R.C. Cola and a candy bar
Iremember an incident that happened back when we lived on Armstrong Street. My mother would go on Saturday and clean a grocery store for the owner. The old man paid my mother off in groceries. When she got through, we would load them into our small red wagon and head for home. I was out front pulling the wagon when I looked down at the ditch beside the road. There lay a gun in the mud on the far bank. I stopped, showing my mother the gun.
She said, “Go get it, but don’t touch anything except the handle.” I went down in the ditch and very carefully picked the gun up. I handed it up to my mother, and she put it in the bed of the wagon.
We got home, and she took the gun from the wagon and put it on a chair. “Get the groceries out of the wagon. No one touch the gun.”
She went across the road to a neighbor who had a telephone and called the police.
It wasn’t just a few minutes until a police car pulled up. My mother told then what had happened. One of the policemen unloaded the gun. There were five shells; two of them had been fired. He went out to the patrol car, and we could see him talking on his radio.
The other officer took out a pad and asked my mother where it was found. She told him, and the other officer came back. He looked at his partner and said, “There was a shooting last night on the short end of Decatur at Elizabeth. Where did you find the gun?”
The other officer spoke up. “Corner of Decatur and Elizabeth. ” The other officer looked at my mother and asked, “Can this young man go with us and show us where the gun came from?”
My mother said I could, and we got in the patrol car. I remember all the kids looking at me as we passed in the patrol car. I must have had a smile on my face a mile long, for one of the officers looked at me and punched his partner. They both laughed, and I sat up straighter in the car where everyone could see me. As small as I was back then, I didn’t realize it was not fun to ride in a police car.
We got to where I found the gun, and I showed him the print of the gun in the mud. He talked a few minutes with the other officer, and they both seemed to agree on something. We got back in the car.
There was a small store where Manis lumber yard sits now. It was run by an elderly gentleman by the name of Miller Dabbs. The driver of the patrol car stopped in front of the store. They got out, leaving me in the car. It was only a few minutes before they came back. One of them had the biggest R.C. Cola that I had ever seen. He offered it to me, along with a candy bar that looked a foot long.
I shook my head saying, “I can’t take it, sir. My mother won’t let us accept things from people.”
We pulled up in front of the house, and I got out. The officer with the candy and the R.C. got out with me. My mother was sitting in a chair on the front porch. He walked up to her. “My partner and I want to reward the young man, but he said he couldn’t accept it.” He reached out the R.C. and candy bar to my mother. “Will you accept it for him?”
My mother took the R.C. and the candy saying, “It’s awfully nice of you, and we will accept it and say thank you.”
“We thank you and the boy,” he said. I watched as the patrol left and went inside. My mother had poured the R.C. cola into three glasses and cut the candy bar also into three pieces. She had gone back in the front room and left us boys at the table. I looked at my brothers . I knew what they were thinking.
I got up and got a glass and a knife. We evened the candy bar into four pieces and the cola into four glasses. We called, and sour mother came into the room. I pointed to the drink and candy.
“That is for you. We will not eat without you.” She smiled and sat down. With a small glass of cola and a piece of candy, we had a party. I remember that if one of the family had anything, then the rest of the family shared it.