“Well, Ears, were you about to say something?” Then she got right up in Ears’s face and he nearly fell over. A loud whistle saved him. The sergeant was standing on the back of the truck, yelling through a megaphone. “Turn in your team members! You have five minutes to get me the list!”
We added Connie’s name to the bottom of the list, and handed it to the sergeant. “Are there any more entries?” he yelled out to the crowd. He waited a minute and then said, “The teams are as follows.” Then he started reading off everyone’s name, and assigning a number to each team. “Team number four is made up of the following boys: Richard Mason, Chuck Lawson, Leroy Thompson, John Clayton Reed, and Connie Hays. What?”
Kids started laughing, and I heard Homer Ray just hooting, “They got a girl on their team! Ha, ha, ha.” I was turning red, and so was the rest of the team.
“Team number four, come here!” We walked up to the end of the truck where the sergeant was standing. “Listen to me, kids. This contest is set up for boys and men. Girls can’t do heavy lifting.”
“But, sergeant,” I said, “The rules don’t say nothin’ about boys and men only.”
“And besides,” said Connie, “I can lift anything these skinny boys can lift. Please let our team enter the drive.” The sergeant just stood there. Finally he just shook his head and said, “Okay, you can enter, but if that girl of yours gets hurt, don’t blame me.” After reading off the remaining teams the sergeant pulled out his pistol and said, “Attention, everybody! The government scrap iron drive is officially under way!”
Wow, the sergeant raised his pistol and fired a shot in the air: Boom! And the scrap iron drive began.
“Let’s get started, guys! John Clayton, go get your wagon and start piling up scrap at the old Phillips oil well site behind the Methodist Church, and Ears, you and Connie go to the old oil well across the road from my house. When we finish loading crap iron from the Phillips location, we’ll come over and pick up the scrap y’all have piled up.”
“I ain’t working with no girl.”
“Ears, just ignore her.”
“Connie, stay away from Ears. Make your own pile, and we’ll come get your scrap iron as soon as we finish with Ears. That is if you have anything piled up,” I laughed. Wow, I could see Connie turning bright red.
“You bunch of skinny, little smart mouth rats! Just wait and see which pile’s the biggest!”
“Let’s go!” I yelled, and we were off in a dead run.
Heck, I knew we were a cinch to win, ’cause me and John Clayton knew every old abandoned oil well around Norphlet, and they’re loaded with scrap iron. But, dang it, even before the first hour of the contest passed, I found out that every other kid in town also knew about all that scrap iron. When me and John Clayton got to the old, abandoned Phillip’s Oil Well location behind the Methodist Church, another team had already started picking up the scrap iron. It was that sorry Homer Ray and his team.
“Oh my gosh,” I said.
“Get off our well! This here scrap is ours,” yelled Homer Ray. He charged me, throwing rocks as he ran. The second rock caught me in the stomach, and I was about to hightail it out of there when John Clayton ran up to Homer Ray.
“Hey, this scrap iron ain’t just yours!” said John Clayton. “We’re gonna get all we can, and if you start anything I’m gonna tell my brother!”
Since John Clayton has a big brother that would pound the heck out of Homer Ray if he bothered us, Homer Ray stopped throwing rocks and started grabbing as much scrap iron as he could. We stockpiled our own, and 30 minutes later we had our first load and were headed to the collection center. Then we ran back to the other location where Ears and Connie were working, and there were two piles of scrap.
“Ears, way to go! Look at that pile, John Clayton!”
“That’s my pile. Your skinny, little rat. Ears can’t even beat a girl. His puny pile is over on the other side.”
Ears looked kinda like a whipped-up-on yard dog because his pile was less than half the size of Connie’s. And, heck, that’s the way it was for the whole drive. That dang girl could drag up more stuff and any two of us. It was a little embarrassing, but we finally got used to it. Boy did we work.
And I was working harder than anybody. I would have to deliver them danged papers and then scrounge up enough food for the sorry, escaped criminals, before I even started to work on collecting scrap iron. Then lie to Daddy about where Sniffer was and, of course, tell John Clayton and all the others on our team that I had put Sniffer in the pen to keep him out of the way while we worked to drag in the scrap iron.
The next day we were hauling scrap from morning till night, but after the end of the second day, even as hard as we worked, I figured we were probably in third place. A team of older boys had a pile of scrap iron about 2 feet higher than ours, and Homer Ray’s team looked to have a pile just a little bigger than ours.
On Thursday morning John Clayton spoke up. “We’ve gotta find some new areas to pick up scrap. We ain’t never gonna catch up if we just dump three wagons a day.” Heck, we were really down in the dumps. I didn’t think we had much of a chance.
“It’s not gonna do us any good to just wander around pulling our wagons hoping we’ll run into a big pile of scrap,” I said. “Let’s split up and spend the morning looking for some new places.” Everybody agreed and off we went. I decided to go behind the refinery where my daddy worked, because the refinery crews had been dumping trash and other junk along an old logging road for years. I was about to give up when I walked up to a pile that looked different. There was none of the refinery trash that was in the other piles.
My heart almost stopped when I got close enough to the pile to see what was there. My gosh, the danged refinery crews had sorted out all the scrap iron from their trash and piled it up in one pile. Heck, I’m sure they’d want this scrap to go for the War effort. Well, maybe they didn’t have that in mind, but, shoot, if it would help win the War, I figured it was okay. I ran all the way back to town.
“Connie! Ears! John Clayton! Chuck! Get the wagons! I’ve found a huge pile of scrap iron!!!” In a few minutes we were standing in front of a bigger pile of scrap iron than we’d ever seen in our whole entire lives.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Ears, “look at all that scrap! We’re gonna win this thing!” My gosh, you ain’t never heard such yelling. After a day of hauling more than 25 loads to the collection center, we’d barely made a dent in the heap of scrap metal at the refinery, and our mound at the collection site was about to move into first place. However, I noticed Homer Ray’s team was spying on us. They were finding almost nothing to put in their pile, and on Wednesday morning as we started back to the refinery scrap iron pile, two of the kids from Homer Ray’s team followed us.
I yelled to Connie, who was out ahead: “Connie, come back here—they’re following us.” We stopped and went back to town, and after everyone had gone home for the day, we sneaked back to the refinery scrap iron pile and filled our wagons. After dumping our last load of the day, we were all standing around talking with the other teams when we got in a little name calling with Homer Ray.
“Hey, Homer Ray, take a look at our pile now!” Ears taunted.
Homer Ray was really hot. “It ain’t over yet you little punks! Wait till Saturday and see who’s ahead!”
“Ha, Ha, listen to the big, stupid loser!” I hollered. We were almost counting the money from the War Bond.
“We’re ahead, Homer Ray,” yelled John Clayton, “Ain’t no one can catch us now. Just how do you think you’re going to win when you ain’t bringing in nothin’? Ha, ha, ha. Loser! Loser! Loser!”
There were only two more days in the drive, and now we were way ahead. Friday morning right after I finished my paper route, we started out again at 6 o’clock to get our last load, but when we walked up the road to the refinery scrap iron pile, we knew something was wrong. There were tire tracks that hadn’t been there the day before. Then we came to the scrap
pile.
“Oh no. Someone found it!” I yelled. “And they’ve stolen every bit of our scrap iron!” Oh my gosh, surely Homer Ray didn’t find it. “They must have followed us yesterday and we didn’t see them.”
Now, things really looked bad because somebody had hauled off every bit of the huge pile of scrap iron. We ran back to town, and what I saw made me sick at my stomach. Team number nine, Homer Ray’s team, now had a huge pile. They’d cleaned out the refinery stockpile and were gonna win the contest. Heck, they had it in the bag now, and there wasn’t a dang thing we could do. That sorry dog, Homer Ray, was strutting around, laughing and yelling at us. “Hey, you little punks, who’s gonna win now? Ha, ha, ha ha! Now, who’s the loser?”
We walked away feeling about as sick as a person could. Heck, we all had our heads
down, and I felt like crying, but when I looked at Connie. She was smiling.
“For gosh sakes, Connie, why are you smiling?”
Connie looked at me and said, “I know how we can win the contest.”
“What?”
We all stopped while Connie finished. “Remember when we split up last Monday and looked for new places? Well, I found a huge piece of scrap iron, but when you found the big refinery pile I didn’t say anything, because what I found is too big for us to move, but if we could get it to our pile, we’d win easily.”
“Well, I’ll bet all of us together can move it,” I said.
“No, we can’t. Now listen to me, you boys. I’ve put up with a lot just workin’ with y’all, especially you, Ears—and, besides, Homer Ray and his team have been laughin’ at me since the contest started. Promise me this. If we get this big piece of scrap iron into town, and we win, will you give me credit in front of everybody?”
We all laughed. “You bet!” hooted John Clayton, “and Richard will even give you a kiss.” We were all laughing like crazy.
“There’s no way you could’ve found anything that big,” I said. “Sure Connie, it’s a deal.”
“Okay, follow me.”
We started off with Connie leading the way, and after about a 40-minute walk we were at the end of an old oilfield road.
“I don’t see nothin’,” Ears said.
Connie walked back in the underbrush and called to us. “Come over here and look behind this big patch of weeds.”
We walked over behind an old oil well pumping house through some bushes, and there in a patch of overgrown blackberry bushes was an old cast iron steam boiler left over from the early boom years. It was at least 20 feet long and 8 feet wide.
“Dang, it is big!” said John Clayton. “I’ll bet it weighs at least 2,000 pounds.”
“You’re right, Connie. If we could get it to our scrap pile, we’d win. But, it’s gonna take a big wench truck to even budge it,” said Ears.
“Let me talk with my daddy,” I said. “The refinery has winch a truck.”
That afternoon when Daddy came home from work, I was sitting on the front steps. “Daddy, Connie found the biggest piece of scrap iron you ever did see, but we can’t get it
downtown. Can you borrow the refinery’s winch truck?”
“Well, Richard, there is a winch truck at the refinery, but I can’t just use it. You’ll have to go ask Uncle Bill. The refinery superintendent is the only one who can allow the winch truck to be used for non-refinery work.”
I walked over to the superintendent’s house before supper that night to ask if he’d send the winch truck to haul in the boiler. Bill Powell, the refinery superintendent, is such a close friend to our family that I call him Uncle Bill, even though he ain’t my uncle. After I asked him he was shaking his head before I even finished.
“Richard, you know I’d like to let you borrow the winch truck, but it wouldn’t be fair to the other teams. There are a lot of boys on other teams whose dads work at the refinery. I just can’t do it.”
I was about to give up when I had a thought.
“Uncle Bill, we really want to do something to help win the War. That boiler would melt down and make enough steel for a tank.” And before I thought, I said. “If we win, our team has decided to give the War Bond back for the war effort.”
He studied me closely. Richard, are you really going to donate the War Bond back if you win? Now tell me the truth.”
“Yes, sir, I promise.”
“Well, I shouldn’t do this, but since it’s for the War effort, and if you’re 100 percent sure your team is going to donate the War Bond back, I’ll send the winch truck by your house about 9 o’clock tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Uncle Bill!”
At 9 the next morning our team was sitting on my front porch waiting for the winch truck. John Clayton saw the truck first. “Here it comes! Here it comes!”
We were all excited, yelling and laughing. The boys hopped on the back of the truck, and Connie got in the front seat to direct the driver. In a few minutes we were backing the winch truck up to hook on to the boiler.
“Dang, Richard, that thing’s a whole lot bigger than we thought,” said John Clayton.
“Maybe it’s too big for the winch truck to pick up,” I said.
The driver got out and looked things over.
“I don’t know, boys; I ain’t sure this truck can pick up that much weight, but we’ll see. You boys slip the winch line under the boiler, and I’ll give it a try.”
“Here Ears, pull it under,” I said. Soon we had the line wrapped around the boiler and ready to pick up.
“Stand back, boys, the line might snap!” The winch line tightened, the truck groaned, and the line started popping like it was about to break. The boiler was just about to swing free when the front of the truck lifted off the ground.
“Too heavy!” yelled the driver. “This truck can’t pick it up!”
“Wait a minute!” I yelled to him. “How about if everybody got on the front bumper to hold the truck down?”
“Well, let’s give it a try.”
We dashed around to the front of the truck and jumped on the bumper. The line tightened again, and this time the boiler cleared the ground.
“Okay, kids, I’m gonna drive real slow. Hold on tight.” We slowly eased our way up the oilfield road. The old truck groaned as it pulled up the final hill and turned onto the pavement. Now we were headed downtown with the big iron boiler swinging behind the winch truck and four kids standing on the front bumper hanging onto the hood. The contest ended at 12 o’clock sharp and it was almost noon when we made it downtown. People were everywhere. After we backed the truck up to our pile and let the 2,000-pound boiler down, we looked over at pile number nine, and there, standing by his pile, was Homer Ray.
Ears yelled at him, “Hey, stupid, check out this load of scrap, you loser!”
We were all yelling and laughing our heads off.
That afternoon, three huge dump trucks rolled up to the collection site, and the sergeant and several soldiers set up a big set of scales on the back of one of the trucks. The sergeant stood up on the back of the truck and blew his whistle, “Okay, listen up folks. We’re going to weigh each team’s scrap as we load it. I am going to start with Team number one.” The truck moved from pile to pile, with the sergeant jotting down the weight for each team’s scrap iron.
He came to team number four, our pile. He took a look at the boiler, and shook his head. “Boys, that’s one big piece of scrap iron. It’s too big to weigh, but I declare that there’s no doubt that y’all have won the Junior Division by at least a thousand pounds.”
We yelled our heads off, as our team waved at Homer Ray. The sergeant moved to the next pile, and finally after the weighing of all the scrap iron in every pile, he stood up on the back of the dump truck to announce the winners. He announced the older team winners first. Then he announced the Junior Division. “Team number four wins the Junior Division. Will team number four come forwardand pick up your $100 War Bond.”
“Come on, everybody; let’s go get that War Bond!” hollered John Cla
yton.
“Get up here on the back of this truck,” said the sergeant to our team. Since I’d organized the team I was the one that the sergeant would hand the War Bond to. I stepped forward and then it hit me. Oh my gosh, I haven’t told the team about donating the War Bond back.
“Uh, uh, just a minute sir. I need to talk with my team.” We stepped back behind the sergeant and huddled.
“What are you doing, Richard?” said John Clayton.
“Listen! I’m sorry but I’ve got to give the War Bond back. I had to promise to give it back to get the winch truck.”
“You what?” everybody screamed. Well, the team was furious, but we were huddled in front of half the town with an army sergeant standing over us, so instead of hitting me, they just looked stunned and finally nodded their heads when I told them that the refinery wouldn’t let us borrow the winch truck unless we donated the War Bond back. I turned around to accept the check when I felt someone pulling my sleeve. It was Connie.
I looked at her, and she whispered, “You promised to give me credit in front of everyone.” I nodded but before I could say anything John Clayton nudged me.
“What?” I whispered.
“You also promised to kiss Connie,” he giggled.
“Oh my gosh,” I mumbled.
The sergeant who had been watching us whisper back and forth shook his head and exclaimed, “Son, don’t you want this War Bond?”
“Yes sir! Yes sir!” I stepped forward, and the sergeant presented me the War Bond and, for a minute, I was speechless.
Then I said, “Sir, our team would like to donate this $100 War Bond back to the War Department.”
The sergeant nodded his head and smiled as took his megaphone and yelled out to the crowd.
“Folks, did you hear that? This team is donating their War Bond back for the War effort!” Everybody yelled and clapped, and the sergeant made us line up for a picture. Then I felt John Clayton poke me. He whispered, “You promised.”
I knew I had to do it. “Sergeant, can I say something else?”
Lyin' Like a Dog, The Yankee Doctor, The Danged Swamp! 3-Volume set Page 47