MY FIRST REAL LIFE HERO (Cont.)

Blog number Ninety-five      06 June 2007 (D Day already?)

Only a few days after we met, I and him and his brother Robert, were walking in the neighborhood - down alleys mostly.  We came to one shed and Bud walked in, picked up a pump or something like that - it had a motor on it, painted green or red, I think.

I thought it a bit odd for a six year old to own something like that, and why was he keeping it in a place not his yard?  I didn't ask any questions though, and I think I figured out not much later that he had stolen it.

He said he got kicked out of Catholic school for stealing from the poor box.  He was still religious though - he made us doff our caps whenever we walked by a Catholic church.

One day we met a group of other boys and two men offered a nickel to whomever would fight.  Bud and this larger fat kid said they would do it.  The fat kid would swing a roundhouse, Bud would duck under and come up with an upper cut.  This went on for a couple more times until the fat kid started crying.  Swing, punch, swing, punch.  I don't know where Bud learned that.  He reminded me of one of the Dead End Kids.

One day we were in a filling station where there was a pay phone.  Bud wanted to call a friend that had a phone. We didn't have any money, but there was a slot on the machine that said, "Coin return," So Bud asked a man standing there if he would give him a nickel so he could call, telling him he would give the nickel right back when it came out of the coin return slot. I remember Bud saying to the man, "See?  It says 'coin return' right there.  You'll get your nickel back."

I couldn't figure out why the guy didn't go for \this.  Obviously we were going to get the nickel back so what could he lose?

Another day Bud found an old fly sprayer that had oil in it and was swinging it around and accidentally sprayed a lady's nylons.  She cussed and cussed at him.  She was mad!

We left Des Moines in 1942 to go live on the farm with my grandparents and I didn't see Bud again until after I was married in 1950.  MY then wife and I went to his old house and there he was, lying on the bed with a rifle, shooting flies on the ceiling.  He told us he had just gotten paroled for car theft.