We live in a town only populated by roughly 500 people and almost half of those people were out of control drunks. Not everyone in the town was so bad. The kids were great they are energetic and creative and smart little buggers.( that is what old folks would call them when they would chase kids off lawns with guard dogs) in the town it consists of the basic commodities it has a local market good for trading, it has a farm equipment repair shop, has a butchery, a post office and a what used to be a nice church. The church at sometimes would be full, every seat in the house of god was taking on Sundays and Wednesdays. But now that there is a bar on every corner of the town which the town only has five corners. The towns layout is simple it has a mile long road right through the middle on one side you have the market and post office.
The other side has the butcher and down the road is the equipment repair shop. Off of the main road are smaller roads which eventually lead to houses farms and eventually another town or city most people that live here usually don’t travel out to other towns.

If you take Clark street for about a mile from the main road you will find a all red house my family lives there. it’s a two story house with a fence four bedrooms and my best friend Steven Michal McGinnis.
We adopted him and took him in as our own because his parents both died when he was young. Me and Steven had been through thick and thin we tried our first smoke together tried our first drink together. Steven was taller, quicker, smarter and he knew that one day he would make it out of our small town and meet new people, not that he didn’t like me and my family but he was someone who liked to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

There was days upon days were from early noon to dinner time were me and him were right by each others side. We would get into trouble three times a week for the oddest reasons because when we were together it didn’t matter we knew we had each other to deal with the punishment. Our parents ideal of punishing kids was with stable work. Our neighbors own a 138 acre farm and we would be forced to clean stales and change bedding and feed over 50 horses in one day. For two kids that is a lot of work it will leave you tired and broke bruised and beaten. But it taught us not to do whatever we did for a couple weeks anyways.

April 14th 1909 was the darkest day of my life I awoke to ma and pa yelling at me and Steven for not having clean rooms an were sentenced to do stable work. ( not something nice to wake up to in the morning.) so me and Steve strap up our boots and headed over to the old miller horse farm. We got there we started from one end and worked our way down to the other end it was especially bad cause we haddent gotten into no trouble past week and a half so the barns were extra nasty. As we were leaving we were walking down the side of the stales just checking to make sure we did a good enough job so we wont half to come back the next day. When Steven noticed one the gates was left open. He said "I got it little buddy" and ran up ahead of me his shoes were laud he had a very heavy foot step. He got to the stale and right as he arrived this massive though row breed mustang walks out and we know these horses like the bottoms of boots and the horses name that walked out was “DENNIS the MENACE” this horse when the millers first bought him had kicked Mr. miller and banged him up pretty good. Steven froze when he looked into the eyes of this horse like he knew what was going to happen. The horse turns to walk away Steven took one step to follow the horse we weren’t going to force it back to his pin cause horses have the control not us. When Steven took that first step I had no idea that this creature would do what he does but that step with stevens heavy feet from a long day at work startles Dennis the menace and he gives Steven one warning kick. But the thing is Mr. miller is quite a bit taller than me or Steven and that kick landed right in the middle of Stevens head and from what I saw he was life less before he had hit the ground. His head was indented from where the kick landed.

There was about ten people at his funeral our family and the millers and that was it. After my dad, Mr. miller, one of his workers and i put the box in the ground I was left to put the dirt on the best friend god has ever blessed someone with. I sat at that head stone for hours crying and asking god to please bring him back but the longer I sat there the more I realized he was not coming back. For days I wouldn’t leave my room it would get messy I would clean 50 stales it would take me three days I knew I would never be the same without him. I could never replace him as a best friend. I could not do anything the same after that everything had reminded me of him. This tragic experience in life has taught me that the definition of a good/happy life is that no matter what you can be ninty years old or ten years old always have your best friend right next to you to back you up.