Gertie, Earl & Endicott 2

Now, I remember it as if it was yesterday. School had just let out for the summer, and the boys of St. Henry Junior High were already dreaming up how they would pass their summer days away. Earl Crawford was no different. This year he decided he was going to join the Apes come heck or high water. As soon as the school bell rang and exhausted Miss Fischer waved them away, he snuck away from campus at a fast clip, his blonde, buzz-cut hair hidden under a low-slung Braves cap. He kept his eyes to the ground and looked neither right nor left. No luck. She spotted him.

“Earl, wait up!”

Earl wrinkled his brow and sped up, but Gertie White caught him up with no problems. She was on the track team.

“Earl, you goober. Didn’t you hear me?” She asked and patted him on the shoulder. Earl glanced around, but nobody was looking at them.

“Oh hey Gertie,” he said.

“Hey,” she responded and fell into step beside him. She was a tall, gangly girl with skin the color of coffee and cream. Her wiry hair started out the morning in two tight braids, but by the afternoon several strands had escaped and sprouted out around her ears like iron shavings stuck to a magnet. She tried not to show her teeth when she smiled because she didn’t want anyone to see her braces, but Earl got an eye full of the sight of them as she broke into a happy grin.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asked.

Earl swallowed and kept his head down.

“Nothing,” he said. Jimmy Jackson had told him the Apes were meeting in the stacks at the public library at 3:30 and that if he was serious this time about joining, he should be there. No girls.

“Well, my daddy’s cutting out early today, he said, on account of school letting out and all and he was gonna take me up to Macon for supper. He said I could invite you, too if I wanted,” Gertie said.

Earl could feel his face begin to burn.

“I can’t. My dad says, uh, I’m being punished.”

“Punished? What for?”

“Not cleaning my room.”

“But it’s the first day of summer!”

Earl shrugged. They walked a while in silence, until they came to the corner of Main Street and ended up in front of the fire station. Gertie’s ma was the fire marshall, and a fine woman she was indeed. Six feet of muscled blonde femininity; Jenny White was known for her bravery, temper, arm-wrestling and fondness for kittens. You might meet her if ever your stove caught fire, but for now, she keeps pretty much out of this story.

“What about tomorrow then?” Gertie asked, placing her hand on the brass doorknob. The Whites lived above the garage where they kept the town’s only fire truck. The steel garage door had a small red door inside it, just under the alarm bell.

Earl shrugged.

“I’ll call you,” he mumbled. Gertie gave him a weird look and glanced around. Earl could feel the blush creeping up his neck, but if his friend noticed anything suspicious, she didn’t say so. Instead she slipped inside the fire station and closed the glossy red door. Earl breathed a sigh of relief, hoisted his backpack and headed straight down the road to the library. So intent was he on his destination, that he didn’t notice the small red door open up again, allowing Gertie to slip behind and follow him.

GERTIE, EARL & ENDICOT 1.1
It’s time you learned the truth about dragons. They’ve been called many names, depending on where you’re sitting and who’s doing the talking. Most of ‘em have been right slandered and that’s the truth of it. Yes, sir. Now, I ain’t saying as all dragons are good, but I sure ain’t saying as all of them are bad, neither. Just like most folks, dragons got all sorts of personalities and you just can’t get along with all of them, not in a million years. But if you meet one that you like, and he in turn likes you, well, that could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Such was the case for a ten-year-old Georgia boy named Earl Crawford.

Earl lived in a small town just south of Macon called St. Henry. There ain’t much to tell you about St. Henry that you couldn’t learn by visiting there. In many ways, it was your typical small town. It had grocery store, a pharmacy, a library, a fire station, a school, three First Baptist churches, the “Georgia Peach” fast food restaurant, and of course, a volcano.

Old Thundertop.

Simply gorgeous. It rose from the red Georgia earth at the south end of Main street, and gradually got darker and darker nearer to the summit, so that its peak was as black as a night in the bottom of a well, and its base was as red as the devil’s underwear. It had gently sloping sides which made it excellent for hiking, and better still, it was riddled with caves and tunnels. Sometimes rivers of steam curled out of these tunnels and wormed their way around the base of the volcano, making it look like it was floating on a cloud. Sometimes a loud bang would send foul smelling gasses out of the top, and St. Henry’s would be awash in the farty stink. Mostly though, Old Thundertop lay like a dog on a hot porch in summertime, sleepy and not inclined to activity. It hadn’t erupted in over two hundred years. That is to say, it hadn’t gone off at all, until the day Earl Crawford woke a sleeping dragon.

I was reading on CNN.com about Garrison Keiller's trip to the Iowa state fair. The article made mention of a pork chop on a stick, and Keiller's delight at eating it with his hands. This got me thinking. About pork chops.

There is something fundamentally wonderful about a pork chop. Some of my fondest memories from childhood center around this shoulder-blade-shaped meat product. I remember quite clearly bonding with Mom as we Shaked and Baked. She'd wet the chop, I'd shake it madly in the coating, together we'd bake.

Or the Waffle House pork chop. In this fast-paced, maddening world, it is good to know that at any time of the day, at almost any roadside pull-off, you can find a moderately priced Pork Chop waiting for you. I have never actually purchased a pork chop at the Waffle House, but I am vastly comforted to know that I can.

I live on my own now and I don't often make dinner with mom anymore. Usually we reserve our kitchen bonding for more complicated dinners - like when she showed me how to cook a turkey. Every now and then, however, out comes that blue box. Family, comfort and nostalgia are only a shake and a bake away.