CONTINUED: Patron Saint

You could feel sorry for my dopey friend Wendell,  but if you had spent any time watching him cross the road without looking, or riding his lawn tractor to the store when no one could run fast enough to stop him,  you’d realize he must have the hardest working Guardian Angel this side of the Pearly Gates.   They say God protects drunks and fools.  Ordinarily Wendell was neither, until the night thirty years ago when he went out drinking after his freshman biology exam.  He lost control of the Chevy convertible as it spun wildly off the road and crashed  into a sleepy fleabag hotel in the Catskills.  Without a seatbelt, it’s a wonder Wendell stayed in the saddle, so to speak.  The Chevy bashed and bounced off 6 parked cars and a US Mail truck before plowing into Units Number 3 and 4.  The latter was occupied by a young lady and an older man who would have a lot of explaining to do when he got out of the hospital.

 Wendell’s head must have hit every two-by-four as he went flying through the walls of the High Peak Motel.  He hasn’t been the same since.  He lives up the road with a sister, and each day walks down to my place, oblivious to the cars that zoom by him on the busy road.  When he gets to my house,  after wandering on and off the pavement inspecting anything along the side of the road that catches his interest, Wendell stops and waits for me to come out and invite him up on the porch.  He loves to sit for a while in the wooden rocking chairs and explain everything in the universe to me.  Some days I stay inside and feel like I’m hiding.  This goes on all summer and fall, until Wendell flies off to spend the winter with his younger brother in Florida.

 “So, “ I asked Wendell, “Saint Joseph traveled all over 48 states looking for work?”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, “ there’s 50 states now.”

“Oh, I forgot,” I said, “we bought Mexico.”

 “No-o-o! Alabama and Puerto Rica.  You don’t know your geology.  Hahahaha!”

 Wendell loves it when I play the fool, though I’m pretty sure he suspects the ruse.  His sister and her family have grown tired of his banter and his needs …  unfortunate, but understandable … and he seldom has the opportunity to feel important,  or even superior.  So, I often ask his advice on little things.

 “It’s clouding up, Wendell.  Do you think rain is coming?” I said that afternoon.

 

“Rain? Coming? Only one way to tell,” he said.  And with that, he got up from the rocker, stepped off the porch and walked toward the road.  Proudly making a production of the joke he’d just thought up, he shuffled up to the macadam, puts his toes on the edge of the grass as if it was the end of a diving board,  and then bowed way out over the road’s surface.  I cringed, thinking he might lose his balance and fall into the path of an oncoming car.  Leaning even further out, Wendell put his hand to his forehead, shading his eyes like some long ago Hiawatha.  He looked north, then swooped the upper half of his body around and stared off to the south.  Then he turned and ambled back to the porch.

 “Any rain coming?” I asked as Wendell plopped himself back down in the rocker.  I’m a good straight man.

 “Huh?”   He looked truly confused.

 He’d forgotten what he had been about.  His eyes screwed up in thought.  In a moment he would realize he’d lost a conversational thread again and begin to feel bad.

 “Did you see any rain coming up the road?” I reminded him.  “Or anyone on a donkey?”

 “No,” he said,  now deflated.  “This isn’t the road to Jerusalem.”  He was  silent for a few moments, while for the first time I wondered if this might be my Road to Emmaus.  If you weren’t listening in Sunday School, that’s where Christ was disguised as a mere mortal after his resurrection to show people that truth is often hidden.

“You want some coffee, Wendell?”

“I’ve had my two cups today,” he said, "but .... "

I knew he wanted a cup.  He always wants a cup.   He was afraid to break one of the many rules his sister had decreed,  this one to keep him from getting too jittery.

 “You won’t tell anyone I had coffee, will you?” he asked.

“Your caffeine secrets are safe with me,” I said with a chuckle.  I stood up to go in and get two mugs.

 He looked up suddenly and said, “Who is your patron saint?”

“Saint George,” I said, without a thought.

“You mean the guy with the dragons and the round table and all?” he asked.

“No, the guy with the piano, George Gershwin.”

“But he’s Jewish,” said Wendell.

“So is God,” I replied.

 Well,  you’d think I’d just made the funniest joke this side of Paradise.  Wendell laughed and laughed,  and was still giggling when I brought the mugs of coffee out from the kitchen.  I always wrap his in a wash cloth and rubber band, because his hands shake a bit.

 Quiet for a moment, we sipped our coffee.  While Wendell was thinking about God-knows-what, I sat and thought of all the things inside the house I needed to do … a package to wrap, the refrigerator ice maker to fix, the ….

 “I have a patron saint,” said Wendell.

“Who’s that,” I asked.

“You,” he replied, without looking at me.

 Ah, me.  What could I say to that?  It’s a heavy responsibility to be someone’s patron saint, I was thinking.  Still,  I’ve never received a nicer compliment.

 “You could find a better one, Wendell,” I said.

 He looked off the porch to the road.

“Probably,” he said.  “But this one comes with a free cup of coffee.”

copyright 2009, David Griffin

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Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

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CONTINUED: Lunatic

I’d had my eye on Mary Immaculata McGrew since the Christmas dance. I would step out the door on a clear and crisp winter evening and gaze up at the moon, imagining a bright faced Mary Immaculata smiling down on me. I struck up a conversation with the real girl one snowy January afternoon at the bus stop.

“Do you play football, Miss,” I said to her.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Miss,’ Dave.  We’ve been in the same school since the fourth grade.”

“Yes, M’am.”

“Call me Immy,” she said. “Everyone does.”

“Yes, M’am.”

“And no, I don’t play football. I couldn’t carry the ball and my dolls at the same time.”

“The coach wouldn’t like that, Miss.”

Immy looked skyward and then walked away.  Which was too bad, because I was about to ask  her if she knew Easter’s date.  How we got on the subject of dolls I don’t know.

Of course I could have looked up the date in an almanac, but an adolescent boy will take any ordinary chore and turn it into a great quest.  Although I wouldn’t have guessed it, opportunities for such adventures were fast disappearing as adulthood loomed on the horizon with its boring cargo of more sensible alternatives. 

Sensibility was not a shining hallmark of my teenage years.  Half of my life took place in the real the world and the other half in my pituitary gland as it pumped out confused hormones that argued with each other like a pack of fighting wolves rolling around in the snow.   Everything was charged with symbol and drama.  Some days I was the successful character in a poorly written melodrama.  On other days I’d get up in the morning feeling like a doomed prisoner, my stomach churning at the prospect of my demise, fearing my execution that morning in front of a firing squad.  Or was it just a squad of questions aimed at me on the Geometry test at ten a.m.?  Reality was a scarce commodity.  A molehill might appear as a mountain and a mountain might not even be noticed.  A mind trying to find its way from boyhood to manhood seldom follows a logical route.

My brain’s cortex  was ill prepared to understand how the path of the moon around the earth and the sun could produce a floating holiday on a calendar where everything else was fixed solid by the sun.

I suppose it’s entirely possible I decided to fathom the moon’s motions as a substitute for my deeper need of figuring out women. No mere boy could understand the feminine and so the problem assumed the guise of figuring out the universe, maybe an easier task.  But a telltale sign of a deeper meaning became obvious: the way I saw the moon, a round orb representing a female face or whatever, dancing around the earth to a 28 day cycle.

In each Thought Experiment I tried to envision the moon’s travel, but Easter continued to hop around the calendar and tease me.  The moon’s capricious female nature refused to fall in line and take a permanent slot on the more regimented and masculine Gregorian calendar. Even the formula for Easter’s date made no sense to me: “The First Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon following the March equinox.”  What the heck was a Paschal Full Moon?

Of course, I didn’t give the path of the moon anywhere near the amount of thought I managed to spend on various aspects of young women.  A huge number of Thought Experiments did not lessen my interest in them.  I certainly sensed the tension they caused in my young life.  But here’s something I may not have realized at the time: the mutual frisson needed for both of us to shine. 

As we got closer to Easter, Immy approached me to ask a couple of dumb questions …  whether I liked a new song on the radio or if I’d seen a particular television show.

“I don’t watch television,” I lied, “because at night I communicate with beings on another planet.”

“Are they relatives or just friends?” she said.

““They have much more fun up there. They go fishing rather than sit in school all day.”

“That’s terrible,” she said. “They’ll never amount to anything in life.”

“I don’t know why I’m having this conversation with you,” I said. “A woman wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly.”

"If you understood perfectly," I said, "you would agree with me!"

“That’s ridiculous.” .

“You women think you can dance around and have holidays on any old date,” I said.  “You may have captured Easter but you’re not getting Christmas.  It will always be on December 25^th.  Forever!”

For some reason, she stopped talking to me again. 

In February the school held a Talent Show and Immy performed a solo ballet on the stage.  It surprised me to see her name on the printed program as I sat in a front row seat where I’d come to heckle a friend when his turn came to play the guitar.  Immy came out from behind the curtain red faced with stage fright.  Her first movements appeared stiff and arthritic.  But soon she was lost in the movements of her body.  So was I.

I can still see Immy in my mind’s eye.  Her limbs and torso were boyish compared to what they would grow into, but her movements were that of a graceful woman.  My God, I thought, she is a beautiful liquid. I wanted to stand up and hold her before she flowed away.

Later that night I dreamed of the moon and Immy, both somehow joined together as a mythic fairy in the forest, peeking around the earth as if it were a giant tree, teasing the sun to shine forth with his strength to illuminate her more brilliantly. To be her best, she needed his attention, his strong light.  To fulfill his purpose, he needed to light her up. 

Immy occupied almost all of my thoughts after that night.  Most of the time I avoided her, although I didn’t know why.  I may have been stuck on the problem of why I wanted her to notice me while at the same time wished she would leave me alone.

I finally made up my mind to speak to her.  Spring had arrived and it was just before Easter of 1957, which turned out splendidly,  occurring on April 21, 1957.   I walked up as she waited for the bus after school.  I had thought about this for days and planned to say something witty, like, “I saw you on the stage.  You danced like it left town without you.”

A warm breeze fluffed her hair as she sat on the bench reading. She looked up when I walked over and stood before her.  There was so much in her eyes.  I couldn’t calculate all of it as my thoughts raced around in my addled brain.  I thought of the fairy peeking around the tree at the sun.  Saying nothing, I simply smiled down at her.  She smiled back, bringing a broad grin across my face. I sat down next to her on the bench and kept quiet, what I do best but not often.  I did nothing but grin like an idiot.  Her bus came before mine, and as she stood to board it, she said in a soft voice I would always remember. “Be nice to me.”  It was the same voice and the same look in her eyes she would give me ten years later on the morning we were married.

copyright 2014 by David Griffin

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CONTINUED: Advice

"Stevenson," he said, "A Democrat is always the working man's friend."

"But I like Ike," she said. "He looks like a President."

"I suppose so," said my father, "but what about Father Gallagher, Mary? He likes Stevenson."

I could tell a provocation when I heard one, even at nine years of age.

"The priests always like Democrats," she said. "Something fishy there."

"That could be sacrilegious, Mary," he said.

My mother didn't respond. She too could tell a provocation when she heard it.  Besides, a proper Irish Catholic woman in 1952 did not play against the Catholic trump card, not in our neighborhood.

"What about the bomb?" she said.

"What bomb?" asked my father.

"The Atomic Bomb," she said.

Dad snorted. "What about the Atomic Bomb?"

"Well, " said my mother, "Ike is a military man. He'd know how to stop one."

"Now, just how would Ike stop an Atomic Bomb, Mary," said my father, becoming exasperated.

"How would I know?" she said, "I’m sure it’s a military secret."

"Uh huh," said my father.

I said nothing.  I was just having fun watching my parents while I memorized five facts about the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. When friends at school described their parents’ bickering, it seemed scary to me.  But Mom and Dad’s quarrels were always amusing, maybe to them, too.  Any squabbles that were not civil presumably took place well away from their children’s ears.

After a moment, Mom came back with an argument less sensible than her first.

"So how do you think Father Gallagher would stop a bomb?" she asked.

"Father Gallagher is a priest," said my father with some emphasis, "he doesn't have to know how to stop a bomb!"

"But it could land here in Cornhill," she said, heat now rising in her voice. “And Gallagher is always talking about the Church protecting us.”

“He means our immortal souls, Mary, not our bodies,” said my father.

“Well at the moment,” she said, “I’m interested in our bodies and the few belongings we have in this ‘vale of tears.’  You’ll care too when the Japs rain fire down from the sky and ruin your new car.”

“Mary, we beat the Japs six years ago.  It’s the Russians we’re worried about now.”

He looked at me and winked. “And I’m using the best car wax I could find in the National Auto store.  At $1.95 for just a small can, I assume the wax is bomb proof.”

“All I’m saying,” continued Mom, “is that Ike knows how to handle the bad guys.

“I think,” said Dad, “that if an Atomic Bomb drops on James Street, no one can save us.”

This bothered me.  “Would we have to move?” I asked. “I don’t want to go back to West Utica”.

“There won’t be any Utica left,” said my father.  “Maybe pieces of it dropping down in Syracuse.”

"That’s the problem for Ike,” said Mom, “where to go first. Should he stop a bomb in Syracuse or Poughkeepsie before he comes to Utica?”

My mother had no idea where Poughkeepsie was, she just liked saying the name.  She pushed out each syllable as she imagined an Indian would, equally accented and with gusto, like a cheerleader after a set shot swooshing through the loop.  Years before a boy in high school had told her she looked like an Indian maiden.  She was as pale as any Irishwomen, but she took it to heart.  She always cheered for the Indians at the movies.  She wrote letters to Rome asking what the hell the hang up was with Kateri Tekatwitha’s canonization to Saint.  Auriesville was her Mormon Temple.

Mom took the peelings over to the garbage can next to the back door.  When she turned back toward Dad and me at the kitchen table,  I  could see the twinkle in her eyes.  It was visible from across the room. 

“Do you think,” she said, “Ike would go to Albany first to save all the bureaucrats and pencil pushers?”

She knew my father’s negative opinion of our state lawmakers and their families on the payroll.

 “I certainly hope not,” said Dad.

My mother harrumphed as she sat down at the table.

“Gallagher would go save the politicians first,” she said.

My father almost laughed at idea of the priest going anywhere to save anyone if we were bombed. 

“I don’t think,” he said, “the good Father will be allowed by his doctor to go on rescue missions.”

“Well, you can’t expect Ike to be everywhere!” said Mom.  “And Father Gallagher is always in some gin mill ....”

"Mary!" interjected my father.

She was steaming up again.  “Admit it! You know Stevenson won’t even try to come here to stop an Atomic Bomb, don’t you?" she said with a flourish.

My father sighed deeply. “Do you really think Ike would?”

“I’m sure he’d send a … what do you call those guys?”

“A go-fer,” said Dad.

“With instructions on how to turn off the bomb,” said Mom. “Maybe Father Gallagher could help.  He’s good at turning things off.  Like the heat in church when the collection wasn’t enough for him.”

Mom got back up and went over to the sink.  Dad said nothing.

My mother continued. “He said Mass that Sunday with his overcoat on.  Can you imagine?  He should have been excommunicated for consecrating the host with his boots on and wearing a coonskin hat he said his nephew gave him.”

 

My father remained quiet as he stared up at the ceiling, grinding his teeth. Then he reached over and put a hand on my arm.

“If you’re ever offered a job as a go-fer when you grow up, ask a lot of questions.”

“Like what, Dad?”

“Like whether you’ll have to carry a Geiger Counter.”

He leaned farther over to me and glanced at my open text book and what I was writing.

“Did you know,” he said, “the man who first spotted land when they reached South America  was never paid the money Columbus promised?  The first land was a small island. The old cheat said he’d seen light in the sky that night and he told the sailor it must be the real mainland. That sailor was just another victim of an owner who held all the cards and had all the rights.”

Dad turned back to my mother and spoke to her in a calm voice.

"I think," he said, "you should vote for Ike."

"No!" she shouted, slamming the potato peeler down on the sink. "I will vote with my husband," she said. "I'll vote for Stevenson."

My father made the best decision he would make all day. He went over to where Mom stood cleaning the potato peeler, kissed her on the back of the neck and without a word left the kitchen.

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David Griffin                copyright 2011/2016   
   

             The   Windswept   Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Helping Out

I’m not sure I know why each of the chores I work on are helpful.  I just have a sense they are.  Call it instinct.  For example, it feels important to bark constantly while the vacuum cleaner is running.  The machine makes a scary high pitched sound, and I guess I’m trying to out-shout it.  Also in this category of what I do selflessly for my old servants is to lick the bottom of the shower almost dry.  Herself doesn’t seem to mind.  Himself does.  You’d think he’d appreciate my efforts, but all he has to say when he catches me is, “If I get Athlete's Foot,  I'll know who to blame.”   If he gets Athlete's Foot, it'll be the first time in twenty years anything athletic has been associated with him.

Among all the chores I perform, the one most helpful ... or so it seems to me ... is to bring home a dead squirrel for supper.  They haven’t cooked one up yet but I continue to pull the little critters through the back door and into the kitchen in the hope they will eventually want to try one.  Their diet is quite unimaginative.  Mine would be too if it weren’t for the great outdoors.

I also defend our home from a variety of truly dangerous characters such as the mail lady, the UPS man (Brown, he’s called) and those weasel-y little future real estate mavens, the Girl Scouts.  I won’t admit I like their cookies.  Because when they see me they want to pick me up and squeeze the daylights out of me.  That hurts, I tell you. Little girls … all they do is compete with each other.  Who gets to hug me first?  Who promises me the most cookies when they are finally shipped in?  And there’s always a girl who really, really, really would like to have a dog like me and would make plans to rescue me from my old servants in the middle of the night, but her current life plan does not allow any emotional commitments, let alone misdemeanor charges.

We haven’t exhausted my list of talents.  If I’ve known you for more than five minutes, I’m really good at just following you around so I can be there in case you need me.  I’ll always walk in front of you and you’ll complain about tripping over me, but in my culture the helper always walks ahead to make the path safe.

My all time favorite … cleaning up dishes and pots and pans.  Himself always wants to whisk them away into the dishwasher before I can get my tongue on any of them. He says he’s worried about my germs.  I wonder why he’s not worried when he licks the remaining ice cream out of the empty dish.  He should let me do it.  I’m the dog, after all.

When I learn to drive, you can be sure I won’t be taking him out for ice cream.

Copyright 2016,  David Griffin

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CONTINUED: The Good Shepherd

  

So in the library we talked and talked  ….. actually, whispered… as we rolled the book cart among the stacks and returned texts and tomes and James Michener best-sellers to their rightful Dewey Decimal homes on the shelves.  Sure,  I would try to kiss her back there in the stacks.  After all, she was a girl and I was a certified  idiot.  She seemed to understand and simply move out of the way. 

When I thought of it, I would wonder  about the two of us,  how a boy and a girl  could just click so completely on an cerebral level and  seemingly not have a  romantic interest in each other.  Or maybe that’s just my memory fooling me again. 

I wasn’t inexperienced with women.  I had dated a girl in high school, after all, and pledged my undying love for ever and a day.  But I lost her telephone number and she found someone else.  Mina  was quite different.  For one thing, she  never looked at me like I was crazy.  She thought what I said had value.  And she always said the neatest things.  She had the deepest thoughts and the coolest ideas about life and love.  I could feel the heat of her mind’s passions when I could get my mind off the heat of her physical attributes.

Her revelation of Harry was unexpected.  She didn’t tell me much about him … hardly anything … but immediately I felt threatened.  I told myself I should not feel anything except happiness for her.  After all, we didn’t have a romantic relationship.  But I wasn’t sure I believed myself.

Mina was an orphan.  She had no family of any note.  She had spent a few years in the 1950’s at the House of the Good Shepherd, an orphanage  just south of the Parkway.  Each morning before breakfast, the children would say a prayer to the Good Shepherd.  He was the grand and beautiful one who took care of his little sheep.   He loved them and was genuinely concerned for their welfare.

The orphanage was torn down in 1954 and replaced by a bowling alley and a regional office of the New York Telephone Company.  The children were placed out to foster families.  Young Mina was taken in by an older childless couple on Kensington Drive.  She was thrilled to have her own sunny bedroom and to sit down each night with “Mom and Dad” and have dinner and talk about where they would go on vacation come summer.  His vacation at the insurance office would be in August this year.  Everything was perfect and each night she would kneel down at her bed with her new doll and look around her room and thank the Good Shepherd for loving her so much. 

She returned from school one afternoon to find her suitcase on the front porch.  There was a note attached saying to wait there and a social worker would pick her up.  The couple had changed their minds.  The doll they had given her was not in the suitcase. She banged on the front door until her hands bled and she screamed into their windows and she cursed them and she vomited and she choked and she cried until she almost died, for Chrissake.  Plain old died.

She told me this one night in the book stacks and it was the only time I ever saw her weep.  Just tears now, there were no sobs.  They had gone off to hide, maybe to harden into a defensive callus for the future. 

Through her tears Mina asked of no one in particular, “How could she have done that?”  I reached out to her, but my hand stopped midway. 

In the summer of 1963 as my graduation approached I got a job offer in New York City.  It was a great opportunity and, truth be told, probably better than I deserved.  Mina was happy for me.   Attending  college part time, her graduation was a couple of years away.  She told me everything she had read that one could see and do in New York.  One evening as we wheeled the book cart back into the stacks, I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.  She looked into my  eyes and I could feel her peer everywhere inside me.  I felt naked, but not the way I would have wanted.  

“Well,” I said, “New York seems awfully far away.”  

“So is the rest of your life,” she said. 

“And I would miss our…..times together,” I said.  She continued to peer into me.  After a moment, I relented and said, “I’m afraid, Mina.   I’ve never been anywhere and I’m afraid.  And…I would miss you.”   I knew she knew it.  She took my hand and brought it to her, opened my palm  and kissed it. 

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “ I’d be home some weekends.  I’d come to see you. Maybe we could actually go out on a date.  Or something.”   She returned my hand, tenderly, and  placed it against my chest.

“But,” she said, “I’m seeing Harry.”

Harry?  Who the  hell was Harry?  She said his name was Harry and when she told me of him I didn’t want to believe her, but I never doubted anything she told me. 

“Who is Harry?” I almost shouted.  “I’ve never heard you talk about him.”   She looked up from my hand and said,  “You could say he’s  the Good Shepherd.”  

Mina never mentioned Harry again and neither did I.   I tried to, but like the time I had reached out to her and stopped halfway,  I knew there was something I didn’t want to touch or couldn’t touch.   I imagined it to be a kind of strength that wasn’t mine to investigate.  I didn’t want to hear the truth.  To this day I don’t know what I wanted to hear.

In two weeks the final semester ended and I was headed down the Thruway on a Greyhound bus.

I  was excited  and gloomy and scared all at once and I thought of Mina.  She had been right.  The rest of my life seemed a long way away.

I called her once from New York in late October.  She was civil, but distant.  I had lost my shepherd, but I wished for Mina the good fortune of finding her own.  I never saw or spoke to her again.

                                  ---o---

In the 1970’s the newspaper viewing room at the Utica Public Library was located on the second floor, hidden away in a corner and piled high with old papers and boxes of little coils of microfilm.  It was easier back then to find a parking space near the building and then make one’s way through the ornate and beautiful lobby up the staircase and toward the front windows overlooking Genesee St. 

Each week or so I would drive in from Syracuse where I was in graduate school working on my final project.    Sometimes I would bring my wife and two children and drop them off at my parents’ home on my way to the library.  

Rolling through the microfilm of the past 3 years’ newspapers and taking notes was tedious.  If I had known someday there would be an Internet and Google I would have seriously thought of delaying my thesis for 20 years.  For a break, after going outside for a smoke, I would often look through obituaries for the fun of it.  Not because death is humorous, but the family names and street names mentioned would often bring back memories and take my mind away from the task at hand.  On page three:

Shepherd, Harry Brent,  age 72, of Kensington Drive.  At rest on  September 23, 1973.  Devoted husband of Mina Hurley Shepherd.   Mr. Shepherd was a retired insurance broker and had previously been married to the  late Irene Lassely Shepherd, who died June 12, 1958.  There were  no children.

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David Griffin, copyright 2007/2016

CONTINUED: The Dupont Gunslinger

It should be noted here that the knife Dad bought me was an "el cheapo" and didn't hold a cutting edge for beans, even while whittling wood. Being the snoopy kid that I was, I found in Dad's dresser in the bedroom where he hid his special jack knife, with a really sharp blade that he used when we had to castrate pigs. That knife was really great for whittling and I don't believe that Dad ever caught on to what I was doing with it, cause I always put it back where I found it after I was done but he had to wonder sometimes about why it didn't hold the fine edge on the cutting blade. If the pigs complained, their complaints were pretty much contained in the squealing they did while the "operation" was performed on them. I still have that knife somewhere around our house today. I also carry a scar on one finger of my left hand where that knife sorta slipped one time and got me, but at least I was cutting away from my body (like Dad taught me to) and all I got was a deep cut that was fixed up with a bandage and carbolic salve. No 911 calls back in those days.

I got to be a pretty good wooden gun maker and along the way, branched off into leather work to make holsters for the wooden guns.

The only leather I had to work with was from old "high cut" boots or pieces of old harnesses that had become obsolete when Dad got the new tractor and the horses had to go.

Do you remember the "high cut boots?" Some called them "High Tops". They came to almost knee high and laced partway up the front and finished with the little hooks for speed lacing. Old photos show that they were the only fashionable footwear for hunters or engineers to wear out in the wilds. As for kids high cut boots, the pictures in the old Sears and Roebuck that really made this kid's mouth water showed the boots that had a nifty little pocket with a snap, sewed on the side of the right boot, and that pocket could hold your nifty Jack Knife. Boy oh Boy, how I wanted a pair of boots like that, but here comes the old refrain I keep singing-----my folks just couldn't afford the extra cost of frills like that. So I never got a pair of "high cuts" that I dreamed about.

Working with that old leather was not easy cause all I had to work with was my jack knife, and a nail for poking holes. To hold pieces of leather together, I poked holes with the nail and then using copper wire I salvaged from an old Model "T" coil that I broke apart, I could poke the wire through the holes and make a passable job of "sewing" the pieces together to make a holster and belt. My first holsters were kinda crude, but when Herbie Tischauser got a store bought Roy Rodgers pistol, holster and belt for Christmas and brought it to school, I saw a way to make a much better holster for my "piece".

Eventually, my side arms were upgraded to cap guns but I had to hang in there with homemade leather holsters and belts.

Fourth of July brought out the fireworks for more realistic sounds to go with the play guns. My folks would give me, when I got old enough and they could afford it, an allowance of maybe fifty cents or up to a whole dollar to buy fireworks in town at the Five and Dime Store, next to Mees's Drug Store. The store would stock up on fireworks for the occasion, and for a whole dollar, you could lay in a good supply of firecrackers and caps for my cap gun. The firecrackers were five or ten cents per package and five cents would buy you a box of rolled caps for your automatic gun or a box of disk caps for a six shooter revolver. Bottle rockets were cheap and fun but I don't remember that they had the M-80, the really powerful fire cracker you can buy nowadays.

The firecrackers were used for all kinds of fun, including blowing up ant hills and putting under tin cans to see how high they would fly. We had a three foot piece of half inch pipe that was pounded shut at one end and bent kinda like a gun stock, so when a firecracker was put in the other end and lit, it would make a passable shotgun.

I learned a valuable lesson the hard way one time when I stupidly put a firecracker in one end of an open pipe, lit it, and then sighted through the pipe from the other end so I wouldn't miss what I was shooting at. I was one lucky kid when it went off, cause all it did was scare the crap out of me without causing any harm to my eye. I never did fess up to my stupidity to anyone, especially my folks, cause I was afraid they would say-----no more fireworks.

My folks had an old cap and ball musket upstairs in the "seed room" that occasionally they would let us kids bring down and use for a firecracker gun, but then we had to put it back. I am glad now that they did not let us kids 'play it to pieces', because that old gun, (I think Dad bought it at an auction somewhere) now hangs on the wall of our family room where I still appreciate the old memories it brings about.

I continued my manufacture of wooden guns way into my high school years. One of my classes was woodworking down in the Agricultural building where us FFA {Future Farmers of America) took shop classes. I was working on a three legged milking stool for a project which was to be made out of a piece of 2 by 10 plank, and I saw an opportunity to make a round drum---- for a Wooden Thompson Sub-Machine Gun that I was building at home ----out of the same plank. That round Thomson Drum, to hold those imaginary wooden bullets, was a lot harder to make than the milking stool but Mr. Polich, the Agriculture teacher did not seem to mind that I was goofing off on another, not especially authorized, project and passed me anyway.

So----that's it readers, for this little story about the Kid Gun Collector and his wooden weapons. One of these days I will get around to a story about the real shootin' irons that we got into when we got older and responsible enough to carry them around.

 copyright 2016, Harold Ratzburg

CONTINUED Beautiful Baby

I happened one afternoon to pick on a young woman I knew only slightly from seeing her around the college campus from time to time.  She would eventually become my wife, but that winter day as I sat down across from her at a large oak library table my major intent was just to get her to talk to me.

She didn’t look up while I removed my jacket, sat down and arranged my books and notes. 

I let a few minutes pass before I spoke.

“You know,” I said, “I was a beautiful baby.  My mother entered my picture in numerous contests.”

She looked up at me, glanced behind her as if I was hopefully speaking to someone else, stared back at me for a half second and quickly lowered her eyes back to her books.  She didn’t speak.  She ignored me.

After a few moments, I pulled out my favorite baby photo, passed it across the table and waited for her response.  The baby in the photo was really me.  And I was really ugly.  Or so everyone told me.  Actually, I thought I was kind of cute, but admittedly not very cuddly.  In the snapshot I was well past six months of age and as bald and chinless as a white zucchini.  There was a remnant of drool on my chin, probably just wiped away by Mom before she took the shot.  The girl glanced at the photo, but pointedly did not touch it.

I waited for some kind of verbal response. It was not forthcoming.  From previous victims of this ruse I knew her reaction might be anything.  Some folks surprised me. A lady pastor at a funeral once turned away from me and began a conversation with the corpse.  But most often I’d get a laugh, or a quick darting of the eyes my way as if to ask if I was serious.  Not often there were hollow words of admiration and fawning smiles worthy of an acting award.  In any case, the ice would be broken and I might find a new conversation partner with a sense of humor.  Or not.

 This girl had done no more than glance my way with raised eyebrows suggesting I was crazy.  I stayed quiet and bided my time, occasionally looking up from my reading to secretly admire her hair, her nose, whatever.  Finally she tilted her head up at me and asked if I knew what time it was.  She made no attempt to hide her wrist watch,

“You know,” I said, ignoring her attempt to take me off my path, “I always wondered who took the photo.”

“Why?” she said.  “Did you want to get even with them?”

“I had thought,” I said, “my father was the only person in our house who knew how to use a camera in 1943.  But my Dad thought of himself as an artistic photographer and shot everything at weird cockeyed angles.  This picture was just a straight snap shot.”

The girl looked up at me again.  I could see the beginning of a smile.  Only the beginning.

“So,” she said, “your mother didn’t want the photo any worse than it had to be and shot the picture herself.”

“Yes,” I said.  “But when I asked her why she took the photo, she said she knew I’d grow up very handsome and this would prove a person could start anywhere.”

She brought the photo closer to her with one finger and stared down at it with a furrowed brow.  Then she looked up at me, a sparkle in her blue eyes.

“When do you plan to start?” she said.

When I look back to my younger days, I often wonder why I thought I was funny.  In business I found few people who thought my jokes humorous and most believed I was just being silly.  Probably a few had the insight to see my attempts at humor as no more than a plea for anyone to notice me.

There’s always something going on when we look deeper.  We often use humor to hide something or hide ourselves.    

The joke may be a veiled revelation of feelings we want to express in a straightforward manner but for some reason cannot.  In the library that afternoon, I wanted to say, “Let me take you home to my nest and we’ll stay there forever.” But of course I couldn’t.  My humor covered up a desire on my part that would have been inappropriate to express in our first meeting

Humor can sometimes hide a plea for help, but probably more often we’re asking for approval.

Perhaps most pressing as a young man was my concern over what others thought of me.  Now that I’m older, I care far less.  Whether I’m worthy of anyone’s praise is for other people to worry about.  I don’t need to know what people think of me unless they are carrying a weapon. 

Because I wanted to be likeable in my youth, I often gilded the hard things that needed to be said with humor, thus diluting the truth.  It was not easy to tell someone they were making a mistake, for example, when I was too interested in whether they liked me. If I told you what you wanted to hear, because I cared more about what you thought of me than my desire to help you, then I became a caretaker for your issues. Your dilemma had been yours, but when I sugar-coated it, I became a kind of co-conspirator for a problem neither of us needed.

Had I persisted in the use of humor to help us put off a direct approach to disputes, for example, I would not have maintained very many honest relationships.  I would not have said to my siblings things that needed to be said.  Or corrected a co-worker in the few instances over a lifetime of employment when it was honestly necessary and did some good.  Or admitted a fault or an offense for which my spouse rightfully held me accountable.  Or neglected to tell any of those people I loved them.

I have found it better to spend more time worrying about the welfare of others rather than engage in a guessing game about what they think of me.  And what they may think of me is, in the final analysis, of no consequence to me at this point.

I eventually grew some hair.  Not a lot, but enough to keep my brains warm and thinking.  However, I never trust a decision I’ve made in January.  I depend upon the girl from the library to lend some sanity to my life.

To be honest, Mom never entered me in a Beautiful Baby Contest.  You probably guessed that, or thought her less than sensible.  But years ago as a joke I posed as a proud mother and sent my baby pictures in to a few contests.  Only one person ever responded.  He was from a local business association and we were acquainted.  Robert’s letter said he’d been given my application and my baby’s photo for extra-special handling.

“What a striking baby you had!” he wrote.  “You must have been terrifically grateful.  That it didn’t bite you.  Did you keep it?”

    

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 copyright 2016 by David Griffin