Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

The Woodhole High School auditorium looked like it had been decorated for a VFW meeting or at least a political convention. All the flags and red-white-and-blue bunting made it look like the Fourth of July, though it was closer to Halloween. With Mr. Marcum leading the marching band in a medley of patriotic hymns, our parents herded us kids into the auditorium as if we were no more than stray cows. I never understood the connection between this “Mom, the flag, and apple pie” stuff and clean kids, but then again, until that year, school had never trained me to think at all. I was far from the class bottom-dictorian, but years of mental inactivity had me more worried about taking the ACTs in a few weeks than that night’s WACK shebang.

Judge Fanning opened the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. Then Brother Powell had us all read the Ten Commandments out loud from the wall because, “Sure as I’m a-standing here humbly before ya, one day the United States Supreme Court is gonna tell us we can’t post them no more.” It sure sounded strange that Brother Powell would criticize our country in the middle of Patriotism Central, but I was just a kid — what did I know?

Various parents approached the microphone at center stage as if it was an upright snake at first, then, feeding on each other’s energy, proceeded to criticize the strange behavior the class of ’69 was displaying — singing strange songs, holding protest meetings, eating that “California food,” even “God-fearing, frog-gigging kids disobeying direct orders to dissect them critters in biology class.” I dozed through the program just as I did while Mom and Dad watched Walter Cronkite read the evening news. That’s the way it was, with nobody sure if the meeting was over, when Leah’s daddy, who owned the local radio station (WMLP, where there’s “More Listening Pleasure”), took the microphone to disagree with the others.

“I was reading over my daughter’s homework assignment the other night, a story by Kentucky’s own Jesse Stuart called ‘Frog-Trouncin’ Contest.’ Anyway, they put this frog on a seesaw and smack the other end with a mallet to see who can lift that frog closest to heaven...”

“Sounds like a great idea,” says Mel Large, who is Miss Large’s brother and head of the Chamber of Commerce. “We could make it part of our annual Fourth of July celebration.”

“Heck,” says Sheriff Bowles, who pitches for our traveling softball team, the Woodhole Whackers, “we could form a frog-trouncing team to take on them yahoos in surrounding counties.”

Amidst all the applause, Waverly strolls onstage and, in disgust, grabs the microphone vacated by Leah’s daddy. As he waves his hands for the crowd to quiet, most of the townspeople stand up — not out of respect, mind you, but to get a good look at him. Hippies are as rare as black people in Clement County. “You’re missing the point of Mr. Stuart’s story,” our teacher starts as though the auditorium is nothing more than a big classroom. “As Amos Johnson says therein, frog-trouncing is mean, even crueler than cockfighting.”

Howie’s dad stands up. “You got something to say to me about my cock, you say it to my face.”

Waverly throws up his hands in front of his face in mock self-defense. “Hey, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Well, the student body starts to howl with laughter. Waverly grabs his guitar and shouts into the microphone, “You all know what a hootenanny is?”

“Yahoo!” screams Whitley as loud as if Delbert has just given birth.

Led by Waverly’s six-string and the senior class, we end the WACK meeting, amidst the overruled protests of Sheriff Bowles and a few members, on a musical note, with everyone singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”

There was more changing in Clement County that fall than the color of its leaves or the minds of its students. Fact is, things got downright serious. One day Waverly made it to class late because someone ran him off the road. Somebody else spray-painted on the window of the Toadmobile HIPPIE GO HOME while he was parked at Judge Fanning’s. Hortense Fanning was already in a tizzy because her best friend, Miss Large, had just up and moved to Florida.

Then, on top of everything else, I got in trouble — or nearly did. It was the Saturday we took the ACT, the test that determined whether we went on to college and where. Mom and Dad had put pressure on me since I learned how to read that I was going to be the first Lowe to go to college, but I’d always taken better to sports than to books. Luckily, my room proctor turned out to be Waverly, and I sat down behind J.D. because we were friends and such. By the end of the session I was so tired I needed one of what Howie always called “a left-handed cigarette.” As I started out into the afternoon sun, Waverly called me into his room and locked the door behind him.