Flashback Friday #185

"Leaf " It Alone!



Welcome back to more of my ramblings. They say as you get older, you don't remember things exactly as they happened. That may be the case, but since you weren't there to refresh my memory, you'll just have to take what I give you as the truth.

As I recounted last week, near the beginning of my Sophomore year, I began my decent to the dark side. Another group that helped me along that wide, well travelled path was the Crook boys. From the time that Pauline Pershing moved away, I tried to make a bond of friendship with the Crooks. Justa was entirely way too cool to be my friend, but I got along OK with two of his younger brothers, Sneaky & Rotten Little (Crummy was a little heathen that I wanted NOTHING to do with).

After Pauline's family moved out, their landlord rented the house to one of his friends. It seemed that this friend of his had one ambition in life, to smoke pot. He always reeked of marijuana smoke and had cultivated quite a crop in his back yard (he said it was a flower garden).

Sneaky had hear Justa talking to his friends about pilfering small amounts of pot from the neighbors garden. If you pinched the leaf right near the stem, it would come off without leaving much of a mark. You really had to be looking closely to see that anything had been taken.

Be that as it may, one day, Sneaky & Rotten Little were up in my room listening to records. Sneaky turned to Rotten Little and said "Why don't you sneak next door and swipe some leaves from the neighbor's plants?" Rotten Little took off and was back in short order. What Sneaky saw in his hand about made his head spin. Rotten Little had broken off an entire branch from one of the larger plants. It left such a ragged tear on the side of the plant Stevie Wonder could have seen that someone been in the "flower garden".

When the neighbor came home and went out to "tend his garden", he saw that someone had taken liberty with his stash. He immediately went to the Crook house (where Justa & Crummy were the only ones home). When Justa answered the door, the neighbor threatened him and told him exactly what he would do to him or any of his brothers, if he every caught him in his patch. When The Crook parents got home from work, Justa told them about the neighbors threats. Pa Crook (who was crooked as a dog's hind leg himself) couldn't stand having anyone threaten his kids. He called the Sheriff. When the Sheriff arrived, the neighbor was arrested and his entire crop was harvested and taken away to be burned (with the exception of the branch that was now in my room drying). It was a good thing that my parents very rarely ever came up to my room.