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Wesly - WMASG - 11-15-2025
I grew up in a very small town. It was so small that we only had an elementary school. There were between ten and twenty kids in each grade, so each grade had it's own room and teacher. "Downtown" was the one-car police station where our one police officer could be found on weekdays between nine and five. There was a post office, which shared the same building with the water board, the electrical co-op office, and the mayor and city council. We had a volunteer fire department, which had a small fire truck, but any real fires were fought with the trucks from the nearest town that was almost twenty miles away and had two fire trucks. The rest of "downtown" was the hardware store, the little grocery store that also rented movies, and a pizza place that only delivered on Friday, Saturday and Sunday until eight - but at least it had some arcade games. That's about it. All surrounded by farms and open fields and small woodlands. There was a reservoir about ten miles away, and a river ran through town that was about fifty feet wide during the spring and just a few trickles among the rocks the rest of the year.
Naturally, my friends were the guys in my grade at school. Kids in the next grade were so much older it seemed, and the kids in the grade below were just little kids.
I was a pretty normal kid. I rode my bike with my friends, watched movies our folks rented from the grocery store, and played arcade games at the pizza place when we could get a few quarters. Todd and Bryce were my best buds, and Jake and Ryan and Mitch were my other friends. The other boys in my class were either brains/dorks or rich kids who thought they were too good to play with the regular kids. I liked playing baseball, but not as much as playing the arcade games at the pizza place. Todd and Bryce were the same. Jake, Ryan and Mitch were more into sports and such than the three of us were, but they weren't total sports-heads. Of course, in elementary school, jocks and dorks weren't firm cliques yet, but us boys were separated a bit by our likes.
So during the summer before sixth grade, when I was eleven, I was riding with Jake and Bryce out to the hills outside town where a bike trail of sorts was forged through the hilly woodlands there. It was fun to do, and every boy in town could be found there at some time or another. This was a hot summer day, and the sun was really bearing down, so getting into the shade of the woods was welcomed. There were a few other boys there already, some older, some younger, but we all managed to get along for the most part. We spent most of the day out there, riding and racing and having a good time.
Jake and Bryce wanted to go home about five, for dinner, but I wanted to stay longer, so they left. I rode some more, raced some more, and had a good time. Most of the rest of the boys went home about six or so. Most of the older boys that had been there when I arrived earlier had left, and some others had come throughout the day. Now it was all older boys, and I was the youngest still there. I knew I would probably get yelled at when I got home after being gone all day, especially if I didn't head home really soon and get there before dark. But I was testing those waters, if you know what I mean. I was already in trouble for missing dinner, which wasn't a huge deal.
So there I was, the only eleven-year-old out there, trying to keep up with the older boys. I couldn't, not with most of them. Then the other boys got worn out and went home. I was left with just one of older boys - one of the teenagers who weren't old enough to have a license, or that were but didn't have a car. I couldn't keep up with him, so I rode on my own and tried the more dangerous stunts on the bigger hills and ramps that I didn't want my friends to see me wipe out doing another day.
I had just tried one of the biggest dirt ramps and had wiped out, and was walking my bike back up the hill to the top. I had hurt my leg a bit and was limping some, when the last guy there, Caleb, came over the hill. I knew almost nothing about him. He was one of the high school guys, that was about all I knew. I think he fourteen or fifteen. Maybe sixteen without a car or something. Anyway, he saw me limping my way up the hill, and put his foot down into the dirt to stop next to me.
"Hey, little dude. Wipe out?"
"Yeah."
"You okay?"
"Yeah. Just about racked my nuts on the bar, but missed 'em," I laughed.
He laughed too, then said, "Yeah, I've racked the ol' balls a few times out here. You gotta learn to lean to one side. Better yet, try to fall over when you're gonna land bad. Ya know?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna try again?"
"Nah. I think I banged my ass on the bar enough today. Gonna head home."
"Oh. Too bad."
"Why?"
"Well, I was gonna show you something."
"What?"
"Well, you wanna see how I keep from racking my nuts on the bar?"
"How?"
"Come on, I'll show ya."
I followed him up the hill, and then he left it and went into the trees.
"Where ya goin'?" I asked.
"To the cave," he told me over his shoulder.
Cave? That sounded too cool to pass up, so I followed him. Actually, I ended up walking alongside him once we got into less dense trees.
"How far is it?"