Smitty

They had to come a long way to pick up Smitty in Song Lake and longer for me to ride to school a distance of a good five miles. And I didn't think they were funny - and had a hard time faking laughter. I never cared for slapstick.

So it was a hard go and they didn't understand me but who did ? And I became an Albatross around their necks - and was ostracised as too painful for unbridled laughter, as I sat there like a stooge mum and muted and I couldn't gibberish and if I did they looked at me like I was tainted. It all lasted for a few weeks before the Homecoming parade, bonfire and dance of which they were going to pick me up, but didn't show and I knew they would never show again.

But Bud O those mornings - warm and the top-down near 8 am and school beginnings. He raced thru the roads of concrete highway - grenada green tree-lined and houses hid, running late for school again, laughter the late driving demon a routine. He would drive like a madman and where the school was in sight as a long low golden stone two-story, with long slat windows in the distance - over the channel on the 30 mile an hour curve, and the dusk-white concrete bridge.

And Bud's late into the curve at sixty ! The wind in the back seat bristles our hair, sixty on the speedometer dial - fifty, forty, and he slams the brakes into the curve before the bridge - and he brakes ! and he brakes ! again - hard-pulling wheel to his left - brakes again ! and the wheels squeal and it feels like a roller coaster.

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