The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life Read Online Free PDF

bank. The river was where you went to drink, to listen to country music, and to be with your crowd.
    The river wasn’t the only place to go, though. Somebody was always having a party, either at their house, their parents’ camp, or at a barn. Teenagers were often on the road to Baton Rouge to the movies, or bowling. A lot of teenage social life centered around the West Feliciana Saints, the high school football and baseball teams. If the CYO scheduled a dance for the same night as a Saints football game, a win meant the priest would let the kids dance till one in the morning, but a loss meant the music stopped at midnight.
    In those days teenagers in our town didn’t really go on formal dates. Instead you’d either go out with your friends, or you’d “go with” someone—which meant you were seeing that person exclusively. If a boy and a girl liked each other, the boy would screw up the courage to ask the girl to go with him. That typically meant they would hang out with all their friends anyway, but would be off-limits to the romantic attentions of others. It was easy to tell which girls were going with which boys: if you got behind them on the highway, the girl would be riding in the front seat of his pickup as close to him as she could be without actually sitting in his lap.
    Mike Leming was a year older than Ruthie and began noticing her in the hallway when she moved up to ninth grade, and therefore overto his side of the high school building. He liked the way Ruthie carried herself. He had never seen anyone like her—tomboyish and girly at the same time. She had lots of friends and never talked about anybody, nor did people gossip about her. When kids were changing classes in the hallway and huddled to talk in groups, he was struck by how she had a way of making people comfortable by the way she talked to them.
    Ruthie’s social ease was especially attractive to Mike. Though he was tall, blond, handsome, and athletic, Mike was painfully shy. He couldn’t figure out how to approach Ruthie.
    One April night in 1983 Ruthie convinced Paw to let her attend a creek party. She was two weeks shy of her fifteenth birthday, and couldn’t believe he had let her go. She saw the Leming boy there, and they got to talking, and laughing with each other, and the next thing you know, he kissed her. Ruthie had a midnight curfew and made it home with only three minutes to spare. That Monday at school everyone teased her for kissing Mike Leming at the party. What was the big deal? It was just a creek party. “Mike and I are just friends!” she protested.
    The next weekend the Saints baseball team played John Curtis High, a suburban New Orleans school, in a regional playoff. John Curtis was well known around the state as an athletic powerhouse. Squaring off against them was a David-and-Goliath moment for the West Feliciana country boys. Mike played right field for the Saints. Ruthie rode the fan bus to New Orleans for the game.
    To everyone’s great surprise the Saints played the hell out of John Curtis, and reached the bottom of the ninth inning ahead, six to two. Victory seemed so certain the West Feliciana fans finally answered the city team’s pregame taunts by singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But then John Curtis rallied, coming within one run of tying the game.
    Bases loaded. Two outs. The John Curtis batter had struck out every time he had come to the plate that night.
    Strike one.
    Strike two.
    And then, on the next pitch, the batter connected. The ball struck a high, hard arc over right field, like an incoming mortar round, right through the heart of West Feliciana’s season. Mike ran for the chain-link outfield fence and started to climb, hoping to lift himself high enough to catch the ball and win the game. There was no catching this ball, glory-bound for a grand slam. Sammy Patrick, the West Feliciana pitching ace, collapsed on the mound in shock and disbelief. Mike hung on the fence for a few