That it had a name implies an aura of importance. Not some global or historical or worldly unless you define worldly down to the individual level. It is said that the world has always been changed by small groups of people with courage. It is also said that the world does not change. No one knows if our visits at flat rock might have changed the world in some small way or if we were the ones doing the changing. If it was us doing the changing rather than the world it wouldn’t really matter I guess. As to us the world was only a backdrop of the stage we played on. We didn’t think our group was much different, than any other group of kids but we didn’t spend lot of time thinking about similarities. Those we wore along with our JC Penney plain pockets jeans and hand me down T shirts. Any time we spent in serious contemplation was spent planning, dreaming and discussing differences – not similarities. Sure we all felt alone sometimes, like we didn’t fit in, but name me a kid who hasn’t felt that.

Flat rock was only known to a handful of us, although when I mentioned to my grandfather that I had discovered a clearing in the hills at the back of the farm, he didn’t hesitate to respond, “Oh you found flat rock.” I presume it was only known to a handful of people at a time for the last thousand years. We were only the newest discoverers of it. Having found a few arrowheads and some traces of Lucky Strikes, I am sure however, that it had many different names besides Flat Rock. We had other places too: The Monkey Tree, Cardboard Hill, The Pear Tree and probably some others I have forgotten. Meeting places where kids unburdened by today’s formalized sports and undistracted by video and TV screens grew and prospered, found their own place in the kid pecking order, played war, played house, built forts, hid things, picked berries and passed summer days, weekends and after school times. The kids I knew at Flat Rock were more behaved then most, so drinking and smoking and adult magazines rarely found their way there during my visits. She was one of the people I met at Flat Rock. I was not smitten at the time. I did not know what smitten was and I had much more important things on my mind as a 9 year old boy. I also had a much shorter attention span that did not allow prolonged concentration on any topic, whether it be girl, mineral, or vegetable.

The rock was a place of first’s which always struck me as odd being as it was so old. I always thought of old things like my grandpa as having used up their allotment of new things. For our group the rock was the place of our first smokes, first drinks and a first a first tryst or two. Although I can’t be sure because it is hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to boys and stories. I can only be sure of my own experiences there - Flat Rock was certainly a place of firsts for me.