© Kevin S. Giles
The next morning, as Mom popped toast, Dad told us he’d heard a thing or two at the bar.
“Frank, it’s Sunday and we’ve got church.” She didn’t want any bar talk in the house under those circumstances.
“The police had some trouble the other night.”
Insight into Paul’s mother
With that Mom turned away from the toaster, suddenly impressed. “What kind of trouble, Frank?” She wiped her hands on her apron, the one with red trim and patterns of pears.
‘Summer of the Black Chevy’ explores a Montana boy’s wonder at becoming a teenager and the pain that follows. Summer of the Black Chevy takes place in Deer Lodge, Montana, in 1965.
“Seems somebody forced a driver out of his car and then took off with it,” Dad related. “The thief just about ran the owner down getting away. Sounded like a bad deal.”
Dad filled his coffee cup from the tin pot on the stove. “I heard it happened near the school Friday night. The cops found the car in an alley down by the ballpark.”
Mom shot me a sharp glance. “Who was involved, Frank?”
“I didn’t hear,” Dad said.
I stared at my cereal bowl, intent on finishing my oatmeal, actually quite relieved at the prospect of going to the Presbyterian Church for a change. At least the sermon delivered wouldn’t be from Mom. At least then, but she took full advantage of the closing minutes of breakfast before I could escape to my bedroom to polish my shoes. It was a Sunday ritual in the Morrison household to polish shoes, using black paste from a little tin. You don’t want to go around with unpolished shoes in my mother’s church.
Curfews for young boys
“Paul, this is exactly why you were supposed to be home on time. You don’t know what kind of trouble you’ll find when you’re running around after curfew doing who knows what.”
(The novel Summer of the Black Chevy , written by Montana native Kevin S. Giles, used his Montana hometown for the setting of this fictional account of teenager Paul Morrison in 1965.)
Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.