Justice! Justice?

Over the years we had a lot of dealings with the Rogers boys - Jack, Don and Jimmy - and, to a lesser degree, their older sister. The Rogers lived across Meadow from our back field so we were close neighbors as well as classmates. A lot of interaction there and some good stories to tell ( and some definitely NOT to) about our love/hate relationship with these folks. One of the first involved their dad.

While we always had hassles with the kids and were leery about their mom, who may have had substance abuse issues or other problems, we actually liked Mr. Rogers, even if being a bit afraid of him. A supervisor at Pacific Car and Foundry in Renton - the "car shops" as they were commonly called - he seemed pretty easy going . He'd had an injury that resulted in a hook hand just like those you see in urban legend representations. Pretty scary, but Oan and I , 6 and 8 or something like that, decided to approach him anyway when we were feeling particularly aggrieved about some injustice Jack and Don had done us, the nature of which I can't even come close to recalling now. So we went to him with our story and hopes he "could do something about it". I'm not sure how we rationalized that this wasn't simply tattling, but we must have done, because even at that early age we viewed "telling" with contempt. Mr. Rogers wasn't fooled, though. He considered for a moment or two, rubbed his chin and opined as to how he guessed he'd "just have to cut their bloody fingers off." Oan and I agreed that that would be going too far. Just barely, but too far.