This story takes place in the mid-1950s mostly in and
around the LJ Bell Elementary School in Rockingham. The
main characters are Frank and Chuck (that you may
remember from the Sand Hill Army Club), Eddie, Ronald,
and Cassandra who was also known as Connie.  They were
all in the sixth grade and in the same class except for
Chuck.  All five of these students’ fathers had been in the
service during World War II.  Chuck’s father had been and
still was in the US Army, Frank’s father had been in the US
Navy, and Connie’s father had been in the US Army Air
Force.  Eddie’s and Ronald’s fathers had both been
sergeants in different companies but in the same US Army
regiment, and each had been decorated with both a Bronze
Star and a Purple Heart for their service in Europe on and
after D-Day.  Both these men were local heroes.  Eddie and
Ronald were very close friends and were modest enough,
but, as expected, were very proud of their fathers.  They
lived in the same neighborhood.       


Kids in the sixth grade are eleven going on twelve.  This is
an awkward age particularly for boys.  Most boys this age
know they like girls, but usually they haven’t yet figured
out why they do.  Girls, on the other hand, are much more
mature than boys at this age.  According to the Social
Security actuarial assumptions, men on average marry
women five years younger than themselves.  Another thing
worth mentioning is that at recent forty-fifth high school
reunions in both Rockingham and Gastonia, less than 5% of
the former classmates were married to or had been
married to another former classmate.  At least 75% of the
population eventually marries someone they didn’t know
when they graduated from high school.  What this means is
that during junior and senior high school, most students
are just practicing how to socialize and interact with
members of the opposite sex.  However, in the sixth grade,
students are not aware of all these statistics, and every
single relationship is very important, especially to boys
who really have a lot to learn.


The vast majority of boys this age have never even held
hands with a girl, never mind kissed one.  However, if you
hear boys talking to each other on the playground, they
have long since done enough to start a new race of people
(like Abraham in the Bible where God promised him that
his descendents would multiply to become “The Children
of Israel.”)  


In our situation, Frank liked Connie, but Connie liked
Eddie, and Eddie liked Connie.  They had all known each
other since the first grade at the old Grammar School
downtown.  Being a girl and much more mature, Connie
was probably able to sense that Frank also liked her.  Of
course all these boys were perfect gentlemen.  Although
Connie sensed that Frank liked her, she knew that he was
being respectful of her current romance and keeping his
distance.  Now Eddie was slow, but he too finally figured
out that Frank liked his girlfriend.  Eddie was upset about
this and was trying to figure out some way to end this
potential love triangle before it got started.  One problem
was that Frank was somewhat bigger and more athletic
than Eddie.  Frank had won many of the events at the “LJ
Bell Track and Field” meet last spring and would probably
dominate them again this year.  He had the potential to be
a future high school football running back.  Eddie’s father
had always taught his sons about the meaning of valor and
courage, but almost no father tries to train his sons about
how to understand women (never heard of any father
being successful at it anyhow).  Eddie decided that he
needed to pick a fight with Frank and tell him that he’d
better leave his girlfriend alone.


Then one day during morning recess, Eddie did just as he
had planned.  He hit Frank with his fist as hard as he could
right in the nose and left eye.  Frank more or less knew this
was coming, but he did not hit Eddie back.  All he did was
to use his arms to ward off future blows, but he did nothing
to retaliate.  This somewhat confused Eddie who then
called Frank a chicken and for him to stay away from his
girlfriend.  Frank didn’t respond to Eddie either with
words or with physical force.  Eventually Eddie walked
away calling Frank a coward.  About that time one of the
teachers, noticing the crowd of spectators, arrived on the
scene.  She asked Frank what was going on.  He said he had
fallen down, but that he was okay now.  Then the bell rang
and everyone went back to his or her classrooms.  After a
short while, their teacher, Ms. McLeod, noticed Frank’s
black eye and questioned him about it.  He told her that he
had run into a door.  The class chuckled, but Ms. McLeod
believed him, at least this first time. Most of the students
knew what had happened.  About a week later Eddie,
sensing that he had not fully completed his mission, hit
Frank in the other eye on the way back from assembly.  
Again Frank did nothing to retaliate either verbally or
physically.  Eddie again called him a coward and told him to
stay away from his girl.  Later Ms. McLeod noticed the new
black eye on the other side and again questioned Frank
about it.  He told her that he ran into a door.  Ms. McLeod
didn’t believe him this time and sent him to see Mr.
Murdock, the new principal at LJ Bell that year.  Mr.
Murdock was also called Coach Murdock since he
previously was a Rockingham High School assistant
football coach.  Now Mr. Murdock was formerly Lieutenant
Murdock, USMC, a Purple Heart veteran in the Pacific
having survived both the big battles at Iwo Jima and Guam
among others.  He asked Frank the same question.  Frank
told him that he ran into a door.  The principal scolded
Frank a little and warned him that he had better not hear
of him fighting again.  Coach Murdock told Frank that even
though he was one of their best students, he wouldn’t like
what might happen to him if he did come back to this office
for fighting.       


About a week later, as Frank and Chuck were walking
along Hawthorne Street on the way home from school, they
met Ronald and Billy over behind the old high school near
the baseball field.  Ronald, who was Eddie’s close buddy,
figured he needed to help Eddie a little.  So he started
being insulting to Frank, figuring he could get by with it
since he thought Frank was a big coward.  Frank advised
Ronald to tone down his language.  Then Ronald tried to
hit Frank, but Frank was fast enough to ward off the blow
and quickly wrestled Ronald to the ground.  He sat on top
of him and pinned Ronald’s hands to the ground.   Frank
said: “Now listen up.  Notice that I could just sit here on
top of you and slap you silly if I wanted to; however, I’m
not going to do that.  This conflict you referred to is
between Eddie and me.  It is his private battle, not yours.  
Eddie can fight his own battles.  You and I don’t have
anything to fight about.  This is not a war.  If this were a
war, you and Eddie would be the sergeants, and we would
all be on the same side.  We’ve known each other since the
first grade.  Now, if it is okay with you, we’ll just call this
little fight a draw if you will agree to keep your mouth
shut.”  Ronald didn’t need any encouragement to get out of
that unpleasant situation.  Ronald was too embarrassed to
tell Eddie about that little episode.  [Just to clarify things, it
took the same amount of time for Frank and Chuck to walk
home as compared with waiting for the school bus since
the school bus ride was the bus’s second load which didn’t
start until at least forty minutes after school was out].     


Several months before all of this, there was a bully who was
aggravating some third and fourth graders including some
little girls at the morning school bus stop over on Midway
Road.  Frank and Chuck asked him to stop, but were told to
get lost.  Frank wrestled him to the ground just like he did
Ronald.  This wasn’t quite as easy as with Ronald since the
bully was an eighth grader.  Frank gave this bully the same
options he gave Ronald.  The bully never bothered those
kids again.  The reason for telling this is that Chuck knew
his friend wasn’t a coward, but he still didn’t know what he
was up to.


Eddie was really getting frustrated.  About a week after the
second attack, while the teacher had gone to another
classroom, Frank went to the back of the room at the coat
closet to put something in his coat pocket.  Eddie snuck
back there and popped Frank in the mouth as he turned
around, and again he called Frank a stinking coward, and
warned him to stay away from his girlfriend.  Again Frank
did not retaliate nor did he say a single word.  When Ms.
McLeod came back, she noticed Frank’s swollen and
bleeding lip.  She gave him a Kleenex and told him to go to
Mr. Murdock’s office.


Mr. Murdock was furious.  He looked at Frank and said:
“Now what we have here is a failure to communicate!  
What do you have to say for yourself young man?  And don’
t tell me you ran into a door again.”  Frank paused to think
a little before answering the question.  He was thinking
that Coach Murdock would put fear and trembling into an
eight hundred pound lion never mind an eleven and a half
year old boy.  What was he going to say?  Then he said: “Sir,
you’re a Marine.  You know there are times when you have
to fight.”  That response calmed Mr. Murdock somewhat
(Remember, once a Marine, always a Marine).  Mr.
Murdock replied: “That’s war; we’re in peacetime now.”  
Then just as Frank was running out of clever things to say,
there was a knock on the door.  It was Ms. McLeod and
Eddie.  Ms. McLeod said that the other students had told
her what had been going on between Frank and Eddie.  In
particular, she told him that Eddie had hit Frank
unprovoked three times, and that on all three occasions
Frank did not fight back at Eddie.  This seemed incredulous
to Coach Murdock who then said to Frank: “What’s all this
crap you told me about ‘sometimes you just have to fight’?  
How come you didn’t hit him back?”  Frank responded:
“Because he’s my friend.  We’ve known each other since
the first grade.”  Mr. Murdock then said:  “There’s got to be
more reason than that?”  Frank replied: “His father
received the Bronze Star in the Normandy Invasion.  I can’t
hit the son of a man who’s done all that for us.”   Mr.
Murdock replied: “There’s still got to be more to it than
that.  Eddie, you’re on probation, but you ain’t getting out
of any school.  Your father’s a good friend of mine.  If I hear
of you fighting again, you and I are going to have a visit
with him.  You know what he will do to you if that
happens.”  That ended the session in Mr. Murdock’s office.  
That was late Friday and school was out.  Eddie needed to
hurry to catch his school bus.


The next day was Saturday, and it was the day for the
regular biweekly (every two weeks) meeting for the Sand
Hill Army Club.  (Please see my previous essay: “Hamlet or
Bust”).  The regular members were Chuck, Frank, and
Steve who lived south of the railroad tracks; and Harry,
Henry, and Nathan who all lived north of the railroad
tracks.  Everyone was there including the canine honorary
members Old Red and Iky.  All the boys wanted to question
Frank about his troubles with Eddie.  “Was Frank a
coward?”  Chuck led out by mentioning the fight Frank had
with the bully at the bus stop several months past.  Frank
didn’t really have to get involved in that fight had he not
wanted to.  He also told them what Frank had done to
Ronald several weeks ago when he got too big for his
britches, and that Ronald was probably tougher than
Eddie.  This put the boys at ease, as they no longer
questioned Frank’s courage.  They knew their Frank and
knew he was up to something.  They wanted to know what.  
After everyone agreed and crossed their hearts and hoped
to die that they would not tell anyone except others in the
Sand Hill Club, Frank told them about what went on in
Coach Murdock’s office.  Believe it or not, boys are much
better at keeping secrets in this type of situation than girls
are.  Girls would tell secrets like this within an hour of
when they had the chance.  Most boys would probably hold
out for at least three or four hours.  The boys asked Frank
for more details.


Frank said: “Do you guys remember last year when we
were talking to ole man French up at the Journal Office.  
Remember he told us about Helen of Troy, where over
three thousand years ago, the Greeks launched a thousand
ships to bring one lady back from Troy?  The Greeks were
never able to unite into a single country.  Each city existed
as a city-state, each with its own king.  The king from one
city gave his daughter, Helen, in marriage to the Menelaus  
(later King) of Sparta.  He was much older than she was,
and no one bothered to ask her if she loved him, which she
certainly did not.  One day there was a shipwreck of a
Trojan ship near Sparta.  One of the survivors was a Prince
of Troy named “Paris.”  The Spartan King treated him like a
royal guest (that he was) until his ship could be repaired to
return to Troy.  Paris repaid the King’s hospitality by
leaving during the middle of the night and taking the King’
s young bride (Helen) with him.  Naturally that upset King
Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon.  The Trojan War
lasted ten years or so.  It all ended with the Trojan Horse
with secret Greek soldiers hidden inside.  The Trojans
thought the Greeks had given up and gone home as all their
ships had sailed out of sight.  After the Trojans got fairly
drunk celebrating their victory, these hidden Greek
soldiers slipped down from the wooden horse and opened
the gates of Troy to all the Greeks soldiers hiding outside.  
The rest is nasty, but Helen was returned to her husband.”  
Then Harry asked: “Are you planning some sort of Trojan
Horse here in Rockingham?”  Frank replied: “No, but this
story shows how important one woman can be.”  Then
Steve butted in: “You mean you took all that crap off Eddie
for a girl?”  Frank never answered that question.  The club
meeting was more or less adjourned after this, and all the
boys went to Chuck’s aunt’s house to watch a western
movie on TV.


About a week or two later as Chuck, Steve, Harry, and
Henry were walking along Hawthorne Street and had just
rounded the corner to Ann Street.  Then looking back the
other way, Harry said: “Look, ain’t that Frank up there?  
Who’s that he’s with?”  Steve responded: “That’s Connie.  
Are they holding hands?”


Epilogue


Over fifty years later at their forty-fifth high school
reunion, the five main characters (Frank, Chuck, Eddie,
Ronald and Connie) sit down to talk about this incident.  
They are all still good friends, and most of them had
attended almost all of the reunions.  Four of these people
had married someone that they didn’t know when they
graduated from high school.  The exception was Chuck who
married a local girl who was one class behind him in high
school.  Connie said: “Back then, I liked both Eddie and
Frank.  I was particularly impressed with Eddie’s father,
and Eddie was the first to seek my attention.  However,
when Eddie punched Frank in the mouth near the coat
closet, he showed a side of himself I didn’t like.  My
sympathies switched over to Frank.  I knew all about Frank’
s fight with Ronald and the eighth-grade bully at the bus
stop.  I knew Frank was not a coward.  I concluded that
Frank wouldn’t hit Eddie because I liked Eddie.  He didn’t
want to damage something that I liked.  Now that’s
romantic.  A girl would expect a boy to fight for her in some
circumstances such as someone questioning the girl’s
honor, or someone harassing her or her little brother or
something like that.  Which boy a girl likes is her decision;
this is not a decision to be determined by the boys.  That’s
the way some animals choose a mate, but not humans.”  
Ronald concluded by saying they should have a required
course in high school just for boys, and the name of this
course would be “How to Understand Women.”