DELOCORP.NET

The town in this story no longer exists. It drowned some years ago, sad to say. But in 1962, Red Church was a bustling mill town known locally as "America's Sweet Tooth," as it refined sugar for the vast sugarcane plantations of the Louisiana low country. This was an idyllic time and place for a boy like Charlie Boone, especially as Charlie was unaware that Russians were building missile bases in Cuba to lob hydrogen bombs onto his head. He was also unaware that his notorious uncle had escaped from prison and was just a few miles up the road. No, on this lazy Saturday afternoon, Charlie's only concern was a wingless variety of thumb-sized wasps he thought were ants... With all the hurricanes breezing in from the gulf, farmhouses were set off the ground on stilts. Kids could run under them standing up, which we did, barefoot in dust as fine as talcum powder. We didn't run up the steps to the house, though, because red velvet ants sunned themselves there, and if one bit your foot it..