An Uncle Toby McCarley Porch Story
Night Twenty-One: The Wrong Newspaper
The twenty-first evening arrived with enough people on Hughes Street to qualify as a municipal gathering. Someone had brought brownies. Someone had brought folding tables. Someone had brought a battery-powered bug zapper. The bug zapper was proving more popular than expected.
Uncle Toby emerged onto the porch. Looked over the crowd. And sighed.
“If this gets much bigger, we’re gonna need permits.”
“From who?” asked Earl.
“I don’t know.”
A pause.
“But somebody official.”
The crowd laughed. The old man settled into the peacock chair. Took a sip of sweet tea. And nodded.
“The newspaper.”
The crowd immediately leaned forward.
“What newspaper?”
“The wrong one.”
“That don’t help.”
“I know.”
And with that, Hughes Street slipped away. Autumn, 1949. The second Golden Squirrel banquet had come and gone. The decorations were packed away. The speeches forgotten. The leftovers consumed. Life resumed. Which was exactly when Maybelline began her collection.
The first scrapbook occupied an old photo album she’d found in a closet. The second occupied a shoebox. The third occupied another shoebox. The system deteriorated rapidly. Back on Hughes Street, Beulah Mae nodded.
“Sounds familiar.”
Several people laughed. Young Maybelline clipped everything. Every article. Every photograph. Every mention of community service. Every Golden Squirrel winner. She even clipped articles about people who didn’t win. Especially people who didn’t win.
One Saturday afternoon she sat at the kitchen table sorting newspapers. Piles surrounded her. Scissors in hand. Paste nearby. Determination everywhere. Clayton walked through. Stopped. Looked around. Then asked:
“You startin’ your own newspaper?”
Maybelline never looked up.
“Maybe.”
Clayton nodded. Apparently satisfied. And continued on his way. Back on Hughes Street, Toby smiled.
“That’s exactly the kind of father he was.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pearl.
“He trusted people.”
A pause.
“Particularly his daughter.”
The crowd grew quiet.
In 1949, Maybelline continued sorting. One clipping caught her eye. Then another. Then another. All from the same newspaper.
The Piedmont Journal.
At first, she didn’t think much of it. Then she noticed something. A peculiar thing. The articles kept mentioning Sam Mickelsen. Frequently. Very frequently. Sometimes deservedly. Sometimes incidentally. Sometimes because he’d attended a meeting. Sometimes because he’d sponsored something. Sometimes because he’d simply been present when a photograph was taken.
Meanwhile Clayton appeared less often. Not absent. Just not as often. Young Maybelline frowned. The pattern bothered her. Not because it was dishonest. Because it felt incomplete. A story with missing pieces.
Back on Hughes Street, the crowd sat silently. The old Toby nodded.
“That was the day she learned somethin’.”
“What?” asked Earl.
“History ain’t the same thing as memory.”
The lanterns flickered softly. Nobody interrupted.
“History gets written down.”
A pause.
“Memory gets carried around.”
Another pause.
“Sometimes they match.”
The crowd remained still.
“And sometimes they don’t.”
Back in 1949, Maybelline continued clipping. Then she discovered another newspaper.
Not the Piedmont Journal.
It was the Jacksonville News.
The article covered the uniform drive. The fundraiser. The town effort. And there, in the middle of the story, appeared a sentence she’d never seen before. One sentence. Just one. But it changed everything.
The old Toby leaned forward. The crowd followed.
“The article said…”
A pause.
“The project was organized by local businessman Clayton Reynolds.”
Silence. Young Maybelline read it again. Then again. Then once more.
Because none of her Piedmont Journal clippings had ever stated it that plainly. Not one. The little girl carefully cut out the article. Folded it. Placed it in the scrapbook. Then wrote a note beside it.
A note she’d completely forget about for nearly seventy years.
Back on Hughes Street, every person in the yard leaned forward.
“What note?” whispered Pearl.
The old man smiled. Slowly. Dangerously. Magnificently. The grin of a man who knew exactly how much trouble one sentence could cause.
Then he stood. The crowd erupted immediately.
“No!”
“Tobe.”
“Don’t you dare.”
The old man shuffled toward the screen door. At the threshold he paused. Turned. And said:
“Tomorrow night… we find out what twelve-year-old Maybelline wrote in the margin.”
The screen door slammed. And for the next twenty-four hours, half of Piedmont was left wondering how a little girl’s note could possibly lead to a stolen squirrel.
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