| For an eleven year old, standing next to your new dirt bike on the high end of your one hundred plus acre farm with three ponds on it, looking down at it, is almost heaven. What is interesting is that every kid only knows what they know growing up. Kids that grow up on a farm, feel trapped or caged when they spend time in a city. Or even at a friend’s house who’s parents have jobs not requiring large amounts of land, they can feel a sort of claustrophobia if the house sits on too small a lot. For an eleven year old who has never known anything else, he feels immortal when on that property. For Jake Halstings, life was very similar to fitting that description. Brian Wilson was Jake’s best friend, or at least it was who he saw the most often. Brian was a year older and probably two years wiser, especially when it came to street smarts. He was bigger by both age and by simple genetics. On top of all that, he had an inner drive, which some might have called meanness, which allowed him to push through any situation. No matter how extreme or unlikely. Brian also had a dirt bike. His was not new, but it was the biggest of all the bikes in the gang. Jeff Ackers lived in town. If you wanted to call it a town. Actually it was just a collection of housing developments connected by a main blacktop road and a convenience store which stayed open from six in the mornings to ten at night. There were some other buildings which once had a business in them but now were just physical ghosts which had signs that were well-faded, each explaining what had once been there. Everything from a butcher shop to a motel was advertised as once having existed there. If you went down by the train tracks there were foundations of buildings which were once the post office, another lodging option, this one a hotel, and the remains of what had once been the place where the cattle were brought up to be hauled off to St. Louis after a quick stop in Kansas City. Now all these lots were just places that were hard to mow because of the still existing foundations. On the north side of town, where the newer, more expensive housing developments were located, was where Cory Raskin and Denny Oatman lived. It was in their area that the opposition mostly lived or at least hung out. They were all at least a year older, although they had one in their gang who was actually younger. Cory and Denny were both eleven years old too. Brian was the only one of the southers who was twelve years. He had been held back because his older brother flunked just ahead of Brian. Apparently the teachers decided that they were a lot to handle by themselves, they didn’t want the two brothers teaming up in the same class. When summer arrived that bicentennial year, it was a summer-long celebration of the country’s two hundredth birthday. The gas shortage and recession had not yet arrived and most people were doing pretty well. The kids in the little town of Staywell were definitely enjoying the perks of a strong economy. Many of the young boys and girls in town had a motorcycle which they used to cover the rather large area that made up the combination farming and residential housing communities. The southers were for the most part the farmers. Also making up that part of the community were people who wanted more than an acre to live on. Those families often owned about five acres and a few owned a ten or fifteen acre place. Motorcycles were in high demand for those living in such areas. Especially for kids aged ten to fifteen. The northers were the rich kids. Or what passed for rich in the town of Staywell. Truth told by someone looking on from the outside, none of the kids were what you might call dirt poor. The northers were called the rich because they were people who had money to spend compared to the southers who’s parents might have been worth more, but since all their wealth was tied up in farmland, they lived a much more humble life. Jake’s motorcycle was the exception. It had been a Christmas gift from his grandfather. He had received many nice gifts in his lifetime but this was far beyond any of the others. It was cherry red. A Honda. The only problem was that he weighed a little more than he should have for that bike. Jake was overweight the way that the empire state building was tall. He was losing some of the weight however. He didn’t know it yet, but the coming summer was going to help shave even more off. After Jake finished his chores, the rest of the day was his to play. He followed his usual routine and rode over to Brian’s house to see if he was home. Both his parents worked so the kids tended to hang out there. Brian had two older siblings and two younger. The older two were both girls, so they often were charged with baby sitting their three baby brothers. The problem was the boys were all a handful. Plus their numbers doubled if a each had a friend over, and well, you can do the math of what it was like when they had two or three friends over. Each. The sisters did pretty well in the cause of fighting back. One day early in the summer the boys dragged their oldest sister’s piano out into the front yard and set it on fire. At first opportunity to retaliate, the older sister hung Brian upside-down off their second-story balcony, holding him by one leg with one hand. She had one question. “Are you going to behave?” If you are wondering his reply? Simply ask yourself what you would say if hanging upside down from a second-story balcony and asked that question. Jake thought both older sisters were total foxes. Just to be touched by one of them was surely worth the fall? It was only two stories for crying-out-loud. His smart-mouth wanted to holler out, “I’ll take your place Brian.” His big problem with that was that if one of the sister’s held him upside down, the next thing to happen would be him dropping. He weighed too much for them to be able to hold him. Jake arrived to find the gang was all there. Brian’s house had a pool which was another reason everybody hung out there. On that early day in June it was the destination of temptation. All the guys figured since it was early in the summer that the pool would not have gotten old yet, for his sisters. Huge bonus!, they also had friends. Amazingly they were all foxes too. The girl watching was in full swing when Jake came walking up to join his friends who were playing in the water. Of course that was just done for distraction so the girls couldn’t complain that the guys were just staring at them. Which of course, is exactly what they were doing. The ladies got tired of the lame ploys by the boys, so to speak, so they left to go shopping. That left the afternoon open for whatever. The boys finally decided on fishing. They rode their bikes over to the local river, the Little Teal, where they spent the afternoon under the shade of a big Maple, which also provided the limb to which their rope swing was attached. It is a great way to spend an afternoon during a summer vacation. Swinging out over the water and dropping off for a big splash. The tree provided shade if you got too hot, and there was plenty of sunshine available if you got too cold. The water would get fairly warm in the month of August but it stayed cool all through June and most of July. About mid-afternoon the northers showed up at the rope swing. The Southers owned the location and the rope, since one of their own had climbed up to tie it up there. The Northers came down on rare occasions. Largely because much like the Southers, they had nothing else to do and were looking for somewhere to ride their bikes. It was okay to ride for the sake of riding, but having a destination and a purpose was much more enticing. |  Understand the relationship between the Southers and the Northers was a civil one. They all went to school together. As fortune or fate would have it, the Northers were all a year ahead of the Southers. Therefore there were instances over the years where the Northers, or at least some of them, were involved in bullying some of the Southers. Brian being the exception because even the kids a year older knew better than to mess with him. He had the courage of a wolverine and anybody who ever fought him would tell you, also the fight. The relationship was for the most part civil but those that had been bullied, had not forgot. And once you bully someone, you don’t forget that either. So the tension existed. One side wasn’t going out of its way to get revenge, but wouldn’t hate it if the situation occurred. The other side having been the bully once, was obviously not over-opposed to the situation or they wouldn’t have been involved the first time. So when the battle of waterbags was given life, it was just that; given life. There were no specific rules designated, no locations deemed out of bounds or safe sanctuaries, and there was no stipulations for law enforcement involvement. Of course, the big bang didn’t happen without something setting off the explosion. The Northers rolled up, there were four of them on four bikes. David Green, a kid who anybody with even two percent of imagination, would have guessed that by the time he was in his thirties would have more hair on his back and coming out his ears, not too mention his one eye-brow, than on top of his head. A pot-bellied gut and be wearing a torn wife-beater white t-shirt would finish out his look. Phil Dutchman was a spoiled rich-boy whose father owned a construction company. Everything he had came with a logo of his father’s company on it. Popular opinion was that it was done that way so they could claim it off their income taxes. Phil had a quick smile that always made you reach for your wallet to see if it was still there. Mike Berlin was the guy most likely to get into a fight with Brian. That was how the Southers would have voted him. They wouldn’t have told you to confuse that with the guy most likely to succeed however. Both Berlin and Brian were not big talkers. They both would choose action over words. Everybody in both gangs were aware of that fact and everybody consciously made an effort to avoid conflict evolving. That more than anything else was the reason the two bike gangs didn’t ride as one. Tommy Wiehner was to Jake what Mike Berlin was to Brian. That was pretty much where the two relationships parted ways however. Tommy would much rather run his mouth than actually get into a physical conflict. Though he had two years on Jake (he had been left behind a year, so he was only one year ahead in school), he was not physically bigger, though he did enjoy a height advantage. Jake had the weight advantage. The scales tipped in his favor, you might say. “Sooo, the southside boys. I thought you guys had a pool you hung out at?” Phil said, smiling that smile that made you want to check and see if your wallet was still there. Brian of course, took the lead. “You’ve been to my sister’s parties. You know we do.” He left it at that, basically daring Phil to say the wrong thing about one of his sisters. Phil was smarter than that. “Just kidding Brian. You have an awesome home and I hope I get to come to some more parties. I mean, if you have some.” Again he smiled. Brian ignored him completely and instead looked directly at Mike Berlin. “Playing football next year?” Berlin nodded. “Looking forward to getting on the field with you.” Brian said. Berlin nodded again. Jake saw it was time to separate the big dogs. His father also owned a construction company which was part of the reason his family had so much land. They needed a place to park the equipment when not in use. Jake stumbled for a reason to address Tommy, resulting in an awkward question. “You’re dad taking your mom to this year’s convention?” Tommy got a look on his face like he had just bit into a cookie expecting sweet and finding out instead it had been baked using salt. Then his facial expression changed immediately as he realized what Jake was doing. Instead of providing the sarcastic reply that jumped to be spoken he backed it down and said, “Yeah.” Then being his usual self he thought of something funny to say. “Seems dad has concluded in his old age that she’s gotten too ugly to kiss goodbye so now he just takes her with him where ever he goes.” Everybody laughed reducing any possibility of a violent occurrence happening. In fact it led to some of the others throwing in their jokes they had overheard their fathers saying about marriage. “Yeah my old man has his own approach to that. My mom asked him for money to get a boob job. Pops says back to her, isn’t that like pouring gas into a wrecked car?” More laughter. Suddenly the northers and southers were getting along. The invaders got off their bikes and stripped down to their underwear and joined in on the swimming and jumping off the rope swing. Sure it was a day where nobody completely let go their inhibitions about the other side, but it was a nice chance to get to know the other and find out they were human too. Next Page |