Roger & Brenda
When you look back through the years you will undoubtedly remember people who entered and then drifted out of your life. Roger and Brenda Stark are a couple who we met at Hardy soon after we moved there. They attended the Ward Street church of Christ in Hardy, where we started attending. Since they were near our age, we became friends and continued our friendship until we moved to Conway. Then time and distance caused us to drift apart. But Peggy and I never forgot the friendship we had then with this wonderful Christian couple.
We would get together, usually on Friday nights, to play Uno or another similar game. Normally at these get togethers we would eat chips and drink soft drinks. None of us drank alcohol and we didn’t smoke so the times we were together were really family nights. After we got our kids to bed, we would play Uno and talk about the things that young couples usually discuss.
Roger had spent a year in Viet Nam, but I was not a veteran having gone to college and then receiving an extremely high draft lottery number (308) just after I lost my college deferment. Roger didn’t tell stories about his experiences in Viet Nam when we were all together. Perhaps it was because we had no military experience and wouldn’t understand the things he had to deal with. I don’t know. So, we discussed our kids, our work, and things happening at church and around town. It was on one of these nights that we ran out of soda and chips, and Roger and I decided to go to the local quick stop before it closed for the night.
On the way to the quick stop and back home we passed the bank. It was this innocent trip to the quick stop with Roger, just before midnight that night that led to the story “Bank Robber” in my book “Before We Were Heroes, Southern Fires”.