CLEBURNE STATE PARK
One of the things we find about being retired is that we can take mini vacations any time we want and we don’t have to go far. My wife and I are at Cleburne State Park about 10 miles from our home. The park is comprised of 145 acres of rolling hills covered with cedar trees and a spring fed lake as its focal point.
We’ve been camping with our tent trailer and enjoying life. We have our mountain bikes, which we ride around the trails that encircle the park. We also have our kayaks, which allows us to explore the lake and I go fishing in the early mornings and late evenings.
It is springtime and the middle of the week, so the park is quiet. We are one of two campers at the park. I’m in my kayak doing some early morning fly fishing, when I notice the large motor home that is parked two campsites down from us is getting ready to pull out.
When I get back to camp, my wife is sitting at the picnic table drinking coffee and working on her computer. She comments “I see our company is leaving. They weren’t very friendly. They didn’t even say hi or goodbye.” I shrugged my shoulders and went into the tent trailer to start breakfast.
“Jim come quick, hurry,” My wife yells!
I jump from the trailer, “What’s the matter?”
“Look,” she said and points to where the motor home had been. On the picnic table is a large purse. “They must have forgotten it when they were leaving.”
I ask my wife to turn off the stove as I hurry to my mountain bike. I know if I take the bike trail around the front side of the lake I can get to the park entrance with the purse before the motor home can get there. It has to follow the road around through the rest of the camping area and through the picnic area around the back side of the lake before leaving the park. Once I get to the gate I’ll give the purse to the Park Ranger and he can return it to the motor home.
I kiss my wife and tell her “I’ll be right back.” I leap on my bike and race off to retrieve the purse.
As I ride up to the picnic table and reach for the purse, a voice screams “Freeze right there .Don’t move.” I am grabbed, yanked from my bike and thrown to the ground. Two men are on top of me holding me down and yelling at me to keep my hands out where they can see them!
I can’t catch my breath. When they jumped on me they knocked the wind out of me. I can hear my wife screaming, but there isn’t anything I can do.
The two guys finally release me and roll me over to a setting position. I am handcuffed and a dozen people with guns drawn are standing around in a circle with my wife and I in the center as the main attraction.
It turns out there’s been a kidnapping and this was the ransom drop. No one wanted to believe that we weren’t the kidnappers. They moved my wife and I to the command center which was a motor home set up with an interrogation room where they proceeded to question us. After four grueling hours we were released.
They told us that they would be contacting us if they needed any more information.
“If you want us we will be at home,” I told them. “I need some rest. These vacations are wearing me out.”
The End
I hope you, at a minimum, called them dirty !@#$%^&*()_+ holes, and advised them of their rights to get their asses whipped at any future date you might choose. Call me for back up.
Let this coming of age story of a boy named Bean take you back to a simple time. Set in a small southern town in the 1960's, encircled by a river and gleaming white cotton fields.
