It was more than a rite of passage--it was a test of prowess akin to the sacred tribal rituals of the ancients. Growing to manhood in Marshall, Texas was not possible until one had experienced the ringing of Wiley's bell.

Wiley was one of two black colleges on the West End of town. The famous bronze bell hung proudly from its place on a short wooden tower - a tower low enough to reach from the ground. In high school, word was out that there was a standing reward of a veal cutlet dinner if one could ring that bell and escape. It was no small challenge. We heard that Wiley College students stood guard twenty-four hours a day. The grounds around the bell site offered little cover, and there was a chill in the air in the vicinity of the bell, even in summer.

To invade the forbidden area was not unlike scenes in To Kill A Mockingbird. In the movie, a character named Boo Radley had been made into a demon by the neighborhood children who never saw him venture out of his house. On dark nights, it was said that monster Boo stood unseen sentry duty over a hollow tree that contained treasures of glass beads, pieces of tin, and rubber bands. For the children, it was a test of their best hit-and-run abilities to even approach the treasure tree, and sure death if Boo Radley caught them there. Wiley's bell held the same fascination as Boo's hidden treasure--complete with an unexplained cold wind, the blackness of night, and the whispered warnings from the swaying pine trees.

Many young men failed to reach adulthood because they were too weak for the task of ringing the bell. "The Legend of the Bell" was a mismatch for many of the most notorious of us - but on the night of the secret raid in 1959, "Thrill" Phil and I showed up to preserve the honor of the North Siders. The North Siders was a swarthy collection of boys whose unity was assured simply from having been born on the poor side of the demarcation line, the Texas & Pacific Railroad tracks.

Thrill Phil got his name from the merit badges he won doing things nobody else dared to do. He was the antithesis of the word chicken. Phil earned the right to be sign-spokesman for our class, having painted "Seniors '61" on the Standpipe Road water tower two years ahead of our graduation. Once he did a one-man panty raid at Rita Rankin's house and brought back seven panties and bras. There was enough underwear for each of us to have a set to keep in our glove compartments as evidence of our conquests. I was proud to be number-two at Phil's side that night--his daring accomplishments in the face of peril helped mask my secret fears.

Came the appointed hour. There was no moon, and the closest streetlight was some hundred yards away. We crawled across the lawn to a large bed of azalea bushes near the bell. Each of us had three ball bearings we got from the railroad shops where Phil's uncle worked. They were extra large bearings, weighing eight to ten ounces each. The balls were so heavy that to hit anything with them, we had to get close. Phil took the first two shots and missed--we heard the dead thump of the ball bearings hitting the grass. Phil pointed at me, and I took two shots. Both fell well short, and one hit the sidewalk and began rolling noisily back toward the street. As it rolled it made a mortar and pestle sound, and it wouldn't stop. When the bearing crossed a seam in the sidewalk, it would hop, making even more noise. Phil looked at me with disgust. I just shrugged my shoulder and pointed back at him. I deferred to Phil's strength. After all, he had tried out for discus in track and field. This was not the time to question why he did not make the squad.

Phil stood up and let his last missile go with all his power. It hit dead center. The bell reeled like it had been struck with a sledgehammer. Its ring was sharper and louder than either of us had ever imagined. Lights began flipping on in dorm rooms like the setting off of chain-reaction fireworks. It seemed like a hundred Boo Radleys had erupted at once. Everything we could see in the night seemed to be coming at us. We ran for blocks, crashing through shrubs amidst barking dogs, and twice getting decked by sagging clotheslines. Finally we collapsed on the floor of the Pope Street Laundromat, our place of refuge where we parked the car.

The pain in our sides from the hard run was numbing, but as we heaved deep breaths on the cool concrete floor, the thrill of victory set in. We had done it! We had rung Wiley's bell and outrun its hordes of defenders. We held our breath for a moment so we could listen. Phil said he could still hear the distant echo of the bell, bouncing off of trees and buildings on the campus. I couldn't hear it, but I smiled in collaborative agreement from under my crown of dryer lint.

The next day, we read the "News Messenger" front to back for coverage of the exploit. We found nothing, and read the entire paper again. There was not one single mention of the feat--not even in the small print in the crimes and lawsuits section. There was only the usual bland local news, the coupon specials at Abraham's market, and a new panel of Little Abner cartoons. Then, as if a final snubbing, we discovered that the "Legend of The Bell" did not include any particulars as to who would buy the veal cutlet dinner.

General George Patton was right. All glory is fleeting.

Copyright © 2002 Ladd Moore
All rights reserved

About the Author

Ladd Moore is a former manufacturing executive who left the boardroom in 1998 to reclaim his roots. He found what he sought "in a little corner of East Texas," where farm life and writing seem to properly balance his energies.

Mr. Moore enjoys more than two hundred publishing credits, and he will soon release his first short story collection, The Leapfrogging Pool. A second work, Firefly Rides, is nearing completion, and he has begun work on a memoir, Offspring of the Tiger. The latter work chronicles his conflicted relationship with his father, one of Chinese National Air's storied "Hump" pilots of World War II.

His work has appeared in Carolina Country, The Virginia Adversaria, Pittsburg Quarterly, Amarillo Bay, Eclectica, Paumanok Review, America's Intercultural Magazine, and Carve Magazine Anthology 2000, among others. His awards include the Wordhammer, the Silver Quill, and a 2002 nomination to The Texas Institute of Letters.

Image: Wiley College, photograph of a postcard, Texas State Historical Society