It was a warm spring day when I busted out through the school doors after the final bell. That bell meant freedom. That bell meant you could fold up your books and head for the great outdoors.

Most days I was a bus rider. On this day, I was a walker. Walkers and car riders got to escape first.

I’m sitting in class, feet folded under my desk, trying but not really trying to listen to whatever the teacher is talking about. Her voice is like the drone of a bee swirling around inside my head. Last period English class, diagramed sentences on the chalk board, and I’m about to die.

The bell goes off like a fire alarm. It’s a long ring. Almost instantaneously, as if in choreographed motion, a herd of sixth graders shoves their chairs back over the tile floor. Kid chatter rumbles over the teacher’s last-minute instructions about homework.

“Where you going?”

My buddy expects me to get on the bus like usual. We sit together.

“I’m walking today. Going down to the foundry to catch a ride home with my dad.”

“Stink wad.”

“Puke breath.”

The windows in our wing were open all day. The air smelled like sunshine, honeysuckle, warm grass, red clover, and peach blossoms all mixed into one breath. It was downright intoxicating and unfair at the same time.

No one can be expected to do Modern Mathematics with the windows open. Explain the stratosphere? Nope. Piano lessons on the C major scale? No way.

Springtime stirs the pre-adolescent juices. Spring fever, they called it. And if anybody was checking, my insides were ready to bounce out that door.

We didn’t have bookbags or backpacks. Backpacks were for camping and hiking. We carried our books under our arm, against our hips. A few of the nerd kids had satchels. Godfrey had a leather one that he carried around. We knew he was a nerd because he actually read books.

I walked out the heavy doors into the sunshine. A Blue Horse notebook, math book, English book, and science book all tucked against my left hip. I had homework to do in each of them.

Outside, nearly every kid was yelling and waving at somebody. Moms sat behind the wheels of Ford Galaxies and Chevy Impalas with no air conditioning. All the walkers split up in two basic directions. Some headed to the left toward College Street. A few of us took to the right, a path under the trees, across the ditch toward the old gym and Central Avenue.

Not being a normal walker, I walked alone. Several groups of two or three were ahead of me. I brought up the rear. I actually liked the solitude. Not that I’ve ever been a loner, but I’ve always, even to this day, been okay with being quiet by myself with my own silent thoughts.

Maybe I’m the nerd.

The old gym seemed like the biggest structure I’d ever seen in my life. It was huge to a 10-year-old. It stood only a short distance from the road. Shaped like a barn, it had a tin roof on it, and I may or may not have picked up a rock from the edge of the pavement and tossed it up on that roof just to hear it “ding” and roll down off the edge.

Maybe twice. Could have been three times. Getting further away each time as I walked along.

The old city park was behind the gym. I never spent much time there. Though I was a Hampton kid, I grew up a few miles east of town and had cow pastures to play in. I don’t reckon my folks ever thought much about a picnic at the park.

There was a small dirt lane that ran the length of the park between Central Avenue and College streets. It was always shaded by the large oaks that stood like sentries down the side of the lane. I imagined a cookout at one of the concrete picnic tables, for all I had was my imagination.

It wasn’t a long walk to Southern States, which we all just called “the foundry.” Dad always worked the first shift, 7am to 3:30pm. By the time I walked, ambled and kicked a can around in front of me, I’d get there by 3pm, easy.

At the top of the hill, I’d cross over Oak Street. If I looked to the left, way in the distance, I could see the corner of Marvin Daniel’s grocery in town. Or, at least, the roof tops of downtown. Jim Henderson’s machine shop was on my right.

When I got up the next hill at Georgia Avenue, I hooked a right toward the foundry. There was a high chain link fence around Southern States. Two or three strands of barbed wire across the top, I think. I’d stop in at the guard shack by the gate.

“Well, looks like I got me a young Chappell trying to break in.”

“No sir. Just here to see my dad.”

The tile floor was green. There was one small desk in the corner. The walls were mostly glass, and the whole thing wasn’t much bigger than a bathroom. I wish I could remember the guard’s name.

“Let me call your dad and let him know you’re here.”

He motioned me on. “You know where you’re going?”

“Yes sir.”

The foundry was a dark place full of machine noises and lots of yelling. Men wearing dirty hard hats, safety glasses, and shirts covered in black dust would wave at me as I walked in past the conveyer moving the molds down the line. They waved like they knew me. I waved back clueless.

When I went past the cleaning room, Mr. Red Floyd stopped me.

“Don’t I know you?”

His big hand swallowed mine when he reached out to shake my hand. He was light-skinned, which meant that the foundry dust just showed up more. He and Dad were rabbit hunting buddies. He was part of the village that raised me.

“Your daddy’s down yonder way. I saw him go into the pattern shop a few minutes ago.”

I wandered off past the furnaces. The men wearing safety goggles and long leather gloves. Their faces glowed in the light of molten iron and the ladles they filled. Their leather aprons had burn marks on them.

The door to the pattern shop was a large, heavy wooden door. The hinges creaked and the weight slammed it back against the frame. Inside, the shop was so different than out in the foundry. It was bright. Fairly clean. The sawdust was cleaner than the black sand. No hard hats in here.

Mr. Linwood Brooks was one of the pattern makers. Dad was standing next to him letting him sharpen his pocketknife for him. He looked over at me and spoke.

“Come over here and let Mr. Linwood sharpen your knife for you.”

It was like I belonged there. Like I was a natural part of his world, and him a part of mine.

He’s been gone 14 years now this month. I still think of those days.