Did My Small Town Have More Predators per Capita Than Most?

I don’t know how many men in our town of 4,955 people were predators, but I know there were more than a few. I know because of how I was treated as a pre-teen and young teenager.

“I heard my Dad say something about you,” the girl whispered to me,

He said you had sex with the Youth Center director.

I was fourteen years old.

I barely knew of B. Johnson, the man who spread the rumor. As far as I can recall, I’d never spoken to him.

The Youth Center director was a nice man. He was kind to me and my friends. He ran the Center where we held dances. It was a rundown, empty building until he came along. On the weekends, some of us as teenagers painted paisley designs on the walls while he did repairs in order to get the Center open for us.

He never said or did anything inappropriate to me or the others who worked to get it ready. Not that I can remember or heard about.

I was a virgin until I was eighteen, and I married him during my first year of college. He was a few years older and not from our town. I won’t say I “lost my virginity” because I gave it freely. Before him, nobody else had sex with me before I was eighteen, much less a grown man.

The man who started the rumor faked his own death in a boating “accident” years later in the Gulf of Mexico, attempting to escape conviction for swindling farmers out of money for their grain. Even after I heard he was “dead,” I didn’t tell anybody what he’d said about me.

Certainly not my father. Telling him wasn’t an option in my naive mind.

According to the newspaper at the time:

“Johnson overextended his investments and ran out of money. Many farmers who trusted Johnson to store their grain were never paid, and those who did receive money only got pennies on the dollar. Johnson tried to fake his own death in Mexico and, for a time, was successful.”

He was found, arrested, and declared bankruptcy.

Why did a big-wig in our tiny town, who was conning surrounding farmers out of money for their grain, spread rumors about a girl he had no connection to? Did he have issues with the Youth Center director and wanted to ruin his name? Why me, though?

I’ve been wrong about men before and since. Still, I don’t see the Youth Center director in the role of predator. He wasn’t to me or anyone I knew. In my small town, I’m sure I would have heard.

. . .

I walked into the 7–11 and felt eyes on me. As I stood at the counter to pay, the cashier, a grown man, said,

“Your legs look really good in those shorts.”

A man in line agreed with him on how cute my legs were. I remember them both leering.

I was thirteen years old.

I was uncomfortable going there alone from then on. This was the only convenience store in town, and all the kids went there after school or on weekends for candy and sodas. We often went to buy bread or some other staple for our families. It was difficult to avoid going there.

I chose to ignore the cashier’s stares and remarks.

I didn’t tell my parents about either situation. Especially not my father. He was a muscular, banty rooster of a man who was largely quiet, with a temper that could lash out like the strike of a snake when provoked. I was afraid he would kill Johnson for spreading rumors about me. He was protective of us.

Once, he knocked my sister’s band teacher to the ground in his own front yard for how he treated my sister in class. The band director’s transgression wasn’t even sexual. I was terrified of what he would do about sexual comments toward his daughters, and didn’t want him going to jail.

Another time, he yelled and cursed, which he very seldom did, at a man at our front door. He told the man never to come to his house again, around his wife and daughters. As the oldest, and at age 12, I listened in as he followed the man to his car. He had been returning a porn film to my father that he’d borrowed. Porn was a bigger deal and much harder to acquire in those days.

Telling him about Johnson or the other men was not an option in my naive mind.

. . .

My father took me to my first dance at the newly restored Youth Center. I was fourteen.

Instead of dropping me off, he came in and danced the first dance with me, teaching me the box step on the spot. I wasn’t embarrassed. My parents were dancers, and so were we.

I’m sure, though, he was making it clear to the boys at the dance that he had his eye on them.

I wonder now, was he also making a statement to the director of the Youth Center, the one B. Johnson started the rumor about?

He didn’t need to scare the boys. The ones who knew him were scared of him already.

He didn’t have to worry anyway. My sisters and I were terrified of getting pregnant and stuck marrying some good-old-boy in that small town. We had bigger dreams and wanted out.

If he was making his statement to the Youth Center director as well as the boys, did he know something we didn’t know ? Whether he did or not, how did my father never hear the rumor about me in a town where rumor was the coin of the day?

I’m haunted by these questions for which I’ll never have answers. All the men are dead, including my father.

I do sometimes imagine what fallout there would have been if I told him about B. Johnson talking that way about me. Or about the things other men said to me, in stores and on the street, starting when I was twelve.

Would it have started a stir that shut down some of the predation going on in our town? Or would the potential ensuing confrontation or violence have put one or more of them in prison?

I’ll never know.

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This post was previously published on Carol Lennox’s blog.

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