“Granddad, tell me a “Stevie Story”, begs my twelve year old granddaughter.

She refers to her Great Uncle Steve, my younger brother by eighteen months, whose childhood antics contributed greatly to the family’s legends.

There are quite a few “Stevie Stories” to tell, and my granddaughter will ask me to repeat one if I cannot think of a story she hasn’t already heard.

So Zoe, this is for you!

It started as a rather normal dry summer day in Greenville, SC where I spent about six years of my early childhood. I was home with my mom, Dad was at work. Six year-old Stevie was with friends in the neighborhood.

Until he wasn’t!

Bobby, his little playmate, was shaking as he pounded on our front door. “Mrs. Eppley, Mrs. Eppley, is Stevie here?”

“Why no, Bobby, I thought he was with you. “

Stevie’s little friend was breathless.

“Yes ma’am, he was, but he wanted to go into one of those big storm drains, and I told him my mama told me to never go down there, ’cause there’s a mean monster who lives there, and I didn’t want to go, but Stevie went anyway and I waited and waited and he never came out and I told him about the mean monster but he wouldn’t listen and …”

I suspect the “mean monster” was an invention of a Bobby’s creative mother who was trying to keep her son away from the city’s water drainage system. To my knowledge no “culvert monsters” were ever reported. However I doubt that my mom heard much beyond “storm drain”. She quickly summoned my Dad at work, who then immediately arrived with a co-worker.

Together with little Bobby as their guide, they began retracing the route to the storm drain and beyond.

Steve was nowhere to be found.

Fueled by pure adrenaline, Dad began lifting manhole covers in search of his missing little boy.

Meanwhile, totally unaware of the panic he had set into motion, Stevie sauntered into the front of the house only to be met by a frantic mom. Sensing the tension, he then explained to mom that he was never in danger or lost, but had just scampered through to the other side of a large and long dry drainage culvert.

Then, not finding Bobby, he just decided to come home. No big deal, really. Nothing to get excited about!

Relieved but clearly agitated, mom sent him back to the location of said culvert to deal with his terrified father.

At first, Stevie watched with fascination as Dad (to quote his co-worker) “was flipping manhole covers like tiddly winks.” Finally he presented himself.

“Hey Pop,” asked Stevie nonchalantly. “What’s Happening?”

His father was not amused.