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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 10/123

A LOW CRIME COMMUNITY

We didn’t have to worry so much about crime around there, although we
did lock our doors when we went somewhere. We locked them because
occasionally we would have a vagrant passing through and we didn’t
want to make it too easy for him to rummage through the house. We had
an open shelter and other outbuildings with a lot of farm implements
and tools and I never knew of any coming up missing. The biggest
crime in our neighborhood was the occasional ’’moonshine still” that
would be found in the river swamp area. Someone might get too much to
drink and get a bit rowdy, that was about all we had to worry about
with crime. Drugs were only read about in world geography or history,
surely not something we had to worry about in our rural community.
Little did we think when studying the Opium Wars, that in a few years
we would be plagued with the same problem.

The only time I can even remember any possible problem, a man came to
the house asking for some water for his truck, Papa and I took a
bucket of water with him to his truck, he only put a little in. They
appeared similar to what we now describe as not wanting to meet in an
alley, whether it was dark or not. Later Emory asked us if we had
seen the rogues in the area a few days before and we told him about
the guy needing water for his truck. He ask if there were two of
them, there were, apparently one had gone to the house to case it out
and found us at home. Thank goodness we never saw them again. Emory
had called the sheriff about them, maybe he got them. Theirs was the
typical way rogues would work a neighborhood. If they found no one
home they would go in and get as much as quickly as they could and
go. Being careful not to stay too long so as not to get caught.

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