Dick Tracy, Chuck Roast, and Guns

Bicycles dominated as our fastest modes of transportation, although we loved running fast and hard, through neighborhood back yards, across highways, around construction sites, on top of school roofs and nothing proved to be an obstacle.

I was faster than Jack, but he was my best friend and it seemed when we were on the loose the action accelerated onto trajectories that often put us in danger.

He wasn’t very good at baseball because he was a slow runner, but in football, he was a great tackler, and that was why we called him the rock.. Yeah, Dwayne Johnson stole the nickname from my friend Jack, but my guess is Dwayne wasn’t even a twinkle in his parent’s eyes when Jack and I were running around.

But who cares anyway.  There’s lots of rocks around but there was only one Jack.  And one Carson.

We were both about 10 years old or and we had few boundaries.  Then it changed suddenly one day.

Some guy in a neighborhood some distance away had a kennel out in his yard, apparently prized dogs of some kind, I never noticed this actually.  I do remember they barked like wild hyenas when Jack and I ran through his yard as we were being chased by some other neighbor boys while playing ditch. We made the mistake of circling back and again running through this guy’s yard, near the alley.

He was waiting for us when we saw him point his revolver at us, we both stopped immediately, quivering while watching his trigger finger.

“What the hell you boys doin in my yard?  Stealin’ my dawgs?”

“Well um, no sir, of course not.”  I said.

“No way.” Jack added.

“You can bet someone’s been stealin em’ Lost one just the other day. You boys come with me into my house right now.   He motioned to his back door with his revolver in his hand.

Of course, we obliged, and understood that the man with the gun had all the power.  But hell, was he going to shoot us? We hadn’t even finished grade school yet and I didn’t even get up the courage yet to ask Joanne if I could walk her home from school and carry her books. yet.  Maybe I would never get the chance now, I thought.

He closed the door behind us, and we stood side by side against the wall in his dank entryway. “What are you boys names?   I’m goin to call your parents and tell them what trouble you’re in.  Speak up now!”

I looked at Jack and he looked back at me.  We both knew what we needed to do at that time, almost with a telepathy communication of some type, amazingly.

“Chuck Roast,”  said Jack

“Dick Tracy,”  I said.

” Oh yeah? You boys think I’d fall for them names?  You got to be kidding me, right? Dick Tracy was a famous cartoon cop and well, I ain’t never heard of no roast named Chuck.”

“No sir.”  But that’s about all I could figure out to say at the time.  I was looking at his revolver.

We both knew that the greatest fear we had was not necessarily this moron’s gun, but the fact that he would call our parents and that, of course, was more terrifying.

“Give me your phone number Dick.”

I had to lie again.  I hated that. I said, “We don’t have a phone no more. Even if we did my pa said we can’t be giving it out to no strangers.”  I was shocked that I was starting to introduce this guy’s hillbilly dialect into my own highly refined language. But then, I figured it might soften him up a bit to see we were just one of the boys.

“You little rats can just get your puny asses out of here right now.”  He put his gun down and let us run.

But of course, we ran several miles away to a meandering creek, far from our home so he couldn’t come after us.

Anyway, all ended well with this true story.  I never told my parents anything about it.  In fact this writing if the only documentation of the event.

And Jack, my friends, became a war hero, wounded and disabled doing secret missions that this country won’t discuss since they are highly classified.

I wish you the best Jack, you are my hero.

SRC