David G. Simpson

AS THE READER, I SUSPECT THAT YOU ARE AS GUILTY AS MY BROTHER RON AND ME FOR RAISING HELL IN YOUR YOUTH. Within these pages are the memories of two senior citizens who drove their family and neighbors absolutely crazy with their youthful foolhardiness during the forties and fifties in Acton, Massachusetts. True stories of two youngsters who terrorized a town, enraged their parents, Ole Ern and Ethel, their neighbors, Ray and Bell Harris, and succeeded in blaming all of them on another kid labeled Gunk, who is ultimately the star of this book. “He was much taller than us, and uglier too. The jerk was as stupid as a box of hair, yet because he thought it funny to push my four-year-old face into his butt and release gas . . . well, it was war.” It didn’t matter what crime we committed; the fact that Gunk was there to take the blame ensured that Ron and I would live another day to get up to more antics, create more chaos, which would be enough to condemn our neighbor across the street. Ron and I did so many tricks on a lot of people that the end results of blaming that other person and getting away with it were so funny that inspiration became an extension of our disruptive activities. Gunk Did It became my mantra for the subsequent indiscretions and were cause for his receiving castigations from anyone we deemed necessary. Predictable as always, as we were to proclaim that Gunk Did It, we never tired of conspiring against him. I owe my learning to inflict falsehoods never dreamed of by humankind to Gunk’s butt-inflicted abuse, which initiated and developed our proclivity for youthful and very funny revenge.