Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 5 Friends Part 3. A Buccaneer is a Hell of a Price

    Bill and I were trying to figure out how I had first met Elliott. My cousin Cookie, my friend Bill and my friend Bruce were all seniors in the class ahead of me and like everyone in that class they were friends with Elliott. He was also dating a girl in my class. She was the daughter of the town's newspaper editor. She and I were in most of the same classes, but not that close. I just didn't remember any of them introducing him to me.  

I do remember it was Bruce who approached me about putting together an underground newspaper. Bruce, Benefield, and Elliott had come up with the idea. Elliott wanted to complain about some policy regarding the school dances. Probably something to do with Seniors escorting Juniors. The official school newspaper wouldn't print Elliot's complaint; so, Elliott decided to do something about it. Bruce could not have cared less about school dances, but really liked the idea of defying the establishment. Honestly, I have no idea what Benefield's motives were. I knew he was very intelligent because my 9th grade science teacher had told me he was. She really shouldn't have, but for some reason she felt the need to point out all the high I.Q. individuals to me. This wasn't really necessary since I already knew most of them. In Benefield's case, however, it was necessary because unlike all my other high I.Q. friends, he was very quiet and introverted.

The three seniors decided they needed a junior and a sophomore to join them to give the paper wider exposure. Like Bruce, I didn't care about the dance issue, but was very excited about defying the establishment. Also, it would give me a forum to complain about the lack of support for the sciences in our high school.

Let me offer a brief explanation for the lack of support for the sciences. In rural Arkansas, the only science related careers were in medicine; so, the only science class the top students took was biology; and instead of any other science classes, they took Latin since it was the root of much medical terminology. I believe I was the only student in the school's history to take both science and Latin. I had to give up study hall to do this, but my father's sister was the Latin teacher and my mother's aunt was a science teacher. One was responsible for my distaste for Latin and the other for my love of science. Because of this prejudice against the general sciences, science fairs and the like received little support even though I took top honors at the regional and state fairs and even competed at the international fair.

Getting back to our newspaper, to add a sophomore to our group, I got my friend Woodson another brilliant rebel to join us. Woodson and I belonged to the same small church and our families had been friends for generations. For as long as I can remember, I was getting him into trouble although he was perfectly capable of getting into it on his own. After high school, he joined the Marines instead of going to college much to the chagrin of his brilliant Phi Beta Kappa mother and equally brilliant father. He is my friend to whom I dedicated my trilogy. You can find more about him in the dedication and final author's note of that trilogy. We corresponded while he was serving in Vietnam. He was quite a clever writer and I wish I had saved his letters. The only one I remember was his parody of Jingle Bells he sent me one Chtistmas:

"Jingle bells, mortar shells, V.C. in the grass,

"Take your merry Christmas tree and shove it up you're a**.

"Dashing through the rice paddies, with an M16 in hand,

"Oh, what fun it is to be in sunny Vietnam."

The first meeting of this group of rebels with a questionable cause took place on a Sunday at the park in the middle of town. Most of the churches in town were a short walk from the park. We all skipped out of our respective church services to meet at the park where we sat around the fountain and discussed religion and philosophy. It was virtually an eighteenth-century salon. We eventually, got around to discussing the paper and scheduled the next meeting at my house.

We each wrote an editorial piece, added a few mock news pieces about the various high school cliques and threw in some really bad one-liners after each editorial. The worst being, "A buccaneer is a hell of a price to pay for corn." Elliott insisted it was funny.

After several get togethers, the paper was ready. Elliott got access to a mimeograph machine and ran off several hundred copies. Our high school had about a thousand students. The five of us distributed the paper off campus just before school started. We sold them for a quarter each. We completely sold out before the first bell.

The paper was a big hit with everyone. Well, except for the staff of the official school paper and all the school administrators.

That afternoon, I was sitting in fourth period English. I remember hearing the sharp echoing sound of footsteps coming down the hallway. For some reason, it reminded me of a movie where the German Gestapo officer marches down a hallway and brings terror to some unsuspecting civilian. Instead of a Gestapo Officer, it was one of the school office's staff. They came through the door and ominously informed my teacher I was to come with them to the principal's office.

I was brought in and seated in the front office just outside the principal's private office. I guessed by the looks on the faces of the office staff that I wasn't there to receive an award. I was made to wait which I knew was clearly an intimidation tactic. It didn't work. I have never been easily intimidated. I'm too oblivious, I guess.

None of my collaborators on the paper were there. I realized this was because the principal was in fact afraid to face the combined intelligence and clout of the five brightest students in his school. He was planning to divide and conquer. A plan I was certain would fail. My friends were as steadfast in their principles as I was and besides the principal was an idiot.

Just as I suspected he had tried to break each of us separately. He was hoping to scare us into promising to stop publication. What he didn't know was we never planned to publish more than one addition, but we weren't going to admit that. Our freedom of speech was a matter of principle. We stood up to the principal on principle.

We compared notes afterwards and all our interviews went about the same. He informed us it was against school rules to sell anything on campus without permission. Each of us informed him the papers were sold off campus. He tried to convince us the issues we had brought up in our editorials were not legitimate or untrue. We assured him they were legitimate and true. He threatened to tell our parents. We told him they already knew.

"Do they know your paper contained profanity?" he asked.

I looked at him like he had lost his mind and asked, "What do you mean?"

He pointed to Elliott's one-liner. "A Buccaneer is a hell of a price to pay for corn."

I could have defended every line in that paper, but that one. I had even suggested we use "heck," but Elliott assured me "hell" made it funnier.

I just stared at the principal. I was speechless. If he thought he could suspend his top students for using the word "hell" in a joke, I was willing to let him try. We would see how big an idiot he really was.

Needless to say, we went unpunished.