By James E. Kerns

A true story

 

Jamie was a boy who spent his time pretending.  He played with his big brother, and he played with his little sister; but when he was alone, he pretended.  He liked to play with others, but he also liked to play alone because he pretended exciting things.

Jamie had a red wagon.  He loaded it with detective things.  There was his toy pistol, a pair of gloves, a magnifying glass, a pair of binoculars in its case, a notepad, and a pencil.  Jamie knelt with his left leg in the wagon, and pumped with his right.  He was off on another adventure.

Jamie pumped his red wagon "car" all around the farm.  He prevented bank robberies, captured bad guys, and rescued pretty girls in distress.  He solved kidnappings, trailed crooks, and broke up spy rings.  Always he was a hero.  People praised him wherever he went.

"There goes the boy who saved my little girl," a man would say.

"That's the boy who found the treasure my grandfather buried," a woman would add.

"He's the one who saved our farm," a family would say gratefully.

Jamie had a large can full of buffalos.  Other people thought they were marbles; but when Jamie poured them out on his rumpled-up blanket, they became a herd of buffalo.  The herd stampeded up valleys and nearly squashed unsuspecting settlers.  Jamie always saved them just in time, but cattle rustlers weren't always so lucky.

The people in Jamie's pretend stories among the bedcovers were represented by the six men from his Clue game.  Colonel Mustard was Jamie.  He was always the hero.  Miss Scarlet and Mrs. Peacock were the other "good guys."  They were always getting into tight places.  They were ever so grateful for Jamie's last-minute rescues from the bad guys represented by Mr. Green, Professor Plum and Mrs. White.

At bath time the Clue men always bathed, too.  The two pretty ladies had many narrow escapes from pirates, sharks and other deep sea dangers.

Jamie loved a dirt pile or a sandbox.  Out would come his animals and cars.  He made roads and farms complete with fences and trees.  The fences were made of lines of pebbles, and the trees were weeds and sticks.

There were problems in Jamie's farm country, too.  Tornadoes, earthquakes and unscrupulous bankers sometimes threatened to destroy property and lives.  The farmers regularly needed the services of a hero, too.

One day Jamie was up in the woods with his father where loggers had set up a mill on his father's land.  The loggers brought logs to the mill site, and sawed them into boards.  A giant pile of sawdust had been made over against the trees.  It was taller than a man, and as long as a house.

To Jamie's eye the sawdust pile was a dream come true.  It was the world's biggest sand box.  He gathered a handful of sticks and wood chips which could serve as trucks and bulldozers, and climbed up on the pile.  He soon had a fine network of roads and farms.

He started digging a gravel pit.  The sawdust was easy to dig in.  It was loose and damp.  But when he thrust his arm down in the hole, the sawdust pile was hot inside.  The deeper he dug, the hotter the pile was.  It almost burned his hand.

This wasn't right.  Something was wrong.  Jamie climbed down from the pile and told his daddy about the hot sawdust.

Jamie's daddy thrust his hand deep into the pile.  He called to the loggers.  The loggers put their hands down into the sawdust.

Things started to happen fast.  The saw was shut off.  Cat tractors were called in from the woods.  The men went to work bulldozing the pile out flat.  The inside of the pile was already charred black.  That pile of sawdust had been all ready to burst into flame and start a forest fire.

Jamie was a real-life hero.