We looked up this week and found fall.  In Southern Indiana, we found cool weather and rain and well…Halloween weather.

These are fall scenes around our house this weekend:

The Sycamore trees along Blue River.

The corn field at the entrance of Riparian Way.

Beyond our driveway and our standard Indiana issued basketball goal in the driveway.

Also today, on the way to preaching, Carrie, my dear wife, and I happened on this:

Somebody got it.  Well, we know who got it and a neighbor down from this place as well.  That is what happens, I suppose, when you have high school students in the house.

That is the way it was when I was a kid.  I should know.  My practice of throwing a football gave me a reputation of being a guy with a good arm when it came to tossing a roll of toilet paper in a tree.

Valerie King was the youth pastor at my church when I was in high school.  Thank God she was there for me.  She was a fabulous influence and talked to me, when she was 36 and I 17 like she believed I had good sense.  It was her gift by the grace of God, I suppose.  I really did learn a great deal from Valerie.  I have written about her on these very pages and offered up high praise she so richly deserves.  But in the fall of 1984, she asked me, as the Halloween season was upon us, if I ever took part in “rolling” a house.  I had no idea of what she was talking about.

Know that Valerie grew up around Washington, DC.  In fact, she saw The Beatles at RFK Stadium.  The Mid-Atlantic vernacular was different than the Midwest vernacular when it came to throwing toilet paper into trees.  Valerie called it “rolling”.  We called it T.P.ing…as in toilet papering a house.  What you did was acquire a large sum of toilet paper.  Under the supervision of a relative of the store that was part and parcel of our youthful indiscretions,  my friends and I backed a truck up to the loading doors of a local mercantile and helped ourselves, thanks to someone who had a legitimate key, to the toilet paper supply that was at the ready.  If there was a toilet paper shortage in Palmyra in late October and early November of 1984, I think I know why.

On a night when two of my friends, Mick and Marc, went to a few friends houses to ceremonially toss toilet paper into some trees, we also stood on the roof of one of our friend’s houses and waited on a car load of young ladies to T.P. the house and when the girls got there we threw M-80 firecrackers toward them and scared the crap…among other things… out of them and they drove off.  It was a simpler time.  As I was speaking with Carrie this evening about these days gone by, she told me she always packed dog biscuits to the toilet papering events to keep the dogs in check.  What can I say?  My wife is brilliant.

That same night, after the toilet papering fun was over, though we still had a great deal of toilet paper under a tarp in the Ford F-150 truck that my friends and I were travelling in on Highway 62 West of Corydon, Mick and Marc and I were just cruising around.  We were drinking.  We were drinking a gallon of 2% percent milk.  Hey, we swigged from the same water bottles back in the day during football practice.  Why not share a gallon of milk?  It is what we did.  If there was a gallon of milk involved there was also a bag of mini powdered doughnuts in play as well.

So there we were, Mick, Marc, and myself.  We were cruising around and it was probably close to ten o’clock at night.  The truck’s tarp concealed a great deal of toilet paper and we were eating powdered doughnuts and drinking milk.  After we had our fill, Marc, who was driving, pulled a piece of Juicy Fruit gum from his pocket and fiddled with the wrapper as he held the bottom of the steering wheel of the truck and happened to weave across the center line of Highway 62 in the process of getting a piece of gum.  We drove on a few seconds and and Marc looked in his rear view mirror.  “Is that an LTD?” Marc asked.  “Nah” I said.  The state police were driving Ford LTDs back then.  “I think it is” , Marc said.  Before he could get his last syllable out there were red lights flashing behind us.  It was an LTD.  It was a State Trooper.  And we were drinking…milk.

The officer came to the driver side window and asked what we were doing.  Marc told him we were just out taking a cruise, driving around.  The officer raised his VERY bright flashlight, pointed it at each of the three of us in the cab of the truck and asked his obligatory question, “Have you boys been drinking?”  Of course, at this point, I could not help myself.  I reached down to the floorboard, grabbed the jug of milk and said, “Yes we have, officer, 2 percent (as I held up the jug of milk), you want a swig?”  “Oh, and we have some doughnuts too if you are interested.”

The officer was not amused.  Neither was Marc…he was the driver.  I was just trying to lighten up the situation.  I think it worked out.  When I saw the toilet paper hanging from those trees today I was quick to remember that night in 1984.  It was fun.  It still is.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson