It Happened at Midway High School

I was a Junior at Midway High School the year Danny Turner killed Jerry Don Hurst with cynanide.

For me, the whole story began before the murder took place. It began with a normal, regular, dull day in Mr. Layman's science class. Except we didn't call him Mr. Layman. None of the students did. The other teachers didn't either. His given name was Haskell Laymen and everyone just called him Hack. He was the shop teacher and the science teacher. Sort of like coach and history teacher. Yeah, right. You know the coaching is the supreme most important thing ever and history is just a means to coaching. Well, for Hack, science was just a means to teaching shop, which in rural Oklahoma is a very big thing. As far as I can recollect Hack never taught us anything in science class. He told us to read the chapters, do the quiz in the book and turn in our answers. Also, as far as I was able to tell Hack assigned grades based on our academic reputations. Chris R and I always got A's. Billy Joe C. and Michelle J got F's. Most others fell somewhere in between. Once I tested my theory by writing nonsense for answers. Question: Explain what kind of star is the sun? Answer: A chicken runs accross the road. Grade: A+ After that I pretty much just gave up on science and focused on socializing.

So, on that normal, regular and dull afternoon I was sitting in the back of class near Pete H and Chris R. We were bored and restless in class. Pete discovered a cardboard box full of bottles of old strange science stuff on the lab table behind him. Recently the custodian had moved an old podium that was pushed up against the wall, (it had been there since any of us could remember) found this box full of odd stuff and put it on the lab table before hauling off the old podium. Now we explored the contents. I remember Banana Oil, some pickled flowers...just odd stuff. And then there was the bottle of Cyanide. We were surprised to see it. I remember thinking..."well, it can't be that poisonous if it is just sitting out here." Pete unscrewed the lid and pretended to sniff it. I grabbed a pinch and playfull tossed it at him. (Remember I'm working on 'socializing' aka 'flirting' as my primary task in Hacks class.) Pete capped the Cyanide and put it back in the box. We went on with our normal, regular, dull day.

The next day we learned that Danny Turner had taken the bottle, mixed the cyanide in Jerry Don's drink. They had been pulled off the main cruising drag and hanging out with friends. Reportedly, Jerry Don took one sip of his drink, spit it out, fell into convulsions and died shortly therafter.

I learned about this when, the next day, on the bus to Indian Capitol VoTech (I atteneded cosmetology) I heard an upperclassmen whispering about it in a very somber way to other students. When I got back to Midway High School that afternoon I was able to catch up on the facts. Pretty much everyone brought their lunch that day and started bringing their lunch for a good week or so after that. Rumour had it that Danny had wanted to contaminate cafeteria food and poison the coffee pot in the teacher's lounge. Later this was substantiated at his trial. He had thrown the empy bottle on our superintendent's lawn. We were all pretty upset about this, we loved Mr. Whitman who had been our English teacher turned principal turned superintendent. We lamented that Midway was getting a bad wrap since Danny Turner had only attended our school for about two weeks. We thought it was sort of cool we were on the news. I saw myself on T.V....walking with friends... on the sidewalk around the school as we did at lunch time. Me always hoping my crush would put me in a head lock or pretend to rope me which happened about a third of the time. We talked about Jerry Don and felt bad, a few students knew him. We pondered motives. The most reasonable one I heard was that he had terminal cancer, was scared to die and wanted to take people with him.

But, I don't think this was true. Danny was convicted of Murder of the First Degree and sentenced to life. The media never said anything about cancer. Some students had to testify at his trial and that kept it real for the rest of us. It was a sobering thing that happened, during my junior year at Midway High School.