07.02.05. Back Home
5. BACK HOME
Todd returned home to a disappointed father and mother, and their disappointment was increased when they found that new and worse habits had fastened upon his life. He had passed during those few months from boyhood to young manhood, and now began to run with the young men of the community some of whom drank heavily. Being a boy whom most of them liked they would often give him whiskey and this too began to tell upon his life. He entered the public school at home, for Indian Territory had now become the State of Oklahoma and schools were better, but he did not get along with the teacher and soon gave that up. The months went by and most of his time was spent in association with those whose company was a menace rather than a blessing to him. This does not mean that all his friends were bad for they were not. He had boyhood chumswho came from noble families and who were model young men and had he chosen them, results would have been different; but he had a way of running with both crowds, and too often the rowdies were given the preference.
Every little while his old self, his real self, would rise up and cry out against these things and long to be a real man, and one summer evening as he sat with his parents out in the yard in front of the little log house, he said, "I see now where I missed it in the other school. I got in with the wrong crowd, and some of my friends here are of the wrong kind; I just can’t make good in this environment, but if I could get into another school I would make good." Immediately their old hearts leaped with joy and confidence, and like all good parents they were ready to try anything if it would only help their boy make good, but when it was mentioned to the brother who had helped him to enter school before, he said, "No; he won’t do right and I’ll not help him any more." But another brother, nine years Todd’s senior, was consulted and he said, "Yes, I’ll help." So his father sold a horse and with the help of this brother, Todd was fitted out with new clothes, a nice trunk and with a hundred dollars in money he again started out.