Caught red clay handed

It was the summer of 1973, I was 7-years old. As usual, my best friend Kevin and I was hanging out looking for something to occupy our restlessness. I remember it was hot and we were barefooted and shirtless. We were sitting on the bank behind my parent's little 4-room cinder block house. The grass was dry and the area we were sitting in was mostly red clay dirt. We would look up at the big blue sky and try to pick out clouds that resembled animals or anything familiar to us. Honey bees were flitting around, stopping long enough to draw some nectar from the small yellow dandelions that scattered our yard. The sounds of the Cicadas was drowned out by the monotonous humming of the electric fan that was mounted in the window of my parent's bedroom. We didn't have air conditioning back in those days, we opened the windows and used fans to stay cool.

As we sat there on that patch of red clay dirt, we began picking out small sized dirt clods, and throwing them. I'm not sure who thought of it first, probably me since I was usually the instigator and Kevin was more level minded, but we decided to sling some of those clods at the window fan. My what fun! "Bzzhzhzhzhzh, bzzhzhzhzz," the clods would hit the metal blades and disintegrate. Sometimes fragments of them would bounce back toward us, causing us to duck before they hit us in the head. We would sling one and just laugh to our hearts content. We threw those dirt clods until we depleted our supply and became bored with it. We brushed ourselves off and moved on to the front yard to play.

We had no more than walked to the front yard when my mother came storming out the side door of the house. "Byron!!! What have you boys done???" Oh Lord, I looked at Kevin and he looked back at me with eyes full of terror. We wondered what in the world we could have possibly done this time. Next, my dad was running toward us. "What in the samhill did you think you were doing?" He always started out that way, "What in the samhill." If I had a dollar for every time I heard my dad say that, I would be filthy rich! Kevin and I just stood there puzzled as to what was going on. Mom was yelling, "my white bedspread!" None of this was making sense to me or Kevin. Dad said, "you get your hind-end in that house and look at what you've done!" Kevin and I were marched into the house and to my parent's bedroom. It didn't take but a second to figure out what we had done. There was red clay dirt all over the room, but mostly it was all over the white bed spread that covered my parent's bed. We were caught red clay handed. There was absolutely no way that we could deny being responsible. We were as guilty as two boys could be.

Kevin quickly exited the room, jumped on his bike and peddled the mile back to his house. I, on the other hand, had to face the wrath of my parents. The familiar sound of the belt buckle jingling and the "slap, slap" sound of the leather popping as dad would snap the belt together, was all that it took to start the tears flowing down my cheeks. "Bend over and hold onto that bed post!" I did as told, and dad commenced to wearing me out with that belt. I swear, it's a wonder that I still have a backside at all after all of the whippings that I received as a young'un. I think about those stripes of punishment every single time that I put a belt on. Every now and then I'll snap one of my belts and hear the "slap, slap" sound, and it makes me cringe.

I don't know whether my mother called Kevin's mother and told her about the whole incident or if he confessed on his own. But, he later told me that he had received his punishment too.

It was definitely a moment in my life that I will never forget.

Moral of this story: While you may not intend to do something wrong, there is always consequences for your actions. Man up and take responsibility, even if it's gonna hurt.