Ringside, 1925

Peter Sykes That morning, Jimmy and me had hiked clear to Connor's Pond, halfway up the mountain, and back again. I hooked four bass and three brown trout. Jimmy, who loves fishing more than just about anything, caught a dozen bluegills and a huge catfish his mother promised to fry us for dinner. Soon as we got back, we stashed our poles under the porch and ran to Robinson's store for root beer floats. We were sitting at the soda fountain, sucking on our straws and listening to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on the radio, when Mr. Walter White asked: "You boys seen Mr. Scopes?" With school being out and it being summer, we figured the new science teacher must be in trouble. But Mr. White is our school superintendent, so we figured we'd be in bigger trouble if we didn't tell. "We saw him a half hour ago," I said, "heading over to the school." "Dressed for tennis," Jimmy added. He hurried back to the table where Mr. Robinson and Mr. Rappleyea waited. Then the Hicks brothers, both Dayton lawyers, showed up in their jalopy and all five of them jabbered like magpies at a picnic. Willy Amos Those big ol' houses at the edge of town . . . Pa says they were once grand and beautiful. Now they're mostly heaps of bricks, wood planks, broken glass. Some got trees growin' right out the roofs, vines twistin' out the doorways. Pa says back before I was born, when the mines were open and the furnaces made metal for the railroads and tall city buildin's, white families lived there-- "lace curtains in the windows, easy chairs an' daisies on the porches in summer," Pa says. Well, that sure ain't how it looks this summer. There's skunks in the cellar, bats in the attic, mice in the kitchen sink. When I'm not helpin' Pa, I come here to root through the hallways and closets, searchin' for somethin' I might be able to fix up and sell--a flower vase, a tin box, a watch face left behind when those families moved to places where jobs come easier. 'Most every year the town council changes the number on the little wooden sign sayin' how many folks live here: 3,000, 2,600, 2,100, . . . and last year 1,800. Pa and me, we don't got much need for big numbers. I'm not sure what they mean, 'ceptin' I know that the first one is biggest and the last one is smallest and that means people are leavin'. Twelve. Now that's a number I'm used to. I was born here twelve years back: May 1913. I ain't never lived anyplace but Dayton, Tennessee, so that last number still seems like plenty of folks to me. But maybe someday, if I move to a big city like New Orleans, Chicago, or Detroit, get me a steady job, I'll live near even more people, and a lot fewer mice and skunks. Jimmy Lee Davis Tarnation! Poor Mr. Scopes! He didn't know why Mr. White came to fetch him from his tennis game & bring him into Robinson's. Me & Pete sipped our sodas & listened as he confessed that back in the spring when we were still in school, he assigned us the chapter on evolution, which explained how all the animals on earth had started as simpler creatures millions of years ago, & how, over time, they changed & developed into the insects, birds, fish, & mammals we see today, & how, even now, they were still changing. (I try not to think of fish as my ancestors when I'm cleaning them.) Mr. Robinson held up a copy of Hunter's Civic Biology, which is the book we used in school, which is also one of the books he sells in his store, & asked: "Did you use this in class?" Calm as Connor's Pond, MrBryant, Jen is the author of 'Ringside, 1925' with ISBN 9780375840470 and ISBN 0375840478.