Reaching for the Marbles

The winner doesn’t always get the prize and the victor doesn’t always get the spoils but heroes are always known for what they leave behind. At least this was the case with Johnny Kirk. Johnny, a few years my elder, was just one of the neighborhood children that made a lasting impression on me. He was the greatest marble player I have ever seen even to this day and also the best snake catcher. Other kids, like the Wilson boys, made lasting impressions on me, also. They were heroes just for staying alive. Their dad was an ex-fighter and a real loser so he took most of his frustration out on those two boys. Jeannie Jones was the tomboy. She was also a few years my elder and the first girl or person for that matter that I knew that owned a motor scooter. She also cooked the best baked potatoes you will ever eat and she cooked them in a hole dug in the ground with hot coals.

The meanest person I knew was also a girl named Earline and also a tomboy and also the big sister of the Wilson boys. She could out curse a Charleston sailor and whip his you know what while doing it. It was nothing to receive a head slap from her on the back of the head. This usually meant you were still in her good graces and that you had not ticked her off in a while. My sweetheart lived down the street. She was also a few years my elder and extremely beautiful. I hate figs but every summer I would pick those nasty things and take them to her mother in hopes that I could catch a glimpse of her or have her smile at me at the door. Do you know what a bunch of rotten figs feel like when mashed between your toes? I hope not. I prefer not to tell you her name because it was a secret love affair of mine and I still would not want her to know it even though she came to my eight year old birthday party and every body joked about me being in love with her.


The rest of us kids in the neighborhood were just normal. No one seemed to notice us much. We were the team players the tag alongs and the non-trouble makers. We worshipped the others but wouldn’t dare admit it. If we admitted it we would be accepting our normality and that was not going to happen. Though we knew we were the worshippers we never wanted the worshipped to know that they were worshipped. This would destroy most of these relationships and when all you had were these friendships you could not handle the loss of one unless of course someone moved away. This is how we lost Johnny Kirk. In fact this is the way we lost everybody.

Moving away was the escape, the reward, and sometimes the best thing that could happen to a young kid in that neighborhood. No one would really mourn the loss of one of us ordinary kids but the day that Johnny Kirk left was a big day in our ordinary lives. Johnny had not prepared us and we were not ready to say goodbye. The truck just pulled up and they started loading it as if nothing was out of the ordinary but everything was out of the ordinary. Today was suppose to be a regular day when Johnny and I would play some marbles, burn some snakes, or just aggravate the hound out of the Wilson boy’s big sister Earline. Today was to be a day of fun and torture and I had enough money to buy a new bag of marbles to lose to Johnny. Today was not supposed to be the day that I would remember all of my life. It was not suppose to be a life changing experience kind of day. I was angry, sad, and lost all in one moment. How could Johnny leave me here with all these other ordinary kids and the Wilson’s boy’s big sister? She will kill me now. She will be the King of the hill and I’ll be a real nobody. I can’t even beat her in marbles even though I’m as good as she is. She always gets mad when she loses and beats up the one who takes her marbles. I’m smart enough not to beat her and that is the very reason Johnny wouldn’t allow her to play with us. Now my protector, my hero, my teacher, and best friend is moving. I want to die. Well, that will come soon enough. Finally, I find myself in Johnny’s yard watching them load the truck. The entire neighborhood had gathered there or just across the street to watch.


No one had looked up to see Johnny’s big surprise. No one could imagine what Johnny had done. Everyone just sat quietly watching as the man of the hour helped load his families’ furniture on the truck. Johnny’s mother had taken some blue denim cloth from the mill and had sewn together a large bag with a drawstring in the top. This was where Johnny had kept his marbles. There must have been a million marbles in there. I know that I lost a few thousand to him myself including my prize shooter. I, like most of the other kids were not allowed to gamble but playing for keeps as we called it just did not seem like gambling. My mother knew I was losing the marbles she bought me but with a wink she would always buy me more. It was like she understood even though as she gave them to me she would lecture me against gambling with them. I just knew that when I did God would forgive me for playing for keeps because we had to learn somehow. The kids that played for fun were wusses and not real challenging and besides that, it wasn’t fun anyway. The thrill of playing for shooters was the greatest thing except maybe for seeing my sweetheart smile at me. Nothing made your heart race faster than waiting your turn to shoot. You would aim with all the strength you could muster and release that shooter toward those helpless marbles. You would watch them scatter outside the circle drawn into the dirt then pick up your winnings while hoping your shooter would stop before it too came out of the circle. If your shooter stayed in the circle you could shoot again and again till it too came out of the circle. It was the greatest of thrills so I thought at the time.


The curtains were already down and the house was already looking bad. An empty house always begins to look bad after a short time. You really never see the chipped paint or the torn shingles or the rust dripping form the gutters while someone lives there. It is funny how living in a home makes no one notice such things. No matter how much I try not to think about it, Johnny is still moving. Johnny is going to say “adios partner”. Johnny will tip his hat and say “we’ll be seeing ya good buddy”. He will rare up on his horse if Johnny had a horse and say “see you later, Tonto”. Someone yelled out to Johnny asking him where he was moving. Johnny then told us that he was moving just a few streets over on the other side of the railroad tracks. This was devastating to us. A few blocks away would not be so bad but we all knew we would not ever see him again because of the railroad tracks. We were not allowed to cross the railroad tracks. This was not like playing for keeps or burning snakes for that matter. We were not allowed to do that either but if we were caught crossing those tracks it would be a belt burning night at our house and my rear end would be the kindling. No more games of marbles and no more life, as I knew it. How on earth would we cope?


Johnny was ready to pull out with the last load. As he pulled away he was laughing and waiving good bye and pointing to the tree that stood beside his house and with that he was gone. Some of us watched till he was out of sight and others stood there in amazement at what Johnny had been pointing to in the tree. You have to understand that this tree was huge. It was a water oak tree that never lost all of its leaves. It was the very tree that made playing marbles in Johnny’s yard possible because the shade from the huge tree would never allow enough light to filter through to grow grass. This left the dirt for us to draw our circles in which we played marbles. I had ruined many pairs of jeans by kneeling in the dirt to play marbles. Most of my playing outside jeans had two or three patches on them. This tree was our refuge in the summer from the rays of the sun. We played in the streets till way after dark because of the canopy that it made. A streetlight was lower than it limbs and would direct enough light on the street to make even stick ball possible. This was the tree of trees and hanging in that tree high on a limb was Johnny’s bag of marbles. They were impossible to get. No one had ever climbed that tree. The fire department wouldn’t be able to get them down. I assume Johnny was saying goodbye the best way he knew how by leaving his greatest prize behind. Maybe this was his way of moving out of boyhood into adolescence. Maybe this was his way of leaving the challenge to the next leader to be. Whoever obtained that bag of marbles would be the new hero and the new leader and the new King of the hill.


We all stood in silence looking at that bag of marbles in that tree. Then without a warning we all scattered to find the right tool needed to knock that bag down. Many days passed and thousands of attempts were made but no one prevailed. The Wilson boy’s sister tried harder than the rest of us. Johnny was long gone but he was still the hero and still the leader and still the King of the hill. No one could take his place until that bag of marbles came down and I was sure that only a tornado would be able to do that and we were nowhere near tornado season. The day finally came when we were all so focused on bringing down that bag of marbles that we had dedicated the whole day to making it happen. We made spears out of bamboo and bows and arrows out of tree limbs and we loaded our arsenal with BBs to use with our slingshots because not one of us had a BB gun. We had been at it most of the day when a young boy from another neighborhood past by. We were not allowed to pass through other neighborhoods unless we were walking to school but because our neighborhood was near both stores we seem to always have traffic from others. Of course, this young boy wanted to know what all the fuss was about. We started to tell him about Johnny Kirk and the hero he was as well as all the nice things he had done and finally we showed him the bag of marbles that hang on the tree branch entirely out of our reach. The young barefooted boy said that he would get the bag and started climbing up the tree. He used his fingers and toes like a monkey and using only the bark of the tree began to climb. Finally I was going to get my prize shooter back and some of the many marbles I had lost to Johnny Kirk. I knew this because the bag of marbles was too large for the young boy to carry down the tree if he was successful in reaching the marbles. I knew that he would have to drop them to be able to climb down. I knew that even though I was not the biggest person there I was not the smallest either and that no one person would be able to carry off this bag of marbles. All of this hinged on whether this outside intruder to our neighborhood would make it all the way out on that limb and untie the bag and drop it to us. We all gasped for air as he slipped but did not fall. He was very strong to be able to hold onto the branches as he did. I am glad that no adult had seen him in the tree as I’m sure they would have called the police or fire department. to come to his rescue. Finally he made it to the bag and while balancing his body on the tree limb he was able to untie the string that held the bag to the limb. We all rejoiced and danced in the street and calling out to the boy as to what we felt he should do with this bag of marbles. Drop it we said, let it down so we can help you, we said. Sweat had started to bead on the boys lips by now and we knew at any moment we were going to have our prize. We didn’t seem to worry about the boy anymore but only the bag of marbles. With the bag in his teeth he began a very slow and methodical crawl backwards to the tree trunk. Backwards he continued down the trunk of the tree until he dropped safely to the ground never letting go of the marbles. Sweaty, dirty and exhausted and with a big smile on his face the young boy began walking away with our marbles. We outnumbered him and we could have overpowered him to take away those marbles but we did not. We all stood in amazement at what we had witnessed. Even the Tomboy Jeanie Jones did nothing to stop him. After that there was very little talk of the bag of marbles or Johnnie Kirk or the boy who miraculously climbed that tree. We moved on as if nothing had happened but our lives had really changed. The Wilson family moved away and the tomboy Jeannie Jones was sent to reform school and my girlfriend never did find out that I was in love with her. The tree finally got too old and was cut down and I guess I also moved on myself. No one ever stepped forth as the leader or the hero or the protector. Life became difficult and more complex as we grew older. Families were started and babies came and jobs grew depressing and we all kept reaching for the marbles. God gives us many chances and many opportunities to learn from our adventures. I think that I brought away from this one an amazement for the different type of people that God made and the different talents that they possess. I think I better understand the limits that I have as a person but at the same time the possibilities that I have as a person. Maybe I did not get my marbles back and maybe I did not get the girl or was not the hero but I was there and I experienced it.

Guilty as charged

I am guilty of being one of those Sunday Scholl teachers that taught things that were wrong as well as damaging to other people’s lives. It was out of this guilt that I began to search for true answers. When I was teaching Sunday School at a boy’s reform school I was given the task to teach every three weeks. It just so happened that as my turn rolled around we were in the scriptures teaching about turning the other cheek. I taught this lesson like it had been taught to me. God wanted us to turn the other cheek and not fight. Jesus did this in the Garden Of Gethsemane. It would be like heaping coals of fire upon their heads as the Bible taught and I am positive I told them other untruths that day. After the lesson the toughest and meanest student we had in our class came and told me that he had prayed the prayer of faith with us and that he had accepted Jesus as his Savior. We were rejoicing at the work the Lord did that day. Others came to tell us they too had accepted Jesus as their Savior. I remember as we left rejoicing in this experience, we had no idea that a life changing experience was about to happen to us. The following week we returned as good teachers would but what we found shook my very soul. The meanest and toughest boy in this institution at the time was sitting on the couch clutching his Bible with a big smile on his face and two black eyes. He told me that another inmate tried to pick a fight and hit him with his fist. He proudly turned the other cheek and let him hit him again thus allowing this other inmate to give him two black eyes without raising a hand in defiance. Those black eyes that day represented black eyes to my belief system. How on earth could this be what God meant for mankind? How could God want us to roll over and play dead and allow others to take our dignity and our families and our livelihood away from us? Why would God want us to be wimps and turn the other cheek only to be hit again and again? Turning the other cheek must be wrong. My heart sank as I looked into those black eyes that day and I knew I would not rest until I found a better explanation for this passage in the Bible. I only hoped that this young man did not see the hurt in my face, as I knew that I was responsible for the pain he had suffered. I knew that someday he would question this teaching of mine and turn away from the joy that he now had. I feared that he would turn from God and I would be responsible. I feared that he would again lose himself in the past life but there was nothing I could do because I did not understand it myself. I knew that there must be a better explanation for this passage and I set out to find it. It took two years for me to find a reasonable explanation that did not take away from the story in the Bible but shed more light to this subject of turning the other cheek. It was amazing that I found this answer not in the Bible but in history. It seems that during the time of Jesus that a person who had been wronged by another could demand as part of the repayment a public display of guilt by slapping the wrongdoer on the face. This would be a display of guilt on the behalf of the wrongdoer as well as a means of retribution to the one who had been wronged. In this passage Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek. If we have wronged someone and their repayment is to publicly slap us then we should turn the other cheek and let them slap us again. We are to show that as followers of Christ we are better than the other people are and are willing to pay more for our wrongdoing. If we are wrong and we are required by law to give them our shirt then we should give them our coat also. The Roman soldiers had set outpost around the city and had a curfew. If one was caught out after the curfew they were required to walk between the outposts with the soldiers carrying their heavy armor. Jesus said, “If they bid you walk one mile you should walk two”. Remember that all this is conditional to the fact that they were caught in a wrongdoing and they were out after curfew. We are to show we are better by going the extra mile. If history could make this passage understandable and helpful in our lives then why is everyone so scared to look at history for solutions to hard questions? I felt relief when I found this answer but also so sad for those that others and I taught incorrectly. The Bible can be explained but it takes many sources to help one understand. When I study the Bible I use one simple principle. I come to the Word of God with the idea that it must be consistent with the other teachings of the Bible. A concept or story in the Bible cannot contradict another. If it appears to be a contradiction then we must look for an answer that rids the story or the concept of the contradiction. I cannot do anything about the boy with the two black eyes but I can tell others about what I have learned so that they will not turn their cheeks when they are not in the wrong. Black eyes can heal but closed minds can continue to do damage.

Clarence

We counted them up one day and we had lived in thirty-six houses before I reached the fourth grade, which is really moving around. I had just entered the second grade in what was my third school to be entered into and around the 34th house we lived in when I met Clarence. Clarence was the most ungifted person I ever had the privilege to meet. Ungifted, smelly, filthy, ragged, and poorer than me . I know that you are thinking that I have some amazing story to tell you about this boy and how we interacted and how close we became and how we always to this day stay in touch. Well, you would be wrong. I’m going to tell you about the worst possible moment in my childhood when I was part of a terrible prank that to this day I don’t think I can forgive myself for doing.

Mrs. Orr was my teacher in the second grade and she taught me so much. I use her real name so if you ever run into her you can tell her how much I still hate her. She was so mean she should have been in Catholic School. The Wilson boys went to Catholic School and were always telling us how mean those teachers were. Mrs. Orr was so mean she pinched the scab right off my arm that was there due to my vaccination. Too bad those vaccinations didn’t keep little boys from having to put up with people like Mrs. Orr. What then do you think I learned from this wretched lady? I learned that if at all possible to stay away from the mean people in this world and not to play jokes on people that don’t deserve it. You see that is what we did to poor Clarence. Actually what started to be a joke or just plain roughing up another kid turned out to have a result that no one really expected. During recess some other guys and I decided to allow Clarence to play football with us. None of us really wanted him to play but we felt that if we roughed him up a little bit then we would feel better about sitting in a hot classroom with this smelly person. As it turned out none of us wanted to tackle him either. Finally someone tackled him and at that moment we turned ugly. We decided that while we had him in the dirt we would give him and old fashion dirt down the pants deal. Actually we did not stop there. We filled his head full of dirt and his shirt, and just before the bell rang we rolled him in it so bad that his shoes were filled with dirt. We all ran to the room and sat quietly because you know who, Mrs. Orr would soon be in.


Clarence was sitting there as if nothing had happened. This had been the first time that anyone had paid attention to him and I really feel that he had enjoyed the attention he got even though it was bad. Just then Mrs. Orr walked in and with vicious eyes she scanned the room for do badders. It seemed she had a second sense when it came to smelling trouble. At first she did not see Clarence in all of his glory but just when we felt that we were clear she broke the silence with a loud thunder that started with "Clarence!!!! What in God’s name happened to you?" Needless to say that Clarence had buried his head in his arms on top of his desk. That was the moment that I started feeling bad. I reckoned it was guilt. It had to be guilt because I felt so bad. Clarence had no control of the conditions he lived in. He never appeared to be the type of boy that would refuse a bath or new clothes for that matter. He was very quite and shy and not involved with anyone. He was a loner and one whiff of his body odor would help you to understand why. However he did not get one breath of compassion from the mean old Mrs. Orr. She grabbed him by his dirt filled ear and towed him away to the office. My stomach began to hurt a little more. I could only imagine what they would do at the office with a poor kid who had gotten extremely dirty at recess. Would they send him home? That did not make sense since he came to school dirty anyway. Would he get the paddle for his behavior? Then the thought occurred to me that what if he told who had gotten him dirty. My stomach started hurting worse. It was now guilt mixed with fear. I thought I was going to have to ask to go to the nurse. It was unbearable.


After what seem to be an eternity a knock came on our closed door. Mrs. Orr opened the door and to everyone’s surprise there stood a clean well dressed Clarence. Someone at the school had given him a bath and good clothes to wear. He had on new shoes that looked a little large but new anyway. His hair was combed for the first time. We were surprised at how nice looking he really was. Clarence returned to his seat and never told anyone what had happened. Maybe he thought we were just playing and he got the best of the deal. Maybe he was glad to finally be apart of something and hoped it would continue. Maybe he was glad he got a bath and new clothes. None of the boys involved were ever good friends with Clarence but we sure held a different kind of respect for him. Clarence disappeared from our classroom shortly after that and I never got a chance to tell him I was sorry for helping to get him so dirty. It makes me wonder now in my latter years just how my mistakes affected someone else. Did I have a good impact on people or bad impact? Do they still think of me and incidents like this one? How was I active in the molding of their lives? I see it often in my children in the things they say and do. I hope I have left something for them to remember that will impact their lives in a positive way. I guess that was what Jesus did and why we still tell his stories. The writers of the New Testament tell us of many things that happen to Jesus and his response to them. I cannot recall one that included rolling someone in the dirt because they smelled bad or not dressed as well as he was. However. I do recall a verse in the New Testament that says good can come out of bad to them that love the Lord. That must be what God showed me through this. That must be why my heart sinks when I see a crusty beggar walking up the street. My prayer is God make something good out of this. My actions may not always be to stop and help but often I have. My intention is to never try to hurt someone. My lesson is God can do wonders with the mistakes we give him.