Stories
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Smitty had been a member of the Hegel gang as they lived close to each other. He was freckle-faced with bright red hair and had the biggest mouth in town. Everyone put their lunch boxes in a line extending from where the bus would stop, about a car length from the curb, in front of the general store, as place holders for the line-up first-come onto the bus. The kids ranged in age from first to eighth grade. High schoolers were sometimes on hand but they took a different bus to a different school.
On really cold days we would all wait in the train station waiting room directly across the street from the bus stop, with a coal burning pot-bellied stove. Smitty was bragging all over the place that he had joined the Pat and Roger Gang. He was also doing a lot of mouthing off about how they had a secret fort that nobody would ever be able to find. I had climbed a tree after school way up high where I lived in this period, with a view east across the swamp, and thought I saw the Pat and Roger gang fort way across the marsh reeds and cattail jungle. I secretly told JimG the next day who passed the word.
It was probably a duck blind, but the next day after school, we all assembled at Hegel's house, six boys and two girls as nurses. We marched UpTown to Main Street, and turned east and marched over the channel bridge to Holman Avenue. We then turned left again and walked the road as it paralleled the channel, to where it dead-ended at a channel off shoot to the right across which began the tree lined edge of the swamp.
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