School is out for the Summer and we can now go barefooted. This is great but uh oh, the sidewalks and the street around the grocery store and drug store are hotttt! Just walk on the grass and run real fast across the streets.
Kenneth Brewer has got a great big tent and the word is out. There will be a sleep outside tonight between the Brewers and Gambles in the tent. Bring comics because someone said they are bringing a lantern and we can stay up reading them. Barbra Chislom’s mom made her come in and David was laughing his head off!
Richard Roundtree says that a lot of people will pay you to bring them carts of wood from the wood shed behind the grocery store. I made 50 cents yesterday. That was easy money. I think I will try to make some more cutting grass today. The going rate is 25 cents for a single or a zero and 50 cents for a double.
Ronny Wheeler and Cooney Brewer have made space helmets out of empty ice cream cartons from the drug store. Mine smelled like strawberries. They are using coal bins as their space ships. Ronny said he will help build a real space ship some day. His mom said that if he keeps getting coal dust in his clothes, she will give him a boost to the moon.
Look out! Here comes Bobby Gamble chasing butterflies for his collection. He will run over you if you are in the way. His cousin, Day-Day, says he has hundreds under glass. I wonder what he’s going to do with them.
We went by the Chislom apartment to get David to go with us down by the creek and throw rocks. But his sister, Barbra, said he and Gary Brewer went up on the playground to play football. That’s just tough for them because we were going to wade across and play in the restricted area also.
Did you hear? Mike Johnson got a new bike. His brother, Hubert, says Mike just will not get off of it.
Norma Jean Sizemore was trying to get Ronny Wheeler to let her wear his watch that he won in an art contest. Ronny said he was afraid she would break it. So, Norma Jean smacked him on the back and ran off.
Some kids just went flying by the drug store on roller skates. They coasted down the hill on the sidewalk all the way from up near the housing office. They better watch it. Mr. Carpenter has warned us about running into people walking on the side walk. It would be just real bad to have to move.
Hey! Someone threw a huge cardboard carton in the trash bin. We can take that thing, knock out the top and bottom, put 4 kids in it, and pretend it is a tank! They can make it roll just like a garble treadmill.
Jimmy Sweat is showing off his dad’s war medals. He better put them back before his parents know he sneaked them out. Man, is he proud of his dad.
Did you see the fender skirts Bobby Johnson put on his dad’s car? They look real cool. I bet everyone would like to do that to their dad’s car. He put some other neat things inside too. If I had a car, I would put a pair of those fuzzy dice on the rear view mirror.
Everyone is talking about the ghost that was in the cemetery over by the Paggent’s apartment last night. When some girls took a short cut after the softball game through the woods and by the cemetery last night, they saw some spooky things and heard a very screechy BOOOO! It scared the dickens out of them. Doodle and some of the other guys are in trouble for getting some bed sheets dirty. Their moms have no idea how they did that.
Some kids are selling cloverleaf brand salve they ordered from the comic books. My mom bought some. I might do that someday and get rich! Let’s see now. Over 500 people in Bynum and if I could sell every one a can of salve…. I would make over a $100! I could buy lots of stuff with that.
Are you going to the Boy Scout meeting tonight? Mr. Gresham says that we start planning for the Jamboree this fall. Shucks, I’ll bet he makes me man the knot tying boot again. I keep forgetting all those funny knots and it is so embarrassing. He threw me out of the booth last year for making a hangman’s noose.
Larry Payne and Billy Brasher went down to the beauty shop and had Billy’s mom shave their heads. They now look like two “thumbs up” from behind.
Mayberry RFD had nothing on us kids at Bynum. We had our own characters and episodes of humor and lessons in life. We saw the effects of dysfunctional families and the opposite effects of very functional families. Happiness was generally a shared experience in Bynum. Unhappiness was kept very private.
We had no Andy Griffith or Goober but we did have Mr. Carpenter and Doodle Bug. We had no Floyd but, we did have Brooks Mundy. We had no Barney Fife but we had several guards to laugh at. We had something that Mayberry did not have….. we had our own Santa Clause (Mr. Walker).