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I came to this town Song Lake the summer between second and third grades, a town like Lake Wobegon the mythical Minnesota, Public Broadcasting, Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor creation of Lutherans and Catholics, only Song Lake was much smaller. We - me my mother and little brother moved into a trailer next to a house my father had built when he disappeared in Chicago for a couple of years, apparently waiting for the present tenants to disappear.

My mother introduced me to a boy my age, who was the son of a mother she knew, and took me over there to play. He lived 'up-town' right close to Main Street, the only street in UpTown. We each had bikes, so at some point we rode around town. We were heading north toward the lake, down Augustana Avenue, when riding along a grassy, steep almost vertical bluff on our left, we were attacked with rocks by bunch of boys our age. I got off my bike but there were no throwable stones around. The road was black-top where they sprinkle the surface with pea gravel and with traffic, it all ends up in furrows along the side of the road. I grabbed handfuls of pea gravel and gave them splattering grapeshot at close range. Couldn't miss. My friend did the same and we drove them up the bluff, where they taunted us, but they were the one's that had run.

I learned later that this was the Craig Hegle Gang. There were two gangs in town at that time of about sixteen boys and three girls, all about the same age, at this time third grade.

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