Only By An Act Of Law

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Yesterday I wrote about walking barefoot on concrete sidewalks. The little town I attended the second through the fifth grade of school at had a few sidewalks going through the downtown area and through the ritzy plantation house parts. This was about the age when I began to be able to wander off by myself to find playmates at random without my parents and my two older sisters smothering me with their infuriating, arm-snatching, tattle-telling bossiness. If it turns out I hate women, they're why.

I called this enhanced crossroads a town because it was a bigger village than the village my family moved there from. Even the village we moved to from this village I'm fixing to describe was actually bigger than this village, but still not quite a real town. That's this place I live in now. It's really considered a "town" only because it's the county seat of the largest county in the state, but it's not an actual town population-wise, only by importance because it has a shabby courthouse in the middle of "town".

Maybe it really is a town. It has lots of sidewalks. Even on the other side of the tracks. But, it's not progressive unless it's forced to be by an act of law. Nevertheless, it has a lot of sidewalks I've walked on barefooted. It the sidewalks on the village before this town I live in now that I really was allowed for the first time to be footloose and fancy free for longer periods of time than ever before.

I was angry for a long time about being jerked around from jerkwater village to jerkwater towns back to jerkwater villages again growing up, but on the flip side of the coin, when I turn within to contemplate my life, having it segmented into so many different towns and houses makes it easier to view it frame-by-frame.

The second town our family moved to, got moved to because it had four years of high school, and the village before that only had eleven grades of school in total. To enter a four-year state college in North Carolina back then, a student had to graduate from a twelve grade school. We moved to this next village just so my oldest sister could satisfy that requirement and enter college.

It was integrated like a progressive spot on the road oughta be. This small-town wannabe place was located at a crossroad on that same concrete "military road". N. C. State Highway 24 and U.S. Highway 258. This hyah one-horse town was itself in the middle of nowhere, and surrounded by huge swamps and long-leaf pine forests. It's a lot more important now. They got a by-pass around town and two stop-lights.

I reckon my parents decided it was okay for me to just wander around anywhere I wanted to go in that place. The aforementioned sidewalks basically followed the two roads that made up the crossroads, and were situated like a cross right through the center of town. It's not like a person could get lost if they found the sidewalk. They were maybe a half-mile long out from the center of town in four directions.

Besides not being likely to get lost, it was the sort of place where what any kid around was looked after by all the adults in town including black and white and indian kids. For some reason it was considered duty for all the adults to raise all the children, and some of them would spank you if you didn't do right too. Race and class probably did have some privileges, but for the most part not. "Spare the rod, spoil the child." This was the last town I ever lived in that followed that credo. Now, people seem to be looking for somebody to sue for interfering in their family business.

Maybe the children of the world have always been abused as if nobody cared, but not where I was raised or maybe my attitude is just another example of how gullible I am can be, and always, always... the last to know.
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