Bub Murdock's family and my family attended the same church. Since we were cousins, we did lots of family things together. One of those family things involved taking turns spending Sunday afternoons at one another's house after church. Back in the early 50's, it was common for our mothers to prepare sumptuous Sunday dinners. Both our mothers could stack a table with some of the best food in Roger Mills County.

Usually following the meal, we kids would go outside and play. If the Flick kids were at the Murdock's, Bub and I would go out and knock flies to one another with a baseball. We would take turns hitting the ball and catching it. We invented a two-man baseball game whereby the batter would knock flies in the general direction of the fielder. The batter stood in the driveway just to the west of Bub's house. He would knock the ball to the fielder as far as he could into the large field across the street, just east of Bobby Clayton's house.

The rules of the game were few and simple. The batter had to be his own pitcher and thus he was required to launch the ball up with one hand. As the ball reached the pinnacle of its ascent, he grabbed the bat with the hand which launched the ball, and as the ball made its decent, he would wallop the thing hard and long. Three tries and he was out if he did not get the ball airborne. If it was a grounder or if it did not clear the street and the fence going into the pasture, it was a strike. Three misses or grounders was considered an out. If the fielder caught the ball, it was an out. After three outs, the fielder and the batter exchanged places. Scores (runs) were made by the fielder not catching the ball. Bub was a whole lot better than I was at baseball. In fact I was so sorry at baseball that I didn't even make the high school baseball team. I never played an inning of baseball in high school. After a couple of hours of two-man baseball, we would go in the house and listen to radio stories. There was always, "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" and his wonder dog, Yukon King. And "The Shadow" was also one of our favorites.

There was another thing we occasionally did on Sunday afternoons. We would finish dinner and walk down town to the Washita Theater and watch a movie. Now that was risky business for me because my mother never did like for us to go to movies on Sunday. In her mind, watching a "picture show" on the Lord's Day was one of the highest crimes one could commit against Almighty God. She was literally death on us Flick kids going to movies on Sunday. It was desecrating the Lord's Day.

Honestly, I never did see it like she saw it because I couldn't see any difference between hitting baseballs into a large field and going to a relaxing or exciting movie. In my mind, they were both the same insofar as the pleasure derived from the respective activities. How was watching a screen any more evil than hitting a leather ball as far as the eye could see? So we never did tell Mother when we went to the "picture shows" on Sundays. We operated under the theory that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. And she didn't usually ask Aunt Nora, who didn't care one way or the other, if we had gone to the movies. I suspect she knew more than we thought. But we just kept our distance on the subject of movies on Sundays.

But I always had these weird feelings about watching movies on Sundays. There were times when I was almost fearful to enter the theater to watch the movie on Sundays. What if Mother was right about that? I gave a lot of thought to the idea. I wondered if she was right, and if God did in fact disapprove of going to movies on Sundays, then what would He do about it? If Mother was right that it was wrong, then how would God punish me? What would He do to bring retribution upon me for watching a "picture show" on Sunday?

Most of the time I would enjoy sitting there watching Gene Autry, Champion & Gabby Hayes, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Trigger, & Bullet, Rocket Man, and all those other stars of the day. On occasions, however, I would lapse into the thought that I was living in sin. There I was sitting in a theater, watching a movie, and doing it on the Lord's Day, which according to Mother, was almost a forbidden sin. She never told me if it was the unpardonable sin, but I gathered that it just might be. To be honest, there were many times I wondered what would happen if God decided to call an end to things and cause the end of the world to happen.

What if God DID cause the end of the world to happen during the movie? What if He did come back for his saints while I was in the Washita Theater? Of all places, I didn't want to have God find me in a theater! Sometimes I would break out into a cold sweat just thinking about God trying to find me in a theater. Perhaps He wouldn't think to look for me there... But on the other hand, if He did cause the Second Coming to occur, I certainly wanted to go with the saints when the Arch Angel blew the trumpet. I would always breathe a sigh of relief when we walked out of the theater and I was still intact and in touch with this world. I was always glad that God didn't decide to make the Second Coming happen on a Sunday afternoon when I was in the Washita Theater.

When the Murdocks went to the Flick's on Sunday afternoon, we didn't have to worry about the Second Coming. We were never anywhere close to the Washita Theater. Mother saw to that.

Among the things Bub and I did was hunt. We each had a nice 22 caliber rifle. Mine was the one, (which I still have) which Dad had bought in his teen-age years. It is a Remington, single-shot, hammer action, rifle about the size of one of those Daisy Red Ryder BB guns. Usually we would hunt on the Washita River below the house.

Many times I wondered if there was a connection between the Washita Theater and the Washita River. If God was disapproving of my being in the Washita Theater on a Sunday afternoon, then why was He not angry with me for hunting in the Washita River on a Sunday afternoon? I never could figure out what the difference was. How was it such a sin to watch a movie in the Washita Theater on the Lord's Day when Sunday hunting on the Washita River wasn't a sin? I never did resolve that one.

On one occasion, Bub and I went hunting on a Sunday afternoon. We began the hunt at the bridge below our house and followed the river up to Grandpa Flick's house. According to the way the river winds and turns, it is about three miles to the place to get out of the river and go to Grandpa's house. On this particular day we were having a lousy hunt. We had shot nothing more than a couple of sparrows. We didn't even see any big game such as rabbits and squirrels.

So when we got to the getting-out place, we decided to go on up the river past Grandpa's to see if we could run into some big game rabbits or squirrels. By the time we got to Elvin Allen's water gap, we were completely bored out of our gourds. I don't know who thought up the idea, but we began to have a discussion about shooting guns at people.

The conversation moved into wondering what it would feel like to be shot at with real live ammunition. How would it feel to know that someone was shooting directly at you? What would be your emotions to know a bullet was being aimed straight at you? How would it feel to have a bullet hit within mere inches of where you were standing? What would it be like to hear the sound of a bullet hitting an object nearby? The further the conversation went, the more we both thought we'd like to know and experience such a thing.

We began to concoct a way we could experience this thing. We decided that one of us would stand behind a huge cottonwood tree and the other would go behind a pond dam, which was about six hundred yards out in Elvin Allen's pasture. I was the one elected to stand behind the tree and Bub was the one who went and slouched behind the dam. The game plan was that we would fire one round directly at the object protecting the other. I don't recall who fired first. I do recall a rush of excitement which dispelled the almost total boredom I had been having from not seeing any "big" game that afternoon.

I think I fired first. I remember taking careful aim at the spot near the top of the dam, directly above where Bub was hiding. He couldn't have been more than four feet from where the bullet hit the dam. I saw the dust rise from the spot where the bullet landed.

Whereupon, it was Bub's turn. I made myself as thin as I could possibly be, standing hunkered close to the big cottonwood tree. I was trying to imagine what would happen next. The only thing standing between me and a bullet through the heart was that tree. I wondered if the tree would hold the bullet and prevent it from piercing my heart. If sheer bravery is what this was all about, Bub and I were a couple of brave guys that day. Stupid would probably be the better adjective to describe the event.

Anyway, I stood there for what seemed like an eternity. I heard the bullet hit the tree before I heard the sound of Bub's gunfire. I'll admit that it was a hair-raising experience. I had experienced being shot at by someone else. And by none other than my own cousin, who happened to be my best friend in all the world... I had experience the intentional, premeditated firing of a gun toward my proximity and lived through it. I had intentionally, and with premeditation, fired a gun at my own cousin.

We called a truce after the first round of fire and shook hands, celebrating the failure of each from killing the other. We agreed that it was, in one sense, rather exciting to know that we had been intentionally fired upon with live ammunition and lived through it. One might call it sort of a rite of passage. One might also call it one of the stupidest events to have occurred in the history of mankind.

Whichever and however one would describe it, we both look back on that occurrence with a high degree of amusement. I have told my children about it and expect that my grandchildren --if I ever get any-- will hear about it. I have also told them not to EVER try anything like that... I'm not sure if Bub has told the story, but I suspect he has. I think we made a pact not to tell anybody about our "war game." But pacts somehow have a way of being broken with the passage of time...