The campus covered a couple of square miles, a paved road around the dormitories was right at a mile. In the center of the campus was a tarnished, bronze statue of the founder Richard D Beckham and a flagpole. Beckham was a charitable carpetbagger who came to Dixie after the American Civil War and bought hundreds of acres for pennies apiece.

Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and Seward's Folly (Alaska) were better deals than was Beckham's buy, but his wasn't bad. All three were wise bargains. Multitudes of refugee children were abandoned after the War of Northern Aggression, so Beckham started taking them in.

Close to the entrance was a restored log cabin that served as Mister Beckham's initial orphanage. There were 11 dormitories on the grounds, as well as an infirmary, a laundry, a cafeteria, a church, and various other service buildings. All had been built during reconstruction from dull, red bricks, with roofs of Spanish tile. Each dorm had a floodlight on the roof for nighttime illumination. After dark, it looked like the Nazi prisoner of war camp portrayed in a situation comedy on television that housed captured allied aviators. Ground fire shot down more bombers than fighters in WWII. Not a lot of folks know that. This tale focuses on four ex alumni before they were that:  Raymon, Willie, Edwin, and Berol. Two were sanguine brothers, and three had staff members as parents.

Once, a mysterious throat ailment reminiscent of “the creeping crud” afflicted an entire dormitory. The complete group was marched to the infirmary. In the 1950s, a popular disinfectant was a reddish, syrupy solution (lice all).

Once at the hospital, each resident had a massive cotton swab soaked with it daubed onto the flapper (aka; the googler). Within 2 days, a miraculous healing took place.

Until about 1967, all the kids were schooled and churched on campus. The home had its own school (complete with football, basketball, and baseball teams called the hornets).

For reasons unknown, in about 1967 (it may have taken that long for The Education Board vs. Brown to reach Dallas), most kids were bussed to public schools during the week and an off campus church on Sunday mornings.

On one of the first Sundays at the civilian church, the four protagonists sat at the highest point in the balcony. They had gotten a bulletin in order to mark the songs, so they'd need not to thumb frantically through the hymnal searching for them.

Many songs had an optional bass line in the chorus. It was rarely sung. The four plotted to join voices and bellow it out. The song began. When the refrain drew near, the conspirators exchanged knowing glances, and prepared to let it rip. They had previously composed some alternative lyrics for it. The part everyone sang went:

"...things that're higher,
things that're lower,
things that're in between.
Eye will hay sin to hymn,
hay sin sew glad den free"

And the tetrad boomed out with gusto: "Hay sin glad den free".

From their high vantage, it could be seen practically everybody in the place turned around to see the source of the croonery.

The quartette commonly substituted libretto. One hymn went:

Hoe Lee
Hoe lee
Hoe lee,...
earl lee in the mourn in
I get up outa' bed....

There were more.

In the off campus church, there were problems with kids who collected their own tithes at first, but it was soon brought under control.

On Sunday nights, religious services were still held at the home's church. The Sunday evening services usually consisted of a few songs, a brief sermon, then an invitational hymn. They were ended by a prayer called a “benediction.”

The church comprised the top floor of a two story building. It served as an auditorium until the ground floor was converted into a proper one.

Once finished, the seats in the new auditorium were padded, plush, and downright luxurious compared to those in the church. The church seat backrests were fixed, and the folding bottoms were harder than Chinese Arithmetic. They must have been made from Brazilian Ironwood.

A small school facility remained on the grounds for the mentally and physically handicapped.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a bomb shelter was built adjacent to the “Power House” (so called because electricity was once generated there).

In the 21^st century, it has been said that the US launched a dummy missile into the USSR to intimidate them. The Russians didn't know it was a dud until it got there, hit, and failed to detonate. A short time later, Norad falsely indicated a lift off from Cuba, and a flight of fueled, armed American bombers was scrambled. The aerodrome's radio went out after the planes were ordered to go, so they couldn't be aborted. The base commander got in his car, and drove onto the runway blinking his headlights, preventing the stratofortresses taking off. If they had taken off, and scorched Eurasia, it surely would have been WW3. The false indication was later blamed on a faulty computer chip.

The home had five buses, rotatedly driven by its employees.

A Mister Moines had his three middle digits on the right hand amputated years previously. His nickname was “Crab.”

He had legendary strength in the thumb and little finger of that fist. He was spoken of in the hushed tones ordinarily reserved for strict teachers or principals.

Humongous boilers in the powerhouse still furnished steam for the laundry and, in winter, heated all the buildings through thick cast iron radiators. In the first cold spell of the year, a symphony of clattering reverberated through the subterranean array of aged pipes.

Whenever a light bulb burned out, the bad bulb was taken there and exchanged for a new one. The bomb shelter was overlaid with a “quonset" type roof, then covered with dirt. Grass soon grew on it. It was kept mowed by 'The Field Gang” (orphans overseen by an adult, who cut the grass). They tied a rope onto the handle of a lawnmower and lowered it from the summit, then reeled it back up top. From the air, it would look like a stretch of flat ground.

Rumor had it, a network of underground tunnels ran from each dorm to the shelter, but it was never substantiated.

Every Halloween, a horror movie was shown. Before the new auditorium was in existence, a tractor truck pulled a van type trailer onto the football field, parked at the 50 yard line, and had sheets draped over it. When at exactly the right distance, the trailer made a screen to rival any drive in. A film projector was set up in the press box.

Drive in movies were big then. Indoor theatres displaced them since. They collected more revenue off popcorn drenched in melted lard with yellow food coloring in it than they did admission.

That year, some of the houseparents dressed up like the ghouls in the film, slipped up behind kids, and scared the excrement out of them. At least one was swathed in bandages, and drug one foot like a celluloid mummy.

There was no mummy in the film that year, but every child who'd watched the children's minimum requirement of television knew of The Mummy.

Before the advent of television, it was the aged that watched out for, babysat, kept an eye on, and taught the ropes to youth. In latter days, television indoctrinated most children.

Babies still needed to be tended, but kids learned more from the TV than school. Only in the last score of years has vision been definitively recognized as a route of entry for poison.

The cathode ray or television tube was an antichrist the chaplain said (there was more than one).

All modern weaponry uses video.

In later years, before the new auditorium was built, the “old gym” was used for the projection of the scary flick.

The Old Gym had once been the only gym. A new gym was built outside of the paved circle, and the old gym had a boxing ring erected at center court. Despite the loss of “ball” sports, the home continued a boxing program.

Someone donated to Beckham hundreds of pairs of roller skates, and the old gym became an impromptu rink.

There was soon a trail worn around the ring. The skates had ball bearings in each wheel. The bearings were lined with steel shot the size of beebees. After months of wear, one would periodically fall out. Many times, the wheel kept on like nothing was amiss. Sometimes however, the wheel would freeze up like water at the North Pole.

If a skater was underway when it happened, it could be disastrous. He or she would have to apply billiards style English and hope they could stop without incident.

The floor displayed several longtitudinal divots where a wheel had frozen up in mid flight, but the skater kept going. A collision with something was the inevitable outcome of a locked wheel in motion. Sewing machine oil squirted in the bearings would give them longer life but was hard to come by. The Lord works in mysterious ways. A solution presented itself in the form of a donation.

People regularly donated stuff to the home. The tax deduction was most likely a powerful incentive. The majority of the time, it was stuff merchants couldn't sell.

Once, a maker of ice cream introduced a peppermint flavor that wasn't well received. Thousands of cartons of it were given to the home. The flavor was like toothpaste. For almost a year, dessert in the cafeteria was minty ice cream.

Those that made clothes gave factory seconds and botched garments to the commissary. Whenever soda pops sweetened with cyclamates were outlawed, a bottler gave the home hundreds of cases of it.

In the 1950s and early 60s, it was fashionable for men to wash the natural oils out of their hair, then replace them with artificial oils.

A corporation that sold such a pomade gave the home crates and crates of a rose colored, perfumed variety. It was the very thing to lubricate the skates. Kids found they could get ordinary BBs, wrench loose the nut on spindles that had lost one, drop a BB into replace it, then batten it back down, douse it with the hair oil, and they were ready to go another thousand miles. The skate would work better than when it was brand new. God or outrageous coincidence watched over children.

God was given great emphasis in every aspect of daily life. It made kids wonder if there really was a god.

Milton wrote, in his book about lost paradise, that hundreds of thousands of souls, spirits, and phantoms roamed the earth unseen.

Maybe... after all, when an empty box was opened, it appeared to have nothing in it, but was actually full of millions of oxygen and nitrogen atoms.

What looked like a clear sky was really congested with molecules, traffic jams of radio waves, television signals, microwaves, telephone transmissions, and air currents flowing from high to low pressure areas.

Just cause god couldn't be seen, didn't mean god wasn't real. An entity responsible for the creation of something as complex as the universes might not be able to communicate with anything as insignificant as a human.

A dandy comparison was to be found in politics. A politician couldn't contact every citizen in his or her constituency even if they wanted to.

Behind the old gym and attached to it was a covered, Olympic size pool. It had a low and medium height diving boards on the deep end, separated from the shallow part by a nylon blue and white rope with floats staggered along its length.

For whatever reason, germ reduction, or sanitation possibly, the water was heavily chlorinated. The bottom of the pool was rougher than a cob. After an hour in the pool, a swimmer's eyes looked like bing cherries in a snowdrift, and their footsoles were raw as hamburger. Tender feet eventully developed plantar calluses in an evolutionary response to the jagged bottom.

On Halloweens after the new auditorium was furbished, the horror movie was shown there. One memorable year, The Phantom of the Opera House was shown. In one scene, a singer woman had passed out. The villain's cohort limped over to the sewer, got a ladle of water, then came back, and threw it in the unconscious woman's face.

At that moment, Berol shouted, "Have a turd!"

His identity was never ascertained because of “the ouch” (the orphic uniform code of honor). As were many great codes, it was unwritten, but ironclad. A “squealer” would definitely suffer. Virtually every resident was an enforcer, maybe ineffective alone, but a gang of orphans could have taken Fort Knox.

The cafeteria was called “Mann Hall.” It was staffed by a half dozen black women. They would come to work before the sun was up and leave at about 2 in the afternoon. Supper was coldcuts.

Although the food was not up to gourmet standards, it wasn't bad enough to merit the slogan scrawled on many bathroom walls, “Flush twice; it's a long way to Mann Hall."

The building, like all the dormitories, was old and had a formidable rat population. In the predawn, before anyone entered, a mop bucket or empty trash can was tossed in. Hopefully, the noise would frighten them into their hideaways. Some were the size of housecats.

On one less than stellar Saturday evening, when everyone was assembled in Mann Hall for supper, one bolted from the kitchen into the cafeteria area. As soon as it was sighted, a pack of adventurous boys gave chase.

The pursuers caught the beast, and one brave lad impaled it with a fork. He proudly exhibited the carcass to anyone who wanted to see it. Its tail looked like black ski rope, and was as big or bigger in girth.

Beckham had its own water supply. It had a curious flavor. It may have been caused from excessive fluoride or chlorine content. It was strange, but not unpleasant.

When a person went off campus for a week or so, they'd first have to get accustomed to city water, then on their return, get readjusted to the home's.

Coffee drinkers who'd drunk it black for years began to use condiments at Beckham.

The church had no special name, it was simply “the church.” On the Sunday evening after the rat was assassinated in Mann Hall, the pastor had given an approximate 30 minute sermon and planned to end the service with a prayer.

In the middle of the prayer, one of the captive sinners in attendance blasted out a fart that vibrated the hardwood seats. Those in close proximity must surely have known who it was, but the offender remained anonymous per the ouch.

A number of young voices giggled, and the preacher paused, which only drew attention to the blasphemy, but silence was quickly restored. The chaplain forged ahead and ended the prayer.

As soon as he said “Amen,” a cacophony made up of laughter, voices asking, “Who did it?” and a hum of conversation ensued.

Every year, a “talent” show went on. After the auditorium was readied, it was held there. It was mostly awful, but some parts were okay. Each floor of every dormitory had to put something on.

One year, a boy came out on stage and read, “A letter from The President to America's Youth.” He was bedecked in his “Sunday Best” and so nervous, his hands shook.

The paper's rattling came through the microphone louder than his voice. The oration was long and lackluster.

Word circulated amongst some older boys, and on a prearranged signal, the aforementioned four began to ovate loudly. Them that had lost interest, and weren’t paying attention, as well as those who’d dozed off thought it was over. They also began to applaud. The reader first stopped, and glanced up sharply, then finished.

The Home had at one time its own bakery, print press, machine shop, radio station, social service facility, farm (stocked with cattle, pigs), and a big multiacre garden). In time, the bakery became the commissary. The web pressed printshop, and radio station were abandoned. Both fell into ruin. The machine shop was turned into a maintenance garage, and the farm reduced to a storage depot one man operated. The pastureland was leased to the owners of beeves to graze their herds on.

Every year, hundreds of watermelons were donated to the home. A trailer full was pulled out onto the football field, and for about 10 minutes, anything went as long as no one got hurt. Everyone got a whole melon. If they wanted to eat some of it, they could, but anyone who did so did it with the certain knowledge any such intake would be done under fire.

The air was filled with pieces of watermelon, and battle cries that probably sounded like middle ages hand to hand combat. One year, Edwin saw a kid with roughly a half a melon crammed down to his ears like a helmet.

After the 10 minutes, rows of orphans walked the field and picked up the watermelon fragments. In the aftermath of the clash, the field was cleaner than it was before the harmless hostilities. Many people had to shower straightaway to remove syrupy melon juice from their persons before it got sticky. A lot of the incoming laundry that week was pink.

The laundry was built in yesteryear, and the equipment mirrored that fact. Massive antiquated steam pressors and extractors were reminiscent of times past when immigrant child labor was legal.

There was a “night watchman” (as if one were needed) named Crocker who kept a vigil on the campus from dusk `til dawn. He stealthily crept around the outer circle in an ancient pickup truck with the headlights off. Crocker was a retired gentleman who was rumored to wear extra dark sunglasses in the daytime to preserve his extremely acute night vision.

The home had dozens of heavy old park type benches on the grounds. They were annually painted a dark green whether they needed it or not. It was a favorite trick on moonless nights for the protagonists to run outside after Crocker had passed (his passage heralded by the old pickup's frame squeaks), at least one of them wearing a brilliant white tee shirt, and lug one of the green benches into the road.

The bright white tee shirted one would then sit on the bench, facing the way Crocker would come. When the truck's noises were heard (by which time the white shirt would surely have been seen), he'd peel the blouse off, and everybody ran like hell. Crocker would think he had a live perpetrator, invariably gun the accelerator, and smash the unlit vehicle into the bench.

The old radio station must have shut down when video replaced audio. There was still some equipment in there, like speakers, record turntables, and tape recorders, all of it obsolete. At the rear of the building was a window that could be unlocked by coat hanger. Thieves in the night could then enter unseen. Raymon and Edwin cooked up a plot to slip in there and did so more than once. Like the pyramids in Egypt, the place had already been looted. There was very little left to plunder. The floors were covered with chunks of glass.

The pair of interlopers saw a couple of trumpet type public address speakers in the building but didn't get them. In a few days, a use was found for them, so plans to surreptitiously re-enter the building were made. The plans were doomed to failure. On the first attempt, Edwin jimmied and raised the rear window. Raymon was halfway in when both heard sounds that froze the blood in their veins. It was the crunch of somebody stealthily walking on broken glass. It got closer by the second. Someone was in there waiting! It was a trap! They ran like the wind, split up, and sprinted off in different directions.

The second attempt fared no better. After their arrival at the rear of the structure, Raymon had to urinate.

The biological function was in progress when Edwin heard the squeaking of the watchman's truck. He ducked into some shrubbery, but Raymon was caught red handed. Edwin could hear Crocker and Raymon talking.

"What are you doing back here?"

"Hunting rabbits".

"Who was with you?"

"Nobody. I'm by myself". (ouch!)

"I thought I saw two of ya'" and he turned on what must've been a hundred thousand watt flashlight. He shone it all around, but saw no one else. "Come on then. What dorm' are ye' in?"

"Cornet", and they departed. As soon as they left, Edwin crawled out of the bushes and hurried there. Raymon didn't get in serious trouble. He was scolded for being out past curfew, but no corporal punishment was inflicted.

At certain times, like when old man Crocker was on vacation, or wanted a weekend off, a fellow named Ryan Roberts maintained nighttime security. In one such spell, one of the most hilarious events ever transpired.

Like Mister Crocker's old truck, Ryan Roberts could be heard before he was seen because of a giant key ring on his belt. It jingled with his every move. The ring attached to a light chain. It reeled in and out of a round metal spool mounted on his waist.

A kid who was a photography buff loaned Raymon a battery powered flash gun. It had two protrusions where it plugged into a camera. Raymon found that a tie clasp, when clipped on one post, and turned, would eventually contact the other post. When it touched, the device energized. It produced a gleam like an atom bomb. It turned the darkest gloom into stark white daylight.

One night when Roberts was on sentry duty, Willie, Edwin, and Berol approached Ryan from the front. They distracted him with insignificant conversation while Raymon crept up behind him with the flasher. When he got close enough, Raymon tapped Ryan on the shoulder. When Roberts turned around, Raymon actuated the flasher. Ryan, Willie, Edwin, and Berol were all stricken blind by the display. Raymon fell to the ground like he'd been shot and dissolved in laughter.

Whenever Edwin got to the point where he could see something besides green spots, he explained to a stupefied Roberts his picture had just been taken for the monthly bulletin.

The tracts of land around the place all belonged to the Beckham Corporation. Some were leased on 99 year terms to stores, schools, and various businesses. Not too many folks live a century, so the leasing was really akin to rental.

On one side of the home was a hill, on which stood a two floored brick building exactly like one of the dormitories (except some of the older dorms were three stories) and 14 white frame cottages that housed some home employees.

The opposite side was wooded and had within its bounds a seasonal body of water called for as long as anyone could recall, 'The Bull Pond'. It filled in times of rain, then dried up in droughts. One year when it dried up, a compact car and a motorcycle became visible. Both machines were encrusted with rust and silt. No one deemed either worth the work it would require to pull them out. They may still be there.

Behind the home was a recreation center complete with tennis courts, bowling lanes, pool tables, and outside it were two baseball diamonds, as well as a quarter mile track.

Beckham administrated two old folks homes. Some of the elderly came to bowl occasionally and would pay ragamuffins a quarter to set pins.

Behind each lane was a pit. The setter sat up above the action. After a ball was thrown, the setter'd pick up the knocked down pins and place them in the vacant sockets of a frame that overhung the triangular pin area. After the second ball, the pull of a cord would allow the carriage to go down over those still standing and reset those knocked down.

A seasoned pin setter sent the ball back before picking up the fallen pins... usually. A ball rolling downlane made a distinctive sound.

A setter for the old folks found out quickly it was wise to send the ball back after retreiving fallen pins, or they might have to dodge it. Luckily, the superannuated bowlers couldn't throw it very fast.

In front of the home was acres and acres of wilderness. The area at the entrance to the wasteland and just beyond was called “Rockbottom.” Further in it was called “The Girl's Woods.” Like The Bull Pond, no one knew who had christened Rockbottom or The Girl's Woods. The names had always been in place.

Civilization was the same way. It had sprung up, faded into obscurity, then resurfaced, and subsequently crashed until the next resurrection.

Only from conjecture, and the fossil record was the history of life on earth interpreted.

Critters' rights organizations wouldn't have approved of the way animals were dealt with at Beckham. One year, a plague of cats came about. There were cats everywhere. Some were caught and released into Mann Hall after hours. They were murdered by rodents. A bounty was put on them, and in time, the feline population was reduced to acceptable levels. Before the reduction, the orphans disproved many times the myth that a dropped cat always landed on its feet. It rarely did so when hog tied.

There seemed to be an overabundance of frogs at the home. A technique was devised that should have been formalized into an Athletic Field Event but never was. It became known as 'The Olympic Tode Slam.” A participant firmly grasped a frog in their dominant hand (one had to exercise care, too tight a grip might result in a hand wet with toad pee), and backed a few paces away from a clearly marked foul boundary. Going over the line meant instant disqualification. The contest was strictly officiated. After whirling like a discus thrower, the flinger approached the line. He or she, had to release the frog before their body broke the vertical plane of the marker.

A winner slammed the amphibian into a wall with sufficient velocity to produce unconsciousness. It was just a harmless pastime for kids, though it was doubtful the animal kingdom would have lent their support. The frogs would usually go into a torpor, then hop away when the paralysis wore off (probably with a splitting headache).

Sparrows hung out in flocks by trash dumpsters, particularly the one behind Mann Hall. Raymon and Edwin bought a dozen mouse traps, baited them with light bread, and set them there. The birds would land, look around, make sure the coast was clear, then peck at the bread. When the trap sprung, it would trap them. On one of these purges, a few big Starlings set down, and each tripped a trap. One flew away with the trap. The two survivors were okay, and were incorporated into “orphan kites.” One end of a string would be securely fastened around a clawed foot. The bird would then be released and allowed to fly. When it hit the end of the string, it was jerked back to earth.

Kids destined to be mechanics when they grew up interchanged wheels on bicycles with such frequency that there were bikes at Beckham unlike any in the world. Once, Edwin and Berol decided to race one another around the campus. Each rode one of the Frankenstinian conveyances. On the home stretch, Berol was in the lead when hubris struck. From behind, Edwin had a bird's eye view of it. He plainly saw the chain come off the rear tire sprocket, slip down, then lodge between it and the frame. The wheel froze immediately.

Dark smoke began to pour from the roadway as rubber burned. Berol didn't know exactly what the problem was but realized something was amiss. He desperately put both feet down and tried to stop it in Flint Stone style. Even with the front wheel braked, the airspeed was faster than a person could run. Berol catapulted through the handlebars and crashed to the pavement, then was actually run over by the pilotless bike.

As Edwin was going full speed, he first passed the accident site, then slowed and turned. He rode back to make sure Berol was alive. He was laughing as he turned around and still was when he pedaled abreast of the bloody Berol.

"And what is so mucking funny?"

"You were. I'd love to have that on film."

"Hardee har har.. funnier'n a crutch huh?"

"If it hadda' kilt' cha', I'da' still had to laugh."

Glenn Penny was the first alumni to come back from the war in a box. His remains laid in state at the home for a day. It was said he'd leaped onto a grenade to save his buddies. He had been one of the first to join the service to leave the home.

Usually, when a resident graduated high school, they left. For those who didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't, there was a “halfway house” on the hill where some of the home's employees were quartered. It was the only brick structure there. The cottages were all wood frame.

As it turned out, Raymon, Edwin, Willie, and Berol left the same year. They realize in hindsight being raised at Beckham was probably better than growing up on the street.