A day in Johnsville
The year is 1976 and the month is October. I think the town is just waking up. Mr. Warner just rode by in his pickup, going to his Frederick office; and that guy with the blue pickup that goes by every morning also went by. As I look down the street from my house that is sort of on top of a hill, I can see Chris Martin on her front porch waiting for the bus. Old Mrs. Wilson is late again. But suddenly, by standing on the chain link fence, I can see her lights flashing down at Danny's house. She continues up the road to pick up Carla, because David, her brother, had already left in his car. She continues on up and picks up Chris and they my sisters and I. I go straight to the back of the bus and sit with Carole, across from Danny. We go on down to Joey's house and pick him up, and of course, he has to sit with me, making it three in a seat. She makes her other three stops, then heads for Linganore High School. We get there just in time to hear the second bell ring, so we are all late. There is a big line in the office and Mrs. Veenordall is very busy writing out late slips.
School isn't too bad today because we have two fire drills and in science, we go outside to do an experiment with the diameter of the sun. We also have a half-day, but we still have fourth period. In fourth period, our class has social studies with Mrs. Rini. There was an argument over who got to go to the library, and finally she picked Cathy, Carole, Evelyn, Jeff, Doug and me. We are supposed to be working on Latin American countries, but Doug and Jeff decide to have a battle with rubber bands and paper. Carol and Cathy shoot every once in a while, but they aren't really in the battle. I walked over and started talking to Chris Bassett and Jenny Nelson, two 9th graders who are studying.
Since it is a half-day, we go home right after fourth period. When we got to the bus, we find Tooty driving, and the whole bus was immediately ready for a paper battle. Once the bus started moving, the paper started flying, but it didn't last too long because Tooty drives about 60 miles per hour. Once I got home, I changed my clothes, got something to eat and headed for Stitely's. I started to try to get a football game going, so I used Carla's phone and called as many people as I could think of. Jack, Joey, Mark, Danny, Carole, Jane and I started playing with the teams of Danny, Carla, Jane and I against the rest of them. After the game, everyone decided to go home to eat, then a few of us would get together and get rowdy.
When we came back, all that were there was Carla, Danny, David, Lorene and I. We decided to throw a few tomatoes at cars then soap Mr. Martin's (Donny Baby) windows. I got the tomatoes out of the garden and we went up to Grossnickle's lane so we could run back the lane or across the road and through Strohm's hay field. We hit a few, but only one stopped. When he did so, we took off back the lane. No one chased us, so we stopped and returned to the scene of the crime. There wasn't anyone there, so we put all of the tomatoes in a pile on the road and left. We had to get soap from somewhere, and David's was closest, so that's where we got it. David and I were the only ones who could do anything, so we cracked up and wrote "Donny Baby" on the garage windows. It was starting to get late, so we all said goodbye and went home. Today was a good day in Johnsville.
(with a nod to AA Milne, below is the accompanying map of our "hundred acre wood")
