By Evans “Buddy” King
Columnist
When my girls were young we lived in a great neighborhood in our small town of Bridgeport with lots and lots of kids around the same age.
There were our two, Beth and Laura, and directly across the street were the Whalen’s three, Shawn and Michael and Megan, and beside the Whalen’s on the other corner were the McCutcheon’s three, Jordan, Kristen, and Trey (who eventually went on to fame, and perhaps a world record, by having all three of the kids attending at the same time and then graduating from the College of Charleston (S.C.)).
A little way down the street were the Lawrence kids (Kathryn and Parker, who also gained fame by both graduating from Harvard while driving their parents into near bankruptcy), and the three Stewart kids, and the two Post boys. In total, 15 kids, all within about five years of each other in age. A neighborhood out of a 1950’s sitcom, a town and a time when we felt safe in letting them walk down the hill to swim team practice at 7 in the morning together or to the little corner grocery nearby to buy candy and drinks.
One of my favorite memories of the time is of one beautiful, hot summer morning when my wife called me at my office and told me that there was a bat flying around inside our house. She asked me if I could drive home and solve the problem. I would guess that Beth was about eight and Laura four at the time. When I pulled up on the street beside our home, my girls were on the porch, along with a bunch of Whalens and McCutcheons and other kids from the neighborhood. The kids were armed with baseball bats and badminton racquets and wearing Pittsburgh Pirate batting caps and Mountaineer football helmets and other assorted head gear, because we all know that “bats go for the hair.” They were all lined up and ready to launch the assault to take back 134 Johnson Avenue. Truly one of the cutest and funniest sights I have ever seen.
But perhaps the best story of this era was what I called the “Drainpipe Caper.” Its protagonists were the Three Amigos, inseparable in those days, Laura, Megan, and Jordan. They were rarely seen one without the other two, and each had an adventuresome spirit, a trait that has followed them into adulthood.
This particular story involves a church directly across the street from the King home. A fairly large church, located in a bad spot to avoid being the subject of a few great adventures. One involved some of my friends and me occasionally practicing our wedge shots from my front yard over the church during Saturday night cookouts. But that is another story for another day. We always made restitution.
This story involves a decision made by the church to level a hill and pave the field where the kids would sleigh ride in the winter. Somehow the Three Amigos caught wind of these plans and decided that if the parents weren’t going to do something about this travesty, they would. Megan was six or seven at the time, having just finished first grade, and Laura and Jordan were five or six, one year behind. This age difference figures prominently in the story later.
Needless to say, the girls realized at a young age the old adage that “desperate times call for desperate measures.” They apparently surveyed the building and the bulldozer next to it and the impending end of their sledding. They spotted a drainpipe on the corner of the building that was loose at the top. We still don’t know the exact timing of the events, whether it was under cover of darkness or not, but the girls decided to remove the pipe, carry it to the shed in my backyard, and leave a ransom note under a rock where the pipe had been. The note read something like “We have your thing, stop and we give it back.” Megan’s first grade experience is critical at this point, as she was the only one of the three who could print well enough to leave the ransom note.
The remaining details are a little foggy for me now. It was about 30 years ago. I do remember that the missing drainpipe was traced back to the three little culprits, someone confessed, and order was restored. But to make the story even better, Jordan’s mom, one of the funniest people on the face of the earth, talked the local chief of police into driving into the neighborhood with his siren going and lights flashing. The girls had been told there was going to be “questioning.” Laura’s mom and I found her hiding on the shelf at the top of the walk-in closet in her bedroom, convinced there was jail time in her future.
I love the memory and I like to think this well executed plan was just an early step in the Three Amigos becoming the strong, independent women they are today.
Evans “Buddy” King is a proud native of Christiansburg, CHS Class of 1971. He resides in Clarksburg, W.Va., where he has practiced law with the firm of Steptoe & Johnson, PLLC, since 1980. He can be reached at evans.king@steptoe-johnson.com.
