Flashback Friday #35

The Butcher Boys

Hello friends. Hello. Can you say it's time for another edition of Flashback Friday? Sure I knew you could. I've told you a few post back about some of my wacky neighbors I had while I was growing up. This post covers some of my favorites.

When I was in fifth grade, Mark & Rose Butcher moved into the house that the biker dude and his sister used to live in. They had four children. The oldest was a boy who was two years younger than me. Next came another boy who was four years younger. These boys became the little brothers I never had. They also had a sister who was four and a little brother who was two.

Doug (the oldest) and Billy (next oldest) were at my house every day. We made too much noise to be inside their house much , with the younger siblings napping and such, so if we were at their house it was generally outside. We never ran out of things to do together.

My brother even liked the fact that they moved in. Not because he liked playing with them, but because they had an aunt who was hot. She was also my brother's age. Whenever she came to visit from Columbus, he found himself next door. We teased them a lot.

We found our way back to the creek nearly every day after homework & chores were done. Sometimes we would wade, float boats or catch crawdads, other times it was to just watch nature. It didn't matter what we did, it was always doing it together that counted.

Mom thought Billy was the sweetest thing. He even got me out of a grounding because he told Mom it just wasn't any fun if I wasn't around to play with. He melted her heart and she reduced the grounding to time served.

One of the most frightening things that ever happened to me, happened while I was talking to Doug. Billy didn't like the WWE family's kids too much. They always teased him because he talked with a bit of a lisp. One day Billy was chasing one of the kids back across the street with a handful of gravel. When they reached the other side, she picked up a rock from the pile that her folks gathered up to throw at each other. Since this rock was bigger than the gravel Billy had, he decided to retreat back across the street. One problem, he didn't do what you always tell a child to do when they come to a street. While I was talking to Doug in the side yard, we heard the screech of brakes and the sickening thud of a seven year old bouncing off a two thousand pound automobile.

Time stood still. For a moment, there was a stunned silence. The lady driver flung her car door open and jumped out. She was screaming "I tried to stop!" over and over. Rose must have been outside because it was only moments until she was screaming hysterically and running for the crumpled form of her little boy that lay by the side of the road. The emergency squad and sheriff were there within minutes. The sheriff took a report from the driver, and from Doug, who had seen it happen (my back was to the street). The squad strapped Billy to the gurney and raced off.

Later that night, we got news that Billy had a broken arm, and stitches in his head. He had run into the front passenger door about where the mirror is attached. Luckily he wasn't faster, or he would have been in front of the car, and possible killed. We played a lot of board games with him while he was recovering because it wouldn't be fair to go to the creek, and leave him behind. He recovered well, and always watched crossing the street after that

We were inseparable until the time I went into seventh grade. I no longer rode the same bus they did, and I got home earlier than they did. Near the end of my seventh grade year, they moved away. They may not have been there in the flesh, but I still had the warm memories of the times we had together. Some of the adventures are whole Flashback Friday posts in themselves.

It was nice having neighbors who were normal for a change.