"GO! BOY! GO!"

Our neighbor, Lloyd, and his brother-in-law, Chesley, elderly coon hunters, were watching a football game one night when the player with the ball broke loose and headed toward the opponent’s goal.

Chesley, an ardent radio fan, jumped up and shouted, "Go! Boy! Go!"

A hound dog, awakened by that familiar command, dashed toward the woods, barking his "trail bark."

Lloyd grabbed his coat and cap, lit his kerosene lantern and hurried off saying, "When your dog goes out like that, he expects you, and you’ve got to go to him."

He missed the rest of the game.

WOOL BATHING SUIT

From my earliest memory of going to Flat Rock to swim on hot summer nights, we kids swam in underwear or whatever clothes we wore that day.

Mom would pat me dry, and we’d be dry and sleepy by the time we got home.

Then Columbia got a swimming pool, where bathing suits were required.

I had sold blackberries, gooseberries and cedar trees and had amassed a fortune of $30, deposited at the Columbia Savings Bank - with checkbook! I ordered a bright red, 100 percent wool bathing suit with five white stripes on the skirt from Sears and Roebuck Co. and mailed them my check for $5 - plus shipping.

Mom took me to the pool, where I paid the quarter admission fee and spent one of the most exciting afternoons of my life.

I’d never seen a waterslide, where I climbed steps, took turns with kids I didn’t know and went flying down into the water. Flat Rock water hole didn’t have that!

When I went to the dressing room, I discovered that the seat of my new wool bathing suit was worn threadbare.

PASSING TIME AWAY

Chub and I were in Montreal Airport, waiting for a small plane to take us, our bikes and saddlebags to Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

We would cycle and camp, from there to St. Johns, approximately 500 miles across beautiful, sparsely populated territory.

A fellow admired our bikes and said, "Peugeot. Our daughter has a Peugeot."

Reading our names on the bikes’ shipping tags, he spelled out G-E-R-A-R-D then asked his wife something.

He turned to me and said, "You wouldn’t be ‘Mrs. G’ from Christian College in Missouri, would you?"

I was that!

They were the parents of a girl on my first European student tour. Her bike came from our son’s bicycle shop.

The time passed quickly, and we agreed that this is, indeed, a very small world.

THAT’S WHERE GUTS ARE!

Brad was always begging to go into the swimming pool before class time, 4 p.m.

Not only did the student teachers and I need a breather between classes; we also required the kids to follow all rules to the letter for safety’s sake.

Finally I blew the whistle and announced, "Four o’clock, all in."

Everybody splashed in - except Brad.

"What’s wrong, Brad? Why aren’t you in the water?" I asked.

"I don’t know," he said, "I just haven’t got the guts to go."

Surprised, I asked, "Guts! Brad, what’s guts?"

"I don’t know," he said, then with a quick gesture toward his head, "It’s up here."

NOW BE GONE!

Susie was a precocious 3-year-old who could pronounce big words.

One day when she was playing alone in her sandbox, a friend of the family leaned over the fence and said, "Hello, little girl, what’s your name?"

Without looking up from her "work," with a tone of disgust and a childish lisp, she replied, "Susie, Mississippi, constipation!"