CONTINUED: Ask

While making the play in a ball game, he would  narrate: “George is dropping back, way back, he’s got the ball.  He’s got it.”  The announcing of his feats was not limited to baseball.  He helped his older brother deliver newspapers.

“George rolls up the newspaper and tucks it into the shape of a rocket.  George winds up, swings around and lobs the paper up on the second floor porch.  Perfect Throw!  Customer Satisfaction!”

Or even making a sandwich for a sibling.  “George is laying down the peanut butter at a perfect right angle to the next layer of jelly.  Flip!  Slap! A perfect slice down the middle and served on a paper plate to a grateful little sister.  Customer Satisfaction!”

George shaped his mouth into a large “O” and forced his breath out to make the most eerily life-like sound of a pleased crowd at the stadium roaring their approval.

I suppose I could have asked any of the kids … but the truth was that I would ask no one.  Asking for help showed I didn’t know something.  I was supposed to be the smartest kid in my neighborhood for my age and among the smartest at school.  I read book after book, everything that passed under my nose.  I did well in my classes, had an encyclopedic mind and could spell with the best of them.  Effortlessly,  numbers stayed in my head.  I was a walking telephone directory for friends and family and was worth having around if you needed to make a lot of calls.  But those were the only endeavors at which I excelled.  I played ball but not very well.  No one ever wanted me on their team.  In bicycle or foot races and any other competitive activity calling for strength and stamina I did poorly.  My intellect was the only thing I possessed that brought me honor and praise.  I seemed to know everything.  I had to know everything because I had nothing else going for me. My currency was knowledge, and although I was probably unaware of it, I was attempting to build my own island made from books.

The year before, 1952, all of us boys in the neighborhood tried out for Little League.  My turn at bat was seared into my memory.  I couldn’t bat even a slow ball pitched to me by a kindly man who was trying to save me from death by embarrassment at my first and last baseball practice.  I stood at home plate swinging at each pitch as the ball apparently disappeared or moved away from me every time I swung the bat.  Everybody laughed at me.  I mean everybody, even a few parents.  George finally came up to the plate and pulled the bat out of my hands.  He got away with it because the adults were glad to see the show end and let me slink away to the bench.  Ordinarily I could swing on a ball and hit it.  Not under pressure, however, and of course not very far.  I promised myself it would be the last time I allowed myself to be seen failing. After that, not wanting to appear stupid or naive prevented me from asking for help for a long time.

So, not surprisingly, I didn’t seek any assistance in my neighborhood about anything.  I didn’t show weakness.  Instead, I used my strengths to help me in my quest.  I used my head.  But after all, it was only the  head of a ten year old.

Still, I was far from dumb. At ten years old I had top honors in the fourth grade and just before summer vacation I finished a paper for extra credit on the Great Inventors of All Time.  I wrote of men who had forged new paths to knowledge and brought about our modern world, who had improved the lives of countless millions in the centuries to follow.  Surely I could apply myself successfully to the problem at hand.

Soon a plan of attack occurred to me.  I’d teach myself to swim.  It couldn’t be all that difficult to discover the secrets of staying on the top of the water.  Lots of animals and little kids knew how to do it.    I’d use the Scientific Method, just like Pasteur, Marconi and the Wright Brothers.  From hypothesis and observation to ... I can’t remember what came after them ... I should certainly be able to work out the details.

First I would do the basic research.  It would all be from books, of course, except for a conversation with my father.  He would never laugh at me.  He never laughed at anything.

 “How can I learn to swim, Dad?” I said to him as he sat in our living room and read his newspaper.

 “We’re Irish,” he said.  “We don’t swim.”

“Why not, Dad?”

From behind his newspaper he said, “I never tried, to be honest.  But we’re solid built, very thick bodied and we don’t float.”  He lowered the paper and  looked at me. “Besides, the Irish were seafarers, and sailors never learn to swim.”

“They don’t?”

“No,” he said.  “If your ship went down, you’d just prolong the agony of dying.”

“How do you mean?” I said.

“Well, you’d be swimming around out there on the ocean for half an hour worrying about it.  And then you’d drown.  Best to get it over with, I think.”

 “You mean just die if our ship goes down?”

“ Sure,.” he said.  “Gotta go sometime.”

“I wouldn’t want to die.”

“Then don’t get on a ship,” he said.

 I didn’t tell him many of the kids in our neighborhood were Irish and they all swam like sea otters.

I followed up with a close study of the chapter on water in my Cub Scout Handbook and then I rode my bike to the library to search for more information.  As I walked through the large brass doors into the main hall of the century old building, it occurred to me I was standing in the most comfortable place on earth for me.  I couldn’t quite re-capture the urgency to learn about swimming.  I’d have rather stayed cooped up back among the shelves of books all day long.  Especially now that the librarian allowed me free reign of the complete library.

“You’re supposed to be in the Children’s Room, young man,” said a new librarian I didn’t recognize when she caught me in the Medical Section under the sign, “Adults Only.”

“I couldn’t find anything about swimming there,” I said, “except for water safety rules.”

“What more did you want at your age?”

“I'm learning to swim,” I admitted.

“You should take lessons.”

“I am … sort of.”

She leaned over me and saw I had a medical dictionary open to a page showing a naked female torso. She put her hand over the image.

“And what does this have to do with swimming, young man?”

“I was in 'S' looking for 'Swimming.”

“No, you're not.  You're in 'R.'  'Reproduction.'”

“I mean I'm in 'R' looking for 'S.'”

“How about you go looking for the Children's Room again?”

But I was finished with the books.  What the Scientific Method called “a review of the  literature” had not been very helpful, except for what I'd learned about Reproduction.  Someday that information might come in handy.  However, it was now time to move my study to the field for a series of observations.

Most mornings during the summer the boys from my neighborhood headed out Burrstone Road to the public swimming pool about a mile away.  They wound  their swim  suits up in towels and tucked the rolls under their arms.  I waited ten minutes and then mounted my bicycle to follow them. 

The pool sat behind a 1930’s Art Deco style building with a high fluted clock tower above the main door.  The tower rose majestically on one end of a rectangular grassy park that rolled down to a baseball diamond at the other end.  Wide paved walkways ran through the grass in the center of the park. Along the front of the property a fairly busy street was marked by huge pot holes.  On the way to the pool, I could hear tires slam into them from time to time.  Along the back of the park was a patch of woods with maple and oak trees. 

I crossed a strip of grass and climbed up one of the maple trees to overlook the pool. There I could hear the splashes and shouts drift my way as I spied upon the neighborhood boys.  Mostly they jumped from the diving boards and swam to a ladder no more than twenty or thirty feet away, repeating the process over and over.  I kept an eye on the entire pool,  too, from the shallow water where the little ones hung out to the deep end that got most of my attention.  I hoped to figure out how the swimmers were able to move through the water without sinking.

Their arms and legs appeared to help them to swim when moved in certain ways.  The method looked easy enough.  But I wondered if there was more to swimming than met the eye.  I wanted to know as much as possible before I jumped into water over my head.

After watching people in the water a couple of days from my perch among the leafy limbs, I had no reason to doubt I had discovered everything there was to know about staying afloat.  I decided to put my knowledge down on paper and call it my Theory of Swimming.  I got the first part of the name from a book I’d read called The Theory of Rain.  The well illustrated book was for older children and was about a boy who thought he could predict the weather.  The story was supposed to have been written by a youngster like myself and the author offered sure-fire methods for weather forecasting.  Each time I used them I predicted only tornadoes and hurricanes … usually every week.  Never a spring shower or light snow ending by morning, only calamity.  No one believed me, and eventually I didn't believe the forecasts either.  Almost every time I followed the book's flowchart while I observed the cloud type, wind speed and direction, temperature and month of the year, the answer came out, “Tornado: Take Shelter Now,” or “Hurricane: Bring lawn chairs indoors.”

From my fourth grade extra credit project I knew how to construct a proper report of a new scientific finding.  Of course, swimming was new only to me. Here was my Theory of Swimming, the complete edition.

I. Hypothesis: a human being can swim if he finds himself in deep water and moves his arms and legs in the correct way, and the waves are not too high.

II. Observations:  After three days of sitting in a tree and observing the local swimming pool, this is what I saw in each area of the pool.

II.1. Shallow part of pool.  Mostly little kids here.  They weren’t swimming.  Once in a while a big kid got in and ignored the little kids.  The water came to about halfway between his knees  and waist.  Why he was there I don’t know, but I guessed he was practicing to swim.  In fact, I think it was the same kid on three different days.  Anyway, he fell forward into the water and seemed to push off with his feet.  He made swimming motions with his arms and legs and swam about twenty feet each time.

II.2. Middle part of pool.  Water about four feet deep.  Mostly junior high school kids here. Boys tried to push girls under water and were thrown out of pool by lifeguard.  Stupid, but it kinda looked like fun.  No one even tried to swim.  I don’t know if that’s because they had other interests or because of the water’s depth.  More on that later.

II.3. Deep end of pool.  Water about 16 feet deep under the diving boards.  Here everyone is swimming (and not drowning.) They jump off the diving board and land under water at the bottom of the pool, and then come back up and swim to a ladder and climb out of the water.  They do this over and over.  No one jumps in the water from the side of the pool, only from the diving boards.  More about that later.

III. Impressions. I saw the same kind of stuff every day.  Some boys wanted to swim, but most just kept cannon-balling into the pool from the sides in the four foot section. Girls my age and older sunned themselves by the side of the pool or got in the water, where they stood and waited for boys to drown them.  They screamed, but not in a way where anyone believed they were really worried.  Kids swam at the deep end and one kid swam at the shallow end.  No one swam in the middle.  I suspect they can’t.  I mean my theory is that humans can swim in shallow or deep water, but not in between, although I’m not sure why.  And I also suspect that in the deep end, people can swim only if they use the diving board.

IV. Progress:   I should be able to swim with success if I use the following method, now and forever to be called The Me Method.  Here it is:

 1.Get in the water.

  2.Push off with feet braced against something.

3a. Get entire body up on the surface of the water. 

3b. Do not let legs sink. 

4. Push forward with feet. 

 5. Use arms and hands to pull water out of your way and behind you. 

 6. Keep kicking legs and feet

That was it.  I now knew how to swim, even though I hadn’t tried it yet.  But I had figured it out.  Pretty much. 

I wrote my paper during the heat of a July afternoon as I lay in a favorite spot under the huge old lilac bushes in our back yard.  The slightest breeze rustled the leaves and helped the air to sound cooler.  Over and over I pictured my arms and legs moving while I pushed the water behind me and zoomed ahead in the pool.   Admittedly, Step 3a., getting my body up on the surface, was a little hazy and I wasn't sure how to do it.  But I reminded myself of the feats of great men I had read about for my extra credit paper.  Most had not worked out all the details when they embarked on their journeys to fame and fortune.  Alexander Bell hadn’t envisioned long distance telephone calls when he shouted, “Watson, come here.  I need you.”  Thomas Edison was just playing around with a needle and a cone of paper when he invented the phonograph.   Even a ten year old saw  courage mattered as much as knowledge or vision.  The trick was not to be afraid, I told myself.  I looked down the line of lilac bushes strung along the driveway behind the house down to the decrepit old garage my father never put his car in.  He was afraid the building would fall down some night in a windstorm, his car the first victim. Dad was always afraid of something.

 The next day, I decided to test out The Me Method of Swimming.  I waited until later in the morning when I knew the local boys would not be at the pool.  I took one of the older towels from our bathroom, wrapped it around my swimming trunks and headed through the kitchen toward the back door.  My mother stopped me and asked where I was going.

“Swimming,” I said with a practiced look of innocence on my face.

“Do you know how to swim?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said,’ “I’ve been studying it. I’m going over to the pool to practice.”

Mom came across the kitchen and put her arms around me.  A short woman, she pulled me against her chest. I inhaled the wonderful smell of cinnamon for supper’s apple desert.   “Promise me something,” she said. “Before you get in the water, tell the lifeguard what you’re doing and ask him to watch you.”

“OK, I will.”

“And practice swimming in the shallow end of the pool.”

“OK, I will.”

“This is important,” she said softly.  “If you find you can’t swim, ask for help.”

I gently pushed away from her and left the kitchen, going out the back door without comment. 

The pool was behind the clock tower building and was surrounded by a tall wire fence. I’d never been inside the building or the pool. This was it, I told myself.  Do or die, although I certainly didn't want the latter.  It occurred to me to wonder why anyone really needed to swim.  I supposed I could stay off boats and never have to worry about drowning.  Or sail away without being able to swim.  After all, people traveled on airplanes and they couldn't flap their arms and fly.  Still, knowing how to swim might be useful.  But then again, I could slip in the bath tub some day, knock my head, pass out and drown in the tub.  Knowing how to swim wouldn't help in that case.

I looked up in the sky.  Maybe a storm was coming and another day might be better for throwing myself into deep water.  There wasn't a cloud in sight, but a storm with thunder and lightning could still come up at any moment and make swimming dangerous.  I had worked the Theory of Rain flowchart yesterday and it said a hurricane might soon be bearing down on us.    Oh, what was the use?  I couldn't get out of the promise I had made to myself to learn to swim at any cost.  The Theory of Rain was wrong.  I didn't need to worry about a hurricane.  My Theory of Swimming wasn’t wrong.  It had to be right.  I couldn’t think of any reason why it wasn’t right.

I walked through the brass plated front door and a pretty teenaged girl asked for a dime and shoved a wire basket at me. I joined a line of boys and followed them.  Soon I was in a room where they were getting undressed and putting their trunks on.  I watched them closely so I'd know what to do.  They put their clothing into the basket and headed out another door.  I did the same and came to a counter where an attendant handed me a brass tag on a wrist band to wear. He reached for my basket.

I didn’t let go.  I remembered I'd brought my Roy Rogers Secret Decoder Ring with me that wrote underwater.  I had seen the offer on the back of a cereal box and immediately became enthralled with the idea of writing notes to my aunt and cousins while sitting underwater.  Of course they'd be short messages.  I didn't have the lung capacity for a long letter.  My older brother suggested I just fill the kitchen sink and hang over it while I breathed and wrote as long a letter as I wanted.

“And as long as you’re there, do the dishes,” he said.

But that couldn't compare to the idea of actually sending Aunt Martha and the girls a note from beneath the surface of the public swimming pool … after I dried out the paper.

“Wait,” I said to the teenaged attendant.  “I need to get my ring out of my pants.”

“No jewelry allowed in the pool, kid.”

“But I need to get it.  It writes underwater.”

He pulled the basket from my grasp. “Move along, Shakespeare.”

The teenager put my basket up on a shelf with the others. The boy behind me pushed on my back and I was shoved away from the counter.

Following the line of boys, I came next to a tiled room where ten shower heads were arranged five on a side.  Ten boys at a time, we each stood under the shower and pulled a chain descending from high on the wall.  The water was brutally cold as it cascaded down on my head and shoulders.  I immediately bolted from under the stream, but a fat old guy in a T-shirt and green janitor pants pushed me back and made every one of us stay under the shower until the stream ended automatically in half a minute. 

I followed the line of boys and began to hear the shouting and splashing of a few hundred over-excited youngsters jumping around in the water.  I was getting scared again. I wished I’d gone to the bathroom before I left the house, a reason to turn back now.  Or hurry up and get in the water to relieve myself.  Years later I’d hear the man who injected chemicals into the water looked out at the pool to judge the number of boys versus girls before determining the amount of chlorine powder to wallop down the pipe.

Up ahead at the front of the line, a doorway led outside to the pool.  A teenage lifeguard was asking each boy to spread his toes, for what I didn’t know.  I looked down at my feet.  Whatever the next test was, if my toes flunked I could go home and forget about this swimming thing.  Something about The Me Method of Swimming was beginning to bother me and now I felt I'd be much more comfortable at home reading my Cub Scout Handbook for a third time.  It was always more comfortable to read about something rather than do it.  Maybe in the calmness of a sunny morning out on the front porch in an old wooden rocker the haziness of  step 3a.. would clear up and a solution present itself.  I still wasn’t sure how to get my body up to the surface of the water.

My toes passed the test and I was outside.  The noise was ear-splitting ... kids screaming and jumping into a pool already filled to the brim with other children. I thought of the Bible scene where Moses and all the people of Israel ran or were chased into Red Sea and were trying to move ahead to the far shore.  Here in the pool,  nobody went anywhere.  The kids just kept getting out and jumping back in.   A few of the younger children cried for reasons known only to them.  Most of the kids my age were laughing and some coughed water up from their lungs.  There was a great deal of what my grandmother called “carrying on.”  Hundreds of us were under the care of a few 15 and 16 year old lifeguards.

 Although I had convinced myself I could swim ... theoretically ... I decided to follow Mom’s suggestion about starting at the shallow end of the pool.  I mimicked the boy I’d seen swimming here the past few days.  In water that came almost to the top of my thighs, I fell forward, pushed off with my feet and made swimming motions with my arms and legs.  Eureka!  I swam  a few feet.  I was elated.  I had figured out how to swim.  All by myself.  I fell into the shallow water and swam again.  And again. 

I swam over to the middle section of the pool, pulled up and settled down on my feet.  Water lapped over my shoulders and under my chin.  I was surrounded by junior high school boys and girls.  The boys were still trying to push the girls under, as they had been doing for three days so far.  Sure enough, no one was swimming here.  I moved away from them and tried to swim. My observation had been swimming was impossible in four feet of water, because no one could get their body up to the surface.  So, Step 3a. of my Method wasn’t working here in this section of the pool, and now I was beginning to understand why my legs kept sinking, why swimming in four feet of water was impossible for humans.

I waded over to a ladder and got out of the pool, then walked down to the deep end to watch the kids.  No one jumped in the deep end from the sides of the pool, only from the boards.  That was a big clue to support my theory, and only later did I notice the sign forbidding such jumps to avoid mid-air collisions with those diving from the boards.

After watching the divers for a while, something became abundantly clear to me. Swimming must depend on first falling forward into the water and then using your arms and legs.  Down in the shallow end of the pool I was already above the surface of the water, standing as I fell forward and swam.  In the four foot section, no one could swim because they couldn’t fall forward and get their legs up on the surface.  Up here in the deeper section I could jump from the diving board and then burst out of the water and ascend high enough to fall forward and swim. It was all about starting from above the surface!  It was the diving board that got a person that high in the deep end of the pool.  Evidently, that was its purpose.  From the board I’d jump high in the air, rocket to the bottom of the pool, bounce back up with a push of the legs and explode out of the water like a ballistic missile launched from a submarine, high enough to fall forward and swim.  I figured no one was jumping from the side of the pool, because it didn’t provide the momentum needed to come very far out of the water. I quickly looked down the length of the pool to confirm this discovery.  Sure enough, at that moment, one little kid was swimming in the shallow end of the pool and no one was swimming in the 4 foot section.  Kids jumped off the board and surfaced here at the deep end and swam to the ladder.  That sewed it up for me. 

V. Conclusion, Theory of Swimming:  It is possible to swim in shallow water, not possible in four feet of water, and possible in deep water only with a diving board. 

Today such faulty thinking astounds me and I can list a number of observational and logical mistakes almost no normal person would make, except a ten year old kid trying to convince himself he could learn to swim without anyone’s help. 

Across the pool I spotted George.  I didn’t see the other boys and assumed they had come and gone home earlier in the morning.   I wondered what he was doing here.  It was hard not to like George, frankly.  Except for grabbing the bat away from me, he had never been nasty to me.  He’d become a star Little League shortstop in the past year and I was in awe of his baseball playing ability.  George was always at the top of his league. I hoped in a few moments he’d see me swimming fabulously across the water to the ladder and running back to the diving board for another jump.  I fervently hoped that’s what I’d be doing, brushing aside a vision of my lifeless body carried to a waiting ambulance. 

I headed for the diving boards, trying to not look obvious.  I was sure I had this swimming thing figured out. 

“There he is,” I said to myself in a deep announcer’s voice, “moving toward the deep end of the pool.”

I looked left and right, afraid someone would stop me.

“Some kids steal second base,” said the announcer, “but this strikingly handsome young lad looks like he’s about the steal an entire diving board!  Whaddya think Artie?” 

My imaginary announcer’s sidekick was named Artie.

“Well, Ed, (my announcer was named Ed), the boy certainly looks fit, but a little nervous.  Still, I’ll bet he executes a perfect swan dive.”

“That’s right, Artie, we’re expecting this obviously well informed young man to come off that board and slice into the water like a sharp sword piercing the heart of a Barbary Coast pirate.”

“Well said, Ed.”

"I'm just quoting the young man, Artie, from his interview with John Cameron Swayze."

"That was great television, Ed."

 Just as I reached the board and was climbing on, someone called, “Hey!  Stop!”

A lifeguard waved his arms at me. “Hey! Kid!  You can’t jump off the board until you show me you can swim.”

Of course, I knew nothing of this rule. He might want an actual demonstration.  Just hearing my Theory of Swimming or The Me Method would probably not satisfy him.  And I had not brought written copies to the pool.  I didn't know where he wanted me to prove my swimming ability, but I knew I needed the diving board to get the momentum to swim in deep water.  Maybe he wanted me to jump from the side of the pool, but I wouldn't hit the bottom hard enough to bounce back up and come well out of the water.  I supposed he didn't want to hear that either. 

I was in a tough spot.  I edged out toward the end of the board.

“Hey!” he yelled, now with his hands cupped around his mouth.  “I said ‘Stop,’ you little shithead!”

I’d come so far.  I pictured myself flunking the swimming test if forced to jump from the edge of the pool, pulled out by a laughing teenaged bully as he yanked me up to safety by the hair on my head, held over the edge of the water, dangling there for all to see and laugh at. The teenager reminded me of an SS guard in a movie I’d just seen about Air Force guys held in a Nazi prison camp.  I had wanted to go home only twenty minutes earlier, but now I was sure of my Theory and  I intended to jump off the board and finally swim through deep water. If I flunked the lifeguard’s test, I’d go home and stew all week over it.  What would happen to me if I had to always ask other people to help me?  It seemed so unfair when I absolutely knew I could swim if I could only jump from the board.  And drowning seemed almost acceptable when compared to the treatment I imagined I’d get from the lifeguard. 

 What the hell. 

I raced to the end of the diving board and jumped skyward.  Coming back down I touched the board with my feet for the bounce.  Getting the bounce on a diving board is a timing trick, but I didn’t know that and I was quite lucky to hit the board just right and rocket back up into the air like an Atlas missile on my way up to intercept  Sputnik.

 For an instant in time at the apogee of my flight. I could see beyond the pool’s fence over the grass and walkways and into the baseball field.  It was like waking up in a bad dream.  How did I get here?  I decided in that split second I really liked baseball and wanted to be over there improving my batting skills.  A baseball career now seemed to make so much sense.  Probably no one had ever drowned playing baseball.  Maybe an outfielder way back by the river, but he should have worn a life vest.  Below me the Prison Guard was calling me truly terrible names that I’m sure he could be fired for, had the town council been aware of how he treated visiting science buffs.   I dropped back toward earth and lost sight of the baseball diamond.  A bit too late I remembered I had to somehow roll forward to accomplish the perfect dive I had planned.  I tried very hard to catch up with my falling body and turn it into a sleek sword as it hurtled out of the sky.  But my stupid ten year old ass never got any higher than my head and I found myself in an uncontrolled dive.  The water rushed up at me as I twisted around to face it.  I slammed down like a dead fish slapped on the cutting block at the market.  A perfect belly whopper.  Down at the other end of the pool, it must have sounded like the crack of a rifle shot when I hit the water.

 In no time at all I was on the bottom under sixteen feet of water, ablaze with pain all the way up my front.  I tried to kick off toward the surface, but I guess I was upside down because my churning feet contacted nothing.   How I got back up is a mystery, but when I arrived at the surface I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do.  So I just kicked and waved and moved every muscle in my body, as if this sheer burst of energy would levitate me out of the pool. When I wasn't swallowing water I screamed.

There was a final awful moment when I realized this could be it.  No one noticed me and in a short time I’d swallow more water and choke to death.  I was headed for the gates of heaven or hell.  I felt I wasn’t ready for either at ten years old.    There was a lot of life left for me to live.   I could not remember ever being as scared before.  A picture came to mind of my father standing by the side of the pool, looking down at me and  saying, “You’re too thick bodied, you’ll never float.”

 George saved my life, in more ways than one.  He reached me before the teenaged Stalagmeister Schwimmerwacher and executed a sloppy life-saving maneuver.  He swam with one arm out front, grabbing the water while his other arm held me in a headlock with my face underwater.  He’d have drowned me if the pool ladder had been any farther away.

It turned out George had come late by himself that day because of a dental appointment  earlier in the morning.   We became friends that evening when one of the other boys began to bother me over my inability to swim and George stepped in to announce he planned to teach me the next morning at the pool.  He told me to come by his house to meet him at nine.  He told me there was now a special bond between us since he had saved my life.

“OK, sure,”  I said.

George and I palled around together until the end of junior high school when my family moved out of the neighborhood, but I saw him occasionally in high school.  He was a jock and I was a nerd, but he was my first close friend.  He appreciated my intellectual pursuits and my ability to organize projects.  I was also able to correct his misunderstanding of Reproduction.  He had something out of order, if I remember correctly. When I saw him in high school he referred to me as his research assistant.

Without effort, George always asked when he didn't know something.  I figured if he could do that naturally, I could somehow manage to do the same. And when we were ten and eleven, I learned a lot from him.  There was so much to ask because he knew all these great things boys should know … how to float and how to swim, how to crack open chestnuts, how to fold a newspaper and throw it up on a second floor porch, how to pretend to drown a girl in the pool, how to hit a baseball straight down the middle, how to wax up a toboggan for maximum speed … and especially how to ask another person for help.  

I never told George, but his example of asking for help was the lesson that more than once in the future not only enlarged my pool of experiences, but brought me closer to becoming a member of the human race.  That more than saved my life.  It made it worth saving.

Copyright 2014 by David Griffin

CONTINUED: Sleuth

Kids of all ages bundled up like Eskimos in so many layers of clothing we began to lose our shapes and identities.  True, no one seemed to care as we stood on frigid street corners in the morning waiting for a bus to take us from Cornhill to some other destination on the polar ice cap we knew as Utica.

And in the dark of a late afternoon,  I waited for the bus on the Busy Corner stamping my feet to ward off the cold when it was at minus 4 degrees.  As I stood in the crowd, shivering under my coat, vest, sweater, plaid shirt, striped tie, and two undershirts, I got to thinking.  “How can I tell if a girl I’m thinking of flirting with is really Mary Lou or her younger brother Bruno?

 Not wanting to make a monumental mistake so early in my career of speaking to girls, and to delay the always difficult task of saying Hello to a young woman, I spent my time on the bus stop freezing in my boots and devising a foolproof method to determine gender by way of only conversation.  All of this was just in case I got up the nerve to speak.  I figured I could ask the following questions instead of having to inquire, "Are you a girl?"   So I offer them to young men everywhere.  Or at least to those anal enough to be interested. 

First, young men, confining your inquiries to people shorter than yourself will greatly increase the odds of success.  Anyone taller than you either isn’t a girl or is older than you.  Here’s the first conversation opener.

"What do you think of my new boots?"  A boy will ignore the question.  A young woman will always be polite.

"How is your mother?"  A girl will look guilty, then immediately begin to complain that her mother doesn’t understand her.

"Do you like the new books in the library?"  A young man  will often look confused, then embarrassed.

"What's the weather for tomorrow?"  A guy will reply with specifics, like wind velocity,  dew point or thermal convection quotients.  A young lady will likely choose more personal words like comfy or horrid,  suffocating or chilly.  And then she may mention her mother again.

"Have we met before?"  A girl … even your sister … will invariably say no.

"How much do you weigh?"  A young woman  will ignore the question or quickly stamp on your toe.

"That's a pretty outfit you're wearing."  A girl will move her hips once, very slightly.  A young man will flare his nostrils.

"I like where your outfit bulges out."  A young woman will walk away, but if not she’ll move her hips two or three times.  A guy will laugh or walk away or punch you.  Any other reaction should cause alarm.

I haven’t found anyone yet who believes this story.  When I told my wife the yarn on our second date, she said I could make anything complicated.  Then she stamped on my toe.

       David Griffin                            copyright 2009   

                      

The Windswept Press  

Murells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: The Wind

The  young Brother and I work well together.  His professed name is Brother Saint Winifred of Gwytherin in Denbigshire.  We can’t imagine such a mouthful when we cheer him on in a softball game, so we have come to call him Kickstart.  The nickname relates to his hitting the road to join a motorcycle gang after getting his doctorate in Late Antiquity.  Seven years in a library will do that to a man.

I don’t at all like outdoor chores after the first frost.  It’s damned cold out there and at seventy years of age my arthritis always flares up.  I mentioned it to Kickstart but he wasn’t listening.  He worked beside me in a light jacket while I bundled up in a ratty old down coat stretched tightly over two sweat shirts.  

I lay here tonight in my cot and can testify the extra layers were not enough.  My hands ache and my hips feel like I slipped on the ice and fell.  But the wind howling outside our dormitory can’t get to me beneath the bed covers and three old work robes piled on top.  I am as comfortable as I’ll be through this long night.

When I think of my conversation with Kick earlier today, my spirits drop and I’m sorry I was not of more help to him in his agony.  His four years here as a contemplative have somewhat closed his eyes to reality.  It happens. 

 “Jesse," he said, as we fit rocks under the main beam of the porch deck,  "I think we’re all doomed up here."

“You mean like we’re going to be hit by a Protestant comet?”  I asked.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I do know what you mean, but I have no answer.”

"They're going to throw us out.  I know it," he said.

I didn't tell Kick, but that's exactly what  I worry about. 

“Where are you going to live, Jesse?”  he asked.

I shoved a stone in farther beneath the beam.  “Maybe I’ll apply for assistance or maybe I’ll get a job in a store.  Rent a room down in the village … I don’t’ know.  After all, I don’t have as far to go down the road as you, Kick.  You have an entire life ahead of you.”

      “My life is here on this mountain," he said.  "I’m staying.”

“Well, you can’t,"  I told him.

“In the woods,” he said.  “I’ll stay in the woods.”

I sneered. “A real Desert Father, huh?” 

“Jesse,” he said , “everything I learned about my life and myself and God is here on this mountain.”

“God isn't only on this mountain,”  I said.

“What I know of him is,”  he said.

“Yes, but maybe it’s time to know him in a different way,” I said.

“God is unchangeable, Jesse.”

“OK, but not in your head He isn’t.  Our vision of him changes as we grow.”

 I have a tendency to be dismissive of anyone's faith that doesn't agree with my mental conception of God and how He operates.  That’s nearly the same as defining Him.  And given my capacity  to make mistakes, allowing me to play God is probably a bad idea.  If I were God, for example, the creation of the world would still be a great plan that I'd look into when I found the time on my busy schedule.  Let There Be Light might get done, but not much else.  Mountains and oceans and elephants would still be drifting around the universe waiting to be attached to something.

Order and precision are what you’d expect from God.  From me you’d get chaos.  I once dreamed of a complicated theory I had proposed and written in careful and full detail on a sheaf of papers. A wind came from I don’t know where and blew the pages off the desk, scattering them across the floor.  Like a mad scientist I fell to my knees in a panic to gather up the papers, but they no longer made any sense.  I realized I was dreaming, but could see the essence of a truly great idea and I did not want to lose it.  I struggled up from my sleep and wrote a note on the pad I kept next to my cot.  In the morning when I awoke, a minute or two passed before I remembered the dream.  I quickly grabbed the pad and read, “defrost the refrigerator.”

 The wind is picking up outside.  I love the sound of it. Hearing it whistle through the old shutters and moan around the eaves has always been like music to me.  Such an appreciation comes from the heart, not the mind.  And now I think that Kickstart was more right than wrong.

          I have for too long been overly interested in my mind and my soul, more than my heart. But my mind is getting rusty and my soul will never be more than what it is.  My heart is full of life, or could be.  It’s the part of me that feels someone else’s  agony.  And the part of me that longs for God, rather than tries to understand or obey him.  With a lot of work. that heart is the only part of me that stands a chance of leaving this world in better condition than when it got here.

On the other hand, I can easily make my experience of God a head trip, purely and conveniently a construction in my mind.  Entire churches have done so.  I forget He is in his creation, not just in our minds,  He is here on the mountian in the streams and boulders and pine  trees for Kickstart.  And for me He is in my body, my heart, everything and everyone around me and even in my desires.  When I long for Grandma’s special gravy and biscuits from sixty years ago on a Sunday afternoon, God is somehow in that.  I can’t tell you how.  I only know this to be true: after years of trying to meditate on His sacred mysteries, I more often see visions of chicken and dumplings.  It must be what He wants me to see.  You would never hear such nonsense from a theological council of any reputable church because it doesn’t make logical sense ... to the mind.  Maybe it doesn’t need to.  A church listens to logic.  The people listen to their hearts.

God warned us a long time ago He wasn’t going to wait around for mankind to catch up with Him as He continued to reveal himself.  Jesus told Nicodemus. “Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above. The wind  blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

So here’s what I’ve been laying here thinking on this frigid night when my mind can’t even conjure up a vision of Grandma’s chicken dinner.  Here’s my latest heresy.

If God were a short order cook, we’d never be hungry.

If God were an accountant, everyone would get what they deserved.

If God were a doctor, everyone would enjoy excellent health.

If God were a teacher, we’d all be worried about Report Cards.  But from what I’ve seen in the world, not many are worried about their Report Cards.

If God were a policeman everyone would be in a lot of trouble and if God were a judge everyone would be damned.

But God is none of those.  He is bigger than the familiar. He’s larger than life.  So I’m thinking He must be a cowboy.  When you consider it, He almost has to be. He’s extremely courteous and won’t push himself forward unless invited.  He’s always mending fences.  I see Him out on the range  under a huge sky full of stars waiting for his doggies to bed down while he sings them to sleep.  And only a cowboy would say, “There, there, little darlin’” when with tears in our eyes we get down on our knees to pray.  Or more often to complain

You know,  I've lived for 35 years up here on the mountain the Indians called Onteora, The Land In The Sky.  So it appeared to them as they gazed up from the valley below.  Tonight it may still be pleasant down there.  But up here on the peak ... in cowboy land ... a white mantle of snow covers the blue-green hemlocks.  The moon has risen and the bare maples glisten black in the cold damp air.    Clouds scraped by the mountain top from the bottom of the sky  drift away like ships leaving without us. Tonight my brothers and I lie shivering on our cots while sleet and snow pelt the windows, and  the wind has its way with our creaking old house.

The spirit blows where it chooses and you don’t know where it’s been or where it’s going.

      But I know one thing.   He is taking care of us as we bed down.  And when the wind howls past the eaves and moans down through the holes in the roof, I know that God is singing us to sleep.

David Griffin                                   Copyright 2014

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Out of Gas

My steady date in high school seemed agreeable to my company, if not thrilled. I probably bored her. I doubt if the girl ever felt that much affection for me, but I was a steady date for her to plan on and her parents evidently believed I was safe. Unfortunately, they were right. We never became the torrid affair I imagined, like Bogey and Bacall. On the many occasions I asked if she loved me, she answered, "Huh? Oh, sure, yeah." I suppose it was just her style, but it wasn't very cuddly. I can imagine if we stayed together and had someday married. At the altar when asked if she took me to be her lawful wedded husband, she might answer, "Huh? Oh, sure, yeah."

   Over the years I wondered why I could not remember much about the girl, her tastes or opinions for example. I had no idea what might have been her favorite color, or music group, or car or TV program or ... anything. It finally occurred to me that I never knew much about her because I never asked. I was too busy talking about myself or a host of topics she had little interest in, such as the possibility of space travel and the various configurations of half wave dipole antennas.

In those high school years I seldom left the attic, so fascinated was I with short wave radio. My aerie up above the rest of the house was cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  Plus it was dingy with the dust of over 50 years.  To make it more hospitable I brought home 3 or 4 refrigerator shipping boxes from an appliance store near my high school.  The cardboard  panels made walls to cut the breeze that blew through the attic in the winter and gave me vertical surfaces on which to mount weather maps and short wave radio posters.  Without the walls there was only the sloping roof.  The end wall of the attic was mostly windows.

All my paper route earnings went into my radio hobby. No one heard from me for weeks at a time. I neglected my studies, stayed up all night and took full advantage of the peak in the sun spot cycle. Each night, into the early morning, I sent and received Morse code over the Atlantic, exchanging signal reports and weather data with fellow Hams in Europe. I learned a lot about signal propagation, the grey line, the ionosphere and 10 meter atmospheric ducting. I threw my antenna wire higher and higher for lower radiation launch angles to increase distance, and installed loading coils for better standing wave ratios. I became conversant with meteorological patterns in Spain and Romania. I become so enamored of everything taking place a third of the globe distant that I forgot about where my feet were planted.  I flunked Geometry and had to take it again in summer school.

I had no study habits to speak of, but I had a terrific memory and remembered what took place in class. It sustained my mediocre high school record while I spent my spare time day dreaming, fooling with radios and playing in a rock band.

I almost flunked Religion. No one ever flunked Religion. It was rumored that if you started failing the tests, you'd be kept after school and sent over to the church next door each day to pray until either you got the message or God got the message and your study habits miraculously improved.

In Religion class I became upset early in the school year when I discovered we would not be studying Aquinas or Augustine. These were two church Fathers who had contributed much to the philosophy and theology of our church, and I wanted the benefit of a classroom forum in which to air my personal theories and opinions on various theological topics.

"I'm afraid we'll all have to struggle along without your ideas on the Majesterium, Mr. Griffin," Sister Mary Metanoia told me when I marched up to her after our first class and announced my disappointment. "We are instead going to study Our Lord's life on earth, here in this vale of tears," she said. "It will help you to put into perspective His final suffering and the debt he paid on the cross for your sins and mine. Probably more for yours."

"But Aquinas' ideas were always debated in the councils of the Church, Sister, and I thought we might continue the debates here."

"Here?" she asked. "Debate?" her voice began to rise.

"Yes, here," I said. "In Utica, on John Street, near the banks of the Mohawk."

"I don't think Holy Mother the Church will entertain any more debate on her theology, young man," she said, now on the verge of getting really upset. "Especially from a boy who can't even understand Geometry."

To say I was insulted would be an understatement. After all, I did in fact understand Geometry. I just forgot to memorize the theorems. When our religion studies commenced that year I found to my chagrin we were covering every route Jesus ever took in his walks around the Holy Land. You'd think he was aiming at a certificate to hang on the wall like you get for completing the Appalachian Trail. We even memorized distances. It's 18 miles from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee. Almost 80 miles down to Jerusalem. That's a long walk, and there were no tour buses in 30 A.D. The class was a travelogue of Jesus stopping at one well or another and offering a parable to desert people who would have rather had a tour bus stop. I soon tuned out. I began to fail, but quickly had a miraculous change in my ability to pay attention and study when Sister threatened to call my parents and suggest they make some changes in how I spent my time. That would have been terrible. Until report cards came out, I had my folks convinced I was a model student. A call to Mom and Dad would have shortened my runway.

My high school sweetheart and I parted at the end of high school. I guess she'd had enough of my immaturity.  I started arguments just to see if I could get a rise out of her. I would have tried to win them, but she was an Irishwoman in training and I knew better than to waste my time. Our estrangement was no surprise, but it left me crushed.

In my second year of college, I lived at home, still mostly in the attic, checking out the weather in Finland or Bulgaria in the middle of most nights and interfering with my neighbors’ televisions when I transmitted. I popped up on a well known Utica eye doctor's stereo, calling "come in, Yugoslavia," the night he had friends over to play them a new recording of Stravinsky's Petrushka. He lived a half mile away and his letter to the FCC in Washington resulted in my second official offense for interference.

I began to wonder what Jenny was doing.

Turns out Jenny was growing nicely. She had one of those great girlish shapes that would not survive very far into adulthood. I didn’t care much about the future at that age and what I saw was a terrific looking girl who always gave me a cute smile.

When Jenny accepted a date with me, I was about to begin my second year at a local community college and Jenny was thinking of going to live with an aunt in Syracuse. That city was just fifty miles away and close enough to get home on weekends, or every night if necessary. Syracuse represented the Big Town to young Uticans who didn't want to go too far away. The city was distant enough to justify renting your own apartment and getting away from your parents’ eternal quest to see you through to maturity as a virgin or a eunuch. And it was a new place where you could start fresh and leave behind high school friends who knew everything about you from the date of your first period to the time you threw up in Biology class when Petey Sardini pretended to eat the frog he was dissecting.

In 1962 there wasn't much to do in Utica, or maybe I was cursed with a limited imagination. A typical date at our age was to go to a bar for a few beers and dance to music on the jukebox. I suggested we drive out to the Blue Note on the Oriskany road, but Jenny said she didn’t like the place. Ditto for McGuirl’s on Eagle Street. I began to suspect she didn’t want to run into my old girlfriend, whom she knew. 

At eighteen Jenny was in great shape, the effects of a sedentary job and child bearing still in the future.  On our first and only date we headed up to Old Forge and I forgot to check the gas in the tank of my father’s car.

Jenny and I drove up the new Arterial, which ended with a sigh half way up Deerfield Hill, as if it couldn’t wait for the new addition of highway that would stretch over the top of the hill and connect it to the old four-lane at South Trenton. On to Forestport and then to Thendara, over smooth new road since Route 28 had been rebuilt in the late 1950s.

By the way, having watched my older brother buy the only car he could afford and see it break down all the time, often in embarrassing places, and then spend weeks earning money for repairs, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why any teenage boy would want his own vehicle when he could borrow his father’s showroom-fresh late model chariot. Dad didn’t quite see it that way, but I managed to use his car evenings fairly often.

On that Friday night there must have been a terrific party going on in a secret location, because we stopped in three bars normally full of kids on the weekend and each place was empty. I asked Jenny twice if she could think of any place to stop that I had missed. Her shrug told me she didn’t care very much and she said, “Whatever you think.” We pushed on past Old Forge and finally sat down at a sticky table in a quiet dive somewhere south of Inlet, near Eagle Bay. We ordered a beer.

"So," I said, "you're thinking of moving to Syracuse."

"Maybe," she said. "I have to decide whether I'll go to college or get a job, but Syracuse might be a good place for either of those."

"Have you ever thought of going into business for yourself?" I asked.

"No," she laughed, "what would I do?"

"Sell hot dogs," I said. "I got talking to a guy in Yorkville the other day and he makes a good living at it. The cart isn’t that expensive, and you can take out a payment plan."

"I don't think I'd be good at selling hot dogs," she said, her smile now gone.

"Sure you would," I replied.

"I think I will probably find something better to do in life," she said.

"You could sell them wearing a bikini." I said.

She didn't answer.

"For a few years, anyway." I said.

I found it difficult to have a conversation with Jenny. I wasn’t so much tongue tied as I was unable to find any common ground. Of course, without asking very much about how her life was going, I launched into The Story of Dave in 3D and Technicolor, conveniently served up with my own reviews and a self-supplied laugh track. That this approach never worked on any girl didn’t stop me. It was my Magnum Opus at the time and I was sure it deserved an audience.

Jenny was polite, but unimpressed. She didn’t have the wherewithal of the young woman I dated the next year, who one night at the Blue Note in the middle of my lengthy monologue reached across the table and grabbed the front of my sweater. She roughly pulled me toward her as the ash tray went flying and said, “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to break this beer bottle over your head.” A slight young woman, but impressive nonetheless. I always wondered if she wound up killing her husband in the ensuing years.

When Jenny and I got in the car to drive back to Utica, she fell asleep over against the far door, possibly as a self defense against the onslaught of more chatter. Of course, she may have been faking, but a gentleman doesn't inquire. Besides, if it got too quiet I could always talk to myself, an easy task for someone who spent most of his life in his head. I didn't try to wake her until I checked the gas gauge. It sat just above Empty. How the heck did that happen? I had put two dollars worth of gas in the night before. And how did I not notice it on our way up from Utica?

"I think we're running out of gas," I said.'

She said nothing, but stopped breathing.

Finally, she said, "That's not funny."

"I'm not trying to be funny and I didn't arrange this. The tank must be leaking. Don't you smell gas?"

"No," she replied.

"I do," I said.

"We're not spending the night in the car," she said.

"Well, if we have to, we have to," I replied. "You can sleep in the back seat and I'll stay up front."

"You can sleep in the trunk," she said.

"I think my father has a load of stuff in there for St. Vincent de Paul’s."

She didn't respond.  A moment later she pulled her coat over her shoulder, turned away from me and did everything but snore to indicate she was asleep.

I watched the gas gauge very closely, hoping it would stay on the safe side of “E.” There was an all-night gas station on Deerfield Corners in North Utica and I hoped I’d make it there. But by the time we passed through Forestport and turned down Route 12 at Alder Creek, I was sure we'd run out of gas before reaching Utica.

That’s when the tiny NY State Trooper station loomed up on the left. For years I’d seen the little ranch house perched on a rise by the side of Route 12. I remembered a gas pump outside the garage doors beneath the house. I braked and turned left into the driveway. I told Jenny I was going to try to get some gas. There were no other vehicles around. I got out of the car, leaving it running because I'd read that starting a car takes as much gas as driving for fifteen minutes. I climbed the hill to the front door. It was locked and I peered through the little window in the door. No one was inside. What the hell, I thought. Back down in the driveway, I inspected the pump as best I could by the weak light of a floodlight mounted on a utility pole. The nozzle wasn’t locked to the side of the stanchion as I’d once seen on a farm. When I backed the car around and tried to pump gas, I found the electricity to the pump was not turned on.

I really did not want to run out of gas. I didn't know what would happen if we were stranded. I could wish for a friendly Trooper to see us later by the side of the road... maybe the guy who should have been upstairs in the barracks. He might carry a full gas can for just such emergencies. But I doubted it. It was more likely he'd call a tow truck and I'd have to pay a service fee for a man to bring us gas, or even pay for a tow. Either way, it could cost $25. It might cost more. I was just a poor student.

The $25 would have to be taken out of the $100 I had saved so far for a new radio transmitter I had my heart set on, a new rig that would triple my output power. Of course, I could use it only very late at night or blot out every radio and television within a six block radius. I pictured myself throwing the big switch, the house lights dimming, and the power surging through my antenna. Any of those damned birds perched on the wire would go straight to the hereafter with their feathers sticking out in all directions. It would be just my luck to find someday when I got to those pearly gates that St. Peter was a bird lover.

If no rescuer showed up and we never got any gas, Jenny would be forced to spend the night with me. She would hate me. Her mother would probably have me arrested. Well, we were not likely to fall in love and get married anyway, but I have never wanted any woman to hate me. I always felt I was a nice guy. A little self absorbed, maybe. But I had come through my teens and no one had seriously tried to kill me. So I think I was somewhat likeable. My inflated opinion of myself happily leveled off as I reached age twenty. Had it followed a natural arc of ascending absurdity, I would have been impossible to live with. As it was, I was only annoying.

I kept staring at the pump as if I could wish it to turn on and fill up the car with hi-test. Jenny was awake. Through the open window of the car she said, “What are you doing?"

“I’m trying to get some gas from the New York State Police," I said, "because you won't sleep with me." I was exasperated with her pretending to sleep.

My sarcasm was met by silence. I'd call it a cold, stony silence.

I could hear trickling when I stuck the gas nozzle into the car’s filler tube and I hoped at least a tiny amount of gas was flowing into the tank. A kind of siphoning action may have been happening. If I first held the nozzle up in the air and then brought it down and inserted it into the filler tube, a small amount of gas could be heard leaking down the hose and into the tank. I repeated the procedure numerous times while my mind floated to nowhere in particular. I wondered if any part of this technique of raising the hose high in the air before inserting the nozzle into the filler might lend itself to making the act of conception more fruitful. I might be able to patent something here and sell the idea to childless couples. Television was the way to sell an item that promised results and I tried to imagine the artwork, thinking of the TV commercials that sold kitchen devices for $19.95. I’d have to get around the FCC’s ban on prurient advertising, of course, but I might be on to something that could lead to millions in sales and royalties. My fame would certainly embarrass that nun who flunked me in Geometry.

Gassing up by this method would take a while, so I reached in the car and turned the ignition off.  Jenny was sitting ramrod stiff in her seat, staring straight ahead. Her eyes were wide open, like a deer just before it gets run down by a Peterbilt. My heart melted and I knew her derision was in fact fear. I felt awful that she might be afraid of me.

"Jenny," I said, "don't worry. I'm a dope who forgets to put gas in the tank, not someone who would try to take advantage of you. If we have to stay out all night I'll sleep outside on the ground. You can lock yourself in the car. I'll explain everything to your mother and offer to compensate her for her worry."

She turned her head slowly toward me and said, "Compensate her?"

"Well, uh, yes," I said. I'll offer to mow her lawn for a couple of weeks, or maybe ..."

"My brother does the lawn," she said.

"You have a sister, Jenny, not a brother," I said.

"My older brother," she said. "He's married and lives in New Hartford. And he's gonna kill you!"

I repeated the lift and fill procedure a couple of dozen times, all the while worrying that a Trooper would return to the station while I was stealing his gas.  With the engine now off, I couldn’t tell if the gas gauge was ever so slightly heading up away from “E.”

A constant swishing of tires out on Route 12 was interrupted by the sound of a car slowing down and soon it could be seen at the end of the driveway. The headlights described a wide arc as the car turned in. I froze. I heard Jenny say, “What’ll my mother say?”

The car came to a stop just off the road. It could not have sat there for more than five seconds. Then it backed out. The transmission clunked into Drive and the car continued on its way north. I have no idea who it was or why they decided to momentarily stop in the driveway. I could see nothing but headlights out near the road. If it was a Trooper, he almost certainly would have seen our car, but maybe not me since I was standing on the far side of the vehicle. He may have gotten a call on the radio and decided to ignore my car in the driveway until he could check it out later.

In any case, I decided I’d had enough. I'd pumped out only a trickle of gas and risked getting arrested. I held the nozzle up in the air and this time brought it down aimed at the ground and squeezed the handle. Nothing came out. I’d gotten all the free gas I deserved.

“I didn’t do this on purpose,” I told Jenny again as we headed south.

“Your old girlfriend said you did things like this all the time,” she said with a sting in her voice.

“Well, not on purpose,” I said. “We all make mistakes.”

“Yes, we certainly do,” she said witheringly.

The gas gauge needle had moved up slightly, or maybe it was my imagination. Soon it was moving downward past E. As we crested Deerfield Hill, I switched off the ignition, convinced I could coast down the long hill to North Utica.  Today the steering lock on most cars would prevent that while the car is in motion. Soon afterward I began to think I should have just put the car in neutral. Starting the car again would probably take more gas than I saved by turning off the engine. With the engine dead, there was no power steering or power brakes. No alternator, either, and the headlights began to dim. Oh, great. I might make it to the gas station, but my battery would be dead on arrival. Just as I approached a leveling out of Trenton Road where the firehouse is today, at 40 miles per hour I turned the key back on. Instead of using the starter, I slammed the automatic transmission into Drive. It worked and the car started. I probably saved 4 cents worth of gas. A week later my father paid $200 to have the transmission repaired. He gave me that look when he came home from the repair shop, but he knew I would respond to any inquiry with a well practiced countenance of innocence mixed with puzzlement. I’d been working on it for years.

Finally Jenny and I arrived at Deerfield Corners. I left the engine running to charge the battery while I put two dollars in the tank.

By this time Jenny’s mood had improved and she seemed to join in the adventure. Once we were fueled up, she relaxed and laughed about it. You’d have thought we were an old married couple as we discussed one thing or another as I drove up John Street and then on to Cornhill. She laughed at my jokes and I asked her about her life and we got along famously.

I parked the car in front of her house and we sat on her steps, continuing to enjoy our conversation. By then we'd had a terrific evening.

I never saw her again.

I truly cannot remember exactly why we did not go out again. I think I did call her for a second date, but maybe she was not able to arrange her schedule. I would have gotten the point and not asked again. And soon I left to live in New York City. I was home for the weekend a few years later when Mom showed me a newspaper clipping of Jenny's marriage. Mom always saved clippings about my friends, but not if they were arrested. No older brother was mentioned in the write-up.

The night of the gas heist Jenny and I parted friends after an evening of only slightly getting to know each other. We sat outside her house late on that moonlit evening until she had to go inside. I leaned toward her and she put her face up and we kissed. She was a lousy kisser. She may have thought the same of me.

I've never been sure of what a good kisser is anyway. Short of drooling, I suppose any kiss is a good kiss when you have the right person in your arms. I never knew if I was good kisser until I met my wife. It's a good thing she loves me and never thought I was all that annoying, except on our first date when I tried to sum up Aquinas' teaching for her. At least she's never threatened to break a beer bottle over my head. Not in quite a while anyway.

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copyright 2013, David Griffin