VA: Man forced to shoot son: "A Henrico County man shot his son in the leg inside their home yesterday after the son demanded money and forced his way inside the father's bedroom, police said. ... The son 'started banging on a locked bedroom door,' said Henrico police spokesman Sgt. Doug Parker. During that time he was demanding money, police said, and eventually broke in the door. Parker said the father retrieved a weapon and shot his son in the leg. The son, whose name was not released, was arrested on outstanding grand-larceny warrants unrelated to yesterday's disturbance, Parker said. The father has not been charged in the shooting."


When I was Tom Sawyer -- by Fred Reed: "Back before the beginning of time, in the late Fifties when the sun lowered over small-town Alabama like a steaming towel, and it was so humid a tadpole could just about fly, we kids of eleven didn't have many store-bought toys. We didn't need'em, neither. On slow barefoot afternoons with nothing to do, we did things anyhow, most of'em the which you couldn't do now. Some, probably, we shouldn't have done. ... To begin with, we all had BB guns. It was a rule. You couldn't be a kid without one. Well, a girl could, and Alabama had some mighty fine girls, but we were four years away from figuring it out. Me and Jimmy Jack 'Callister and Don Berzette and . all of us, had BB guns and lived as small hunter-gatherers. Today BB guns would be illegal and send mothers screeching and hiding under sofas and calling for federal help. Alabama knew about federal help, and didn't want any."