NEWTON'S LAW: BOOK PORTRAYS JOURNEY IN LIFE THAT WE ALL TAKE

Here is the story of a crime from my youth. To my knowledge, it never found print. A shame, since the headline could have been fun: "Crime Most Fowl."

No names will be used since we were all guilty of innocence in those days. Also, no one is sure what the statute of limitations is on chicken snatching.

Two facts are needed to set the crime scenario: one, we were juniors in high school and, two, there was a school administrator we were fond of who had a rooster for a pet.

As juniors, we were obliged to think that an administrator having a rooster for a pet was strange. And though this man seemed perfectly capable of taking a joke, I was surprised to learn one Saturday morning that the cock had been kidnapped and a ransom note left. I was informed of this by one of the perpetrators.

I went to my classmate's house and there, sure enough, was the rooster, pacing nervously in a large cardboard box and pecking occasionally at a bowl of corn flakes. (These were city-slicker bandits who soon realized they knew nothing of what a chicken fed upon. With logic put to work, corn flakes were decided on because a rooster graces the box.)

The ransom note was specific: the administrator was to go to a downtown street corner at a designated time Saturday afternoon and leave a brown paper bag containing 73 cents. (We were in the Class of '74 and the perpetrators were hoping to divert blame to the seniors. Get it? It was a slick crowd I ran with.)

Lore has it that someone saw the administrator downtown that afternoon, looking none too amused and with a paper bag in his hand. No one went to check on the ransom. In fact, cold feet became epidemic. I was even uncomfortable as an accessory after the fact.

Plus, the chicken seemed to be behaving in a peculiar manner (like anyone in the junior class knew what a chicken was supposed to act like) and feathers were going everywhere. The classmate who was keeping the chicken had told his trusting mother he had rescued it from the Pizza Inn parking lot, but she was beginning to lose faith in the story.

On Saturday night, the rooster was returned to its pen behind the administrator's house, a bit traumatized perhaps from the ordeal and probably with an acquired taste for corn flakes.

This story comes up from time to time among people I went to school with and still gets a good laugh. It is remarkable, however, in other ways.

In one sense, it is odd to think that from this pool of mischief ultimately arose a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer and a professional musician, all successful in their fields. In another sense, this story never seems to miss its mark with people who hear it and don't know any of the people involved; what it speaks to is the daring and carefree behavior of one's growing up, a universal feeling of the fun and invincibility of being young.

This feeling has been detailed in much grander fashion by one of my high school classmates. His name is Terry Teachout and, as far I know, he has never heisted a chicken (at least not one that wasn't covered in tarragon sauce).

What Terry has done is write a book called "City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy," just published by Poseidon Press and available on bookstore shelves locally.

What he has managed to do beyond that, a far more meaningful feat, is not just tell us about the insecurities of growing up as a shy, bright boy in Sikeston, Missouri, but about the journey we all take from where we were to where we are.

This book, which I read in galley form this summer and again with its publication, was a delight for me ... and not just in the ways you would expect.

Obviously, the book is laced with familiar references; Cape Girardeau even gets a number of mentions. And it was jarring to have my memories of certain events filtered through the eyes of someone else.

But parts of the book I liked best were those of the years I had lost touch with Terry, of his befriending an aging jazzman who played piano like Art Tatum, of his gone-berserk effort to capture his college revue's top prize, of his post-graduate drifting and stark awakening in the real world.

Terry succeeds by creating a place we all know by heart. The path that takes you from childhood to adulthood is encumbered with uncertainties and missteps, but most often you bring from it warm memories and a great sense of fun.

Terry is now a big-time journalist, writing editorials for a New York City daily and doing research on his next book, a biography of H.L. Mencken. He has been to the Oval Office, has dined with the Kissingers and been cursed by David Dinkens. If you need to know William F. Buckley's home phone number, Terry could give it to you.

Yet much of what he feels has nothing to do with new-found metropolitan success, but of a place where you spend summer nights playing tag under street lights, where you can linger over your grandmother's grave without being maudlin, where there is always a familiar chair for you at the kitchen table.

Terry Teachout has taken such a journey. So have we all.