Welcome to another ‘Tickle-me-Thursday’ and here is part four of No School Summer. The author, Don Bowen, has graciously given his permission to share some of his humorous stories exclusively on the Examiner. After the story, there is a recipe for Garden Peas and Dumplings.. Enjoy!
I had not seen anything, so I asked him, “What did you see, Pee Wee?”
He said, “I just saw three convicts in striped clothes run across the road and into those woods over there!”
Well, he was so convincing about what he had seen. So, I went along with him and said, “Yes, I saw them, too.”
Before I knew it, I started shaking with fear and excitement by just believing there were really some escaped convicts hiding in the woods. We took off toward the main road to see if we could find someone to help us inform the authorities about what we had seen.
Luckily, we were able to flag down an approaching driver. We told him what we had seen and asked him to go notify the sheriff. The man took off as fast as he could go. Within a few minutes, the sheriff’s department and the Donaldsonville Police Department showed up. They wanted to know in which direction the convicts had taken off.
Once they had the information, they set out on a manhunt through the woods, hoping to capture the escaped convicts. Pee Wee and I went back to my house. We sat out on the front porch for what seemed like hours. Soon, we forgot about the posse out hunting for the escaped convicts.
We were having a good time sitting on the porch talking and playing, when we spotted the posse emerging from the woods in front of my house. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of pure terror. All the deputies’ clothes were dirty and torn. Sweat was rolling down their faces. One of them came limping into the front yard. Pee Wee and I headed for the porch, when Mother came out to meet the sheriff.
When he started talking to Mother, I began to feel an overpowering sense of doom. I knew we were in deep trouble, from the way they both kept looking over at us.
After their talk, they came over to us and took us by the arms. They led us to a police car. Spurgeon North, the Donaldsonville police chief, was in the driver’s seat with a disgusted look on his face.
Finally, Mother said, “You are going to jail!”
Those five words kept ringing in my ears all the way to the Donaldsonville jail.
Spurgeon North was a very well-known man. He was respected by many people in the surrounding towns. But, I was terrified of him!
My fear was soon visited with downright anger with Pee Wee, as I thought about how he was the one who was the cause for getting us into trouble. Pee glanced over at me. I glared back at him with spears shooting out of my eyes. Well, that was the end of our summer vacation, because we were going to jail.
Once we got there, Spurgeon North carried us inside. He gave us a stern talking to about lying. He told u s we had to clean the jail for two hours every day for fourteen days. I looked around at the condition of the jail and thought it was the ‘nastiest pig pen of a place’ I had ever seen.
The two-week-stretch went by quickly and we had paid our debt to society.
Recipe: Garden Peas and Dumplings (Don Bowen)
Make dumplings with flour, shortening, and water. Roll out the dough and cut into strips. Put two cans of garden peas (English peas) into a large sauce pan and bring to a boil, drop the dumplings into the boiling peas until done.
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