It happened on a typical day in the year 1956. My close friends James Bell and Steve Martin
and I were on a neighborhood adventure along the banks of the Manatee River in
Ellenton, FL. We may well have been
looking for sharks teeth unearthed by dredging in the middle of the river and piped
ashore along with sand as landfill (a practice common at the time before environmental
concerns later prohibited it). As youngsters
on the threshold of adolescence, nothing could compare with this adventure (except
maybe for the act of digging for lead bullets encased in brass from the embankments
of an old fuller’s earth mining site now used by the military as an occasional
rifle range). In any case, today we
were walking down the river bank and spied awash in the surf a used condom. Immediately James exclaimed “What is this?” Steve and I looked at each another knowingly
and told James that we knew what it was, but we wouldn’t say. Later that day at James’ home, he told his
mother what we had seen painting a very good picture of it and said that Wayne
and Steve knew what it was, but wouldn’t tell him. Looking back on this river bank incident, I
find the smugness appalling and a major moral failing and even an act of treachery. It was a simple case where duty arising from
friendship plainly called, but I in snobbery stood complacent and content in
superior knowledge.
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