Childhood Innocence

    The movie Stand By Me was based on the book written by Stephan King called the Body. It was set in 1959 in a fiction town called Castle Rock, Oregon. A group of four kids: Gordie Lachance, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio set out to find a missing kid. Aside from all that had been going on in the world, the boys were only interested in the missing boy. It had been broadcasted all over the town and the boys heard of his possible whereabouts from one of their family members. As they set out on their journey, the boys didn’t seem to care that schools had become integrated or the U.S. added two new states to the union, or that blacks were receiving more and more rights. They just wanted to be recognized as town heroes and maybe escape from their troubled family lives.
    Along the way on their two-day journey, they encounter many hardships. To start out with, Chris’s older brother and the town bully accost Chris and Gordie. When they do finally get started the boys realize they forgot to pack the food. So they went a few miles out of their way through a junkyard to a town gas stop. In the junkyard the owner shows up with his said to be intimidating dog, “SICK BALLS” was all the four boys could here until they were on the other side of the fence.
 They finally get back on track to come across a bridge. The boys have to make a decision whether to cross downstream or risk crossing. “Fine, you guys can haul your candy asses half way across the state and back, but I’ll be on the other side relaxing with my thoughts.”(Stand By Me)  They cross the bridge finally, a train does come, and Vern and Gordie barely make it off.  After the two stared death in the face, the boys decide to continue across a field into a marshy swamp. At first it appears to be shallow enough to walk through, but when they start to cross they all end up in over their heads. Teddy begins to splash around. “Act your age.”
     “This is my age, I’m in the prime of my youth, and I’ll only be young once.” (Stand By Me)
Covered in leaches they roll out of the water, but at least they are across the swamp and closer to the end of their journey.
 Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern were all oblivious to the outside world around them. They were more consumed in their everyday child life.
     “ You think Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman?” (Stand By Me)
     “If I could have one food for the rest of my life? That’s easy. Cherry pez…”(Stand By Me)
      The late 1950’s was a time of national prosperity. There was a rush for most families to live in suburbs. Suburbs encouraged uniformity. Most homeowners were young, married couples at or around the same age. Houses were built basically all the same so it attracted people with similar incomes. (The Americans) At the same time, recreation was high. Baseball was the nations past time. The L.A. Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox in a six game World Series 4 to 2. (Learning Network)
     Schools became integrated. It all started with Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Oliver Brown was rejected when he tried to enroll his daughter Linda Brown, in an all white elementary school. Thurgood Marshall, attorney for the NAACP represented Brown. Thurgood later became the first black Supreme Court Justice.  The court ruled in favor of Mr. Brown. Public schools were then integrated. (The Americans)
     Martin Luther King Jr., a black minister and head of the Montgomery Bus Boycott help African Americans become less segregated through peaceful resistance. Segregation in public transportation was declared unconstitutional. King organized a group called the SCLC, (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which later dealt with issues in the 1960’s. After that, the first Civil Rights Act sprang up in 1957. This gave the Justice Department the right to file a suit on behalf of African Americans that were denied the right to vote. (The Americans)
     In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000.00 (about 2 cents per acre). People ridiculed this purchase as “Seward’s Folly.” Then in 1898, a gold rush took place. Population increased and since then, Alaska has contributed billions of dollars in products to the U.S. economy. On January 3, 1959, Alaska was entered into the union as the forty-ninth state in the U.S. (Learning Network)
     When the need for sugar became great, it meant expanding the nation to Hawaii. The Republic of Hawaii was established when Queen Liliuokalani was deposed a year before. Sanford B. Dole was the President. In 1898, Hawaii was annexed and it became a territory of in 1900.  It was entered into the United States as the Fiftieth state on August 21, 1959. (Learning Network)
    It didn’t matter to these four boys that two new states had been added to the union. It only meant more questions on their history exam. Alaska and Hawaii existed only in their minds. They had never been there. Did they really exist? They didn’t care. It didn’t matter that the United States had been at war with the North Koreans just six short years before. They didn’t care that some day their schools would become integrated. They were more interested in trying to become adults. They smoked cigarettes, carried around a gun, wanted to be independent, and wanted to learn more about death. They  also thought that they were old enough to take a two-day camping trip to the next town and back. Yet, at the same time they were acting like children. Running around like they were at the Battle of Normandy, and shooting the Nazis. They had a clubhouse with a secret passage word where they sat around talking about each other’s mothers and insulting one another over a hand of five-card stud.
     All four of the boys had troubled families. Gordie lost his athletic, talented brother and was expected by his father to fill the giant footsteps. Chris was known as a troublemaker and was not likely to become anything else. Teddy’s father was locked away in a mental institute and it showed through Teddy’s actions that he had grown up without a dad. Vern’s brother hated him. Billy valued his friends more than his own brother.
    Of all of the events that happened through out the late 1950’s, the only things that really mattered to these kids were the things that happened in or around Castle Rock, Oregon that they could see and touch. Material that pertained to kids their age. That is why they traveled two days to find a dead body, so that they might all be able to understand death a little better, become town heroes, and at the same time help them grow to become young adults.