At the Logansport Art Association, Ed Zimmerman asked about the barrel scene. He asked if I had gone down the hill in the barrel but, truthfully, I couldn't remember if anyone had actually ever gone down the hill in the barrel. Ed said he'd witnessed it and when the foolish daredevil crawled out of the barrel, after the abrupt stop, he was all shaken up, just like a rattled cat, and I asked my brother, Mike, what he knew about this rattled cat business. He fessed up to going over the hill and the discombobulating effect it had on him. Safety measures were taken, though. The interior of the barrel had a plush rug and someone stood at the bottom of the hill to wave off oncoming traffic. Here it is in the book:
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Though the Blynners didn’t know anything, none of it was funny. Not at all. If he had kept on running the night his dad threw him down the stairs instead of going to Al Jr.’s place, he would’ve been all the way to Indy by now, and he wouldn’t have stopped. He would have gone as far as his thumb would’ve taken him, maybe all the way to Florida. Running had crossed his mind many times in the past year. But Al Jr. had changed everything. He was such a weakling and always had been; sometimes Billy felt as if he were the elder brother. Even their mother had told Billy it was his job to watch out for Al Jr. But it was ridiculous to think he could keep Al Jr. from doing dumb things. Hell, Al Jr. would do something just to show off for kids who thought he was nothing but a square, like the time the creep down the street had him roll down the hill at the end of the alley in a trash barrel and the milkman nearly ran him over.
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<span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>