Dad's Stories: Get A Rock

GET A ROCK! (written Mon, 10 May 2004)
No one has tested the old adage, “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” more than me. When I was around four years of age, it dawned on me that I was very adept at throwing rocks and hitting what I aimed at! This is a disgusting habit and should never be taken lightly or encouraged in any young child. Growing up in a neighborhood populated by other Army brats you learned at an early age that it wasn’t beneficial to allow oneself to be pushed around.
One good scrap is about all it takes to convinced a boy that the odds are against him winning a fist fight with someone that’s a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier. In moments like these you must bring an equalizer into play. About the handiest thing around for me was rocks. When someone picked on me, I would yell, “Get a rock!” My antagonists soon learned to immediately vacate the area once my survival instincts kicked in and I ran for rock. They tell me I was very accurate with a rock at a very young age. I had mastered the difficult art of leading a fleeing boy at just the right distance to fling a stone that intersected his escape route at the exact moment necessary to fell the victim in his tracks.
Some of the drawbacks to this rather “sinister talent” was my parents were confronted by many an angry parent; I would occasionally be the recipient of an incoming missile; and getting caught with no rocks around. I usually carried a couple of nice throwing stones in my pocket.
I recall one rock fight in San Antonio, Texas, when I was about four years old. I had flung my missile and missed ( I must have had the sun in my face. How could I have been so careless). While digging in my pocket for another rock, I looked up just in time to see an ugly and distorted sphere shaped object speeding toward me. It hit the sidewalk one time and then caromed of my unprotected forehead. Oh day of tragic days… normally I’d be wearing my little plastic war helmet.
It’s like they say, sooner or later you’re gonna find someone a little faster or a little more accurate than you. I had obviously met that someone. I really don’t remember feeling much pain, but my small, dirt blotched, grubby little legs would no longer support me. I fell down and rolled onto my face and lay still like a salted slug. The next thing I know I’m riding in an ambulance with lights flashing and siren screaming. In the emergency room I remember getting my wound cleaned and sewed up.
Although I felt like a wounded war hero there were no parades or banquets. Instead I was admonished for being reckless and causing a lot of problems for other people. What kind of a war is this, I thought? I go out there in a rough army brat barrio… put my young life on the line every day and get no respect at all. Could it be that I didn’t deserve any respect? That I was destined to live the life of a lonely and forsaken “rock thrower?” Emphatically, yes, yes and yes!
Years later while going through Boot Camp in Fort Ord, CA., I recall a wizened platoon Sergeant instructing us, “If you duck your head and let the enemy establish superior fire power, you’re dead!” I nodded affirmatively as one who had once committed that very error and had suffered the humiliation of a flawed battle strategy. I mumbled, “He’s absolutely right.” The other recruits looked at me like I’d said something wrong. If they’d only knew that I was a true veteran, that I too had been to hell and back… they would have given me the same respect as the Sergeant!
When we lived in Fort Worth, Texas, during WWII. My daddy was an ROTC instructor at Pascal High School. We played outside all the time. Only going inside to refuel and rest at night. It was a very impressive time in my life, because it was when I first really got into the serial radio shows. When the William Tell Overture would come on the radio, kids would immediately stop what they were doing and run to their respective homes. We would fall onto the floor in front of the radio and listen as announcer Fred Foy’s dulcet tones would elucidate the well known and respected opening to the Lone Ranger. “From out of the past come the thundering hoof beats of the great horse Silver… The Lone Ranger rides again.” Brace Beamer, as the voice of the Lone Ranger, would yell to us through the radio’s speaker, “Hi Yo Silver away!” The Lone Ranger’s faithful companion would then bellow, “Get ‘um up Scout!” Ah, those were the days. I believe I was around fifteen-years-old, when I quit calling the LONE Ranger, the LONG Ranger.
Although the Lone Ranger was definitely one of my favorite childhood radio programs, I can’t tell you with any degree of certainty what, “Kemo Sabe,” means. Tonto was forever referring to the Lone Ranger as “Kemo Sabe.” There were a lot of jokes going around the neighborhood about the term and what it meant. None of them I care to rehearse for you at this time. I have assumed that it was a friendly _expression from one of the Native American languages, and I have found nothing to dispute this, but very little to support it. Like all good theories, one must try just as hard to disprove them as to prove them. I once asked a Native American friend in Radio, who was a full blooded Navaho, if he knew what "Kemo Sabe" meant and he looked at me like I was asking him if he could explain time and space. So I’m resolved to, “Faithful Companion or Sidekick.”
One late summer afternoon, I was passing the time waiting for the call to supper. I was perambulating around the yard looking for something to do, when an older boy from up the street yelled, “Look out kid.” He was speeding down the sidewalk on his bicycle. I stepped back just in time to miss getting hit by his front tire. “Watch out,” I yelled at him. He countered with something like, “Shut up and get out of the way!” In kiddom, those are true fighting words. As he sped on up the sidewalk, I dug into my pocket and removed a perfectly shaped throwing rock. The victim was about to find out that he was dealing with a true rock throwing professional. We’re talking aerodynamics here, not just kid stuff. I quickly judged the wind velocity and direction, put my left foot forward, turned sideways and took careful aim. At the distance he was from me, forty feet or so, I guesstimated that I would have to lead him by about ten feet. I drew back and launched the missile with a mighty heave!
The rock curved a little to the right and then began to ark back toward the left and my target. It appeared my azimuth and distance had been properly calculated, I was right on target. As the unsuspecting victim stood on the peddles and streaked down the sidewalk, it was obvious that both he and the rock were on a collision course. You could see it written in the stars, as they say. Bam! The rock hit the bike rider right between the shoulder blades. He shrieked loudly as his body leaped forward and impaled itself on the handle bars. He and the bike went end-over-end. His inert form lay on the ground as it had fallen. As I stood in front of my house wondering if I’d killed my first neighborhood kid, he finally began to move.
With a mighty effort he was bipedal and dazedly looking around the ground for the ordinance that had smote him from his bike. This wasn’t good, he was a survivor and he was obviously very angry. He had made it across the street and was standing about eighty-feet from me. With a Herculean effort he began to run toward me. This definitely wasn’t good. Something in my head told me, “You can’t stand here and dispose of him like Little David dispatched Goliath. Retreat!” Discretion is the better part of valor. I’m certain the first guy to say that was preparing to flee the battlefield. The huge boy was drawing closer. Here, I would like to remind my readers that I have only been outran one time in my life and that was by a boy named Jimmy Lomax. Following a disagreement in the front yard over Kick Back, I had chased Jimmy up a long grassy road and could just reach out and touch his shirt, but couldn’t catch him. By the time we’d gotten to the end of the road both of us had forgotten what started the argument and went back to playing our game.
I spun on my heels and quickly reached top speed as I ran for the backdoor of our house. “Why the back door.” you might ask. Well, going in the front door was slower because you had to open a screen door and big wooden door and there was no friendly adults to help you. Secondly, I knew my Mom and Dad were in the kitchen fixing supper. I quickly scampered up the back steps and tore open the screen door and darted inside. “Help me!” I yelled as loud as I could, while running to the back of the kitchen. My daddy was attending to something on the stove and whirled around just as his private spaced was invaded by my tormenter. The screen door had hardly closed when the giant boy chasing me pulled it open and ran inside the kitchen and headed for me.
My daddy said, “Whoa, what in the tarnation is going on here?” He had a look of surprise and confusion as he reached out and grabbed the older youth and pinned him against the sink. Daddy told him, “Boy, you can’t come busting into my house and start beating up one of my kids, what did he do to you?” “He hit me with a rock,” the boy responded. “Sammy, did you hit him with a rock?” “Yea, but only because he tried to run over me with his bicycle,” I countered. My dad ordered the youth, “Get out of here and leave my kids alone!” He left without another word. I thought my daddy was going to skin me alive, but instead he said, “Sammy, go clean up for supper and quit throwing rocks.” Wow! I thought, that’s it? I’m getting off easy on this one. Once in a while daddy would let me slide a little. When you did push him over the top, look out!
Near our Fort Worth address on Lipscum Avenue, there was a large vacant lot that we’d play in. Two opposing groups of us had dub out a couple of trenches and placed lumber boards over the top and covered the boards with dirt. These were fun to play in. No chance of a gave in and just deep enough that we could maneuver in them by bending over slightly.
We would gather in the lot, choose up sides and have at it... heaving dirt clods at one another. The trench provided good cover, but once you tucked tail and scampered inside the tunnel, you couldn’t get back out to return fire. Remember, keep that superior firepower going! One day we were playing and dirk clods were flying everywhere. Now, to be an accomplished dirt clod thrower, you must be able to dig up the right size and shape of a dirt clod. If it was too thin it would “Frisbee” on you and if it was too big, you couldn’t get proper distance. I don’t like to brag, but I could hit a garbage can twenty times in a row at thirty paces! I knew it and they knew it.
This particular day we had a real donnybrook of a dirt clod battle going. One of the opposing kids was wearing some sort of a metal cooking pot on his head that was held on by elastic wrapped around the pan and then under his chin. That little dude was a marked man from the very start. There was just something about that pot on his head and the false sense of safety it gave him, that drew up an almost primeval desire to pop him one with a dirt clod. Somebody whistled and the war was on!
Here’s a little more insight to surviving a dirt clod battle. Good periphery vision and rapid eye movement were imperative to survival and victory. More than one good “kid soldier” had fallen victim to an oblique attacked that had caught them in a vulnerable body spot. They would scream and fall just like a World War One soldier would do when caught by a machine gun burst in the middle of no man’s land. Quite often, a wounded combatant would lay where he fell… whimper a little, then get up and return to the fray. Other times, they skulked away to the healing triage (the bathroom) and receive the healing touch of their mom. After that they were usually forbidden to return to the front. The only time the battle would enjoy a cease fire, was when someone drew blood. We dreaded the sight of blood, ours or that of someone else. While time was called, the bleeder would be hustled to his home and dispatched within. Then the medics who had attended him, would hustle back to the battlefield and mount a surprise attack!
I crawled to a good vantage point and hid behind a small bush. I was waiting for the kid with the pot on his head to run out and throw some clods. I didn’t want to give my position away by randomly throwing clods toward the opposing trench in an attempt to establish that all important firepower! While my buddies pummeled their opponents with dirt clods I patiently waiting for my opportunity to “nail” the kid with the pot.
A couple of times I saw him get close to the trench opening because I saw his silly “pot helmet” reflect the sun… no, not yet. Let him run out a little further. I felt like a sniper about to claim his first victim. Finally, my patience paid off. The “pot head” ran out in the open. He held several dirt clods in his left arm and was throwing them with his right arm. He was going after some unfortunate victim with a great amount of alacrity when I stood up and took careful aim. I fired a dirt clod that I’d been shaping with my hands for ten minutes. Bulls eye! The dirt clod hit the kid with the pot on his head right in the stomach. He lurched forward as the metal pot flew off his head and landed on the ground in front of him. He was soon to follow and fell right on top of the pot, with that silly elastic band flopping around his head.
It was a picture perfect shot. I beamed with satisfaction as his mates ran to him yelling, time out, time out! I didn’t know it before I launched the clod, but the kid I had taken down was their General. I might have known it, he was the only one with a metal pot on his head. I expected by comrades to carry me on their shoulders, praising as author of the winning shot. They did nothing of the kind. It seems it was always the same. No matter what I did, it was expected of me.
I walked over to the fallen General and asked him if he was okay. He said, “Yea, I guess so… nice shot!” “Thanks,” I replied. Actually, I had missed! I had intended on hitting his "metal pot." Can you just imagine how that would have rung his ears.
I don’t remember too many “rock fights” or “dirt clod wars" after that. Maybe we were getting too old for such “kiddy games.” Actually, I believe we were slowly maturing and realized that someone could get an eye put out playing rough games where missiles were hurled with the sole intent of inflictiong bodily harm. Beside, there were lots of other games just as fun. But that’s another story, for another time.