Like when Tommy Smith beat up Nathan Dicks ...

My buddy Preston and I realized that there were some weird things going on in the school. We were too scared to tell anyone, but we knew that something weird was going on with the principal and some of his decisions. Mr. Proud, pronounced “prod,” was dealing out some unique decisions, almost like they were parental influenced and certainly not at all consistent with established expectations. Like when Tommy Smith beat up Nathan Dicks and didn’t even really get in trouble, he just “got a talkin’ to.”

We decided to investigate, just like the Hardy boys. We knew that it was going to take some work, but we decided that we could work, investigate, and break this case wide open. Mr. Proud would regret the day that he let the Jackson Boys snoop through the school.

Mr. Jackson was our teacher, and he promoted reading. He encouraged us to read books like the Hardy Boys series, so we did. And we knew when things were weird. We didn’t really tell the teacher anything about our plan, but we put some things in to effect. Like when the chance came to sign up for after school computer class. This being 1982, we were using some brand new, very expensive computers. They were Commodore 64s and you had to supply your own cassette tape. I only had one and it had the Kenny Rogers album “The Gambler” on it, but I figured it would be a tool to use to be able to stay after school. We would figure out what was going on.