The Kerrville tragedy brings to mind the most severe spanking of my childhood.

I was 12 when my father was transferred to San Antonio. He went first, by train, and after he found a house mother, I and my three younger sisters followed behind the moving van, taking what must have been 15 hours in the old Plymouth to get there.

No air conditioning, no radio (we couldn’t agree on what to listen to), no interstate. Prized position was back floor, transmission hump not withstanding.

Relocating was something we had down pat. The Butlers were headed to their seventh posting at that time (it stopped at nine when Dad told employer back to Alexandria or he was done).

Arriving we found what to me was just another house though a bit larger than the one left vacant back on Gay Road.

But at the end of the street was something new — the link fence was clearly visible from a couple of hundred yards away. Perhaps eight feet tall, it was a boy magnet.

First words from Dad after the obligatory welcoming hug: Stay away from the fence.

Three days later I was leaning on it, looking 40 yards across at a similar barrier. They bordered a deep ditch, not much different than one paralleling Prescott Road back in Alexandria except the water in it was barely enough for a tadpole pool.

Within two weeks I was over the fence and in the ditch (my new, mostly Mexican-American, friends called it acequia), searching for various treasures and basking in breaking rules.

But I got careless, forgetting JRB got home midday on Saturdays. He pulled me off the fence after ordering me out, scattering my mates like Texas roadrunners.

And pushed me, literally, all the way home, where he commenced to give me the whopping of my life (well, one much later at a place called the Pelican Club was a contender, but that’s another story).

I took it as punishment for disobedience, until one day it rained, and rained, and rained. As it let up I walked down to the fence to check the ditch.

But the languid drain was gone, swallowed by a surging, boiling river, carrying downstream all the detritus in its path.

Life lesson learned.