1. A Shooting in Town
NE HOT SUMMER DAY when
I was about ten, I was
sitting alone on our front porch
when I looked east and saw Jerome, our rotund old
neighbor, carrying a rifle as he walked my way from
where he and his ancient mother
lived three doors away.
I knew that Jerome was
an accurate shooter because he
and Dad would sometimes
shoot rats around Jerome's
barn, and Dad had remarked once that Jerome hardly ever missed a rat.
"Jerome stopped, aimed
his rifle at the dog, and shot
it dead with one bullet."
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Anyway, when Jerome got about halfway to our house with his rifle,
a big dog was trotting along on the other
side of Brown Street--probably
a stray. That same dog had come up to me the previous day
and I had petted it--it seemed pretty friendly.
Jerome stopped walking, aimed
his rifle at the dog, and shot
it dead with one bullet.
Then he lumbered across the
street, grabbed the ex-dog
by one hind leg, and
dragged it over to his
front yard, all the while muttering
loud oaths about how that dog ever got into this world.
I never found out what Jerome did
with the carcass because I went
on into our house, not feeling too well.
I was dumbstruck that
anyone could be allowed
to do such a thing, right there
in town. I told
my parents about this, but
what could they do?
Lesson: Killing is a bad deal.
2. A Shrill Focusing
There had been a big snow
the day before, and I was walking
home from school along
Stilson Street where a stretch of
sidewalk had been shoveled
very straight and neat,
leaving foot-high cliffs of snow on
either side of the bare concrete.
Absentmindedly, I walked
along and rounded
off the neat
top corner of snow,
kicking some
of it down onto the
sidewalk with each step.
"Suddenly Florence's
shrill voice
(my first acquaintance
with her)
scolded me from
her ample front porch...."
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Suddenly Florence's
shrill voice
(my first acquaintance
with her)
scolded me from
her ample front porch--for
wrecking a shoveling
job she had just paid
perfectly good money
to get done.
"Come up here on the porch," she commanded.
Like someone who owned me,
she put a broom in my hands
and ordered me to sweep up
all the snow I had kicked
down.
I dutifully did, and it took an embarrassingly long time.
When I returned
the broom to her, she softened
into "I hope I wasn't
too harsh with you.
I can see that you probably
didn't mean to do it.
Were you daydreaming?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
Lesson: When you mess up, people can own you with their tone of voice.
3. Wayne's Hardware Store
"Wayne's laugh,
once it got going,
sounded like a 2-cylinder
John Deere tractor at
a little above idle."
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Humor and hardware
came together whenever
Wayne was in
his store. His laugh,
once it got going,
sounded like a 2-cylinder
John Deere tractor at
a little above idle.
Every time Dad
and I would stop in (and we seldom really needed any hardware), Wayne would banter with us and tell
us a new story.
One of the stories I remember was that
a backwoods father had confronted
his son about possibly
having tipped over the
family outhouse. The
son, thinking to save
himself with honesty,
replied: "I've read about
how George Washington
confessed to chopping
down his father's cherry
tree, so I must be honest,
Paw, and tell you that I
did tip the outhouse over."
"That's a nice try, son," said the father,
"but there's one big difference:
George Washington's father
wasn't sitting in the cherry
tree at the time."
Then Wayne's laugh would
come to life like our old
flywheel-cranked Model A John Deere,
catching and firing.
Another time Wayne passed along to us
the championship lie from
the year's National Liar's Contest, which was:
"I have a grandfather clock
which is so old that the shadow
of its swinging pendulum has worn
a hole in the back of the case."
Lesson: Hardware is human; humor, divine.
4. How Cold It Can Get
When there was snow
and ice on the ground
I couldn't use my bicycle
for delivering the Ottawa
newspapers, so the route always
took longer then and
wore me out.
"Whenever the wind was very
strong and cold from the
north or northwest,
I wasn't sure
I would live through it."
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There was one house on
my route which required walking up north of town
a quarter mile, and
whenever the wind was very
strong and cold from the
north or northwest,
I wasn't sure
I would live through it.
No houses or
trees were beside the road along the way to slow the wind down.
One night when I was about twelve years old I came back home
to report an unusual phenomenon
to the rest of the family,
who were already eating supper in the kitchen.
Dad asked me, "Was it cold out there tonight?"
I said, "Yeah--it was so cold that when
my nose ran, the mucus would
freeze before it got down to my upper lip."
Dad wasn't impressed by this observation at all, and he
scolded me: "Can't you see that we're
all eating supper here? Now
don't say things like that."
Lesson: When trying to impress, always consider context.
5. A Sorry Quarry
I was 16 and Dad
had given me thorough
mechanical and safety
instructions on how to
use his .22 pistol.
I was never to have it out
when kids were around
and was only to use it
for target practice or
shooting pests like rats
and gophers.
We had an old wooden shed
behind our house which
would collect forgotten
miscellany for a period of several
years and then, with grand human
effort, get cleaned out in order to
again collect forgotten
miscellany for several more years,
world without end.
Not much miscellany was inside the shed this particular summer
and you could actually
walk around inside it. The shed's
outside north wall sported a large parabolic rat hole
such as you would see in Tom
and Jerry cartoons. Rats
had chewed it out of
the clapboard siding for access to their
nests beneath the shed's
wooden floor.
"I saw
a rat scurrying through that
hole to get under the shed,
so I decided to go get Dad's
pistol and see what could
be done."
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One day while in the back
yard feeding our three geese, I saw
a rat scurrying through that
hole to get under the shed,
so I decided to go get Dad's
pistol and see what could
be done. Nobody else was
around that day.
I went to his bookcase and
pulled the main part of the
pistol out from where it was hidden behind some
books, and then to the
fireplace mantel to pick up
the cylinder, which always had
bullets in it. I
was forbidden to assemble the pistol
inside the house,
and I never did.
I then walked out back, assembled the pistol, quietly entered the shed,
and peered down with my head stuck through the open north window. I also pointed
the pistol straight down at
the rat hole and just waited.
Before long a rat
stuck its head out through
the hole and looked around. I shot him and
got him.
My feelings of triumph
were surprisingly mixed. The
rat had never bothered me
personally, but you were
just supposed to shoot
rats. I was a hero but
a murderer. Dad would
praise me when he came
home, but I felt dirty
inside. There was no
cure for this ugly feeling except time.
Lesson: Killing is a bad deal.
6. Canine Chemistry
Earlville in the 1950's allowed dogs
as much freedom as it did
people. Dogs weren't walked with a leash or tied up or scooped behind
or fenced in or dogcaught as
are their descendants in modern suburbia.
On my paper route a common
experience was to be barked at, nipped at, lunged at,
or bitten by a frenetic dog.
"So one day I filled my squirt gun with the proper mix of water and ammonia."
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I would receive all kinds of advice from people for
handling dogs, but nothing really worked.
Once somebody told me
that I could fill a toy squirt gun
with ammonia water and use
that for self-defense--the ammonia would irritate the dog's eyes and make it stay away. So one day I filled my squirt gun with the proper mix of water and ammonia.
Skippy, the most ill-tempered dog
on my paper route,
belonged, appropriately enough, to the
most
ill-tempered couple in town, and this 15-pound terror-terrier
was forever
harassing me. It was a darn shame
that Skippy would sometimes tear up his mean owners' newspaper
after I tossed it inside their screen door,
but that behavior was beyond my control.
On this particular day Skippy was loose outdoors for some reason, and he rushed at
me with furious barking as
if to bite me. I whipped out
my ammonia gun and shot
a squirt at him. Probably
only a few millidrops actually hit him,
but he immediately became even more
furious. He didn't actually bite me, but the ammonia was no help at all.
At the end of my route that day I discovered
that the ammonia had
gummed up the works
inside my squirt gun,
which wouldn't squirt properly anymore.
I threw away the squirt gun and the whole idea.
Lesson: Chemical warfare is iffy at best.
7. Striking Out the Shed
I was 11 years old and was already playing
in Little League Baseball.
My observation at that
time was that the pitchers
received all the glory, and I
coveted that position.
I played left field for a
while, and later the coach moved me to shortstop as
I became more skilled, and finally to
first base near the
end of the season. But
being a pitcher was my dream.
One problem was that
my aim wasn't very precise,
and another problem was
that I couldn't throw the ball
fast enough. Those are problems for an aspiring pitcher.
"I chalked a big square on
the north outside wall of our back shed
to represent the strike
zone for an average Little League batter."
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I determined to throw
harder and more accurately,
so at home I chalked a big square on
the north outside wall of our back shed
to represent the strike
zone for an average Little League batter.
Whenever I could, I would practice throwing the
baseball hard at the shed,
keeping track of how many
pitches were hitting the strike zone
and how many were missing it.
Whap. Whap. Whap.
I fancied myself a dangerous new
pitcher in the making.
I was improving a little, I think,
until one day I saw
that a siding board on the shed had
developed a crack about
where I'd been throwing
the ball. I must be getting stronger
to be able to do this, I thought, so
I kept on pitching the baseball
at the shed with renewed vigor.
After a few days that crack
had widened, and finally,
with one mighty pitch,
I broke a hole through the siding
and a piece of board fell down inside.
Wow, I said to myself,
it's amazing what a little
baseball can do.
A couple of days later Dad and I were
walking in the back yard and he spotted
the hole in the shed.
"What's this?"
he asked me.
"Oh, I was
throwing my baseball
at the shed and I guess
I threw too hard." was
my braggart's apology.
Dad was not impressed
in the least. "You mean
you saw this starting to
happen and you kept on
throwing until the siding board broke?
I can't believe you'd be
so stupid."
I never did become a pitcher.
Pitchers have to be fast,
accurate, and above all, smart.
Lesson: Power can be stupid.
8. A Close Call
One winter's night around 6 p.m.
I had been delivering newspapers up north of that
windy quarter-mile stretch north of town
and was walking south back toward town through the snow.
I was 14 and far too young to die.
"As the car
came closer it appeared that the driver
had spotted me and was heading straight for me
on the shoulder in an attempt to run me down."
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Coming out of town toward me were the wavering headlights
of a car being driven fast and erratically.
I stepped
off the left side of the road to be cautious, but as the car
came closer it appeared that the driver
had spotted me and was heading straight for me
on the shoulder in an attempt to run me down.
I completely stopped thinking (as people do
in such moments) and darted away from the left shoulder out in front
of the car to escape the threat of being
splattered into the ditch. I barely cleared the front
of the car and escaped being hit,
then ran toward town as fast as I could plop my
heavy four-buckle boots along the pavement.
At a safer distance from
the maniac car, and completely exhausted, I looked back and saw that the driver, a man,
had stopped his car and was getting out.
Now what? I was
breathing
so hard from the exertion of running that I doubted I
could escape another attack from him. I walked south into town
and he drove on north.
The next day at school I found out that this death driver
had been a high school boy who lived in
the house where
I had just been delivering a newspaper, and that he was probably
driving more carelessly than homicidally.
But whichever stupidity was prevailing that night, his car's impact could have been lethal.
I didn't dare tell my parents about this close call because they would probably make me give up my paper route.
Lesson: Getting killed is a bad deal.
9. Birthday Glory
The evening of my 12th birthday began with a
Little League baseball
game on the Earlville High School ball diamond. My
coach and the rest of the team had been impressed by
my having hit a triple in the
opening game of the season, so they were
always peppering me with
"Get a triple, Harry! Get
a triple! We know you can do it!"
Harry was my nickname.
Bernard, my coach,
was also
my mother's first cousin.
After those Little League days he continued to call me Harry until
he died twenty years later.
"The pitcher's first offering
was a fat one and I nailed it for
a home run."
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My first turn at bat culminated in a walk. Nothing
exciting. My second time
up, the bases were loaded
and my teammates were yelling their usual
"Come on, Harry! Drive everybody in.
You can do it!" The pitcher's first offering
was a fat one and I nailed it for
a home run. Our low-budget baseball field had no
outfield fence, so the opposing
team didn't get the ball thrown back into
the infield until long after I had crossed
home plate. From my team there was backslapping and
"Way to go, Harry! We knew
you could do it." Such glory.
My third time at bat, with nobody
on base, I watched a few questionable
pitches go by. "Look for the
good one, Harry! Hit another
homer, Harry!" Then a fat
pitch came in and I hit it pretty
deep into right field. It wasn't hit
as hard as my earlier home run, so I ran
as fast as I could. After I crossed
second base the shortstop bobbled the throw coming in from right field. I took a chance
and ran around third base and sprinted toward home plate. It was a reckless move, but I crossed the
plate just ahead of the throw
to the catcher and was safe.
The cheerings were crazed now, and
the backslappings were manifold.
"Nice job, Harry! Keep it up, Harry!"
I was in Harry heaven, it seemed.
Next time I went to bat, everyone was screaming for
another homer, and I was psyched up for
another one, but instead I hit a low
single to right field. Teammates
and crowd cheered anyway.
"That's okay, Harry. They can't
all be homers! Get around those
bases now!" Our team won the game,
and I had tasted glory knowing that my family was in the stands.
At home after the game my family had a birthday
party for me,
during which I drank tremendous quantities of
Kool-Aid and ate far too much cake.
When I went to bed that night,
I was all Harry the Hero. 12 years old now.
Two home runs.
On and on went my mind while my stomach,
filled with Kool-Aid and cake, was feeling worse and worse.
There was no sleep until halfway
through the night.
Lesson: Glory isn't a natural state, but it's fun while it lasts.
10. Rat Stampede
Shelling corn on the farm was always
a big occasion. Ear corn was
stored for several months in the crib because it dried better while
on the cobs and would bring a better price if you didn't sell it at the time of harvest rush. Today's technology of shelling corn in
the field with a combine and drying it with heat wasn't yet widely used.
Dad and Uncle Bob would hire John and Elmer each year to come to the farm
with their loud, complicated corn sheller that was mounted on a truck bed. All hands had
to be there early on shelling day to help make the job go faster.
"Our job was
to stand between the corn crib and
the barn...and kill all the rats we could as they
ran away from the emptying crib toward the barn."
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It was time to shell corn at Uncle Bob's farm, and the rats that year had been
especially plentiful in his corn crib. Uncle Bob's son (my cousin)
Tom was 13 and I was 14. Our job was
to stand between the corn crib and
the barn (which were about 25 feet apart) with ball-bat-length
2-by-2 clubs and kill all the rats we could as they
ran away from the emptying crib toward the barn.
After the shelling started and the rats were stampeding, we found this task to be great sport.
Some rats got away, since there were so many, but we
clubbed many of them to death and made piles of
their bodies as the shelling
progressed.
Uncle Bob's dog Spot was a big help too.
A fine farm mongrel, small and bearing mottled markings which no one
questioned, he was considered
a valuable part of the team. As the rat exodus picked up speed, so did Tom's and my efforts
at transporting those freeloaders into rat heaven.
At one point a big rat ran between Spot and me
and I swung hard at it just as
Spot independently made a lunge for it. Spot grabbed the rat at the very moment my club came down and actually broke in two over the top of the poor dog's
skull. I was excruciatingly flummoxed.
Spot immediately rolled over on his side as if he were dying, and he was emitting
horrible howls of agony: Awwwr
Awwwr Awwwr Awwwr (but an
octave higher). I thought I had killed him.
Uncle Bob came right over, but
he had no idea what to do or say.
He picked up Spot and carried him away.
After this incident, Tom and I felt far less
gusto for killing rats,
but we continued doing our assigned job until the
corn shelling was finished, around noon.
That afternoon
we saw Spot walking around the barnyard
again, apparently recovered
from his trauma. He lived to be an old dog.
I don't remember what Dad and Uncle Bob
did with those heaps of dead rats.
Lesson: Killing is a bad deal.
