Lesson Learned by friend_to

Lesson Learned
by
� friend_to_dogs

Hi there, yall

I can tell a little story. Although Cherokee, I was raised in Southwestern
Oklahoma -- the old Comanche/Kiowa lands. So I grew up knowing more about Southern Plains Culture than my own.

On June 22, 1974, I received my discharge from the Army, got on a plane and came home. I spent the first night back home in my parents house. After they'd gone to bed, I snuck out of the house, not wanting to disturb them. I got accustomed to hitching a ride in the army, and I wanted to get a beer. I put my thumb out and a car full of young guys pulled over to give me a ride. They were driving around and drinking. So I bought the next 6 pack and we drove around.
t was custom in those days to drive and drink on the old country roads out side
of the small town here in Southwestern Oklahoma. I'd thought we were getting
to be friends.

We stopped here & there to relieve ourselves. While on one of these stops, a few miles East of town on a road a quarter mile from the railroad tracks, two of the guys fot out of the car and started yelling at each other. I didn't know what it was all about. By this time I'd had a few -- maybe too many, I suppose now looking back.

Like an idiot, I walked right between these two guys I'd just met a couple of hours earlier, and told them to stop fighting. Both looked at me like I had no business interfering, and I could see I made a mistake. I felt a sharp pain in my leg and could tell I'd better get out of there.

Now today they have winter wheat, it isn't very tall and it's already harvested by late June. But a quarter of a century ago it was much taller and ripe, still in the field, in late June.

So I ran into a wheat field, by accident, towards the railroad tracks. I could hear these guys still yelling and turned my head back to look. I saw them open the
trunk of the car. Out of the trunk a long, black metalic object appeared. So I turned back, kept running, kept my head low so that I was hidden by the wheat,
for the most part.

A big boom went off behind me -- not the high pitched "whirrr" of a rifle, but the lower pitched and shorter durationed "drsh" of a shotgun sound sound. I felt nothing, and don't know if they aimed it at themselves or me, but I strongly suspected it was in my direction. Adrenalin was pumping, and I kept running
until I got to the railroad tracks, not looking back till then.

Well I stopped there, and looked back in the direction of the road, and saw
nothing, guessing they'd just taken off. Knowing the railroad went right through town, and feeling safer on it, than the road, I walked back to town, about a 4 or 5 mile walk. I also now felt the pain in my leg again. I never saw anyting, but apparently one of the 2 guys arguing had a knife, and when I stepped between them, I got the knife in my leg, too.

Well,I walked to town, and back to my parents house, climbing in the window,
so as to make the least noise -- didn't want them to know. I went to teh bathroom to clean up a little, saw the wound, cleaned it a little, and crawled into bed -- probably 4 or 5 in the morning.

I never told them what I'd done, and never really have told very many people, to
be honest with you.

I learned a few good lesson there. Don't try to break up a fignt between strangers, and sometimes it's alright to run away. Ha ha. Also people sometimes do stupid things under alcohol influence, and I practically never touch the stuff anymore.