The Climber

Although he is only 15, Roger Kerr is known around rural Brazil (pop. 8,400), Ind. as a boy with "quite a reputation." For one thing, he has smoked cigarettes since the age of seven without any apparent damage to his wind or--even more amazing--to his manners: he always says "please" and "thank you" to his mother. He is a fair hand at training dogs, and is smart in the woods. But he is best known for his talent at scaling trees and cliffs.

Even back in West Virginia, where the family lived before coming to Indiana, says his mother, "everybody knowed he was a climber. He'd worry the life out of me goin' up on to some knoll and then riding a sapling down into the gulch." Reflecting on this one afternoon last week, while munching on a jelly sandwich Roger felt a little dissatisfied with himself. School had been out a week and the weather was warm, but he still hadn't "worked up some of his big ideas."

The Captive. Roger decided on action. He called his two beagles, Midge and Queen, and his black & tan mongrel, Nipper, and headed for a hollow beech tree in the woods a mile and a half away. Stationing his dogs near a hole at the base of the trunk in case he scared out any raccoons, he went up the 40-ft. bole like a monkey.

The tree was hollow from top to bottom. For a while, Roger dropped sticks down inside it. No coons came out. Finally--although the opening at the top was only 18 inches across--the boy squeezed himself down inside the tree, bracing his feet against a rotten projection. He hoped to look for coons in a hollow limb part way down. But his foothold broke. Roger slid down 20 feet, stuck momentarily and began sliding again. Skinned, startled and breathless, he landed at the bottom.

He got his clothes off and tried to wiggle, feet first, out the hole at the bottom of the tree. He got stuck again, legs out, body in. Jostling each other in delight, his dogs began licking his bare toes. He ordered them to go for help. They licked harder. He yelled. Nothing happened. Finally, darkness fell. He told himself: "Roger, you've made your last mistake."

The Hero. With a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder, the season's worst rainstorm began; the drenched and naked boy dozed fitfully, dreamed and woke up.

The dogs were licking his feet again. But finally, Nipper, the biggest, trotted home. Nobody paid him any attention; Roger's father, scores of neighbors and two state troopers were scouring the countryside for the lost boy. But the next morning Roger's brother Rodney followed the dog. Slowly, and with numberless side expeditions, snuffmgs and flea scratchings, Nipper led the way to the tree with the feet sticking out of it.

It was quickly surrounded by jubilant searchers. A rope was lowered down inside; after 16 hours of imprisonment, Roger was snaked back up to the top, extracted like a cork from a bottle, and put back into circulation. Shaky, but full of honors, he retired to his parents' four-room frame house and recounted his adventures.

Brazil was proud of him. "There was Roger," said his father expansively, "like a fancy cigar in a glass tube." This week, as he "took it easy" and received admirers, it was generally felt that he was a lad likely to go far--if he didn't break his neck, get into politics or join a circus.

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