My third grade year I discovered Bill. He could be kind of abusive, but was a friend nonetheless. In fact, he was my only friend. Compared to constantly getting taunted and having my books repeatedly knocked out of my hands and kicked down the hall, I wasn’t complaining. Still, I cried easily, and he would sometimes spitefully kick me really hard, especially in the groin, to show off around his other friends. I’d start bawling and catch even more flak because of it.
Looking back, I am sure if I would not have clung to him so tightly he would have been a lot less likely to have tired of my company. But I was desperate for anyone who was willing to hang out with me, and I did not think anyone else would want to. I knew I was a social reject, an outcast that was frantic to find friendship wherever it could be found. For that reason many of the people I hung out with were also social rejects: the people no one else wanted to be around. Most of time I spent alone with my head down, avoiding the gaze of other people.
Sometimes Bill could be really cool to hang out with, and taught me how to fold fancy paper airplanes on one occasion. Probably his all-time biggest claim to fame, however, were his “blow-cars.”These contraptions were usually designed by drawing the top of a racing car’s body and cutting it out, then rolling up a couple of small pieces of paper and gluing them on the bottom for the wheels. We would then bend up the spoiler, crouch down behind it and blow to propel it across the desk.
He also showed me how to fold paper throwing stars and footballs. These were triangular shaped creations held between the thumb and index finger with one hand and flipped with the other at a person or object such as a “field goal” consisting of the person holding their hands up, index fingers extended and thumbs touching to form the square goal posts. We also checked out a Japanese paper-folding1 book from the school library and were able to fold the birds that flap their wings when you hold their body and pull on their tail. I couldn’t hope to make one from memory now if my life depended on it.
When he wasn’t there, I would get bummed out and I often battled depression anyway. I was desperate for a friend and did not think life had too much to look forward to. We were required to keep a diary in class, and I wrote in it without really thinking I had anything to say. On the days he was there, he always surfaced as the journal’s highlight. I had forgotten how depressive I was then until my mom sent it to me, and I reread for myself one dismal entry after another. It was a lot more insightful than I had given it credit for at the time.
On a more positive note, I am thankful I spent a lot of time reading. I devoured books, partly as a form of escape. Little did I realize the kind of implications reading so often has. Among many things it increased my vocabulary, broadened my level and range of awareness and helped develop my natural aptitude for writing. Reading is a key to the gateway of the mind, and its long-term effects are obvious, though I was blind to them as a kid.
I was obsessed with my Arizona roots. In my own mind I had built the state into a lost paradise. One year my family decided to vacation there. Imagine my delight! We took Vicky’s car and stopped at my cousin and her husband’s house. We had not much more than gotten through the door when we heard an explosion. We jokingly told Vicky, “There goes your car.” We weren’t laughing for very long.
We heard a knock on the door, and a neighbor was standing there asking if the little green Chevy Citation belonged to us. It was her car! It had somehow caught fire, and the fire department had bashed her windows out since it was locked. She was sick! She chose to look at it on the bright side, though. She told me she trusted God, and He was using this to draw her closer to Him and that it would accomplish something far better in the end. I guess she was right, at least on the second point, because she ended up getting a much nicer car, though it must have given her faith a good shaking.
Anyway, we decided to continue on with the vacation. My dad caught the Greyhound bus back home and drove the car back. We had a good time in Arizona, and I enjoyed myself. I’m not sure it was quite the utopia I had envisioned, but nonetheless . . .
It was beautiful, and I marveled at the deeper blue of the western sky compared to Missouri. I took a lot of pictures and still have a few somewhere. The only scary part of the mountain camping trip was getting lost in the pine trees. I decided to venture off by myself and was right next to the camp, I just did not realize it. I was more than a little relived to see Mom and Dad again. Altogether too soon, the vacation ended, and it was back to the dreariness of life as we know it.
I tried going to church camp with my sister’s church in Olathe, Kansas several times as a kid. The first time I did not enjoy the camp at all. There was very little to do, and we’d do silly things to occupy the boredom, like swing on the ropes on the flagpole, or catch crawdads (or crayfish, if you prefer) and eat their tails. We did get to ride horses, watch movies, and a few other things, so it wasn’t all bad.
The camp had a natural spring that I spent quite a bit of time playing around. I was near the edge one day when some of the older kids pushed me in. This was a major contributing factor to my phobia of water. Fortunately, I blacked out and floated to the surface. When I finally clawed my way out my good leather boots were filled with water. A group of kids had crowded around, laughing as I sputtered for breath. After that incident, I was deathly afraid of water.
Even at that, I tried it a couple more times with West Side Church of the Nazarene, my sister’s home church in Olathe, Kansas. Most of my experiences were a little traumatic. I did do some interesting things like making leather crafts and so on, but for the most part I was too sheltered and had too few friends to enjoy it, though I would probably love going to something like that now. Church kids can be some of the worst, especially when you don’t know them. When they get away from home they have a chance to test those less than angelic wings they’re forbidden to use around home and church.
One day I came home talking about how stupid Boy Scouts was. I had never been in the Scouts before, and I was ranting and raving to my mom as she was standing at the kitchen sink preparing dinner for the evening. I did not have enough bad things to say about it.
The very next day I’d completely changed my mind. I brought home an application from school and begged Mom and Dad to let me join up. They consented and we traveled to Springfield to buy my dark blue uniform and accessories. I stayed in the Scouting program for several years, reaching Weeblo status before I tired of it and dropped out.
I was a pretty fair salesman, and we were selling candy bar sales one year. I did really well, coming in third and earned a number of incentives I got to pick, including a hammock, field glasses, and some camping gear. I fell in love with the hammock, but it soon started falling apart. My folks eventually bought me a better one for Christmas that I still have to this day.
Another thing I did well at was selling cinnamon toothpicks. Several of the kids on the bus were selling them, and I asked them how they did it. Soon I found out and bought a bottle of cinnamon extract from the local pharmacy. I’d then soak toothpicks in it and sell them for a nickel a piece. I easily made my money back and would have made even more, but I couldn’t enforce my credit list.
One scouting memory that stands out in my mind was the Pine Wood Derby, a sort of miniature Indianapolis 500. These cars came as kits through our Scouting Master and included a pine block with two grooves cut into the bottom, five nails (one extra) and four tires. It was up to us to shape and decorate the wooden body. The nails fit the holes in the wheels, forming axles that could be driven solidly into the grooves.
Then, the night of the derby there were two ramps in the school auditorium set up side by side in the center of the floor to race the cars down. Some of the kids had glued washers on the bottom of the cars or suchnot for added weight, but were required to stay under a certain limit. Those who did not had to bore holes in the bottom of their cars with the drill plugged in the back, or else they weren’t allowed to enter the competition. I can’t remember what the prizes were, but I don’t think I even placed. (Sigh!)
Another idea came from the scouting manual. Since the son of a mechanic usually has access to a lot of tools and spare parts, I had soon built my first soapbox car. These homemade vehicles were fueled by gravity, and I just had to have one.
For the main section I used a board about an inch wide and ten inches across and long enough I could sit and fit with room to spare. I drove some heavy nails through the ends of two two-by-fours and bent them over to affix the axles of some old lawnmower tires. I nailed one two-by-four to the bottom rear of the main board, and the other I bolted through the center on the front, allowing it to pivot freely for steering capability. I then fastened a strong rope on either end so that I could pilot it easily.
For a seat back I found an old tanning board for animal skins that I nailed from the bottom of the main board and reinforced it with a two-by-four fastened diagonally from the top of the seat to near the end of the body. I bolted a wooden lever to the side to drag against the road when I needed to stop, ending up replacing it several times. I painted the finished product white and would go on suicide runs down the steep hill on the blacktop road that my folks lived on, first making sure there were no cars coming.
I had a pretty good friend by the name of Scott that spent a few nights with me. He was the first friend Mom and Dad had ever let me have over. He was really interested in my soapbox car, and the two of us rode down the hill together. My brake only worked after a fashion, and we would barrel down the hill, narrowly missing the steep ditch at the bottom of the curve, steering clear just in time, coming to a stop only after the pavement had chewed a large amount of wood off the brake lever.
After riding down the hill several times, the nails holding the axles had begun to bend a little. On our last ride, one of the wheels came off, and we went careening off the pavement into the ditch. I rolled several times and was a little scraped up, but he was riding on the back and got the worst of it. When his mother picked him up, she wasn’t real pleased with me.
That was the same occasion that I lost my privilege to use my pellet gun. Procrastinators that we were, we still had our Christmas lights up around the house, and he was shooting the bulbs out with his pellet gun. That made me mad, so I shot him. In the fight that ensued, I was the one who got busted. My folks did not have much sympathy for me.
Despite the fact we both got a little tired of each other, we were pretty good friends. He came over a few more times, and I visited him at his house. His mom liked me pretty well, even if she was a little put out when her baby came home all dinged up.
My eyes used to weep really badly, and I found it to be very disconcerting. It seemed to be worse around air conditioning, in closed in spaces, or when I was stressed out. Mom and Dad decided to have them checked out. As it were, my tear ducts were not draining properly.
We drove to Springfield to see the eye specialist, and he complimented me after the surgery that I was one of his best patients. The procedure went smoothly. He inserted a long, curved needle down into my ducts, injecting some kind of medicine. Obviously I couldn’t close my eyelids.
Watching the needle was bad enough, but the potion was awful! He could always tell if it was working when it hit the back of my throat. It set of my gag reflex, and it was a permeating, suffocating taste that demanded my undivided attention with its sickening pungency. I just kept gagging and gagging.
We had to come back a second time, and this time my folks bought me a bag of candy. I’m always been a sucker for sugar, but I couldn’t enjoy it because the fluid was all I could taste. We stopped to eat, and I could still taste it even after I finished my meal. It took several hours to completely rid my mouth of the sensation.
About this same time, my folks responded to a radio ad for a used ten-speed bicycle. We drove to Springfield again, and they decided to buy it for me. I think it was about forty dollars. However much it was, we paid too much. It was yellow and we had to recalibrate the hand brakes. I rode it for awhile, but it soon was left leaning up against the house, where it still is sitting, the grass and the vines weaving through the spokes of its flat tires, cementing its rusting frame securely to the wall.
I had always been curious about smoking cigarettes, and we always used a wood stove, so matches were not hard to come by. In fact, First Savings and Loan, where Mom and Dad banked, offered free packs with the FDIC logo on the cover. I often grabbed several and stuck them in my pocket.
I had no idea how to smoke a cigarette, much less how one was made. For the longest time, I thought you blew out rather than sucked in. I rolled up some small, dry paper wads in a section of notebook paper and couldn’t get it to stay lit. The paper wads were so densely packed that I couldn’t get any air through them. I couldn’t figure out why these badly rolled paper wad cigarettes did not work. I got little satisfaction from it, but I guess I came out better than Jeff. Mom and Dad tell the story of his smoking soda pop straws, and he did know to inhale! Uh huh.
My folks have always liked beagles, and they had one they named Heidi. I never really liked that dog and would pester her mercilessly. Heidi had a habit of sleeping in the corner under Mom and Dad’s bed. One day I was stretched out across the bed, leaning over the edge and blowing on her as she was trying to get some sleep. She snarled at me several times, but I was having too much fun and couldn’t take the hint; that is, until she jumped up and bit my face. Her jaws closed over my eye and sunk in my cheek. I was seething, and my mom had very little sympathy for me. She seemed to think I got what I deserved. I can’t fathom what would have given her such an outrageous idea!
And then there was the pet goose I had. There was a girl at school I had a crush on whose name was Nicole, and I’ll bet you’d never guess what I named the goose. I told my folks that I liked the name, though they probably had a better idea of my actual reasoning than what I gave them credit for.
She was still young and golden and hadn’t grown feathers yet. I tied a purple ribbon around her neck and brought her to church with me on a Wednesday night. She was an instant hit. The only problem was, Nicole had never had toilet training. This caused a bit of a stink, to say the least.
I soon became a good friend with Mike. He looked up to me, and the two of us were pretty devious. We spent a lot of time hanging out. We both swore worse than sailors and had a very juvenile interest in sex. I have no idea how many Playboys and Penthouses, etc. we drooled over and laughed at, but it was a bunch.
He spent a lot of time over at my house, and he did not get along too well with his foster parents. I also stayed over at his house a lot, and they were definitely interesting people and none too friendly. Since we looked a lot alike, most of the kids at school thought we were brothers.
My fifth grade year I also had the chance to join band, and I just had to. I wanted to play drums, but Mom and Dad said no way. Since Mike decided to play trumpet and I had access to Jeff’s from his school days, I became a trumpet player too.
Neither one of us were very good because we rarely practiced. Out of four trumpet players, he was usually third chair, and I was usually last. Occasionally I’d practice a little harder and knock him into last chair, but he’d usually practice just enough to turn around and knock me back out.
I also became a pretty good friend of Brian’s. He usually sat in second chair and was later to become a fellow guitar slinger. I limped through until eighth grade, even going so far as to buy a better trumpet from a guy at church. Nevertheless, I never could quite get into the swing of trumpet playing.
Every Christmas Bolivar Elementary had a drawing contest, and winners from every grade would be announced in an awards assembly. Sherry, a very artistic girl, won nearly every year. The winners would always be reprinted in the local newspaper, the Bolivar Herald-Free Press. If non-winners had business sponsors, they would often include their work in their ads, so it was a win-win situation for the kids and the area companies.
My fifth grade year I drew a piece I titled “The Little Town of Bethlehem” after my church roots, as that is where Jesus was born. I had seen some of the Jewish buildings drawn in some of the Sunday School literature and recreated from memory what I’d seen. When it came time for the assembly, the sponsors called out all the names, but paused before they called out the first place winner, mumbling something about not knowing how to pronounce the name. I turned to one of my peers and disgustedly said, “How hard is it to pronounce her name?” thinking of Sherry. Imagine my surprise when I heard my own! I think I won something like five dollars, but it was soon a faded memory like so many things in life.
Table of Contents | Home | About | Newsletter | Forum | Misc. | Contact | Search | Links | Random Page
.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.
