Petticoat Acres
by Jennifer Sue
Benji was small and slender for his age. On top of that he was a late bloomer, looking more like a ten year old than his true age. As a result he was a frequent target for bullying in middle school. Now fourteen year old Benji Joe Carson forlornly sat in the seat of the World War Two vintage twin engine DC3 airplane. Three weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, his parents had died in a car crash in Chicago. With no nearby relatives he’d been temporarily placed in an orphanage until they were able to reach his great uncle, Joe Carson. While he’d been bullied in school, the orphanage had been far worse. Fortunately Benji Joe was an ace student, so when he was pulled from his suburban school they gave him passing grades for the year. As a result the orphanage didn’t try to enroll him in their local school.
Now here it was June 1 and he was on the flagship aircraft of Trans Pixley Airlines heading toward their main hub, the Pixley International Airport. Having flown out of Chicago Midway Airport he was leaving the upper middle class Chicago suburbs that had been his lifelong home. He’d never heard of Pixley. It sounded like some place in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on that new kiddie show, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, that had debuted in February on the National Educational Television.
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This story is 245 words long.