#233 Billy Goats- Jill McCorkle

#233 Billy Goats- Jill McCorkle

I’m not a big one for nostalgia, but this one brought me back. There is really nothing like the connections you have as a kid growing up in a small town. The hot summer nights riding around in packs of bicycles. Not looking for trouble but finding it, killing time by exploring the industrial ruins down by the river, trying to make sense of your parent’s gossip, and riling up the local town weirdoes.

We used to hang out in places like “the benches, the lady’s yard, the tressel.” If you didn’t know these places, you were an outsider. School always created cliques and a popularity system, but in town, where everyone knew each other their whole lives, each kid had their place, no matter how odd.

“One boy, tall with a freckled complexion and ears that stuck out from his head, was a bit of an outcast at the junior high school. But here in the neighborhood where he had loved his entire life, he fit in…his acute observations and large vocabulary, which brought laughter and scorn in the classroom, were accepted—really expected—by the neighborhood crowd.”

Around junior high school is where things start changing. “We were too old for kick-the-can and too young to make out.”

It’s in remembrance that you realize the more innocent times, weren’t all that innocent. There was small town intrigue, murders, suicides, forced sexual acts, homophobic bullies, etc. If the times weren’t more innocent our memories make them so, our view of such things less worldly and more pointed through the eyes of a child.

Rating: 8-8-9-9 Total=33