three days on a chain gang / part 2

three days on a chain gang/ part 2

fiction
edward w pritchard

It's funny how driving along old country roads can trigger memories. I just read what I wrote in part one. I wrote about Pounders and was going to tell about Byron Littlejohn. Both are dead now. It's twenty two years later than when I was on the chain gang and I am now  riding a greyhound bus down route 30 in Ohio near Louisville, Ohio where I served time on the highway detail with Deputy Watkins, who I still think of as coach. Coach passed on about 18 years ago; I used to work for him some after meeting him on the chain gang. After he retired as a deputy sheriff Coach Watkins  would drive one of those police cars that followed over sized load vehicles on country roads. He paid me $50 a day to ride with him and talk a few years after I was on the "chain gang". I know it's hard to follow when the narrator jumps from past to present like that but as I ride along here on route 30 my mind is racing from the scenery, which is beautiful; it always reminds me of being back in the 19th century, at least as I suppose it was, to be far out in the country in Ohio on back roads when Ohio was a rural area. Ohio is so nowhere now, but to me Ohio is now normal in a kind of quaint way. Anyway if I make an anachronism or two please forgive me, my mind is racing. I have had a lot on my mind that I will tell you about later, after I tell about Byron Littlejohn when he spent his first day picking up trash and litter on the chain gang.

Byron was a big black guy the kind of guy that was an old fashioned Black person, more like the kind we used to call colored back in the 1950's here in the mid west. Sadly Byron lived in the 1980',s that's when I was on the chain gang, and Byron got in trouble a lot because of how everyone treated him. Deputy Watkins wasn't everyone as far as I ever saw and he treated everyone straight, if you were decent he liked you, if you weren't watch out especially if he was on duty, in his official capacity. Immediately Coach Watkins stuck up for Byron and gave him a lot of leniency in how he treated him, rather than treating him as a prisoner or convict, which we were technically; Coach treated Byron as a friend.

We were in a kind of tough area of Canton. Ha tough, that's what the other guys on our team said. Me I am from Cleveland, Hough actually,  now that's tough. Byron got forced into helping this Black weight lifter who was lifting at a bench on his grand mother's porch. We were picking up papers and trash out along the street and the guy, a teenager but very big and strong called for one of us to spot for him. He was trying to bench 375 pounds. The porch didn't look like it would hold it. Well jumping ahead, to the end of the story about Byron, after Byron spotted the weight for this kind of smart ass type guy, Byron ended up benching 400 pounds. The weightlifter guy took offense at Byron showing him up, and was calling Byron some insulting names, the kind of names only Black people between themselves can get the innuendo of and to stop a fight between the  two Black guys Coach told the Grand Mother to handle her grandson. Just like that the fight was over. Black people then didn't like confrontations with the police. It was a lesson I wish I could have remembered myself later in my life. Byron died in a shooting about ten years ago. He was good guy but somehow couldn't avoid trouble. When I heard he had died that night I listened to some Mississippi delta blues and had some good red wine.
end part 2