Doodle Bug Gamble and Melvin Chambliss are setting up a “Big Ring” for marble shooting down by the Maddox’s apartment. If you don’t get there quickly, you will have to wait for the next game. There is only enough room in the ring for 10 shooters at a time.
Hey, guess what I just heard? There is a China berry gun battle going down at the creek below Yogi Dourough”s apartment. Cooney Brewer and Ronny Wheeler have made some real neat China berry guns that shoot real straight.
There is a ball game going on up on top of the playground. Yogi is showing his stuff and knockin’ them clear over the tennis court. Kenneth Brewer and Boyd Maddox are playing pitch. Kenneth just bought him a new glove down at the drug store where he works.
I heard that Gary Canant has driven his little tractor over to Big Manor to watch the marble game. Maybe he will let us ride it.
Great Scott! Doc Stevens is giving cherry cokes at the drug store for the deposit of five coke bottles. Hurry before he changes his mind.
Bobby Gamble is drafting up a crew to go up in the woods and build a bunch of huts and play like we live in the jungle and he is the chief. Doodle says Bobby is just showing off because he is older than the rest of us.
Uh oh! Honkey Horn is in trrrroubllle. His mom found the magazines he borrowed from Doodle bug hidden under his bed.
Heey! They’re making some ice cream over at Hubert Johnson’s. Maybe if we hang around they will give us some.
Dang! There was a water balloon fight behind the library and we missed it.
What’s playing at the base theater tonight? Oh boy! Red Rider and Little Beaver again. I want a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. Then I can pretend I’m out on the range just like Red Rider.
I hear the guards are going to watch close this Halloween to see who is soapin’ car windows. Now, just who would do a thing like that?
Let’s go up to the pool and watch the girls swim and sun. I hear that Juanita Pratt and Shirley Carr have new bathing suits. Judy Braxton is still wearing the one her dad told her not to buy. YeeHaw!
Anybody got a wrench I could borrow? The front wheel came off my bike when we were jumping ramps on the playground. I got to get it fixed so I can deliver newspapers this afternoon.
Growing up in Bynum was a very unique experience. We all loved living there and revered our own little world of simplicity and mayhem. We always had something to do and there were plenty of other kids to do it with us. No one in our little world was rich but some were more poor than others, some were of other ethnicity….. no problem, we were the same at Bynum. After we went into high school, others were in a kind of awe of us because Bynum kids stuck together……….. because we were family.
Later in life, I began to understand the closeness of people from places like the Bronx neighborhoods. We had our own version of it. Some things were great, some just good and some bad. But overall, we loved where we lived and grew up.
God sometimes makes some special places and put special people in them……….. we had that.
