snowstorm.  Still, we all just bundled up really well, and faced the cold.

As soon as we made camp on that snowy afternoon, we were all encouraged to get out in the woods and gather plenty of fallen branches and sticks and logs for firewood to keep the bonfires blazing overnight. Then, with the work done, we decided to have our fun.   Many of us had brought sleds along. When the big white fluffy flakes started falling, it packed in nicely around the base of our tents, and actually provided some “insulation” after a fashion.

Even though the snow got to a depth of about a foot, it wasn’t as cold for camping as you might think.  Of course we made a variety of snow “forts” in preparation for the obligatory giant snowball fight.  Then, later that night, I have an extremely vivid memory of sledding down hills in Mr. Neill’s farm fields with a group of my fellow Boy Scouts in the full moon light.   One boy was speeding down a hill at breakneck speed and sledded right into a barb-wire fence.  I remember our group running down to where he was and helping extricate him from the tangle.

He got some lacerations from the barbs, including at least one across his face.  I have tried, but simply don’t remember the Scout’s name that hit the fence.  There was a lot of blood, and I have this vivid memory of red drops in the white snow in the moonlight.  With so many vivid memories of that trip, I’m kind of surprised that I simply don’t remember the name of the scout who got injured.

Later, wet and cold and half-frozen, we all assembled back by the campfire. We warmed ourselves with nearly boiling hot beef bouillion sipped slowly from tin cups.  The “prescription” was:  Take a tiny steaming sip, and as you swallow you can feel it warming you all the way down to your gut.  Take another.  And another.  Soon you were feeling warm all over, standing in the moonlight in the snow with the flickering light of the campfire casting shadows on the surrounding tents.

A roaring fire, crackling and spitting and popping, since some of the wood was wet from the snow, sparks flying in the air, maybe a dozen nearly frozen boys crowded around sipping the life-giving broth.  There we were, miles from town, surrounded by snow, by other boys and our scout leaders, and by a small settlement of tents scattered about.   Laughing and telling stories. It’s hard to imagine a grander adventure for a boy.

Then as the time for retiring to our tents drew near, crawling back through the tent flap, careful as possible not to drag in any more snow than necessary, taking off boots, sliding into sleeping bags, and stripping down to just long-johns.  Making sure we had a dry change of clothes stowed in the foot of the sleeping bag, so as to be warmed by our body-heat for morning.

When morning came, I wriggled into the warm clothes from the foot of the sleeping bag, then into my heavy winter coat, and along with other scouts who were also emerging from their own tents, came out into the bright white winter world, to gather again around the roaring fire with Mr. Adams and Holly Neill and a couple of other dads who had gone along, to a hearty breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and hot steaming oatmeal.  And scalding coffee from a small campfire percolator.

Here is a fact that is not up for argument:  Breakfast, expertly cooked over a campfire on a cold wintry morning is the best breakfast in the world.

Back in the “real world”, back in Mexico, Missouri just a few miles down the road, on normal mornings … even in winter …. I’m guessing that few if any of us kids were coffee drinkers.  But standing in the middle of the woods in a foot of fresh-fallen snow all around, EVERYBODY is a coffee drinker.  It was SO good.

As scouts from our “Great Rivers” Boy Scout district in that age, on our uniforms we wore a leather slide on our belts with two dangling leather lanyards.  On the lanyards we would string a pair of matching colored beads.  The assorted colors signified different things.

A fair-weather, “blue skies” campout was a simple pair of blue beads. Most scouts had lanyards mostly full of blue beads.  A campout with significant rain earned you a pair of gray beads.  If there was a tornado warning …. (Yikes!!) … you got black beads. Black beads were NEVER intentional.   When we would hold a district Scout-O-Rama with other area scout troops so that families could come and see you demonstrate the skills you’d learned, you earned a pair of yellow beads.   By contrast, a “Jamboree” where you competed against other scout troops, was good for a pair of bright red beads. And finally, Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico was the source of a pair or hard-earned pink marbled beads.  Very coveted.

Philmont is a national Scouting destination in the high country of New Mexico.  A typical trek at Philmont takes a group of scouts out into the wilderness for twelve days and covers 55 to 60 miles. I never went, but I had several friends who did, and everyone that I knew of who went to Philmont considered it a life-changing experience.

However, perhaps even rarer than the pink marbled beads were the WHITE beads we earned for the snow campout.

As Scouts we would sometimes go on trail hikes.  As part of our regular progression through the ranks, we were required to do some hiking.  We would often go on ten-mile hikes around Mexico… often out on the gravel roads around the city, past farms and fields and woods.  We hiked out past the railroad trestle, which local legend said had been the scene of at least one early hanging from the last century… and was also supposed to be haunted.   In the light of day, it didn’t seem scary at all.  But it would be many years before I would venture out that direction alone, and certainly not at night.   When I did begin to venture out there later in my high school years, the only “haunting” was from other kids my age or older, who saw the trestle as a dandy moonlight party-spot.

In addition to the ten-mile hikes we took around town as scouts, our troop went on a few longer hikes, in the twenty-mile range or slightly longer.  We went to Illinois to hike the Lincoln Trail, near Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace in Springfield.  We hiked the Moniteau Trail, over in Howard County.  The Moniteau Trail at that time was about twenty miles and included crossing a small river over a scout-constructed “monkey bridge”.   A monkey bridge was a swaying bridge with three main ropes, bound together in a triangle with a lattice of ropes.   It was sort of a “Jacob’s Ladder” contraption, where you walked across the river balanced on one lower rope, while holding tight with your hands to the other two ropes which were a little over waist high.  It was a tricky maneuver and had to be taken one careful step at a time.  We had a couple of scouts who did not make the crossing successfully and plunged into the river below.   But the fall wasn’t far, the river underneath wasn’t terribly deep, and nobody was injured. Except for their pride.  The worst part for those who fell was facing the rest of a long, difficult hike while soaking wet. Especially wet feet in wet boots.   At the end of the twenty-mile day, I remember being exhausted, and how much my feet hurt.

But I also remember that my own dad was one of the dads who drove over to Howard County to build a campfire and cook a fantastic meal of burgers, beans, etc., for the weary scout hikers as we slogged in from a grueling day of hiking.   It was just a simple burger, but it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and I was so proud that my dad was one of the ones there to greet us.  It felt so good to get to ride back home with him afterward and talk with him and the other boys in our car about the day’s adventures.

 

One of the best things by far about Mexico when I was a kid growing up there was the Liberty Theater.  First opened in 1920, what a grand old lady she was.  In Mexico, there had at one time been several movie theaters … the Orpheum, the Sosna, the Rex, the Liberty, etc.   But the Liberty was the true gem and the only one of these palaces still standing and open for business during my childhood.

With its lit marquees of chasing lights flashing around and the hanging letters assembled to spell out the title of feature playing inside, the excitement would build as we stood in line, before we even got to the ticket booth.  Once inside the front doors, all of your kid senses were bombarded at once, from the feel under your feet of the lush carpeted lobby, to the blast of cool air-conditioned air, which was instant and startling blessed relief for the horde of sweaty kids streaming through the doors. Then there was the snack bar with the sound and smell of freshly popping corn.  And, the balcony (always a little mysterious… where the older kids sat, and who knows WHAT they did up there). Once you went through the swinging doors on either side of the snack bar, there were three inside main-floor sections of seats facing an immense silver screen, with heavy dark red velvet drapes on each side.  The end seat of every row had a dim light aimed down onto the aisle floor, to show you the way to your seat so that you did not stumble in the dark.

I would be remiss here not to go back and share a word about that snack bar:  it was simply world-class… loaded with fresh popcorn dripping with butter, Sno-Caps, Milk Duds, Slo-Pokes, Jujubes, Tootsie Rolls, Boston Baked Beans (that’s candy folks, not actual legumes), Red Hots, Now ‘n Later, Mike & Ike, Hot Tamales…if it was sugary, chocolaty or had the potential to ruin your teeth in any way, they had it..   I was a Milk Dud kid.  Five and a half decades later, I still am.

At the end of the school year, we kids could purchase a strip of movie tickets, 50 cents each, to see a movie each Wednesday afternoon over the summer break.  These were seldom the “first run” movies from those years, but often movies that had been released a few years before.  I think we had such classics as “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”, and “The Swiss Family Robinson”, etc.    But we also had some cheesy B-movies … but we kids loved them all. Maybe as much for the sheer delight of being out of the hot sun and into the cool darkness with a load of our friends as for the movies themselves.

I remember one, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars!!”   I’m not sure why that particular one stuck in my head, but a few years ago I searched it out, and was delighted to be able to find it on DVD.  I am sorry to say that it wasn’t quite the cinematic tour-de-force I remember.  I must admit though, in watching it, I was completely transported back to those Wednesday afternoons at the Liberty, Milk Duds in hand, sitting wide-eyed in the glow of the screen with a couple-hundred excited and noisy kids.

On those Wednesdays, before the movies began, they would show either cartoons, or one of those “old-timey” serials (Flash Gordon or some Western short), or one of the old Movie-Tone newsreels with Lowell Thomas or some other serious-sounding narrator. The German bombing of London and other highlights of World War II, Lindbergh’s flight, Babe Ruth’s march to home-run glory in the 1927 season, the Hindenburg, disaster, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.  Those were all subjects that we saw on those news-reels in the moments ahead of our feature film on those Wednesday afternoons.

I guess the idea was to give us kids a notion of what going to the movies had been like for the kids of our parent’s generation, because those things weren’t current news at all, but usually stuff that had been current 20 or 30 or more years ago. (For perspective, when I was 10, Babe Ruth’s epic ’27 season and Lindbergh’s flight were a mere 40 years in the past. Much like the 1970’s is to us now.)  Still, to me those newsreels were often one of the best parts of the afternoon.

On one particular Wednesday afternoon, when I was about ten years old, I dutifully rode my bike to the Liberty Theater for the day’s movie.  I parked it in one of the bike racks that have vertical rods to hold the front tire, along with the mass of other kid’s bikes. No need for bike chains, nobody worried about stolen bikes.  I took my place in line.

As I approached the ticket booth that day after probably ten minutes of standing in line, I reached into my pocket for my ticket and realized with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t there!   Oh no!  I realized in an instant that I’d left it at home.  Worse, I didn’t have the two quarters to simply BUY a last-minute ticket on my own.  This was a disaster of epic proportions!

My friends were going to get to see the movie in the cool air-conditioned air, eat the Milk Duds, and keep their eye on the cute girl across the aisle or a couple rows over.  Meanwhile, I was going to be stuck outside in the summer heat by myself!

I decided in an instant that there was nothing to do but frantically ride my bike the six blocks home, grab my ticket, and pedal hard the six blocks back as fast as I could.  So, I grabbed my bike and started out, pedaling as hard as I could.  I realized within a block or so there was NO way I was going to make it there and back in time. Just not enough time.  Certainly not before the cartoons and newsreel started, and most likely not even in time for the main feature movie.  Crap!

Then suddenly, like a shining beacon on a hill, there, across the street from where I was …. right by the railroad tracks across from the train depot, was “my” Lumber Company!   They knew me in there, right??  They KNEW me!  I mean, I’d been helping myself to their scrap lumber for years!   I’d built (and destroyed) BRIDGES with their lumber!  I was a regular!

I whipped my bike up to the lumber-yard front office door, jumped off and ran up to the front counter, where in one breathless outburst I asked the man standing there, “Excuse me sir I left my ticket for the movie at home and I don’t have time to go home and get it and I was wondering maybe if I could borrow fifty cents??”  The sentence came out in about a second and a half.   The guy looks at me, doesn’t say anything for a minute, smiles, and says, “I’m sorry … what’s the problem?”.     I repeated, just a bit slower. But only a bit.  “Excuse me sir I left my ticket for the movie at home.  I don’t think I have enough time to go home and get it.  I was wondering maybe if I could borrow fifty cents??”

He looked at me.  “Fifty cents?   Well, I guess you’re going to have to talk to the boss-man about that”, and he points over his shoulder with his thumb to the office behind him, where a man was sitting behind a desk, bent over some paperwork.   I gulped and walked back there and knocked on the frame of the open door.

The man looked up at me and asked, “Yes, son? Can I help you?”  I stammered a bit this time as the gravity of this course I’d chosen began to set in.  “I… um… I left my movie ticket at home, sir.  And, …um, there’s no time to ride back and get it before the movie starts … and I was wondering if …. if maybe I could borrow fifty cents?”    He sat back and sized me up with a studied gaze and asked quietly, “What’s your name son?”   The thought never crossed my mind back then, but it was a small town, so the chances were always going to be darned good he’d know my family.   “John Shouse, sir.”

He smiled. “Are you Dorsey Shouse’s boy?”

Recognition!  This might work out after all!

I smiled. “Yes sir, I am”.

He smiled back. “Fifty cents you say?  Well, sure, why not?  I expect you’re good for it.”

He reached into his pocket and I heard some change jingling. He pulled out two quarters and handed them to me.  I thanked him, raced outside, hopped on my bike, and made it to the movie just in time, and another Wednesday afternoon of escaping from the real world in the cool air, low lights and shared wonder and magic of “The Movies”.

I don’t remember what feature was showing that day.  It didn’t matter.   I was inside, with my people.

As soon as the movie let out, I knew exactly what I had to do.  No time to dilly-dally with my friends.  I sped the six-blocks straight home, got a couple of quarters, and rode my bike back to the lumber company and paid off my first ever official “loan” to the man who’d reached in his pocket and financed my movie experience.

I had asked for the loan, got the loan, had the benefit derived therefrom, and paid it off in full.  All in less than three hours after spontaneously initiating the transaction.

And all the collateral I’d needed was my dad’s good name.

I suspect that for the man with the pocket full of quarters, it was not really that memorable of an encounter.  He probably chuckled to himself, and never gave it another thought.

But for me, for reasons I don’t fully understand even now, the whole episode is one of the most vivid memories from my childhood years.

The man, who loaned me the money, though I didn’t know his name at the time, was Alan Coatsworth.

 

I don’t get back there to my hometown as often as I’d like, or as often as I probably should.  I do still have family there.  I still love Mexico.  I love the town, and how it and my experiences there as a kid helped to shape me into the person I’ve become.  I am so glad to have grown up in what was a far simpler time.  No matter what else happens or how Mexico of today has changed, the Mexico of my youth will always be indelibly etched in my brain as “my hometown”.

The “ordinary” moments of our lives… the ones that don’t necessarily register at the time as being so very important in helping to shape the people that we eventually become… those moments are so precious.  Keeping them alive through stories, by sharing them with family and friends, is a joyful part of my life.

Those moments are so very precious indeed, and especially now that I have a few decades of wear and tear, and now that I’ve had kids of my own who have experienced adventures of THEIR own.  I find myself hoping that even though I know full-well that I will never know the depth and breadth of their own adventures, I want to believe that they had experiences to powerfully shape their own lives.

Thanks to the advent of the internet, email, and “social media”, I am also enjoying the newfound camaraderie of folks who also grew up back in Mexico, either a few years before or a few years after I did.  Some of them I did not know back in those days.  Some I only knew by name without having any real relationship back then.  But we do have a relationship. Like it or not, we have the relationship that comes from shared history….  We share a powerful sense of place, even though that place has changed in so many ways.

We call Mexico, Missouri home … and the majority of those people from there whom I have connected with do so proudly. No matter how far we may have wandered, no matter what sort of experiences we may have had in the intervening years, there is a camaraderie and bond from having the same hometown.

From having walked (and pedaled, and then cruised) the same familiar streets and country roads, from having shopped in the same familiar stores, and having attended the same familiar schools and gone to the same familiar churches.  From having spent the same familiar Friday nights at the football field or walking the downtown sidewalks on the night when the stores stayed open late.

Some of these newfound friends also enjoy reminiscing about their own adventures and memories of growing up there.  Childhood and all those memories, as well as the later experiences and memories associated with coming of age in a small town, are something I hold so dear.   More dear than I could possibly express here in a few pages.

From time-to-time I have wondered (and I wondered this even as far as all those years back then when I was a kid) … if kids of other generations in the past had as much fun as we did?   Now I know the answer is yes, of course they did.

To be sure, every generation has things which make it unique.  But as I talk to folks who shared the streets of my hometown, who pedaled through those neighborhoods or walked those sidewalks, it should come as no surprise to know that having grown up in the same place, even if it happened in different eras, has worked to shape so many of us in such profound ways.

I am so glad to be able call Mexico “home”, and I will always feel a special bond with those can do likewise … and in some sense, I think there is a special bond with ALL those who recognize and cherish the notion that growing up in their own “time and place” has worked to make them who they are.

I think I always knew that I wasn’t destined to remain in Mexico forever.  I do remember daydreams as a kid about growing up, moving off and changing the world from some other place in the world as a scientist or engineer.

Like so many others, I did grow up and move off.  Though, I’m not so sure how that “changing the world” thing has worked out.

But hey, it could still happen!!  Right?

If you’ve stuck with this all the way to the end, you are amazing.   Thanks.    I hope you like Part II.    I don’t know *when* I’ll publish it, but I promise it won’t be *too* long.

Thanks for playing with me.

love,
John