The 1950's were idyllic, yet challenging times. In this insightful and often humorous semi-autobiographical novel, Osburn portrays life as a teenager in rural eastern Arkansas as anything but boring. However, would his conservative upbringing, revivals, and the Scout Oath see him through? While things were looking up after the war, time-honored ways were up for grabs. Federal intervention in desegregation shook old foundations. Rock and roll was attracting a generation of accepting musicians across racial barriers. Emerging counter-culturalism was beginning to challenge traditional values. In the face of modernism, old time religion was entrenching. Unavoidable questions demanded rethinking everything held sacred by the Southern mind-set --the status quo, prosperity, segregation, the political system, religion, social classes. Where might "the thin edge of the wedge" lead? In this engaging anecdotal account, a boy is caught in the cultural lag that kept diehard Southern culture from dealing with the harsh realities of a changing world. His coming to terms with critical issues of the time is an interesting search for values and, half a century later, is loaded with contemporary relevance.

THE EDGE OF THE WEDGE

Recollections of a Reluctant ProdigalBy CARROLL OSBURN

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Carroll Osburn
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3474-4

Chapter One

It was not a good afternoon for Delbert. We agreed to meet after he finished his paper route at four-thirty, so I jumped on my bike and dashed off toward the drug store where everybody flocked after school for milkshakes. It wasn't so much that I wanted to see Delbert as I hoped that Gwendolyn might be there. She was the hottest chick in the whole ninth grade, but my big crush on her-along with about two-dozen other guys-stood as slim a chance as with Marilyn Monroe. On the way, goofy ole' Earl D. flagged me down, flapping his arms like a preening goose. He was throwing Delbert's papers because Delbert was still at the paper office, "looking kindly stove up."

Just inside the door of the Sentinel, there the scudder was, stretched out face down over a huge roll of printing paper. When I asked, "What's wrong? Chevy stop making trucks?" his eyes rolled slowly over in my direction. With his perpetual smile vanished, the boy looked like death warmed over. After school, one of the kids brought a plug of tobacco that he had filched from his father. Bull of the Woods it was, and it was still lying there on the floor with the wrapper over most of it, but a big bite out of one end. They'd dared him to do it and Delbert didn't need much egging on to do anything. While he was chewing it, Earl D. slapped him on the back to congratulate him and Delbert swallowed most of it-chaw, juice, and all.

Mr. Deese, the editor, was as mad as an old wet hen. "God love him ... somebody's gotta!" he yelled. He hadn't given Delbert the boot that time when he rounded a corner at breakneck speed on his bike, let a paper fly, and hit Miz' Geiser smack dab on the rear end as she was stooped over in her flowerbed. He hadn't axed him when he rode his bike like a bolt of greased lightning up into Miz' Darden's yard trying to run over that cat. Delbert swore up and down that he only went up on the sidewalk. Even so, Mr. Deese was hot under the collar about it for weeks.

Delbert just came that way, it seems. Maybe he had been a good kid at one time. It's hard to tell. Some would debate it. Trouble just seemed to follow him around, like at summer camp when some big guys from another town roughed him up on his way from the canteen back to the campsite and stole his Hershey bar. The next day, Delbert bought another Hershey bar and replaced the chocolate with Exlax. Sure enough, they jumped out from some bushes and stole his candy again. That night at supper, the camp director had what amounted to a hissy fit with a tail on it. Several guys had pretty well tied up the pilot-to-bombardier toilet at the Chickasaw campsite. As he told it, some kid whom those guys swore they could identify had offered them candy with Exlax in it. According to the director, it would be sorted out the next morning when the whole camp assembled at the flagpole. It didn't happen. That night, Delbert was caught doing "the unmentionable" and before breakfast he was on a Greyhound bus headed home.

He couldn't help but screw stuff up. Take camping, for instance. We used to camp out a lot, but not lately. The final straw was one night when he peed in the fire embers and the rancid smoke drifted straight through my tent. He didn't have to stand close. See, a couple of years back, he caught the tip of his penis in the zipper of his jeans and it hadn't healed right. His tiny little stream would go a good eight feet or so. In fact, Delbert always won the peeing contests off the old river bridge. To be honest, my Army surplus pup tent didn't smell like roses from the git go. I don't think the Marines used it at Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima or anywhere famous; it was probably used at some lousy training base in a god-forsaken swamp. It only cost three bucks at the Army-Navy store in Memphis, but the nicer five dollar one would have been a much better buy, for sure. Delbert's stinky smoke that would gag a maggot, on top of that swampy smell, was more than a guy ought'a put up with and we hadn't camped together since. Even so, one doesn't bug out on a good friend just because a few things don't go according to Hoyle now and then.

All peekid around the gills, he was sprawled over that roll of printing paper like a limp dishrag. His big scar just jumped out at you. The week before school started, we all decided to get Mr. Yancey to give us flat top haircuts. Everybody's was okay, but Delbert had a humongous scar that ran catacornered across the top of his head. It came about back in fifth grade. His dad was drunker'n Cooter Brown one night and tried to fix something on his old '48 Nash. Delbert wandered out there eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His dad told him to lick his fingers off and hold a certain wire to a spark plug while he tried to get it started. The story has it that Delbert banged his head against the down-turned edge of the hood and it took several stitches to close up the gash. They said he bled like a stuck hog. His flat top was decent enough, but that scar stood out like a pregnant nun on Easter Sunday.

While we're on the subject, Delbert had two other visible identifying scars, one being a vertical cut on his cheek. It started just under his left eye, about as wide as a #2 pencil lead, and continued straight down for about two inches. That one happened right after Christmas last year. Santa had brought him a brand spanking new lever action Daisy model 102 BB gun. Several of us were admiring it out by their garage, taking turns plinking at a tin can. In one way of looking at it, an older kid from near the cotton gin named Wally was mostly responsible because he was the one that put Delbert up to it. Wally moved away not long after, but that was unrelated to this incident. Wally's dad was sent to the pen for selling moonshine and word was that Wally's mom ran off with some guy that worked on a tugboat. The principal's secretary said that Wally had transferred up to Cairo, Illinois, so that all makes sense. Anyway, Wally asked if Delbert's dad had any shotgun shells and then asked to see one. A minute or two later, Delbert came out with a 20-gauge shell, eight-shot field load. "Double dog dare you to put it on the end of the barrel and pull the trigger," Wally smirked. Well, Delbert just smiled, cocked the thing, and balanced the shell on the business end of the barrel.

We all ducked for cover as he held his new BB gun up over his head at arm's length, pointed to the sky, and pulled the trigger. Aside from blowing out all the panes in the garage window, the blast put a couple of holes and several dents in the side of their Nash and one shot left a crease down his left cheek. The barrel of his new BB gun was peeled back about three inches in three sections like a banana. He's lucky it was eight-shot instead of buckshot! Talk about crazy as a loon! For the longest, Delbert's dad went around yapping about how his son didn't have the sense God gave a goose, that he was dumber than gourd guts, that any stump in the swamp had a higher IQ, that he was thinking about canceling his birth certificate, and so on. I always thought, "like father, like son" and "chip off the old block." There's an old joke that some of the guys thought might be true regarding Delbert that, the doc picked him up by his heels when he was born, took one look at him, and spanked his mother.

Delbert was still stretched out when the editor came in really ticked off. In fact, the veins stood out in his neck, his...