The Rascals of Stafford Street: Laughing and Losing during the Remarkable Summer of '62

By John Quick

Beginning in the autumn of 2015, the author began writing a series of novels loosely based upon his childhood while growing up in a small southern town during the early to mid 60s.
Laughing and Losing during the Remarkable Summer of '62 is the original short novel in the Rascals of Stafford Street series.The story takes place during the summer of '62, involving humor wrapped around a thread of darkness, an ugly moment from the author's childhood when he was attacked by an older boy. An act of extreme violence soon follows, ensnaring the rascals in a life and death mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Quick
• Release date: Dec 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370117086

Book preview

The Rascals of Stafford Street:

Laughing and Losing during the

Remarkable Summer of ‘62

John J. Quick

Copyright©2017 by John J. Quick

All Rights Reserved

(Distributed by Smashwords)

Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Introduction

A Prelude To Summer

Our Territory

Summer Begins

The Club Convenes

Gathering Clouds

And Then It Poured

Out Of The Darkness

A Halloween Like No Other

The Closing Hours

Epilogue

Free Offer

Other books in The Rascals of Stafford Street Series

Disclaimer

Cover

The front cover photo was taken on the 4th of July, 1961, the summer before we became The Rascals of Stafford Street. Clockwise, following Billy leading the parade are Martha, Linda, the author, and Nancy.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to Linda, Nancy, Martha, Billy, and Jim. I could not imagine growing up without being surrounded by the five of you. I will always be grateful for the abundance of your laughter and love. As a child, I could not have asked for more.

Introduction

Beginning in the autumn of 2015, I began writing a series of novels loosely based upon my childhood while growing up in a small southern town during the early to mid 60s.

The cover photo, showing the rascals assembled for their annual Fourth of July parade, was taken in 1961. Forty-four years later, I was standing on the same sidewalk in front of my Aunt Mai’s home, celebrating her 90th birthday. I began reminiscing about growing up next door and the mysteries and mischief the rascals were involved in. My nephew, John Paul, made a request, You need to write down those stories someday. Well, someday finally arrived, tens years later.

Light and darkness circulate around us throughout our lives, but I was only remembering the seemingly endless laughter and fun of my childhood. Ten years is a long time to wait, but I knew something was missing. Then one day, in conversation with one of my sisters, I recalled a very brief but ugly moment I had never told anyone about. This became the spark of inspiration I needed to begin writing about the rascals.

Laughing and Losing during the Remarkable Summer of ’62 is the original short novel in the Rascals of Stafford Street series. Laughing and Losing is an apt description of the narrative─humor wrapped around a thread of darkness, the threatening episode from my actual childhood referenced above when I was attacked by an older boy. An act of extreme violence soon follows, ensnaring the rascals in a life and death mystery.

I feel very blessed having had the opportunity to live, and then relive again thru my writing, those extraordinary summer days.

A Prelude To Summer

Johnny, I’ve been looking for you.

I was out back, then I noticed a bunch of grownups standing in the driveway between the old Hodges’ house and Miss Sotheby’s.

Somebody killed Samantha.

What?! When?

I heard them folks saying somebody killed Samantha last night . . . stabbed her . . . more than once. Jim’s mind was racing faster than he could speak.

Did somebody see it? How’d they know?

Miss Sotheby found her lying dead in the driveway early this morning. Said she almost passed out.

I thought you said Samantha was already dead.

She was. Miss Sotheby almost passed out.

Oh.

It was only a few weeks before when Jim and I had our one and only encounter with Samantha, very brief, but in a child’s mind it was a real encounter, an encounter worth telling everyone about. We had told the story so often there was no way we would ever forget.

You could recognize Samantha a block away. She was a colored woman, probably in her late forties and five feet by four feet. Yes, five feet tall and forty-eight inches around, at the least. Samantha came to work for my grandmother when my grandfather became bedridden, the last year of his life. She came once a week to help clean while Mama nursed Papa.

Samantha always carried, and I mean always, a very large handbag, larger than any woman’s purse I had ever seen. You could have carried four footballs or five catcher’s mitts inside that bag along with a billfold and all the other female accessories every southern woman would have when she left home. But Samantha carried something altogether different in her handbag─a full-size butcher knife.

Mama accidentally spotted it one day while Samantha was off in another room cleaning. Perhaps she had set the handbag down without closing the two halves together, or perhaps Mama was doing a little snooping; perhaps she felt she was entitled to do some detective work regarding a woman she knew very little about. Mama told Papa about the butcher knife; Papa told Samantha she was no longer needed. Looking back, I don’t blame Miss Samantha for carrying around a knife. I did the same thing as soon as I was old enough, like every other boy I knew. But that wasn’t quite the end of the story.

A few weeks later, around the middle of May, Jim and I saw Samantha one last time. My backyard joined the back of Papa’s yard where he had his garden, a garden which included strawberries. As Jim and I knelt to grab a few of the largest ones we could find, I spotted someone out of the corner of my eye. Now there was a well worn foot path between my grandparents’ house and Aunt Mai’s house, about sixty steps away, and, lo and behold, there came ol’ Samantha, satchel in hand, of course, taking her sweet time walking thru somebody else’s backyard as if she owned the place. Samantha spotted Jim and me now standing up and frozen in place and hollered, You boys got something to say? Before we could answer, even if we dared to answer, we heard a familiar voice, Johnny, you and Jim come over here.

It was Papa standing alone on his back porch. Jim and I raced each other to see who could get there first. He didn’t say anything at first, extending one arm around me and the other around Jim. All three of us watched Samantha disappear around the side of Aunt Mai’s house.

Did you boys leave the mockingbirds any strawberries or did you get them all? That was Papa’s way of saying it was all over, so go back to what you were doing.

We kids didn’t really know anything about Samantha. She was a big, scary looking woman who carried a butcher knife, enough said. Rumors about her, from grownups and kids alike, circulated for weeks. We, the rascals of Stafford Street, craved a little mystery and danger, adding a dash of excitement to an otherwise quiet neighborhood. Give us only the opening line and our imaginations gladly wrote the rest of the story, especially my cousin, Billy, master of mixing fiction with fact, but that’s another story, for sure.

That was my last memory of Papa, out of bed and fully dressed. I later learned that Samantha had come by that morning to ask Papa if he would reconsider and allow her to return to help with the house work. He said, No. None of us ever saw Samantha again . . . and now she was dead, at least that’s what Jim was saying.

Are the folks still looking at her? Can we go over there and see the dead body?

Nope. After Miss Sotheby called the police, she told Reb to get the shovel and bury her in the backyard, beneath that big mulberry tree.

I didn’t see or hear any police car.

They didn’t come out. Just said go ahead and bury her wherever you want. Miss Sotheby said she was going to keep the tail.

Keep the tail?

You know Miss Sotheby’s always been a mite strange.

I know, but I remember Samantha and she didn’t have a tail, at least not that you could see.

Johnny, that cat had a tail just like every other cat around here.