Chapter Eight: The Bolyard Boys
There weren't a whole lot of houses in my rural neighborhood; therefore there weren't a whole lot of families. Therefore, there weren't a whole lot of children. Out of all the children that were in those families, none of them was exactly my age, except for Tony Smith and Jamie Nicely. And they were boys. Just like most of the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.
Sure, off and on through my childhood, there were girls to play with. Later, I'll tell you about the new family who moved in one cornfield over. They had THREE girls! But I'll save that for a different chapter.
At times, I had friends who were my age, like Shannon Randolph, whose brother was an absolute creep, who never played fair at hide and seek and who would pull down your pants in front of everyone and laugh at you if he got the chance. He continued to be an absolute creep as long as I knew him, which was through high school. And there was Marnie Morris, who was the bestest friend I could have, who spent the night with me and played Barbies with me and had the nicest laugh and the coolest name of anyone I knew. She was so cool that I could handle that she had a creepy little brother with a bad buzz cut and a nasty temper. But Marnie’s father broke my heart when he took her away. We were very young when her parents divorced, and I hardly ever saw her again—except one time at the drugstore while I was reading Mad Magazine and she came in with her dad. I’ve always wondered what happened to Marnie
The thing about Shannon and Marnie, though, was that they lived in The Twinplexes, which was the just about as bad as living in The Trailer Park. People who lived in The Twinplexes smoked, did drugs, had divorced parents, and worshipped the devil. Okay, maybe they just had divorced parents. But from what my parents told me, and the way they acted about me playing with the kids in The Twinplexes, it was better to have no friends at all. They would just bring you down with them, because they were always up to No Good.
So, aside from Shannon and Marnie, I didn't really have any friends who were girls. Before I started kindergarten, I'm not sure if I realized that other girls even existed on this planet, other than Shannon and Marnie. I had to settle for the likes of Tony "Booger Hair" Smith. And the Bolyard Boys.
The Bolyard Boys lived across the street from me in the big, white Wise farmhouse. Before they lived there, Charlie Wise had farmed there, but his wife had died of cancer and he'd been left with several little children. I think he had moved back to the home farm with his parents, or some such thing. I don't know. You'd have to ask my dad about that one. He probably won't remember, either.
Anyway, the Bolyard Boys moved into the old Wise farm about the time I was old enough to start playing with people. They had a wonderful, pleasantly plump, feisty mother, another Marilyn, who served me the best food in the whole wide world--bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip and yellow mustard...WITH the crusts cut off. And on the side, really thin potato chips, something my mom would never buy. I remember one time that my mom was standing outside talking to Marilyn Bolyard when I came home from school. Boy, did I have a hankering for a Swanson's chicken pot pie! As luck would have it, there wasn't a single Swanson's chicken pot pie in our freezer, and "running" to the store for anything was simply out of the question. A trip into Hartville for groceries was really a once a week thing, if that, so anything that we didn't have, we'd just live without until the next shopping trip. If we didn’t go to the Hartville IGA because we were out of milk, we certainly weren’t going because we were out of chicken pot pies. I was whining about this injustice to my mother (yes, I did say *whining*) when Marilyn, bless her heart, spoke up in that great big motherly way she had. "Well, I believe I have a chicken pot pie in my freezer. I'll send it over!" From that point on, Marilyn Bolyard became one of my favorite ever people in the whole wide world.
Marilyn and her husband (whose name has completely slipped my mind) had three sons, who were all younger than I. Danny was the oldest, about a year younger than I, slightly plump, unable to understand simple logic and very defensive. There wasn't much you could say that wouldn't send towheaded Danny into a fit of rage. Ricky was next, different than his brothers in that he had brown hair. Ricky was about two years younger than I, and even more defensive than Danny, but more likely to get into a scuffle with his older brother than anyone else. But if you made him mad (which was actually a pretty easy thing to do) he'd ball up his fists at you pretty good. Danny and Ricky both spoke with lisps and called each other bad names.
And then there was little Scotty. When I met Scotty, he was still in diapers, so I guess I'd peg him at about two years old. He was the cutest little towhead, but I suppose he had the same kind of temper the other two had. I always thought they were rough and tumble kids or their parents let them be bad all the time, but I suppose now that they were just boys.
The Bolyard Boys were a good choice to hang out with because they were right across the street, and chances are my mom would let me play with them, because she could watch me from the front window. I'm sure she did do that sometimes but most times I’m sure she didn't. I think she was probably mostly glad she didn't have to entertain me or listen to my long-winded stories. I think I was a pretty high-maintenance kid, especially since I was an only child. As long as The Bolyard Boys and I played in the front yard, where she could see me at her own convenience, and I was out of her hair for a while, I could play for hours.
One day, she must not have been watching very closely, because we came up with a pretty cool activity that she would not have thought was all that cool. The first part of the activity was to climb up to one of the highest branches of the great big oak tree in the front yard, which was a pretty common thing for us to do. What we discovered on this particular day, up in that big oak tree, was that there were these cool little things hanging all over the place in the branches that made really nice propulsion devices. These little beauties were absolutely everywhere up in that tree, and they were just the perfect size to pick off with your free hand and throw at the guy on the branch below you. Okay, so we were up in this tree, probably twenty feet off the ground, and we were throwing little hard things at each other--hard things with pointy little tops. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What can I say? We were grade-schoolers and we were bored.
Somebody, and I don't know who it was, but I have a feeling it was me, came up with the idea to see if we could find a good target at which to throw these little propulsive devices. We tried wingin' 'em at windows, little brothers who couldn't climb trees yet, rocks, parked cars--NOT mothers who were bent over working in the garden. But stationery objects just didn't seem like all that much of a challenge. Given that this big oak tree was in the front yard, and the front yard was very close to the road, it wasn't long before one of us (again, probably me, but I couldn't say for sure) came up with the idea of trying to hit a moving target. But it wasn't just cars that we tried to hit. It was the cars who were moving away from us. Specifically cars with mufflers that were moving away from us. Even more specifically, we were just trying to hit the mufflers themselves. Rather, the goal was to get the acorns into the mufflers of the cars that were moving away from us. It was quite a challenge.
None of us was a very good shot. We hit the road. We hit trunks of cars. We hit windows of cars. We hit each other. Rarely, someone would hit the bumper of a car, and I think, occasionally, someone would lie about actually getting it into the muffler, but no one actually did it. Until the black and white car came by.
All of us up in the tree knew when to quit. And when a black and white care drove by, and one of us (I won't say who, but I can bet it wasn't me) actually hit the target and got the acorn IN the muffler of the nice black and white car, we knew it was time to quit. And it was time to be completely still.
But when Scotty, the little brother who couldn't climb trees yet, saw the black and white car, whose driver didn't know there was an acorn in his tailpipe, going past, Scotty picked up a piece of ammo and flung it. Hard. It hit the pretty black and white car square in the rear window, which caused a nice little bright red effect we call brake lights. Scotty thought this was the coolest thing, because, not only did the bright red lights flash, the black and white car actually turned around at the next driveway just so he could give Scotty another chance to get his acorn in the tailpipe. This time, as the police car pulled into the driveway, and we all peed our pants up in the oak tree, Scotty stood in the yard with a handful of acorns. Good, we thought, he'll take the rap, and the policeman will give him a nice little lecture. As we sat there in the tree with our wet pants on, we heard the policeman give Scotty a lecture about how very bad it was to throw things at cars as they passed, and how he shouldn't be so close to the road anyway, and if he caught him doing this again, he'd have to take him in. And just when we thought he'd scared Scotty really well and he was ready to go back to his police car, he asked The Question. "Where did you get this idea, anyway?" Scotty dropped all of his acorns and pointed. Up. Into the oak tree. At us.
I don't remember anything after that, but I'm pretty sure Marilyn Bolyard didn't feed me bologna sandwiches and chicken pot pies.
Sure, off and on through my childhood, there were girls to play with. Later, I'll tell you about the new family who moved in one cornfield over. They had THREE girls! But I'll save that for a different chapter.
At times, I had friends who were my age, like Shannon Randolph, whose brother was an absolute creep, who never played fair at hide and seek and who would pull down your pants in front of everyone and laugh at you if he got the chance. He continued to be an absolute creep as long as I knew him, which was through high school. And there was Marnie Morris, who was the bestest friend I could have, who spent the night with me and played Barbies with me and had the nicest laugh and the coolest name of anyone I knew. She was so cool that I could handle that she had a creepy little brother with a bad buzz cut and a nasty temper. But Marnie’s father broke my heart when he took her away. We were very young when her parents divorced, and I hardly ever saw her again—except one time at the drugstore while I was reading Mad Magazine and she came in with her dad. I’ve always wondered what happened to Marnie
The thing about Shannon and Marnie, though, was that they lived in The Twinplexes, which was the just about as bad as living in The Trailer Park. People who lived in The Twinplexes smoked, did drugs, had divorced parents, and worshipped the devil. Okay, maybe they just had divorced parents. But from what my parents told me, and the way they acted about me playing with the kids in The Twinplexes, it was better to have no friends at all. They would just bring you down with them, because they were always up to No Good.
So, aside from Shannon and Marnie, I didn't really have any friends who were girls. Before I started kindergarten, I'm not sure if I realized that other girls even existed on this planet, other than Shannon and Marnie. I had to settle for the likes of Tony "Booger Hair" Smith. And the Bolyard Boys.
The Bolyard Boys lived across the street from me in the big, white Wise farmhouse. Before they lived there, Charlie Wise had farmed there, but his wife had died of cancer and he'd been left with several little children. I think he had moved back to the home farm with his parents, or some such thing. I don't know. You'd have to ask my dad about that one. He probably won't remember, either.
Anyway, the Bolyard Boys moved into the old Wise farm about the time I was old enough to start playing with people. They had a wonderful, pleasantly plump, feisty mother, another Marilyn, who served me the best food in the whole wide world--bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip and yellow mustard...WITH the crusts cut off. And on the side, really thin potato chips, something my mom would never buy. I remember one time that my mom was standing outside talking to Marilyn Bolyard when I came home from school. Boy, did I have a hankering for a Swanson's chicken pot pie! As luck would have it, there wasn't a single Swanson's chicken pot pie in our freezer, and "running" to the store for anything was simply out of the question. A trip into Hartville for groceries was really a once a week thing, if that, so anything that we didn't have, we'd just live without until the next shopping trip. If we didn’t go to the Hartville IGA because we were out of milk, we certainly weren’t going because we were out of chicken pot pies. I was whining about this injustice to my mother (yes, I did say *whining*) when Marilyn, bless her heart, spoke up in that great big motherly way she had. "Well, I believe I have a chicken pot pie in my freezer. I'll send it over!" From that point on, Marilyn Bolyard became one of my favorite ever people in the whole wide world.
Marilyn and her husband (whose name has completely slipped my mind) had three sons, who were all younger than I. Danny was the oldest, about a year younger than I, slightly plump, unable to understand simple logic and very defensive. There wasn't much you could say that wouldn't send towheaded Danny into a fit of rage. Ricky was next, different than his brothers in that he had brown hair. Ricky was about two years younger than I, and even more defensive than Danny, but more likely to get into a scuffle with his older brother than anyone else. But if you made him mad (which was actually a pretty easy thing to do) he'd ball up his fists at you pretty good. Danny and Ricky both spoke with lisps and called each other bad names.
And then there was little Scotty. When I met Scotty, he was still in diapers, so I guess I'd peg him at about two years old. He was the cutest little towhead, but I suppose he had the same kind of temper the other two had. I always thought they were rough and tumble kids or their parents let them be bad all the time, but I suppose now that they were just boys.
The Bolyard Boys were a good choice to hang out with because they were right across the street, and chances are my mom would let me play with them, because she could watch me from the front window. I'm sure she did do that sometimes but most times I’m sure she didn't. I think she was probably mostly glad she didn't have to entertain me or listen to my long-winded stories. I think I was a pretty high-maintenance kid, especially since I was an only child. As long as The Bolyard Boys and I played in the front yard, where she could see me at her own convenience, and I was out of her hair for a while, I could play for hours.
One day, she must not have been watching very closely, because we came up with a pretty cool activity that she would not have thought was all that cool. The first part of the activity was to climb up to one of the highest branches of the great big oak tree in the front yard, which was a pretty common thing for us to do. What we discovered on this particular day, up in that big oak tree, was that there were these cool little things hanging all over the place in the branches that made really nice propulsion devices. These little beauties were absolutely everywhere up in that tree, and they were just the perfect size to pick off with your free hand and throw at the guy on the branch below you. Okay, so we were up in this tree, probably twenty feet off the ground, and we were throwing little hard things at each other--hard things with pointy little tops. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What can I say? We were grade-schoolers and we were bored.
Somebody, and I don't know who it was, but I have a feeling it was me, came up with the idea to see if we could find a good target at which to throw these little propulsive devices. We tried wingin' 'em at windows, little brothers who couldn't climb trees yet, rocks, parked cars--NOT mothers who were bent over working in the garden. But stationery objects just didn't seem like all that much of a challenge. Given that this big oak tree was in the front yard, and the front yard was very close to the road, it wasn't long before one of us (again, probably me, but I couldn't say for sure) came up with the idea of trying to hit a moving target. But it wasn't just cars that we tried to hit. It was the cars who were moving away from us. Specifically cars with mufflers that were moving away from us. Even more specifically, we were just trying to hit the mufflers themselves. Rather, the goal was to get the acorns into the mufflers of the cars that were moving away from us. It was quite a challenge.
None of us was a very good shot. We hit the road. We hit trunks of cars. We hit windows of cars. We hit each other. Rarely, someone would hit the bumper of a car, and I think, occasionally, someone would lie about actually getting it into the muffler, but no one actually did it. Until the black and white car came by.
All of us up in the tree knew when to quit. And when a black and white care drove by, and one of us (I won't say who, but I can bet it wasn't me) actually hit the target and got the acorn IN the muffler of the nice black and white car, we knew it was time to quit. And it was time to be completely still.
But when Scotty, the little brother who couldn't climb trees yet, saw the black and white car, whose driver didn't know there was an acorn in his tailpipe, going past, Scotty picked up a piece of ammo and flung it. Hard. It hit the pretty black and white car square in the rear window, which caused a nice little bright red effect we call brake lights. Scotty thought this was the coolest thing, because, not only did the bright red lights flash, the black and white car actually turned around at the next driveway just so he could give Scotty another chance to get his acorn in the tailpipe. This time, as the police car pulled into the driveway, and we all peed our pants up in the oak tree, Scotty stood in the yard with a handful of acorns. Good, we thought, he'll take the rap, and the policeman will give him a nice little lecture. As we sat there in the tree with our wet pants on, we heard the policeman give Scotty a lecture about how very bad it was to throw things at cars as they passed, and how he shouldn't be so close to the road anyway, and if he caught him doing this again, he'd have to take him in. And just when we thought he'd scared Scotty really well and he was ready to go back to his police car, he asked The Question. "Where did you get this idea, anyway?" Scotty dropped all of his acorns and pointed. Up. Into the oak tree. At us.
I don't remember anything after that, but I'm pretty sure Marilyn Bolyard didn't feed me bologna sandwiches and chicken pot pies.
Hammered out at 1:26 AM. Copyright 2004 by Denice Hazlett
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