The school librarian was Mrs. Moose. Yes, that was her name. She was married to Mr. Moose. Yes, that was his real name. He passed away, and she remarried, but we all knew her has Mrs. Moose. She didn't like her name much, but it was a fond reminder of her first husband. We just thought it was funny.
My best friend Richard and I would spend our lunch hour in the library with Mrs. Moose. We would write funny captions on the pictures in the news magazines. She didn't like that what we did. We would also play chess using the New York Times Sunday newspaper's games section. She didn't mind that as much, because we were bettering our minds. We also spent the time writing poems and stories. It was our creative hour.
During our senior year, the administration said that we could go off campus to eat and not get penalized. The kids with cars did just that. The popular kids had cars. Most of those kids were not our friends. We didn't get invited to go to lunch off campus, so we stayed in the library and saved up our lunch money for other stuff. It was getting towards the end of the school year, and we wanted to go to lunch at Hardee's, which was about half of a mile away from Flora.
We asked Mrs. Moose if we could borrow her car to go to Hardee's. Of course, she said no. We told her that we would be careful with her car. She still said no. We told her that we would take a couple of "responsible" students with us. She knew us too well to think we would be "responsible", so she said okay. We could take her car to Hardee's during our lunch hour. She gave us the keys, which was a huge mistake on her part.
We got down to Hardee's. As we pulled into the parking lot, a car was coming out of there. Our driver had to swerve to miss the car, and he hit the curb inside the lot. We didn't think anything of it, as we parked the car. We all went inside and ate our first lunch away from school in our entire 12 years of going to school. We finished lunch and headed back to the car. Everybody's eyes bugged out of her heads, and our mouths dropped open. A tire was flat. The curb that we hit was very sharp and had ripped open the tire. Could anyone change a flat tire? Of course not. We were kids, at least in our minds.
We had to have a plan. One of the guys said he would walk back to school and get help. We knew he was going to go back to school and leave us there. Another guy volunteered to go with him to make sure we got help. We knew he was going to just leave us there, too. There was a pay phone at the parking lot. Why not call Mrs. Moose and get her to send help? We didn't know the phone number of the library. A police car came by. He asked us if that was our car. We said no. It belonged to Mrs. Moose. He thought we were lying to him, but we insisted that the school librarian's name was Mrs. Moose. He got on his radio and checked to see if we were telling him the truth. It was confirmed. By now, we had gone way past the time to get back. Mrs. Moose was frantic. Where had we gone in her car? The officer helped us change the tire, and we got back to school almost two hours late. She was glad we were okay. We pooled our money and bought her a new tire.
We never got to go off campus again for lunch. Every time Richard and I went back to the library, Mrs. Moose gave us that look that was like a laser beam which would cut through steel. We just sat at the table and wrote stuff. We didn't dare get a magazine or a newspaper. She forgave us, when we graduated. She said the tire was rotted and needed to be replaced. She just wanted to see us sweat. We did.
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