Under the High School

Under the High School

by : A Fake Ted Mark

How the Gladiatorial Rodeo came to Saddle-Back

Saddle-Back is a small timber town in Washington State that nearly died when logging moved to Indonesia in the 1970s, but we got a reprieve when Homegrown Industries opened its factory here. We became a Company Town as we grew from 6000 to 12000 folks,...hell, poor rural folks came from every dying town in the Pacific Northwest, and just got used to replacing mobile homes with manufactured homes, and having a Bi-Mart and Dairy Queen just like a real city! Then, in 1999, the factory closed its gates, moving manufacturing to - you guesses it - Indonesia. So the factory became a place for kids to have gang fights and smoke crank and drink until their eyes turned yellow, and the Homegrown Industries Central Office on the outside of town put up electrified fences and hired armed guards to make sure their white-collar managers remained safe in their walled off condominium park.

Everybody else became viewed by the City Council and the Police the way Rich People in South American Dictatorships viewed poor rabble - most likely criminally dangerous and utter trash for sure!

We had one more heritage from our Past - originally, in the early 1800s, Russians had opened up mining operations in the bowels of a cavern they found under the tiny valley in which our town came to be built. No gold was found, but a stream ran through the central cavern that was as high as a High School Gymnasium, and was hollowed out of the rock in a series of sections each the size of a Big City Basket-Ball Court too. Think of a railroad-train as a string of box-cars and you get the general idea.

In the 1950s a Tradition Started. A Girl and Boy Gang from the rich north part of town would meet in the first of these chambers on Prom-Night to fight it out with a Girl Gang and a Boy Gang form the poor, working, south part of town.

Everybody knew these often bloody and occasionally lethal teen-fights took place, but nobody every breathed a word. In fact, it became a kind of local superstition that whichever side won, rich or poor, would be a kind of Oman as to which half of town, Rich or Poor, got the upper hand in Collective Bargaining and Tourist Business over the course of the year. Tourists, truckers, and even the State Representatives in the Capitol had NO CLUE. You had to live here long enough to be considered a Local to catch wind of this Thing. And by the 1980s it had grown into a kind of Secret Mystery Religion in this lonely one on and off ramp blip on the little highway connecting two minor cities between the I-5 and the Coast.

As deaths became more common, and even expected as a kind of Blood Sacrifice to the Local Gods and Goddesses, the missing in action all turned up on the Police Blotter as drunk driving deaths, and empty coffins showed up at funerals, because - to be blunt - the local reservoir behind the dam was getting funky spill-ways from the bones and it was already a tradition to enjoy a Bar-B-Que at the end of what by 2004 had become a series of Death Fights including Family Feuds and Grandmothers settling grudges. And only the chief fights in each division were expected to go to the death. But the understanding was that EVERYBODY FIGHTS and THE FIRST RULE was NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THE FIGHT. Kids old enough to scratch and bite and hags old enough to wave a cane in the air and everybody in between - each had a division in the Local Social Order in which to punch and gnaw!

This Yearly Prom-Night Celebration blew off frustrations that would have torn the town apart. It fed the Beast. It kept the Peace.

And after living here 10 years and moving in with a buxom widow-lady who worked as Dispach at the local Police Department and had just taken in a twelve year old girl named Kayla and a ten year old boy named Mark - I discovered how Honey?s sister had died, and how two wildcat kids had come into my Life................

(All Join In - or don?t)

Interesting idea for a series, hopefully some people will move it along with some fights. I may do a few quickie fights occationally if the mood hits me.

Thanks for contributing, hope to to see you do a few fights in your series, and welcome to my board.

MikeJV

Fake--

Very nice.

-c