When I was a small boy, we often went to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia to rake the fallen leaves off my Grandfather’s grave.There was a big white marble monument with the name GOODSON emblazoned across it in big bold letters.

Gradually, I began to think of that gravestone as my grandfather. Anytime anyone mentioned my grandfather, which was exceedingly rare in my home, for reasons that I will touch on briefly, I pictured that gravestone. He had died long before I was born and when anyone made any reference to him, which wasn’t very often, I didn’t picture a man, I pictured a gravestone.

As I got older I longed to know something about my grandfather. What kind of man he was. What his interests were. Nobody ever talked about it. Not my grandmother, with whom we lived. Certainly not my mother, who had been a young child when he died unexpectedly one night.

My Mother, his daughter, and the youngest of four children was reportedly his favorite. Although she never admitted it, my Mother couldn’t talk about it, since she was a 10 year old girl when he died and she never quite got over it.

One day, when I was about 12, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I was now too old to believe my grandfather was a toad and the mystery surrounding him still haunted me.

I called up my mother at work and demanded that she tell me something about my grandfather.

My paternal grandfather, had died in 1919, twenty-seven years before I was born, and my maternal grandfather had died suddenly ten years later, at age 39 in 1929.

One Sunday afternoon, when my parents were in the cemetery, rakes in hand, drawing pretty parallel lines in the grey sand, to my delight, I discovered a small grey toad was living in a little hollow under the gravestone. Every Sunday we went to the cemetery and every week I looked for that toad. And he was there week after week, in that little burrow under the right rear corner of the white marble monument.

I began to think of that toad as my grandfather.

If all else fails, the mind will answer its own questions.

Later on, when I was a few years older, I realized it was impossible that the toad was my grandfather, and I became even more curious to know something–anything about himm. My mother suggested I call up the place of business where my grandfather had worked (the Union Station Railroad Terminal Building in Savannah, Georgia) and ask to speak to an old man there named Mr. Leopold. He had worked with my grandfather and was nearing retirement.

I got the number and called him up.

He said, “You want me to tell you something about your grandfather ….?” he asked.

“Yes, please…. “ I replied meekly in my little boy voice.

“Mr. Leopold continued,“.Okay…your grandfather was the kind of guy who would pass you in the hallway and not say hello! ”

I slowly hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Then I called my mother back on the telephone and told her what Mr. Leopold had said. I was crying.

She said, “Let ME tell you something….”

“MR. LEOPOLD was the kind of man who would pass you in the hallway and not say hello!!”

At the beginning of tenth grade, there was a boy named “Ronnie” who sat in front of me in homeroom class. We became acquainted, and after a week of brief, but friendly chats, he invited me to join his fraternity.

Having grown up an only child, and a rather lonely one at that, I was elated at the prospect of being “accepted” by a group of my peers, and finally having some real “friends”. Ronnie gave me the address of his fraternity, and suggested that I drop by the following Saturday afternoon, to “meet some of the brothers.”

A few days later, I took the city bus uptown, got off twenty-five minutes later, found the address and climbed the stairs of a rather run-down, three-story wooden building, badly in need of a paint job. It was in the “Victorian Section” of Savannah.

I knocked on the door and was invited in by none other than my old friend Cecil, who shook my hand, welcomed me to Sigma Epsilon Chi fraternity (S.E.X.) and showed me around the place.

After a perfunctory tour of the facility, I witnessed one or two teenage boys I did not recognize sitting around in worn out “comfy” chairs and reading old Playboy magazines. There were more men’s magazines scattered about a wooden spool table which appeared to have been salvaged from some back alley.

We ascended the stairs to the third floor, where I was shown into a dusty old room with dirty windows. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling over an unmade bed. With a knowing look on his face, and the glint of saliva on his lower teeth, Cecil confided to me that this room was set aside by the “brothers” for the private entertainment of female “guests”.

While I may have had one or two impure ideas regarding females up to that point in my life, in reality, I had never so much as even said “Hi” to a girl, and thus, I was completely horrified by the thought of what sort of things– and what sorts of girls– might make use of such a room.

Nevertheless, my need to belong, to feel a part of something bigger than myself, to have “friends” and to be accepted by my peers burned strong within me, and so, I readily accepted his invitation to return one week later to be “interviewed” by the brothers.

The following week provided ample time for daydreaming and fantasizing about what my life would be like once I was a member of the fraternity and instantly one of the “cool”kids. I imagined that girls at the school, who I liked and secretly admired, would suddenly notice me and be interested in me. I started to picture what kind of clothes I would have to wear to school in order to maintain the correct image that was expected of me by the other brothers. I anticipated being invited to wild parties where people would be drinking alcohol and dancing and conversing with each other and luridly with members of the opposite sex. Once I was one of “them,” people would finally have a real reason to like me and to accept me and I would be a person to be admired and respected. Then, as I happily pondered the excitement of my new life, these and other thoughts suddenly made me nervous and it all seemed so very different from the way my life had been that I started to panic at the thought of it all.

Nevertheless, the following Saturday, I awoke early from a troubled sleep, took a shower, brushed my teeth three times, got dressed in my “coolest” clothes, paid fifteen cents and took the bus to the corner of Drayton and 31st Street.

I thought I looked pretty sharp in my Gant shirt, khaki pants, Madras belt, Burlington socks and Weejuns. But, so far, anyway, no one had paid much attention to me, treated me any differently than usual or asked me where I was going. Not the people on the bus stop, not the bus driver, not any of the other passengers on the bus or any of the passing motorists.

Undeterred, I proceeded to the address of the fraternity house and climbed the stairs, just as I had exactly one week earlier and rang the bell. But now, something felt different.

This time, the door was answered by someone I did not know. He was not particularly “brotherly” and I was rudely instructed to take a seat in a room with all the other prospective members who sat around rather nervously eyeing each other and me sheepishly. I was informed that I was to come into another room when my name was called.

One by one, the other candidates for admission into coolness were summoned by name and timidly arose from their seats and disappeared behind a door into another room. The process was repeated about every seven to ten minutes.

Finally it was my turn. The door opened and the stranger I had met before stood in it and said, “Parker….?”

I was ushered into a large room and directed to take a seat on a tall wooden stool which had been strategically placed in the center of the room for the apparent amusement of twenty or twenty-five of the “brothers” who were seated in chairs and on several couches which were arranged around the perimeter of the room so that each person had a good view of the proceedings. The room was dark, and I could not see the faces of any of my future “brothers”, but there was one light overhead, the kind with a green metal shade, the type of light that might hang over a pool table in a seedy part of town–and it shone down directly– and solely, on me.

For the first time in my life, I did not enjoy being the center of attention.

I sat rather awkwardly and uncomfortably upon the stool as someone from behind me shot me in the back with the first question. I immediately realized I was about to be subjected to a rude form of interrogation, designed to humiliate me or make me look stupid, but I was willing to play along with it, for a chance to belong, but my desire to be one of them and my chances were quickly slipping away with each passing second.

“Okay….what’s your name…and where do you go to school….?”

I remember thinking this was a stupid question. I went to the same school as most of them. And besides, if they didn’t know who I was, why had they invited me inside the sanctity of their fraternity house and, for another thing, why hadn’t my old friend Cecil told them I was coming. I felt tricked and a little betrayed.

My natural inclination was to be funny, and for a moment, I considered making something up, saying something like “Seymour Butts….” going for the cheap laugh, but it didn’t seem like the kind of situation where anything I said would be getting any laughs. So I just told them my name and told them I went to Savannah High School.

Then someone directly behind me asked another question. This question was asked in a somewhat louder voice than the question before, and I could feel the tension building in the dark room, as out of the corner of my eye I could see some of the brothers begin to squirming in their seats in anticipation of the fun that was to come.

“What grade are you in?” At least, unlike in Mrs. Wade’s math class, they were asking questions to which I knew the answers.

“TENTH!”, I shot out, momentarily emboldened, and seeking to regain the high ground.

Then, from directly behind me, another brother wanted to ask me something. I swiveled around in my seat. I was getting good at that.

His voice sounded vaguely familiar, and almost friendly. As I was wondering if he might be Robert Schuman, a boy whom I liked and had known since first grade, he inquired of me,

“If we asked you to go downtown to the women’s section of a department store and buy some women’s underwear, would you do it….?”

I thought about the question for perhaps ten or twelve seconds… pondering it seriously… suspecting that it might be a trick question, while at the same time understanding on some level that this might be the pivotal question they would ask me, and the very question which I must answer correctly– and the one question upon which any chance I would ever have of being one of the “cool” people, might hang.

I remembered that once, when I was somewhere, someone, maybe it was a teacher, had told me:

“Honestly is the best policy.” 

So I decided to be honest. I thought they would respect that. I thought they would want to accept into their midst someone who was forthright and honest, someone who would know right from wrong and try to do the right thing in any given situation. So after what must have seemed like a long time to some, so long in fact that one or two may have even forgotten what the question was….

I simply said, , “NO….I wouldn’t.

Someone across the dark room shot out indignantly, as if he hadn’t heard me,

“No, you wouldn’t WHAT??”

“No I wouldn’t buy you any women’s underwear….”

Then it was all over.

Another anonymous face, someone who hadn’t spoken before, but seemed to be in authority said, “”All right, that’s all….you can go now.”

Someone opened the door for me and as I walked through it told me to wait outside in the other room for a minute. I felt a tremendous sense of relief as I sat back down in the reception room to await my fate. One or two others, who were still waiting to be interviewed looked up at me as I sat back down, and, I felt a little sorry for them– and even sorrier for myself.

I knew that I had failed– and would never be one of the cool people.

While I was coming to that realization the door suddenly opened and one of the brothers handed me a folded up piece of paper and said,

“Don’t open this up, until after you have left here.”

Always able to follow simple instructions, I stood up and let myself out. I descended the stairs and stood on the sidewalk in front of the old white Victorian building which badly needed a paint job. I unfolded the paper and read it. They had reached a decision.

“NO!!!” was all it said.

I decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. It was a few miles. For a moment, I felt a little like crying, but my feelings of rejection were gradually replaced by a steely determination never to speak to anyone at that school ever again for the rest of the time I was there.

And so I went home. And went into my room and closed my door.

Then I lay down on my bed and tried to accept that I would never be one of the cool people.

After school, when I was 13, and in the eighth grade, I would frequently go over to the home of one of my classmates, a studious boy named Jerry Coleman. I had known Jerry since we were both in grade school together, but we never interacted much as I was usually over at Hughie’s house. I may have gravitated to Jerry, out of some sense of rejection because Hughie seemed more interested in hanging out with Richard, the boy who lived next door to him. But I never completely gave up on Hughie until he got a car on his sixteenth birthday and he and Richard got in it and drove away together to one of the local drive-in hamburger restaurants that were popular at the time. I was still riding my bicycle at 16, but it wouldn’t have been cool to follow them on my bicycle.

One day after school, Jerry asked me to come over to his house and help him study Morse Code. He explained that he was trying to learn it so that he could rise up the ranks in the Boy Scouts.

I thought that it would be nice to perhaps try to cultivate a new friendship in light of my “third wheel” status with Hughie and Richard. Plus my father had been employed for many years as a telegraph operator for the Seaboard Railroad and he had learned Morse Code from his own father who had been a telegraph operator in a little shack by the tracks in Nicholls, Georgia after Rheumatoid Arthritis made it impossible for him to continue his vocation travelling around Georgia by train as a “drummer”, or seller of wholesale groceries.

The way I looked at it, not only would I be cementing a new friendship, by helping Jerry, but I would be carrying on a family tradition.

We met several times and after Jerry had mastered the Morse Code, and I had learned A, B, C, E, S, and O, we turned our attention to tying knots. Thanks to Jerry, I can still tie a “square knot” and a “half hitch”, and a “hangman’s noose” three of the simpler types of knots, but nevertheless knots that might prove useful in life, especially if you want to tie a knot that stays tied. The first time I tried to tie the “square knot”, Jerry smiled consolingly and told me that I had tied a “Granny,” an inferior type of knot that wouldn’t hold. Since I lived with my grandmother, an invalid in a wheelchair, and we were very close, I wished that the scouts had come up with a different name for it. I felt a little sorry for myself for the minor failure and even sorrier for my Grandmother.

After a week or two of hanging out with Jerry, he asked me if I would like to join Troop 108 of the Boy Scouts of America. They met every Monday evening at 6 p.m. in a little shack on the grounds of The Whitfield Methodist Church in our neighborhood.

I’ll admit, I was somewhat intrigued by the invitation and gratified by the realization that someone actually wanted to spend time with me and I found the prospect of making more new friends rather appealing, especially after my frustrating and rather disappointing experiences with Hughie in my early life. But, in my own defense, I had given it a good ten years to work out. In retrospect, it was nothing personal, it was just that I needed him more than he needed me.

The following Monday evening at around six, in the fading light of an early Fall evening, my Mother dropped me off in front of the church and I tentatively walked over to a small white building off to one side. The door was open and there was a light on inside and I could see six or seven boys congregating near the entrance. I could tell by their movements and the way they darted in and out of the door that there was something fun and possibly very exciting going on in that little shack. And I wanted more than anything to be a part of it.

As I walked in, I passed a young man of undetermined age, perhaps as old as nineteen or twenty. He was talking to another older boy. They were both dressed in their scout uniforms, which were covered with medals and ribbons and one had a sash across his chest that had dozens of colorful merit badges on it—which had no doubt been awarded to him for his superior knowledge, skills and abilities in a variety of areas. I soon found out their names– George Linsky and Aurthur Saile and that they were scout leaders.

My friend, Jerry Coleman was already there, looking sharp in his uniform. And all the other boys were in theirs, except for me, that is. There was an American Flag on a shiny wooden pole on one side at the front of the room, and on the other was the Troop flag of Troop 108 of the Boy Scouts of America. Hanging from the top of the Troop Flag were a variety of ribbons which had been awarded for various events and activities the troop had been involved in going back many years. I felt honored to be in the presence of such accomplished and skilled individuals and the ghosts of countless others that were not present but who had obviously come before. It was obvious to me that this was an organization with a proud and glorious history–you could feel it in the room.

And I was determined to be a part of it. 

George called the scout meeting to order and everyone stood up and raised their right hand and gave the three-fingered scout salute. Then George led us in the Scout Oath, which was a regular feature at the beginning of each meeting. “On my honor, I will do my best, 
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; 
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, 
mentally awake, and morally straight.”

I wasn’t sure what “doing my duty to God was” or what “morally straight” was, but deep down inside, I worried that I may have already violated that oath on numerous occasions. But I really hoped that whatever it was wouldn’t prevent me from becoming a Boy Scout.

That same week, my mother took me downtown to the basement in Penny’s department store where they sold the Boy Scout uniforms and equipment. With the help of a salesman, in no time at all I had my uniform, consisting of shirt, pants, web belt with brass buckle, red and yellow neckerchief and Official Boy Scout hat. For good measure, my mother bought me a wallet with a zipper on it in which to keep my membership card and any money I might acquire. Like any decent wallet worth its salt, there was a place for folding money and even a small pouch for coins. The whole thing could be zipped up for greater security. It was my first wallet, and as I would soon find out, a fine one.

But no zipper and no amount of money could ever secure me.

By November of that year, I had learned oaths and mottos and rules. I had learned how to build a fire, cook on it, wash pots and pans in dirt if no water was available, dig a latrine, splint a broken bone, what different animal tracks look like, where to apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and even how to suck out the poison from a snake bite.  

Preparations were now well underway for our first camping trip. It was to take place on The Isle of Wight, near Midway Georgia in mid-December. I also learned that it gets very cold in Georgia in the Wintertime.

On the appointed day, at around five-thirty in the morning my father dropped me off in front the church to join the other scouts who were going on the camping trip. I had a Boy Scout Haversack which my father had bought from a friend named Hatcher. It was slightly used and still had his name on the leather label, “Fletcher Hatcher”. There was no way to change that as it seemed to be burned into the label with a branding iron. I hoped no one would notice the name on the pack and think It had stolen it–or worse yet, think my name was really Fletcher Hatcher.

The rest of my gear was comprised of an old army surplus pup tent I had purchased for a dollar, about five years earlier from King’s Pawn Shop on Broughton Street, and its accompanying poles and pegs and rope. I packed my sleeping bag, which had been repaired by my grandmother after it had caught on fire a few years earlier, and my mess kit, canteen, a change of underwear and socks, a small hatchet, a pocket knife, some strike-anywhere matches and a couple of cans of vienna sausage and box of Premium Saltines. The hatchet and the canteen, I wore on an old pistol belt from the army surplus store. 

At around six a.m., we loaded up everything into a rag-tag convoy of old cars and set off down Highway 17 passing the same familiar sights I had seen dozens of times before on the many trips I made with my father to visit his mother in Jacksonville, Florida. There were my old friends the Powder Magazine, The Horn of Plenty, Gill’s Grill, Charlie’s Rendezvous Lounge, The Bamboo Ranch, Mammy’s Kitchen, Howard Johnson’s, and eventually The Dixie Jungle, where I had ridden my bike to buy firecrackers only a few weeks before. In a little while we turned left off the highway at the old church in Midway, with its graves of long dead farmers and their wives and children.  We followed the car in front of us, which followed the signs to the Isle of Wight.

After crossing a wooden plank bridge with no railings on it, in short order we arrived at the scoutmaster’s property on the river where we would set up our camp. Mr. Fillmore, our scoutmaster, was a red-haired man with very white skin and a permanent look on his face that seemed to say, “Yes, I can sort of see what you mean….” Mr. Fillmore was more of a figurehead, really, and rarely spoke to us directly. The Monday Meetings were mainly run by the Assistant Scoutmasters, George and Arthur.

Not having a tent-mate, I set up my tent, all by myself, by some tall pine trees, about halfway between the road where the cars let us out and the bluff of the river.  I remembered that my uncle always insisted I was a “sleepwalker” and had tied me to an army cot and to trees a few years earlier when I went camping. Although I knew he was wrong, I still didn’t want to get too close to the river. Rivers and the edges of cliffs are best approached in the daylight, and even then, with caution.

Everything went reasonably well that day. We set up camp in the crisp December morning, dug a latrine in the woods, gathered firewood, chopped it up, cleared an area for a fire, made a fire, cooked on it, ate canned goods and hot dogs, drank Coca-Cola, and ate potato sticks, made a map of the campsite, looked at the river, went on a hike, visited each other’s tents, and as darkness fell, we lit the big bonfire we had made earlier and sat around it, each kid telling some scary story in the firelight and each kid falling asleep as he listened, and picking up the story in his dreams, while others drifted warily back to their tents in turn.

Soon it was time to retire for the evening. Leaving the comfort of the fire, I immediately noticed that the temperature had dropped considerably in the last couple of hours. I hurried to my tent, crawled inside my repaired sleeping bag and buttoned it up as best I could in the dark. I remember thinking, next time, I’ll bring a flashlight. On a moonless night in the Georgia woods it gets dark at night and cold as well.

Very Cold.

Particularly if you don’t have a ground cloth, or something waterproof to put between your sleeping bag and the frozen bare earth.  This is especially important if you have lost about half the feathers in your sleeping bag. But my grandmother did remove the burned insulation and sew the bag back up, God Bless her Soul. 

I was beginning to understand what the scout motto “BE PREPARED” meant.

(to be continued)

After returning home from a month in summer camp in North Carolina, when I was still only twelve, I fell in with a small group of younger kids from down the street. We would all randomly congregate at a small circular park at the end of the block, known as “The Circle”.

On The Circle’s west side was a small, mysterious, but otherwise unremarkable brick building, which I later found out was a “pumping station”—whether for water or sewage, I never knew, although there was plenty of each in my home town.

I found out about 40 years later when they were digging up the street that there were some very large pipes which ran under the street to this building, although I doubt any of us knew it at the time. From time to time, one could hear mysterious whooshing sounds coming from inside the windowless building, too, as if the unoccupied windowless brick building was constructed to obscure some ancient magical waterfall.

There were plenty of big bushes, too, some with little orange berries that were good for throwing at other kids, three or four magnolia trees, at various locations in the park, suitable for climbing, and one open area large enough to get up a game of “half rubber”, a bastardization of baseball involving a solid rubber ball cut in half and a sawed-off old broom handle for a bat. One nice thing about half rubber was that you only needed three players—a pitcher, a batter and a catcher—although an outfielder would have been nice.

There was also an open area on the South side of The Circle which was large enough for tackle football, where there was a small patch of bare earth where the grass had been worn away, mute testimony to the spot where most of the main action had taken place.

“Solomon Park”, as it was known on the maps, was situated on a side street, so there wasn’t much car traffic, which made it an ideal place to play or to circumnavigate on a bicycle.

In those days every kid over the age of five or six had a bicycle, and as far as I knew, was free to roam the neighborhood with no adult supervision, as most kid’s fathers were at work and their mothers were home taking care of smaller children or tending to household responsibilities.

I never once saw an adult in that park.

Anyway, it became a thing that August to see which of us “big kids” could ride his bicycle around the park the most times. It took about two and a half minutes to circle the park on a bike. There were three or four kids aside from myself who showed up there, day after day, at the end of that summer.

Hour upon hot hour, we would ride around and around, each kid keeping track of the number of revolutions he had made.

There were no girls in our group. Boys like us didn’t play with girls. I considered it traitorous.

It was an unusually hot summer that year and a couple of the younger boys had taken to throwing cups of water on us each time we came around. Most kids in those days rode American bicycles with big rubber tires, but I had a red “Rudge”, an English bike with thin tires and two hand brakes.

I had gotten it for Christmas when I was six and been riding it for half of my life at this point.

On days I was not in school, I was allowed to sleep late, and in the summertime, my parents were both at work by the time I woke up. At this time of the morning, the only other person at home was my grandmother, an “invalid”, who by this time of the morning, would have pulled herself up out of bed, using a makeshift “trapeze” of two by fours, sawed-off broom handles and doubled-up clothesline rope my Dad had rigged up for her, and plunked herself down in her wheelchair for another day.

She was like a mother to me and spent her day looking out the window at the birds and squirrels or reading her bible, or making phonecalls for the Calvary Baptist Church or writing letters to her son in Washington, D.C. She talked to “Tweety” and “Pete”, her two parakeets.

My mother told me that parrots and parakeets could “talk”, so I was sure they understood her every word, and one day would answer back, but they never did.

My grandmother, whose name was the same as my own mother’s, had a small black and white television set on a rolling tubular aluminum stand in one corner of the room and she spent her time watching quiz shows like The Price Is Right (with Bill Cullen), where contestants tried to guess the price of common household items without going over the price, or “Kids Say The Darndest Things” with Art Linkletter. She crocheted booties, bonnets and bedspreads for her 8 grandchildren and any others who asked.

It was great for me to have her there all the time, but she was in no condition to ever stop me from going wherever I wanted–and besides, I never asked anyone’s permission, because for the most part, being of an impulsive nature, I never knew where I was going until I was on my bike headed there. My Grandmother never knew where I was or what I was doing when I was out of the house, which was a good deal of the time. And if she had tried to stop me, I would have not listened to her.

Monday, August 31, 1959 dawned hot and the Blue Jays were restless in the magnolia tree outside my bedroom window.

It was my 13^th birthday. I got an early start, and was the first one at The Circle that day. I began riding around and around, keeping count of how many revolutions I had made. By the time, I was up to about thirty, I was joined by one or to other kids and then later on, another, and we rode around and around, as the hot morning turned into the hot afternoon.

We rode silently and with determination into the late Georgia Summer.

By two or three o’clock I was up to about 150 revolutions and someone’s little brother who had joined us for a while, but dropped out, was now filling up a waxpaper Dixie cup with little green hearts on it from a neighbor’s garden hose and running over to throw water in the face of any big kid he could.

I was a teenager now, a couple of years older than the other kids and I was determined not to let anyone younger “beat me”. So I kept going, skipping lunch and not bothering to stop to go to the bathroom.

The afternoon came and went, and the sun dropped down warm and orange behind some tall pine trees in the backyard of a nearby house. Most kids had now dropped out or joined the water brigade.

I kept going.

My parents got home from work after 6, but by that time, I was still going strong. I could have kept going until after dark, but 256 times around the park was a record and that was good enough for me. The other kids had all gone home anyway.

There was no one left to impress except myself. There never was.

The next day I showed up again at the park. There were a few kids there already. They asked me how many times I went around. I told them. Someone figured out that I had ridden over 40 miles. I knew at that moment I was ready for an even greater challenge.

I would ride my bicycle to the “Dixie Jungle” in next county, to buy fireworks. It was 17 miles away. I would save my strength and my money for a month or so, and then just get up early one morning and go.

I rode home.

I was a boy with a plan.

That fall, on a sunny day in November, when the air in Georgia is crisp and cool, but not cold, with twelve dollars in my pocket and both of my parents at work and my grandmother in her wheelchair in her bedroom, I got dressed, grabbed an army surplus canvas bag to carry the fireworks in, slung it over the handlebars and slipped unseen and unnoticed, except perhaps by a stray cat out the front door of our house.

I mounted my red bicycle and carefully pedaled west on 51^st Street, passing the houses of kids I knew– and kids I didn’t.

I crossed Harmon Street glancing over briefly at Solomon Park, scene of my recent triumph. I crossed Paulsen Street, where my mother always turned right to go to work.

I kept going, passing houses on whose porches I had trick-or-treated or sold Oatmeal Cookies.

I came to Habersham Street. I crossed it and rode on.

Now and then a car would pass or someone would be walking on the sidewalk. I ignored them. They returned the favor. I was invisible now with secrets to confess.

I came to Abercorn Street, a busy street leading downtown with a median in the middle of it. Years later my parents would be involved in a serious automoible accident there following an aborted attempt to flee a hurricane.

But I easily crossed Abercorn and headed West.

It was late Fall, the trees were bare and I could see the water tower at the end of the street at the Neal Blun Lumber Company. I had been down this street many times in past years as it was the shortest route from our house to Highway 17, the main highway to Florida. The main difference, was every other time I had gone this way, I had been in a car with my father driving, and we were on our way to Jacksonville to visit his mother.

This time, however, I was on my bike and all alone.

I came to the end of 51^st Street and crossed the railroad tracks. Soon I was peddling past motels and gas stations on the outskirts of town. The sky was blue and I kept thinking about what kind of fireworks I was going to buy when I got to The Dixie Jungle.

I had been there before once or twice with my father. It was basically a gas station and souvenir shop selling soft drinks, chips, candy, and cigarettes, in addition to firecrackers, cherry bombs, TNT’s, Torpedoes, Cracker Balls, Skyrockets, 2-inch salutes and buzz bombs. They also had a really crummy “zoo” out back with a few monkeys, a ratty-looking bobcat, a skunk, a possum, a few bored-looking raccoons, a pony, a few chickens and a goat or two.

For 50 cents, the proprietor would take you on a brief walking tour of his sad collection of chicken-wire cages. The star of the show was “Maude The Singing Jackass,” who was advertised on hand-painted signs for miles in either direction. Maude was tied to the stump of a nearby tree and apparently didn’t feel much like singing the day my Dad took me there.

After another fifteen or twenty minutes I was really out on the highway. It was a two lane paved black asphalt road with one lane in either direction. I stayed over to the right and kept the front tire of my bike a few inches in from the edge. I was going about 15 mph and there was plenty of room for cars to pass. It was the trucks I was worried about.

I kept glancing back over my shoulder about every ten seconds and if there was a truck coming up behind me I would get off the road completely and ride slowly along the grassy median trying to avoid broken bottles or cans and then get back up on the road and continue on. There wasn’t that much traffic in those days, but, nevertheless, I had to do this many times. I passed Mammy’s Kitchen, a Bar-B-Q restaurant off to the side of the road. There was a big colorful painted roadsign of “Mammy” complete with a white bandana on her head and red and white apron. Mammy looked a lot like Aunt Jemima. I pedaled on.

I came to the bend in the road where my father had told me he had once run off the road into a ditch in 1927, when he first came to Savannah. I passed the Wise Owl Potato Chip Sign. It was cut out to the shape of a big owl and stuck up from the center of a large bush. It advised passing motorists to “Get Wise.” It seemed much larger to me now than on the many times I had seen it when my father and I were going to see my grandma in Florida. I got a good look at it. I liked that owl. I fancied that it approved of what I was doing.

At any rate, it was too late to turn back now.

When I got to the abandoned gas station with Donald Duck and Goofy painted on the inside glass window I stopped to rest. This landmark, too, I had seen it many times in the past. This time I noticed that the paintings of Goofy and Donald seemed “off” somehow. I suppose that being an artist, myself, I couldn’t help having a more critical eye than most. I sat by the side of the road and thought about Donald and Goofy and watched the passing cars and trucks for a few minutes. I imagined that Donald and Goofy approved of what I was doing.

Then I got back on my bike for the final leg of the journey.

It wasn’t long before I passed another landmark, The Bamboo Farm, and then I came into a large open area where the road passed through a marshy area. Off in the distance I could see the low open concrete bridge that crossed the Ogeechee River and separated Chatham country from Bryan County and which separated me from fireworks.

I pedaled a bit harder.

Once over the bridge and the black water, I came to a series of road signs advertising The Dixie Jungle and Fireworks.

I was almost there.

In a couple of minutes I pulled up and leaned my bike against the side of the building. It was a quiet at the jungle that day. I swung open a screen door and stepped inside. It was dark and cool and the only light seemed to be from a naked lightbulb hanging from the wooden ceiling near the center of the store. There was a man in the back of the place who noticed me when I came in, but didn’t pay me much mind, so I casually drifted over to the section where they had the fireworks for sale. I was the only customer there at the time. They certainly had a great selection. I tried not to wet myself. It would be difficult to choose between the bewildering assortment of colorful packages all wrapped in cellophane with such labels as Black Cat, Alligator, Zebra, Yankee Boy, Dixie Boy, Anchor, Camel and Cock brand, but I eventually settled on a large package containing 80 packs of Anchor Brand Firecrackers for four dollars.

I brought this up to the man in the back of the store and for good measure and because I still had a few dollars left purchased some bottle rockets and a dozen cherry bombs. Expecting to be arrested at any moment, I handed over the money and he handed me a paper bag full of power and self-respect.

I walked directly out the front door, did not pass go or collect two hundred dollars.

I placed the goodies in the canvas bag, slung it over the handlebars and started for home. I don’t remember much about the trip back, except that I arrived back home, by 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

No one had missed me.

My parents never knew what I had done and I wasn’t about to tell anyone. I went back inside and put the fireworks in a small black suitcase in my bedroom closet, where they stayed until I went to visit my cousin in Florida for New Year’s.

Wasn’t  he going to be impressed?