Richard, the paperboy from The Red Scarf, Sept 1944, #7

Richard, the paperboy, from The Red Scarf, Sept. 1944, #6
I don’t know how to tell y’all this, but me and John Clayton has got in trouble again, and it’s serious as death trouble…you know big time switching trouble. Well, listen up and I’ll tell you how it happened, and I think y’all will see it weren’t nothing we did.

You see we’d finally scraped up enough money to go to the circus in El Dorado…you know Ringling Brothers, Barnam and Baily… biggest circus in the entire world…that’s what folks say. Anyway, we had a special ticket a man a gaved us for putting up posters. It was to see Guaruantua, the great ape. Well, when we got into the tent where the big ape was, he was sound asleep. Heck, nobody in the entire world wants to see a sleeping ape, so I had this real smart idea…we would stand by each end of the cage and hiss like a big snake. John Clayton would hiss then I’d hiss. What we was trying to do was to just wake him up where we could see him better. The hissing started and we did, wake him up and then some. I knew we shoulda stopped, but John Clayton got carried away and after old Guaruantua got up and started shaking the bars, John Clayton went into a hissing fit. Oh my good Lord in heaven above!…he shouldn’t a-done that. For you could move one of them bars cracked, and we both let out a scream you could have heard in Norphlet. Heck, we was sure that big ape was gonna come outta that cage and start pulling people’s arms off, so we ran out of the tent screaming, “Guaruantua is escaping! Run for your lives!” Uh, well that kinda got peoples attention, and they was the dangest yelling you’ve ever heard and a big crowd of folks went running down the midway. Heck, we was running like a scalded dog and was halfway back to Norphlet brfore you could turn around.

Now, we’re in more trouble than you can imagine. The danged ape didn’t get out, but as the sherrif, said, “It was two boys from Norphlet which caused all the trouble, and we’re gonna find out who they is.”

Now, all we was trying to do was see Guaruantua stand up. It wasn’t our fault that he woked up in a bad mood.

Well, it seems like folks is always trying to blame me and John Clayton…heck we didn’t do nothing…much.