I grew up with three brothers all older than me. I have often wondered how any of us ever survived childhood and how my mother survived motherhood. Recently after hearing my brothers tell wild tales I had never heard, I am even more convinced that their survival is a miracle of miracles.
Now understand that I cannot give you their names because I am sure there are still authorities seeking restitution for misdeeds done by the culprits. For the purpose of this story the brothers will be referred to as Brother 1, 2, and 3.
Brother 2, 3, 1
When the phone rang at our house, Mama would cringe. She must have been relieved when the caller turned out to be someone who called for the preacher to come visit a family member who was on their deathbed or to make a trip to the jail to council a neighbor’s kid. But, alas, that was not always the case.
Those boys got into enough trouble for all of us. Brother 3 got cigarettes from a friend who snitched them from his mama, and he was only six years old. Brother 3’s big Brother 1 even gave him the nub ends of the cigarettes he got from I-don’t-want-to-know-who. One day, Mama caught Brother 3 crawling under the house with matches to smoke his contraband and sent Daddy after him. That was aside from him smoking rabbit tobacco in his homemade corncob pipe when he made me promise not to tell on him. He must have quite grown up by then because he was all of seven.
At one of the nearby businesses that was plagued with mischievous kids, at least until the preacher moved, the boys had their fill of soda pop. They would sneak into the business after hours and open the hinged top of the chest coke machine to expose the suspended bottles hanging by their necks (which is what the owners would like to have done to the kids). Instead of putting their money into the coin slot and making their selection, they proceeded to pop the tops of the ice cold sodas and slurp out the contents with their paper straws. When the owner went to work the next morning and got his morning soda the bottles were all empty. There was little question as to who was responsible, or irresponsible, but nothing could be proven if they weren’t caught red-handed.
Brother 1 and 2
Some of their shenanigans were harmless enough such as playing “pocketbook.” One time, a car stopped as the driver eyed the pocketbook. When the boys tried to reel it in, the pocketbook got lodged on the railroad track. The driver of the car, the Sheriff, got out and took chase. The boys escaped. Other escapades included climbing on the train when it stopped by the cotton gin and riding it to a neighboring town. They had to wait for the return train to make their way home again. When Brother 2 was contacted to validate these claims, he verified that this was indeed true. Brother 1 seemed very familiar with the story and I believe him to be the ringleader. (Brother 1 is also the one responsible for my broken collar bone.)
Other misdeeds were vandalism, like when they the broke the windows out of the back of one of the shops. Brother 2 said, “We got our butts beat.” Other neighborhood boys were involved, and each family had to pay for the windows to be replaced.
As several of us listened to their tales, Sister 2 said, “Why didn’t they run us out of town?” Brother 3’s response was a classic, “We were preacher’s kids.” There was a short pause and he giggled, “It was hard to get a preacher.”
Now we know!
These tales were just a drop in bucket that was filled with stolen watermelons, a record sized big snake, broom straw lit on fire, pigs, picked tulips, burning bags of manure, rocks, phone calls, kids in trunks to sneak into drive-in movies, etc., and some tales you’ll never know.