Lesson learned

     He was a giant of a man to a small boy looking up at him. He was a policeman as well which made his appearance even more frightening. The boy would see officer Striker walking his beat in town tipping his hat to the ladies as he swung his night stick around and around. Back in the late fifties the town had only four police officers and they took turns walking the downtown beat checking for locked doors and any signs of a problem which usually only meant a shop keeper had left the lights on. Officer Striker took his time walking around town making sure everything and everybody was safe and secure. One evening during the holidays when the stores stayed open longer for the holiday shoppers, the boy and his mom were out doing some shopping in the big department store on the corner of main street. It had two floors of anything you could ever want., including a huge candy display right smack dab in the middle of the floor. His mom was looking at ties for dad and wasn’t paying to much attention to what he was doing and before he knew what he was doing he took a pack of chewing gum and put it in his coat pocket all that is except for the sweet, sweet juicy piece he put into his mouth. “What are you chewing”? his mom asked. The boy said nothing as she held out her hand and told him to spit it out. Not knowing what to do he did the most logical thing and swallowed it.” I know the smell of Juicy fruit chewing gum young man, and I know it comes in a pack so where is the rest of it? The boy knew when to say when, so he retrieved the pack from his pocket and just as he was handing it to her he turned to his right and there stood all six feet seven of officer Striker. The rest of this story is short and to the point. The boy’s mom told the officer what he had done which led him to believe he was going to jail or at the very least a home for troubled boys. But as luck and good fortune would have it all he had to do was walk the beat with officer Striker for a solid week. During that longest week of his young life he was told countless stories of boys who took the wrong path in life and by the end of that week he swore he would always walk on the right side of the law. The boy is a man now and whenever he goes home he takes a walk around officer Strikers beat hearing the stories of a giant of a man with a heart just as big.
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