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Old 02-06-2014, 03:21 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Sarzana,Italy
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Default Chapter 4

Spring is near; I have been working in my new garden pruning the grape arbors, olive trees rose bushes and planting potatoes, lettuce and garlic. It was while planting potatoes that I recalled Mister Bisbee and his farm where I committed my first carefully executed robbery at the age of thirteen.

CHAPTER 4: The Bonnie and Clyde Approach
There was little money in our house and like many New Englanders we lived day to day. As a teenaged school boy one of the things I hated most was my farmers bib overalls and cheap sneakers but they were my only wardrobe. I wore them every day for all occasions, along with cast off shirts from relatives. My Uncle Bill who had recently returned from the war in Germany had given me a waist length military jacket that still had his patches and stripes on it. I had to turn up the cuffs to wear it but I was very proud of it and wore it to school every day. It had inside pockets that became hiding places for my cigarettes. I started smoking before I finished the seventh grade.
Lucky Strikes were 10 cents a package. My stepfather Ernest would buy them by the carton and keep them in his bedroom dresser. I would sneak into his bedroom when he was gone, open up the drawer, steal a pack from the middle of the carton, and put it back exactly as I’d found it. I also kept a Prince Albert can in those secret pockets, where I would store cigarette butts that I picked up along the roadside.
One morning as I was getting ready for school I asked Ernest if I could have some different school clothes. The other kids dressed nicely, none in bib overalls with pockets on the side that rulers fit into except me. “If the clothes I put on your back aren’t good enough, earn the money yourself and buy your own. From that point on I found ways of earning money. My first jobs were picking strawberries .later I found work stacking bales of hay and following behind the cultivator sacking potatoes for Mr. Bisbee.
Mr. Bisbee was a hard-working Yankee farmer. He had a good farm with a nice herd of Holstein cattle. In the summer and fall his road side stand always had for sale the best sweet corn, green beans, wax beans, pumpkins, carrots, red fat Macintosh apples stored in round wooden baskets and honey. His apple cider was considered to be the best in all of Rockingham County, as were his peaches and prize winning cantaloupes.
One day I saw Mr. Bisbee on his red Farm All tractor, cultivator behind, unearthing big Russet potatoes in a cloud of September dust. I took off barefoot and ran the half-mile across the pasture to where he was working. “Mr. Bisbee,” I called up to him, “Can I pick potatoes for you?”


“You want to pick potatoes for me boy? Go right ahead.” And he continued on down the lane uncovering more potatoes. I grabbed a burlap sack from off the nearby wagon and started scooping up potatoes.
It was mid-afternoon when I started and by the time I had picked five eighty pound sacks full, I was getting very hungry. So I stopped, dragged all the sacks off the field next to the wagon, had a good drink of water and then went to Mr. Bisbee who was still bent over sacking potatoes. I told him that I was going home and would he pay me for my work. He stood up from his sack frowned, stretched his back and looked down at me. Five sacks of potatoes were worth fifty cents. Then he returned to picking up potatoes and said, “Boy, you said you wanted to pick potatoes. I didn’t say anything about paying you. Now you get on home.”
In the summer when the air at night was so sweet and whippoorwills lamented, fireflies glowed like tiny paper lanterns; I was would sleep outside- to the relief of the entire household. I slept under the lean-to of the chicken coop and most nights had the company of Buddy, a big gray and white rooster. We got along just fine once I got the part of the chicken that goes over the fence last, pointed in the right direction away from my head. When there was no worry about rain, I would take my blanket and sleep under the white pines, .the golden needles raked into a fragrant comfortable mattress. One night my friend Donald begged his folks to stay over with me. As we both lay under the September moonlight talking.
I told Don about the potatoes and non-payment by Mr. Bisbee and decided we should get even by sneaking up to his farm and steal melons. The melons were ripe for plucking and we knew exactly in what part of the garden they lay. Our plan was to walk up the road until we got to the cornfield, cut through it, climb under the electric fence and carry off as many melons as we could. Everything went quite well as far as the fence. Then the whole plan unraveled, we were crawling on the ground when, we ran into the herd of milk cows and spooked them. They must have thought we were a pair of timber wolves. Snorting and stamping their hooves they stampeded. They crashed right through the garden fence, mooing and moaning- and ended up in our melon patch.
Don and I turned and high tailed it back to our camp. We were too excited by the commotion we had stirred up to be able to sleep. After an hour or so we decided to steal some cider... Mr. Bisbee kept his cider in gallon glass jugs which were on the north side of the produce stand under the shelf that held the baskets of Macintosh apples. This presented us with the possibility of being seen as the farm house was on the other side of the lawn, exposing us to view.
We decided on the direct approach just like Bonnie and Clyde. We would hit quickly and be gone in a flash. Arriving at our target and waited to be sure no one was up. After a while, our heartbeats settled down a bit. We counted; “one, two, and three”…and then we were off. Donald grabbed two jugs and I had mine in my hands when the dogs started barking. We took off and ran straight into a little wire fence Mrs. Bisbee had placed around a bed of petunias. Both Don and I went flying through the air, head first into the flowers. I dropped both jugs and was crawling in the moonlight looking for them. Don was up and running and, looking for the ditch. I was determined to leave with my cider which I felt I had earned it in the potato patch. I finally got things under control and ran as if the Devil himself were behind. We took our jugs down to the backwoods near the giant oak and buried them for later when things cooled off.
We thought cider was like beer. We would climb up the oak, pass the jug back and forth between us, talk about the robbery and laugh ourselves silly. A few days later I was walking over to Don’s house and as I slinked by the produce stand, Mr. Bisbee called me over. “You were up here the other night stealing apples, boy?” he questioned me. “No sir, Mr. Bisbee. I never stole an apple from you, I swear to God I didn’t.” I turned and went running down the road, feeling pleased with the fact that I had not told him a lie.
Don’s dad was not a farmer, but a carpenter, who loved to play the guitar and hunt and fish for recreation. The Cary’s were a good happy family. Mrs. Cary was always fixing donuts, cupcakes and lots of pies. My favorite was her lemon meringue. Whenever I was allowed to visit them, she would always fix me tea with milk and honey and we would have some dessert to eat. I think she knew about my circumstances and was always kind to me. It was from the way they lived that I really began to understand my home life was not a normal one.
Here is also the idea for a new painting. It is to be done in bright carnival colors.
I think the title will be Clowns eating Ice cream.
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