ME -- SWAMP RAT (1947-1949) -- Chapter 21

 

CHAPTER 21 

Two boys came walking up our long lane that first summer in the swamp. It was late June, not long after school had ended. Both boys were about my age, but I was certain I hadn’t seen them in my class. As it turned out, there was a third boy, he was younger and hadn’t come with his brothers that day. There was also a younger sister. And none went to my school.

I am sorry to admit, but I no longer remember their names.

They said someone at the plant told their mom a boy their age lived down in the swamp and they came to see. The “plant” was the Autocar Motor Company. They lived with their mom in one of the Cape Cod company homes that ran down the east side along the factory drive,  between it and the Church Farm School.

Their dad died in the war (World War II) and they went to the Hershey Industrial School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That was why I had never seen them before. They were off in Hershey when we moved to the swamp and old came home for summer break and a few holidays. Milton Hershey, the chocolate king, had created the school for orphaned boys in 1918. (The board changed the name to Milton Hershey School In 1959.) Today it is co-educational. In 1948 it was still an all boys school. (Pictured left: Milton and Catherine Hershey. Catherine appears t have enjoyed her husband’s candy.) 

Hershey Industrial was a boarding school, not unlike the Church

Farm School. Boys were to do chores as well as get an education. This included milking the cows twice each day. These boys only came home for a brief period at Christmas break and then for the summer months. We were to become fast friends for that summer taking turns playing at each other’s home. My mom, probably concerned about my lack of companions, even allowed me to walk along the highway to their place as long as I stayed on our side and well away from the traffic. I remained banned from cresting the hill behind us, though.

 The company homes were upon a steep gravel-covered embankment next to the Autocar plant. Atop this embankmentThere was some sort of dug out tunnel; a big hole actually, which we climbed into and pretended was a cave or fort or secret hideout. I don’t know who put it there. The boys claimed they had, but that seems unlikely. The structure was too and well designed for boys as young as we were to have constructed. I say it was a hole, but it actually wasn’t open where one might stumble across it and fall in. There was a wooden barrier across the opening that could be slid aside for entry and inside was a wooded ladder, almost steps, built into the dirt. I don’t remember if there was anything else inside, only that it went down several feet and widened into an underground room, a mystery I never solved. We would run back and forth along the edge of the hill playing the usual games of boyhood, war or Cowboys and Indians, anything where you chase each other a lot and pretend to shoot guns. At times we would duck into the hole and call it a fort or our hideout or whatever suited our imagination at the moment. Their sister was the youngest and stayed in with her mom most of the time. She never joined in our rough games or went down the hole.

Loose gravel covered the embankment slope. Embankments were never good to me.

 In Mrs. Helms’ Kindergarten we had a project. It was a simple thing,

to make paperweights out of coal. To get our material, Mrs. Helms took us on a field trip to the rail yard behind the Downingtown Train Station. There was a lot of loose coal pieces along the rails. We picked up large chunks to take back with us. While we were there collecting we went up into a field beyond the tracks. Don’t ask me why, I don’t remember. I do know I was running along side the embankment overlooking the train tracks and slipped. I fell forward into a barbwire fence and one of the barbs pierced and tore my left cheek. I’m sure there was blood and tears. It left me with a one-inch scar on that side of my face. It was like the sword scars the Old Prussian aristocracy wore as a badge of honor, and it didn’t completely fade away until I was middle age. 

Apparently, Mrs. Helms patched me up. I didn’t get stitches. I don’t know if I got a tetanus shot, I think not, but I didn’t get tetanus either. I completed my paperweight project and I have the piece of coal I dabbed with orange paint and lacquered sitting on my desk as I key this.

Now at Glenloch I once again slipped running along the edge of an embankment. I fell forward, but there was no fence to catch me. I slid down the length of the slope to the pavement of the driveway below. I was a bit stunned. I sat up and my left hand tingled. I looked and that hand was totally covered in blood.

 I didn’t want anyone to see my hand. It embarrassed me for some reason. Kid’s minds work in mysterious ways. I stuck my hand in my pocket and tried to act as if nothing was wrong and then I went down the hole to hide. The older of my friends caught a glimpse of blood on my wrist and insisted I see his mother. We went in his home and she made me take my hand out. She gasped when she saw all the blood. She washed my hand off and I had a long gash in the center of the

palm. I must have cut it on one of the stones during my slide. She slathered my palm with Mercurochrome, a common household antiseptic during my childhood. You couldn’t tell what condition my hand was in because the Mercurochrome stained it red and you couldn’t tell the blood from the cure. In more recent times the United States Government removed Mercurochrome from distribution in America as a potential mercury poisoning threat (something they should consider about those curlicue light bulbs they are forcing us to use).

 As she examined my hand during her treatment she commented on how the lines formed an M in my palm. Ah, I have a monogrammed palm! 

“You have a M in your palm,” she told me. “That means you will have money someday.”

She was a nice lady, but she was no prognosticator.

The cut left me with another long scar that didn’t fade for decades, a jagged line in my left palm. Although the scar did finally fade, you can see where it ran by looking at the lines. That top line that runs across is deeper than the others I had been born with. That’s where the cut had been.

 The boys were due to return at the end of summer to the Hershey Industrial School, as it was then known. The three of them walked to my home to say goodbye. This time they brought their little sister along. We played a bit and then they had to leave. I waved goodbye as they went down my lane and I watched them turn east toward where they lived. My mother was doing something in the yard, so I remained outside.

We heard the squeal of tires a few seconds later. We saw traffic slowing and my mother and I ran down the lane. There were a number of cars pulled over to the side of the road when we reached the highway. The three boys were standing on the shoulder. A woman held the oldest boy who pressed against her, obviously crying. People clustered out on the road surface and I just got a glimpse of their sister lying on the cement before my mom turned me about and shooed me up the lane. 

As the boys had headed home, the oldest boy saw some wild

flowers growing in the grass across the highway. He decided he would gather a bouquet as a goodbye gift for their mother. He had been leading their sister by the hand. He gave her to one of his brothers and told him to hold her hand so she didn’t follow. She wanted to pick flowers, too. She bit her brother’s hand, he let go and she ran onto the highway. A car struck her and she died on the road.

How horrible it must have been for the mother and brothers, the husband and father killed in war and the youngest, the only daughter, dead on the highway. I felt guilt for a long time, even though I had nothing to do with her death. Still, they had been visiting me, going home from my place when it happened. 

It was the last I saw those boys. They weren’t back the next summer. I do not know what happened to them during the rest of their lives. And I feel sad I can’t even remember their names.