Category: random

Marcy was six-years old when she announced to the family that Santa Claus wasn’t real. We were sitting at the supper table, preparing to eat.

Without thinking, Mom responded, “Jus’ like the Easter Bunny.”

Suddenly Marcy’s face drooped as her look of confidence shifted to shock. Her mouth hung open and tears welled-up in her eyes.

Then Deirdre replied, “Mom, I don’t think she knew that.”

Without warning, both Marcy and Mom started crying, each for slightly different reasons.

It was deer hunting season and Uncle Ron, Dad and I were scouring the hillside for any sign of the animals. We had returned to the truck and had plans to head home when Ron decided to walk over to a nearby ravine and have a quick look.

Dad and I sat in the truck as Ron stood at the ravine’s edge, looking the area over through the scope on his hunting rifle. Suddenly he jumped and turned quickly to his left.

As he did, he lowered his rifle as if he were planning to shoot something. But he was too late in squeezing the trigger and the shot went high.

Within a second or two, Ron was laying on his back near the bottom of the ravine. I was racing to help him while Dad stood guard over us with his rifle at the ready.

Fortunately, Uncle Ron got up on his own and he was unhurt. However it was the first and only time he was attacked by a yearling.

Much to Uncle Ron’s discomfort, we laughed about it all the way home.

Jus’ outside our kitchen door we had an upright freezer. It had been in the spot in the rumpus room since we first moved to the house.

Tommy Smith and I were playing around the neighborhood and I was going to show him a stash of girly magazines I had hidden in the attic. The opening to the attic, more a crawl-space than anything, was directly above the freezer.

As kids, we had a method for getting into the attic and it involved the freezer. First, we’d climb up on the bookshelf next to the freezer, climb on top of the freezer and then slip into the square hole to the crawl space.

However, on this one day I went to climb up into the attic, and I stepped on the door of the freezer. It popped open and I found myself doing the splits.

However there is only so far my legs would spread and I ended up flopping on the ground with a loud thwap-like sound. I hit with such force that it knocked the breath out of me.

Mom heard me hit the concrete floor and quickly stepped outside. All she could see was me, laying on the ground and Tommy ducking around the corner, laughing.

She asked, “What happened? Did he hit you?”

It took me a while to explain that I simply fell off the freezer while trying to get into the crawl space. Then I had to explain why I was going up there.

That’s where the real trouble started.

High Prairie Creek was swollen nearly beyond its limits. It was the start of the spring thaw and the snow was melting high in the mountains far beyond where Adam or I could see it.

The water rushed by, sounding like a thousand sticks being beaten on a rock. The creek was a giving us a challenge and were accepting it.

Adam pounded the last nail in. It was bent over and rammed down flat with a hand-sized rock. Most of the nails that we had driven into the raft that cloudy morning were that way.

How a nail had been driven did not matter. How crooked the boards were cut did not matter, either.

What was important was whether the raft would float or not. A piece of rope that I had scrounged was not enough to build the raft. Besides, it had failed to hold even two lengths of timber together as we dragged them to the creeks edge.

Nails, it was decided would do for this job. Finally, we set our tools aside to look at what we had made. The hull of their raft was built out of old planking that we had dragged down from the old barn.

The planks were laid side-by-side and nailed together at either end with more planking. Together the raft was heavy. It was almost too heavy to lift, but that also told us it was a sturdy raft.

We were pleased with our craftsmanship. Now all that was left to do was get the raft into the water.

In school, I had learned the Egyptians had moved the giant stone blocks used to build the Pyramids over logs. Every time a log was rolled over and it came out from underneath the stone, it would be rushed up to the front to make another pass under the stone.

So we set ourselves to work looking for as many small logs as we could carry. This came to nine or ten. They were all different in size, but they worked.

Finally at the creeks edge we made one final push to get the raft into the water. With a mighty splash it was in the swift moving current.

It was at that moment I figured out a use for the rope, but by then though all we could do was stand there and watch our raft disappear.

Looking back, it was a stupid thing to get upset over. But at the time I didn’t fully understand that there was difference between what they wanted and what I thought they wanted.

“They” in this case was the Annual Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon and I wanted to make a donation but Mom refused even after I tried to explain to her. Looking back, I can see why she said no.

I wanted to make a donation at the time because I thought it would make me one of “Jerry’s Kids” too.

Both Mom and Dad had warned me to be careful as I sprinted around my Aunt and Uncle’s home on Cecil Avenue. I was wearing a brand new pair of spiked shoes, my first pair ever.

I literally felt like I was flying as I zipped around one corner of the home to

However my euphoria was short-lived as Marcy walked into my path. We nearly collided, but because I was so quick, I managed to side step her before we made full contact.

As I headed for the next corner, I heard her scream. The pitch in her young voice caused me to stop and trot back to where she was now sitting.

She was holding her foot and traces of blood appeared from around her fingers. I nearly fell down racing across the cement patio to get help.

Dad was the first to get to Marcy.

He looked at her foot and declared that I must have stepped on her and drove a spike through her skin. He and Mom loaded Marcy up and took her over to Doc Gobles so he could stitch up the puncture wounds.

They were gone a little over an hour. By the time they arrived I was back in my regular tennis shoes and had placed the spiked racing shoes back in their box.

I put them in the back of our station wagon.

When they returned I told my parents that I didn’t want the shoes anymore and that I didn’t deserve them. It took a week for me to stop moping
and finally put them on again.

It didn’t snow very often, however when it did, it caused lots of driving problems. The situation was no different the day the five of us piled into the bus for the trip home.

On the bus were Peggy Gensaw, Debbie Wolcott, Vicki Billy, Shirley Baldwin (our driver) and myself.

We were climbing up the hill towards Klamath, when we found ourselves in a heavy, wet snowfall. The road was slippery and so we were unable to continue.

We were jus’ south of the first big corner, before coming to what the locals called the 30 mile-turn. 30-mile turn was a sharp curve with a sign that warned drivers to reduce their speed to a recommended 30 miles-per hour, especially when wet.

It was also one of the most accident prone spots between Klamath and Crescent City. It was at this point that California Highway Patrol Officer Johnny Jones instructed Shirley to turn the little yellow van around and head back to Crescent City.

As she turned the vehicle, a Ford F-150 coming from the opposite direction, appeared from around 30-mile corner. The driver saw the mini-bus as it straddled the roadway, but it was too late.

The truck slammed headlong into the school bus. Shirley’s door popped open and for a second I thought she was going to get tossed out of the vehicle.

However she had her seatbelt on and that kept her inside the van. The three girls in the back seats were bounced from where they sat.

One girl, Debbie Wolcott sailed towards the front of the van.

It dawned on me that she could strike the windshield if she wasn’t stopped. So I put my hands out as if I were going to catch her.

However, the top of her head slammed into my face. I felt my nose pop and could see blood on my shirt as the vehicle finally came to a rest in ditch, in a semi-upright position.

Other than a few scrapes, bumps, bruises and one bloody-nose we were alright. The people in the pick-up truck were unhurt.

I spent the night with my friend Danny Ross.

The next day Dad came and picked me up. That’s when he learned that the brand new glasses I had jus’ gotten that day, had been broken during the accident.

It would be nearly two weeks before I’d get a replacement pair.

 

The keys were jingling as Dad tried to insert one into the church’s doorknob. It went in easily but now he could not get them to turn in the lock and he could not pull it out.

“Well, I was afraid of that,” Dad said as he looked down at me.

He gave the set of keys one more tug then he let out a heavy sigh.

Dad had carried his toolbox to the door with him. He was prepared for the lock to give him problems.

Father Charles had call him, saying there was a difficulty getting into the church the Sunday before. That was nearly a week ago.

It was important to get the lock fixed as church would be the following day and Father Charles would not want to hold Mass out side.

The first tool Dad pulled out was his Philips screwdriver. He started removing the faceplate behind the knob.

“They should have put in a separate lock from the knob,” he said to me. Then he added, “It would be more secure that way.”

Removing a knob from a door was something I had never seen. And I was keenly interested in what was about to occur.

“I’ll hand you the tool you need, Dad. Ask me. Let me help,” I said nearly begging.

“Flathead screw driver,” Dad directed.

It sounded so exotic to me. I looked down into the old beat up gray chest full of tools,

“Which one is that?” I asked.

Dad looked at the tools then pointed, “That one.”

I picked it up and handed it to him.

He started to pry the faceplate away from the wood of the door. It would not budge.

Dad shifted his position. Still the faceplate would not loosen.

“Give me the hammer,” he commanded.

Immediately I grabbed it and handed it to him.

He struck the yellow handle of the flat head screwdriver a couple of times and still it would not come loose. Dad changed positions again, then he turned the keys, which were still in the lock.

The knob turned free and the door opened up.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dad, said out loud.

Dad had gotten the door to unlock, he had fixed it. Then Dad discovered that the keys still would not come out of the lock.

“At least we got the door to open,” he commented as he swung the door wide to look at the other side of the knob.

Dad examined the inside doorknob for a moment, making several thoughtful, “Hmm’s” as he looked and wiggled the knob back and forth. I reached up and pulled at the keys.

“Don’t,” Dad half-shouted.

I pulled my hands away and put them behind my back.

Dad then picked up the Phillip screwdriver and proceeded to undo the faceplate on the inside of the door. I had seen this part done before and nothing interesting had happened because of it, so I wondered into the church.

There was the altar and the many rows of pews, plus the two marble statues, one of the Virgin Mary and the other of another saint I did not know. But the most interesting item to me was the life-like cross with the body of Christ on it, as he was dying.

“Damn it!” Dad said loudly.

I walked back as quickly as I could to see what the problem was, thinking perhaps by wandering off I might have caused him some problem.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Nope,” Dad said as he shook his head back and forth, “I can’t get the knob off,” he added with a sigh.

While Dad was standing outside the church and I was inside examining the situation. I decided to reached up and grabbed the knob on from my side of the door and pull it straight towards me.

Suddenly I heard the metallic ring of the knob on the other side as it bounced off the cement steps. In my hand was the inside doorknob.

“What in the hell did you do?” asked Dad.

I could tell Dad was frustrated but he was even more surprised.

I held the small brass globe out to him, “I—-I—-I just pulled back on it,” I stuttered.

Dad reached down and took the knob from me.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said.

He shook his head then dropped the knob into his toolbox. We two spent the next half hour or so replacing the old knob and lock.

Later I heard Dad tell Mom, “I spent an hour beating on the damned thing and he walks up and it comes off in his hand.”

“Now, Tom,” Mom said, “You know that if he hadn’t done that, you’d still be there cussing at that doorknob.”

Dad laughed at the thought.

It was a warm summer day and I was looking forward to going horseback riding. Grandpa Bill asked me that since I was going out that way, to check on his watermelon patch, which he had hidden in a cornfield.

Freckles was a young horse and could hardly wait to get saddled. We set out across the pasture to the back side of the barn and through a small thicket before we encountered grandpa’s cornfields.

At first I thought I knew where I was going, but after nearly an hour of slipping from one corn row to another, I was completely lost. I stood up in my stirrups to see where I was located in the field.

Unfortunately I was too short and the corn stalks were to high. So I decided to stand on the saddle for a better view.

That’s when a crow cawed somewhere nearby. Freckles shivered slightly.

Before I could get seated, the crow cawed again, this time closer. The noise sent Freckles into a panic.

The horse jumped straight up and came straight down with a jar. Somehow, though I managed to keep my balance and not fall off the animals back.

The third time the crow cawed however, Freckles took off running and I had to walk home.

Adam could climb most any tree with great ease. And he had discovered a way to make his talent pay.

He collected moss and sold it by the pound to the burl shop at the Trees of Mystery. The finer the moss, the better the price and the higher Adam had to climb.

One day I tagged along.

With me around he could toss down the moss and I’d stuff into the burlap sacks. After filling up the sacks, Adam invited me up into a tree he had dubbed, “The Lookout Tree.”

I reluctantly climbed up the tree to the level that Adam was perched at.

Adam was spread out on a fat limb much like our gray house cat used to spread herself out on the windowsill. I clung on for my life.

Then we heard a sound. At first it was distant but it kept growing louder as each “snap” was heard.

Adam saw it first, a huge buck. It paused to sniff the air and then the ground.

My brother had his knife in hand by now. He gripped it so tight, his knuckles turned white.

Suddenly he rolled off the limb and in a moment it was over. I scrambled down the tree because Adam needed my help.

The struggle was hard as I pulled Adam out of the marshy bog in which he laid trapped face down.