Richard, the paperboy from The Red Scarf, Sept. 1944, #5

September 23
Richard, the paperboy, from The Red Scarf, Sept. 1944 #5
Okay, y'all, listen up and i'm gonna prove to you that me and Ears ain't kid criminals. Well, first off let me go back to the watermelon patch with two big old hounds howling like crazy right on our tails, us lugging a danged big 70 pound watermelon while we was trying to just fly across that cornfield, and to top it all off old man Odom was firing away with his old shotgun full of bird shot. 'Bout that time Ears let out a squeal like a stuck pig, "Ahaaaaaaaa! I'm hit! Shot! I'm gonna die!" Course, even with Ears yelling that he was gonna die didn't do nothing but put us in higher gear...if that was possible. We made it to the woods with bird shot raining down all around us and the two danged dogs right on our heels. Shoot, we slipped that big watermelon into some bushes and I yelled at Ears, "Get your slingshot out and shoot them danged dogs!" Course every boy we know carries a slingshot in his back pocket and in about the time it take to blink we was a-drawing back to shoot some dogs. I guess if anything was funny 'bout this whole mess was when that first dog caught a rock right up side his ugly head. Man a-live, he put her in reverse so fast his feet was a-spinning. Two more rocks and them dogs hightailed it back toward their house. But, whooooo, you ain't never heard nothing in your life like the cussing old man Odom made when he got to the edge of the woods. We hid behind a big old oak tree while he railed on and on, you know, how he was gonna have our hides. Well, he finally went back toward his house and we took off like two scared rabbits back toward town. We didn't stop running till we was at the breadbox. Ears was whinning like he'd been beat with a crowbar, saying he was dying and bleeding to death. Well, I looked at the back of his neck where there was a little spot of blood and right under the skin was a piece of birdshot. Heck, I just popped it out and that was all they was to it. Course, Ears let out another yell like someone had cut one of his finger off. Well, of course we hid out the rest of the day, but the next day, which was the fourth of July we went back to where we'd hid the watermelon and in a few minutes we had it on my wagon and were hauling it back toward town. Okay, let me confess a little something: We was gonna take it to a picnic table behind the school and get so full of watermelon we'd hafta roll home, but something happened. We passed the camp where the solddiers were camped and we could see them sitting around doing nothing on the fourth, and we got to feeling bad. Heck, before we knew it we'd hauled that watermelon over to where them soldiers were camped and five minutes later me, Ears, and 'bout 10 soldiers was chowing down. So see we ain't no low rent kid crinimals. We's even...We did swipe a watermelon, but we give it to the soldiers, course we ate a bunch of it.....more tomorrow.