Again, my son Jonathan has triggered memories from my past with his latest blog "Getting Robbed."  Although I wasn't robbed, I did have an interesting evening and proved how stupid I really am.  It was Halloween night in 1966.  The town was Cherokee, Kansas and I had only been in the area for about 4 or 5 months.  My parents had separated again in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. 
   
      There were about 20 of us sitting on the stone wall that surrounded the one of the bus barns of the school district (USD 247).  It used to be the sight of the Cherokee Grade school or High school....I don' t remember...or maybe never knew.  Anyway, some guy drove up in his car and stopped.  He started shouting some obscenities at one of the guys there and I interrupted him with, " Hey, why don't you go away and leave us alone?   We're not doing anything but just sitting here."   He got back into his car and drove off, waving with only one finger as he left.  We went back to laughing and talking about what "tricks" we could pull on the local people of Cherokee on this night of Trick or Treat.

      About 10 minutes later, the guy showed back up and stopped back in the street next to us and got out.  He laid the barrel of a rifle across the top of his car aimed at me, right between the running lights.  Everyone else sitting on the fence, dove over it and lay flat on the ground.  For some reason, I figured this was his warped impression of Trick or Treat.   He said something like, "Now I'm going to blow your ass away."  I said back, " If you look back to the west, down the street, you can see the police car with the officer in it looking this direction.  Now don't you think that you ought to put that gun away and go away?" (Told you I was going to prove how stupid I was.)  Again he got back into his car with an encore of expletives and another one fingered wave and drove off.  After he was out of sight, the others started raising their heads and getting back on the fence.  Someone asked, "Don't you know who that was?"  "No," I responded.  I can't remember what his name was. but I do remember the description of what he was.  They said "He just got out of prison a couple of weeks ago.  He was in for manslaughter."  I remember asking, " Didn't you think that may have been something I should have known when he first left?"   They said, "We didn't know he would be coming back."  "Thanks, guys....guess there are some tests you have to put the new guy through to be accepted.  This is a bit too much."

      Didn't hear anymore or or out of that guy......don't know if he went back to prison or left town or what.  I am probably still just as stupid today as I was then.  After that incident, the crowd kinda broke up into groups to 2 or 3 guys to individually get into mischief on their own.

      The small group the I was with was Sam Massey, Roger, Andy Bethel and myself.  We headed north for the bus barn area and the fence and found a house with the old out-house behind it.  We started to tip it over and heard a round being chambered in a shotgun accompanied by a voice saying, "You'd better get the Hell outta here."  We didn't wait, we hauled butt.   I'm sure the guy fired way above our heads, just to scare us and not hurt us.  He made his point, about 3 yard over from where we lit out was a clothes line wire about 5 feet above the ground.  I must have been the only one to not see it as it caught me right around the eyebrows and flipped me.  I hit the ground on my stomach.  I got up and ran again.  I was sure I would have a mark on my head over this one....now was not the time to check it though.  We decided to ride around a little and keep out of trouble.

       We were (Sam, Roger, Andy and myself) riding with Andy and had to stop for a train going through town.  It was stopped a crossing. Sam and Roger and I thought it would be a good idea to hop on it and ride it to Pittsburg and meet Andy at 20th and the By-pass (about 10 - 12 miles).  We got out of the car and got on the train, climbed up to the top of the car and waited for it to start up.  There was a member of the crew that must have seen us, because we could see him coming down the track toward us.  We got back off the car and hid in the bushes on the other side of the train.  He stopped where we had gotten on and shined his flashlight around.  After a minute or two, he headed back up toward the engine. 

      We got back on and in a few minutes the train started up.  What the train held was coal.  The dust on the coal was blowing everywhere.  We climbed down between the cars and sat on the open ends of the cars and waited  to progress to Pittsburg.  We knew that the train would have to make a big turn to the east (right) to go to Pittsburg.  The speed increased to line speed and we waited for the thing to slow down and start the curve to P'burg.  It didn't happen.  It just kept on going north and picking up more speed. By now it was going too fast to safely jump off so we just hunkered down and rode it out.  It did start to slow down and make a gradual turn to the right so we looked for a place to jump off.  A bit after midway in the right turn, the train started to pick up speed again.  We decided to look for a place to jump off of now.  The moon was in and out of the clouds and didn't afford too much light to "shop" for a jumping off site.  We decided to just jump off and take our chances.  I jumped, then Sam and then Roger.  I went off a crossing and into a stream, Sam went into some bushes and Roger went into an old rusty fence, that luckily broke when he hit it.

       We all survived the jump in one condition or another.  We could see the lights of Fort Scott to the east of us and headed toward them.  After about an hour of walking we came across a gas station still open.  We went into the bathroom to get a little cleaned up, we were covered with coal dust, clothes and bodies.  There was no soap so we did the best we could with just water and paper towels.  Only about 30 to 50% effective, we still looked like we came out of the Grapes of Wrath when we exited the station.  We walked over to US Highway 69, the main road between Fort Scott and Pittsburg and headed south.  The towns are 25 miles apart so we knew we had  a long time of walking ahead of us.  It was about mid-night by then... and the thought of how dumb we had been was sinking in.  During the walk there were few vehicles passing us in the southbound direction.   We heard a semi coming from behind.  We figured if the guy had a sleeper cab, he may stop and pick us up.  We turned around and put out the thumbs.  This clown came off the road with two wheels and actually tried to run us over, we had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.  That was even more scary than the gun pointed between the eyes and the jump off the train.

      About two hours and two or three unsuccessful thumbing events, a car finally pulled over and stopped.  We ran for the car and the guy said he was on the way back to the college in Pittsburg from Kansas City.  We thanked him profusely and said we would gladly pay for the ride except we were totally broke and very stupid.  He laughed and said he could only vouch for the second part.   We got to Pittsburg about 20 minutes later and got dropped off about Washington and Broadway....about 2 blocks from Sam's garage apartment at his grandmother's house.  We got a bite to eat and called Andy Bethel back in Cherokee and asked him to come pick us up at Sam's and take us back to Cherokee to get our cars and go home and clean up and get some sleep....He really laughed until he cried when he saw our condition.  He asked if next year we would try to catch a train to Columbus (going South).  We just glared at him.