It was also in that classroom that I learned my first four-letter word. T-I-H-S. I walked into the room one morning and saw those letters written in the dust on the outside of the window. Not being familiar with the word I was standing there mouthing it out loud and trying to figure out how to pronounce it when my buddy walked in.

“Hey, do you know what that is written on the window?”

He cocked his head and studied it a moment. “S-H-I-T. Oh, I got it! It’s shit.”

“Shit?”

“Yep. It’s shit alright. Just backwards because it’s written on the outside of the glass.”

“What’s shit?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes and said, “You don’t know what shit is?”.

“Nope. Never heard of it. What is it?”

He laughed at me and said, “It’s the grownup word for do-do. Don’t ever say it out loud, especially around grownups.”

I nodded, “Good to know. Thanks.”

He took me under his wing and taught me several more adult words that year.

It was during the fifth grade that I started to notice girls were beginning to look a little different. But different in a good way.

We were out on the playground one spring day and a bunch of kids wanted to play Red Rover. Someone motioned for me to go over to a blonde-haired girl that was playing alone and ask her if she’d like to join in.

When I approached her she was down on all fours pushing a toy car down an imaginary dirt road. She was leaning over and I could see down her dress. My heart stood still. I had heard about them before, but that was the first time I had ever seen them. Breasts. I was trying not to stare, but my eyes were glued to them. I felt like I was paralyzed or something and I couldn’t move a muscle.

She looked up and instantly knew I was looking at them. Then she smiled and asked, “You wann’a play cars?”

I did. I wanted to play cars with her, to heck with Red Rover. I thought I was falling in love. I realized I was learning a lot more than I had ever dreamed of at school and it was well worth having to wear shoes all day long.

It was also on that playground when some kid spied something odd protruding from the dirt beneath one of the basketball goals. All the kids were aware that the property was once where the old Catholic church and cemetery was located. Just after the turn of the twentieth century a cyclone had come through the area and torn up the town.

One of the buildings in its path was the old Catholic church. After the church was destroyed the county purchased the property. The dead in the cemetery were disinterred and reburied elsewhere. Most ended up in another Catholic cemetery near Philadelphia, twenty-five miles south of Louisville.

After the graves were moved the county built a new elementary school across the street from the old high school.

Well, when that kid found the rounded off corner of something metal sticking out of the ground beneath that basketball goal it was no small event. The first thing he did was shout, “It’s a casket!” and that got everybody’s attention.

The teachers quickly herded all the kids off the playground, lined us up against the building and called our trusty janitor to bring a shovel and see what was rising from the dead.

I must say the old guy wasn’t too eager to dig up whatever was trying to make its debut, but with all eyes glued to that spot he began to slowly pick away at the edges of the thing.

We kids were all betting it was a casket and just knew we’d been playing ball on top of a dead man.

One kid cried, another laughed. Someone yelled, “It’s gonna stink!” As bad as we knew it was going to be, we just couldn’t look away. We were about to see a real live dead body.

After digging and poking the janitor leaned down for a closer look. Then he got down on his knees and we just knew whatever or whoever was in that casket was about to reach up and grab him.

He tugged at it. Dug a little more and tugged some more. It began to move. Was he opening the lid? Surely not. Another scream erupted from the girls that were gathered near the door, ready to bolt inside should a mummy come crawling out of that grave.

Finally, the janitor put the blade of the shovel under one corner and pried down with all his might. Up popped a large chunk of whatever it was and the janitor fell backwards.

“It got him!” someone screamed, and the girls by the door fled inside.

After steading himself he reached down and lifted up what was left of an old muffler.

A collective sigh of relief arose from the teachers. Another collective groan of disappointment arose from the guys that were hoping to see something a bit more gruesome.

There would be no ghost or mummy lurching forward to grab the janitor or anyone else that day.

(To be continued)

The men that felled Big Boss, the giant pine tree in Winston County.	Fair Lumber Company.
A load of Winston County's first pianos.	My grandfather Urb Foster.
Building Louisville's post office.	Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt visiting my great grandparents.
Clark reunion. My great grandparents are seated on the far right. D. C. and Alice Bennett.	Photo by Walter Bennett
Photo by Walter Bennett	My great grandmother, Alice McGee Bennett and her sister Mollie McGee Worthy.
Butter's Studio on Park Street in Louisville.

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Rick Algood
September 2, 2021