Seven
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Jawbreakers
When we kids were
little we didn’t have much of any contact with other children until we started
ridin’ the school bus with kids of all grades, even ones in high school. Those
high school kids soon found out that my brother, Richard, could be pert near
talked into most anything. One day Richard got kicked off of the bus for
kissing girls because two of the high school boys had put him up to it for a
piece of hard candy, which Richard never received. Another time he got talked
into somethin’ that caused some really big trouble with our parents, again he
was misled by the same two boys. Our family took cream to the creamery several
times a week and got paid once a month by check. Richard got talked into
getting cash money instead of puttin’ the payment on our parents’ account. He
went out and bought jawbreakers with the money. Needless to say, our parents weren’t
too happy and Richard, once again, got a tongue-lashing and a lesson in
responsibility and obedience.
Richard broke his arm right after that in a fall
from a tree. The day his cast was removed he got on the swing at school and
fell off and broke it again. Although Richard seemed a littler mischievous, he
was well beyond his years in helpin’ with all of the farm work. He was
responsible for roundin’ up our cow for milking, feeding the chickens, hitchin’
up our horses with Pa, as well as other many other chores.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Sarah Jane,” Rae Ann inquired, “you alright?”
“I’m just a bit tired, I recon.”
“Maybe we should tell Ma and Pa to take you to
the doctor.”
“I don’t like goin’ there so much, but if I
ain’t better soon—”
“Ok, we’ll wait and see. Your cough better
today?”
“Yeah, I recon.”
Sarah Jane had come down with a nagging cough
over the previous winter that had lasted for months, but with the conclusion of
summer it seemed to be subsiding somewhat.
“Hey,” Richard entered the bedroom where two of
his sisters were playing, “Want to go to town today?”
Sarah Jane was first to reply, “Are you crazy,
Richard? It’s too far to walk.”
“Yeah,” Rae Ann agreed.
“Who said we was walkin’? Pa’s goin’ and we just
hitched up the wagon.”
“What about Ma and Mary?” inquired Rae Ann.
Richard was getting anxious to leave and
answered abruptly, “They want to stay home… you two comin’ or what? Pa and
Teddy are waitin’ on me.”
The two sisters looked at each other
before Rae Ann replied, “Naw, I think all us ‘womenfolk’ will just stay home
today. You ‘boys’ go have yourselves a time, ya hear.”
Richard ran out of the room, through the front
door like a scared rabbit running from a fox, then hopped into the back of the
wagon just as his father urged the horses on.
“Whew,” Richard gasped for breath as he sat up
and positioned himself next to his brother against the back of the wagon’s
wooden seat, “that was close.”
“Aw, you had plenty of time, Richard,” Teddy
assured “everyone knows you’re the fasted runner in school, faster than all the
older boys.”
“I guess so, but bein’ faster than a horse or
two, now that’s another matter all in itself,” Richard laughed.
The dusty trip to town always felt like hours to
Richard. His anxious spirit and the excitement he felt at being able to go into
town always got the best of him. His father was patient, but sometimes Mr.
Charlton’s patience wore thin.
“Can you boys settle down back there?” the boys’
father addressed his two youngins. “We’ll be there soon enough.”
“I ain’t moved a wiggle, Pa,” Teddy replied
defensively.
“Ok, Pa,” Richard answered.
“We gotta pick up some stuff for you all
youngins for school and I need to stop and check out an automobile.”
Automobile? Both boys’ minds raced faster than
jockey Willie Saunders had ridden the Thoroughbred, Omaha, to victory in that
year’s Kentucky Derby. The horse had earned the coveted Triple Crown that
summer with its win of the Belmont Stakes in New York.
“Automobile, Pa?” questioned Richard.
“I’ll tell you boys about it later. Just never
mind for now, we got some work to do.”
The two brothers knew better than to pester
their father when there was work to do. And talking was another thing not
generally allowed to its excess when there was work cresting the day’s distant
horizon.
Richard could not help himself at times; he just
had to express his feelings. He was all too familiar with his father’s famous
words, ‘You can talk tonight in your sleep… get to work’. Today, however,
Richard chose to exercise restraint concerning his deepening curiosity.
After purchasing a few items for his children’s
upcoming school days, John Charlton dropped the two boys at the drugstore and
instructed them to go in and buy a couple of sodas and that he would return
shortly to get them. After handing the boys some coins Mr. Charlton raised the
reigns and sped off in the wagon.
“Where’s Pa goin’?” questioned Teddy.
“I bet he’s goin’ to check out that automobile
he mentioned.”
Opening the door to the drugstore, Teddy
commented, “Wonder why Pa didn’t have a mind to take us.”
“If you was Pa and had somethin’ like lookin’ at
some automobile in peace and quiet would you take us along? Anyway, we can have
us a soda or two.”
“Two?” Teddy fearfully questioned.
“Yeah, Pa gave us enough change to get at least
two each, maybe some jawbreakers too. He didn’t have a mind to tell us not too,
right?”
Teddy thought for a moment, then replied, “I
guess so, maybe we’re gonna be here for a spell.”
After the boys seated themselves on two tall
stools along the left side of the counter, they gazed out of the big picture
window that stretched along the entire front of the store next to the entry
door.
“May I help you?” a young man asked the two
youthful patrons.
The boys happily gave their order to the soda
jerk; Richard ordered three scoops of chocolate ice cream for his root beer
float and Teddy took three vanilla scoops in his.
“This is like bein’ on a vacation or somethin’,”
Teddy commented.
Richard looked at his brother with a huge grin
across his face and replied, “You can say that again, Teddy.”
“Ok,” Teddy swirled around on his stool and
repeated the comment.
Laughing, Richard spun around on his stool too.
A couple of high school girls entered the
drugstore and smiled at the two boys. This made Teddy rather nervous, but
Richard decided to smile back. The girls sat a few stools away from the two
boys and continued to turn toward the two brothers and smile on occasion.
Richard and Teddy polished off another soda each
and used the rest of the money to but a few large jawbreakers for themselves
and one each for their sisters, even Sarah Jane. At the sound of a strange horn
outside of the drugstore, Richard and Teddy turned to look out of the large
picture window.
“Wow!” one of the girls exclaimed as she and her
friend gazed out of the store’s window.
Richard and Teddy could not believe their eyes.
Their father was seated in a 1927 Ford Model T that looked as new as the day it
was made. The two boys slid off of their seats, Teddy almost falling to the
floor, then they ran out of the store to see the car.
“Well, boys, what do you think?” their father
smiled from ear to ear.
At a loss for words, a rare thing for Richard,
the youth could only mutter, “Uh….”
Teddy curtailed his excitement by running his
hand across the vehicle’s fender, asking, “Where’d this come from, Pa?”
“It was a gift from a lifelong friend of our
family. He was killed last fall, in October I think. The man at the bank
couldn’t tell me all the particulars, bein’ that he didn’t know nothin’ much,
but he said it was bought all legal and all. There was just a note that said it
should go to us in the event he met an untimely demise. It took this long to
get it to us for some reason, but I ain’t a complainin’.”
Richard’s only comment was, “I just ain’t got
the words.”
“What about the wagon, Pa?” Teddy inquired.
“I’m gonna fetch it in the morning. I figured
you two would rather ride in the Model T back to the farm instead of mannin’
the wagon and horses all alone.”
Richard cheered, “Yeah, Pa.”
“We’ll head back to town early in the mornin’ and
fetch the wagon, I expect you two young men to not get yourselves into any
trouble when you take it back to the farm, now, ok?”
“No, Pa, we won’t get into no trouble,” Richard
promised.
“We better be stoppin’ at the fillin' station in
the morn, I recon,” Mr. Charlton proclaimed proudly, “hay and grains just ain’t
gonna do it from now on.”
The two girls inside the drugstore stood in the
window staring. Richard smiled and waved as his father honked the horn and
drove away toward home.
“Jawbreaker, Pa?” Richard offered.
“No thanks son, you just keep it for yourself.”
“If only we had this automobile before that
Park-O-Meter thing was set up in Oklahoma City back in July,” Richard said, “we
could have drove to see it the first day it was bein’ used.”
“Payin’ for parkin,” John Charlton moaned,
“imagine that. What’s this world comin’ to?”
Neither Richard nor Teddy could reply. The boys
could not imagine why folks would pay money to park a car on a public street.
The boys’ father continued with his verbal lamentations
“Makes a soul wonder what is comin’ next.”
Richard
and Teddy felt so proud to be part of a family with a motorized vehicle. Their
parents had already sold many of their livestock from time to time to make ends
meet, but that special feeling of owning a Model T quickly made them forget the
current dry summer and previous cold winter. Things looked better than they
actually were through the youthful, hopeful eyes of wonder that youngins tend
to possess.
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