Four-wheel roller skates that clamped on street shoes. Hula hoop craze. Frisbee practice (boring). Basic tree climbing 101. Falling from trees 101. Learning to breathe again after fall. Finding new and improved bad words that we did not understand. Learning to eat soap.

It was a cowboy town in the Chillicothe frontier. Most television shows were all about cowboys. Good guys always got the bad guys... but there was always more the next TV night! Standard public attire for boys is as follows: cowboy hat, cowboy boots, cowboy chaps, one pair of six shooters, and gaudy holsters. Special edition guns actually fired caps of real gunpowder (cap guns). An acceptable street greeting was “Howdy Pardner.” It was a wonderful world—nothing like today.

We fished. We were early swamp people and proud of it. One of my buddies had a huge catfish head sun-dried above the front door. Pride of Benedict Street!  Everyone talked about it!  Thanks to my buddy I learned what “Stink Bait” could do for huge catfish attraction. I usually used worms for bait. Buddy’s name was Walker. We just called him “Slow.” He was huge around and had feet kinda like an elephant. Slow wore the same outfit six straight days a week. I could always pick him out of a crowd because of the twenty-foot empty circle of folks who respectfully kept some distance. He knew lots of cool information and I thought he was a genius. 

So one fine summer day we agreed to meet at the river at 10am. I decided to ride my bike ahead to get there on time (that’s what I told him anyway). Slow told me that he was bringing special stink bait that his Pa had created. I was very excited to hear about that. It was noon and the sun was cooking me on the bank of the river. Slow finally appeared thumping down the incline. “What happened? It’s noon Slow!” Sheepishly he mumbled his excuses. “Ma told me the car wouldn’t start so I had to walk. I thought hitchhiking would be faster. Everyone who picked me up dropped me off at the next corner. I had to wait for another car to stop. I didn’t know that the entire town was so busy. It took forever to get here. The last ride I got dumped me out at City Hall!” City Hall was about 400 yards from the river where I was waiting. It was all downhill but Slow’s feet were not adapted to walking like a human. His were elephant-like. Can’t fault him for that. But he had endured!

He pulled out a snuff can from his back pocket. There it was!  Stink bait in a can!  It wreaked like roadkill. I know most folks don’t carry roadkill in their cars so it made total sense to me that Slow was dropped off at every next corner. I don’t think Slow ever did understand that. I got sick to my stomach and rode straight home. I took an untimely shower. My mother was delighted but confused. “Catch any fish today?”  “Nope, they weren’t biting Mom.” Soon after we changed Slow’s first name to Stink Walker. We all felt that calling him Slow was disrespectful.

Hug your kids. Love your neighbor and thank God you live in a great small town.