From the time I was 10 I was pretty much raised by the community.  I took meals and overnighted in dozens of homes and while I have no blood siblings I have lots of “brothers” and “sisters.”  This resulted in my growing up with a pretty good reputation among the local adults.  By the time I was driving I was allowed to car date with girls that other guys could not.  Old man Johnson who owned the stone quarry always said the tire tracks he found down there every Monday morning belonged to my ‘46 Ford but I always denied it.  I had a reputation to uphold.

Max Trent, on the other hand, was a wild one.  He was lead-footed, always getting traffic tickets, but he was also the best mechanic anywhere.  When I came home on leave from the Navy one time I had car nearly identical to the one Max drove, only not as souped up.  As a boy when I hitchhiked home from the county seat I would walk through town right past old Mrs. Holt’s house and she always pulled back her curtains to see who was passing by.  Somehow that always bothered me.  One night I took my Max look-alike-car, backed it up into the gravel in front of her house and peeled off.  This threw #12 crushed limestone gravel from the quarry up against the front of her house and rattled against the windows.  She got a look at my car and thought it was Max.

She called the sheriff and by the time he got his britches on and drove the eight miles from the county seat it was just in time to meet Max coming home from a date in a town just across the county line.  Yep.  He got a ticket for reckless driving.  Max knew who the culprit was and for years after, even when I had been long departed from Indiana, Max would tease, “You rascal,” he’d laugh over the phone.  “You still owe me $16.50 for that traffic ticket.  I know it was you.” 

Max ran his own diesel repair shop for years out on the edge of town near the new truck stop.  One afternoon, beneath a 1999 Freightliner, he suffered a heart attack and died.  The paper said in lieu of flowers to make a donation to Animal Services.  After the funeral I stopped by the pound, had some small talk with friends who worked  there, petted some death row inmates and on my way out there was this dog food dish with a sign above that read DONATIONS.  I dropped in $16.50.