When they would come, and they came about every six months, I would pray and beg God to take it away. I can remember when I was about fourteen years old, I went through one of those events. Over the ensuing years, I would have fits of guilt and depression with that whole event looming before my eyes and harassing my mind. The event was over, but it had lasting ramifications. I will never forget going back up to our house and washing that turtle’s blood off of my Boy Scout knife. I thought I had thrown my sin away and by doing so I would never think of it again. I stood at the fence and threw that turtle as far as my eleven-year-old arm would make him fly. It was a field deeply covered with sage brush. I ran from the yard toward the field behind our house. Suddenly, the greatest fit of guilt I had ever experienced came upon me. His legs spread straight out in all four directions, and he was gone. He sort of “hissed” when the knife went in. I put the point of that Boy Scout knife right in that slight opening and shoved it to the hilt.
Something said to me: “Why don’t you stick the point of your knife right in there where he closed his shell and kill him? Slide it right in there!” For some strange reason I did it. Of course, he pulled himself back into his shell and closed the door. I picked him up and played with him for a few minutes.
One day I was around behind our house near a small Mimosa tree when I noticed a little box turtle crawling around under that small tree. My mother did not know I was doing such a thing and I don’t recommend it to kids today!! I came awfully close to a hospital visit a couple of times but somehow, I avoided it. I was so good in throwing that knife that I would part my toes and stick the knife between my big toe and the toe next to it. One of my “games” I played with it was that I would throw it and stick it in cigarette butts that people threw out of the car as they went by our house.
I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to wear that Boy Scout knife on my hip. Get the picture? I was a member of a Cub Scout Pack and I had been given a Boy Scout knife with a leather sheath. The street in front of our house was still dirt and we had a peanut field on the other side. At the time we were almost out in the country. Here’s the story: When I was eleven years old, we lived on East 16 th Street on the North side of Tifton. I think that my attachment to that little guy was rooted in the fact that earlier in my life, when I was eleven years old, there was another turtle. This little turtle became a “buddy” of mine, and I did all I could do to protect him and keep life going for him as it should. I got to the point that I looked for him every day and he did not disappoint me. There he came again and made his way to the same spot under those Azaleas. A few days later, there I was again on my porch talking and drinking iced Starbucks coffee. I watched him carefully as he went into the overlapping branches of those bushes. He was headed toward a bank of Azaleas that were planted around some pines. One day I noticed a small turtle as he came out of the yard next door and slowly made his way into our yard. I loved to watch it get dark and experience the peace of the day. One of my favorite pastimes while living at one of our former homes in Evans, GA was to sit on my front porch late in the afternoon and early evening and talk on the phone with some of my preacher friends while drinking iced coffee. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column of those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
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