Returning with his drink, Uncle Ernest looked full
of vigor. “Yeah, Moose, when I woke up I knew just what to do. In case of an
emergency I always kept five or six big cigars and a couple of lighters wrapped
in a plastic bag in the pockets of my shorts. Flicking on the lighter, I saw
some sardines sloshing around at my feet. I hesitate to tell you this, but I
ate a couple, I was so hungry. They were tasty but too salty for my palate, for
they made me so thirsty that I pulled out my flask of Ole Granddad from my big
pocket and took a few swigs to calm my nerves. And do you know, Moose, I felt
better right away. Then I began my plan. Do you know what I had in mind?”
“I sure do!” I blurted. “You’re going to use those
cigars to make him sneeze you out.”
“Absolutely true. I smoked all six of those stogies
down to a half-inch butt, and after each one I crawled up and ground out the
burning butt on his tonsils. On the sixth cigar, that old channel cat started
to wheeze; then he sneezed me out … whoosh!
I was propelled to the surface in a hurry, where I took a big breath of fresh
air.
“Treading water and looking all around, I noticed a
ship that looked familiar for some reason and swam towards it. The water was
filthy on the surface, covered with garbage and burnt oil. When I reached the
ship I realized that it was docked in a harbor. I swam to a piling next to it
and shinnied up. Ahhh, I was finally on dry land. Moose, do you know why that
ship looked familiar to me?”
“No idea.”
“That ship happened to be the U.S.S. Constellation, and when I looked off in the distance I saw
the Shot Tower so I knew where I was. That old catfish had taken me to
Baltimore. I was in the famous BaltimoreHarbor.”
“Unbelievable Unk! That catty took you fifty or
sixty miles underwater. I certainly wouldn’t want to travel that way. How did
you feel when you got on dry land? Were you sick?”
“Aww no, Moose, but I sure was wet and smelly,”
Uncle Ernest said, holding his nose. “Believe it or not, I was very hungry, and
when I get back I’ll tell you what I did.”
[To be continued Friday, 3/2/2012]
Uncle Ernest’s favorite hangout was the
Hole-in-the-Wall, on the South Side of the canal in the great town of ChesapeakeCity. Well one morning, Nina, after he
had been drinking all night, and was enjoying a six pack for breakfast, he told
Birdie the Bartender that he had decided to jump off the canal's lift bridge.
When Birdie asked him why in the world he would want to kill himself, Uncle
Ernest answered that he had no intentions of suicide, but wanted to jump just
for the fun of it, the challenge of it.
Uncle Ernest said that he was sure he could survive
the plunge, and that he was going to make the leap as soon as he finished
breakfast. Sure enough, Nina, five minutes after Uncle Ernest left the
Hole-in-the-Wall bar, Birdie saw him at the top of the span, ready to jump.
Some customers came in and by the time Birdie was able to look back Uncle
Ernest had disappeared, so Birdie just shook his head at the silliness of Uncle
Ernest’s boasting.
But one summer afternoon, as Uncle Ernest and I sat
on our front porch swing—the swing I always abused by riding it lengthwise like
an airplane and crashing it into the house and the porch post—I asked him about
the jumping incident. And, Nina, here's the story I got from him.
“That’s
right, Moose,” he said, knuckling my head as always; “I had always wanted to
jump off that bridge … so I did it. I had to gauge the wind direction, which
was blowing towards Ticktown, so I had to walk about forty feet towards ChesapeakeCity in order to land in the middle of
the canal. I’d hate to hit old Joe Schaefer's wharf and bust all those new
planks.”
“Weren’t you scared up there, Unk?” I asked him, as
the swing slowed to a gentle sway.
“Yeah, I was a little, but it was something I had
inside of me; I had to do the deed. I took off my shoes and all my clothes
except for my fatigue shorts, walked carefully to the edge, took a deep breath,
put my left hand high in the air, held my nose with my right, and jumped. It
was a good balanced jump, too; my body hit straight up and I felt the water
envelop me. As I descended I knew everything was all right and opened my eyes.”
“Wow! What did you see? Were there any sharks down
there?”
“No indeed, Moose; there was something worse.”
As I stared at him in awe, he slid his feet on the
concrete floor to stop the swing and got off to go into the house to freshen
his drink. With the swing to myself, I turned and grabbed the chain that held
it on one side and rode it like an airplane. Pulling hard, I propelled the
swing high and fast. It then swayed from side to side, crashed the porch post
on the left and slammed the house front on the right. Slowing the swing down, I
heard Pop yell from the living room: “Cut that out, you fool! Are you trying to
knock the house down?”
Grabbing and stopping the swing, Uncle Ernest slid
heavily in next to me and continued his tale. “As I swam with the current
towards the surface—now Moose, this is hard for you to imagine but—I saw a
hideous creature about two feet from my head. I have never seen anything that
ugly in my entire life, not even in CecilCounty. It was the
wide-open mouth of a Mississippi catfish, an immense channel cat. My guess is
that it was about twelve feet long. I just picked up the sight of its whiskers
and the large dorsal fin before it swallowed me whole.
“What a feeling! I was inside the fish’s belly. It
was utterly dark and I could hear the deep gurgling sounds of his digestive
system. Surprisingly, I was able to breathe because of the supply of air in the
cavity. Everything was all slimy but was more comfortable than you might think,
Moose. The catty then began swimming extremely fast, because I could feel the
tail undulating forcefully. Since there was nothing I could do, I just rested
my head on a piece of driftwood and took a nap.”
“What! You took a nap? How could you have possibly
done that, Unk? You were swallowed by a fish for craps sake!”
“Well, Moose my boy, it was the stress working on
me, for whenever I’m stressed out I have to sleep, and then everything seems to
work out. And, do you know what? My mind worked out a plan during that nap.
I’ll tell you all about it after I fire up this empty glass.” When Uncle Ernest
slipped off, I stretched out lengthwise on the swing, mouth open with
amazement. [To be continued Tuesday, 2/28/2012]
Then Uncle Ernest headed in for a night on the town,
and I was left to watch night descend and listen to the sounds of another dying
day. I got to feeling kind of miserable for some reason, so I walked over to
where the two locust trees stood beside the back of our house and thought about
what happened there last summer. The two trees were about the same size,
sisters probably, nearly thirty feet tall and a foot or so in diameter. I
remember how I used to tie a rope between them and throw a blanket over the
rope to make a dandy tent. I played in there with all sorts of things, and
Wiggsey would always creep into the tent to keep me company.
The summer before, Nina, Old Dave McNolt, the farmer
who tilled our fields, was burning off some brush and almost burned our stable
down. I remember how the flames flickered up the corner of the stable as Old
Dave and Pop threw buckets of water on them. They caught it in time, but some
of the boards were charred black. They’re still there, Nina; I’ll show them to
you if you like.
Now, the incident I want to tell you about happened
that same summer. McNolt had horses, mules, cows, and many other domesticated
farm animals. The cows he’d graze on our fields at times, but the mules and
horses were there often. Well, one of the horses he had was a bad one. You
know, Nina, some animals can be bad just like some people.
At any rate, this horse, a large, brown stallion
named Jack, was wild and hard to manage, and one evening, before McNolt
returned to his farm with the other mules and horses, he had tied Jack to one
of the trees that I used to hold my tent. Jack snorted, whinnied, and stomped
the ground that evening before bedtime.
Let me tell you, Nina, when I woke up the next
morning and looked out the upstairs hall window, I saw the strangest sight.
Jack was lying dead on the ground, strangled on that tree, with his eyeballs
bulging out and his purple tongue dangling to the ground. He had twisted
himself around and down to the bottom of the tree trunk until he had no where
to go, so that his head and neck were snug up against the trunk. He had
struggled valiantly—in one direction only. His enormous body (remember
he was a large work horse) lay fully across the area where I had pitched my
tent a few days before.
And do you believe that Old Dave McNolt didn’t
bother to remove the carcass. In a couple of days the body swelled up to twice
its size, its belly especially, bloating up like a gigantic hairy balloon and
stretching as taut as a bass drum. I remember how nifty it was to look up at
the prostrate Jack as I stood there on the ground, but it was even better to
see it from the hall window upstairs, where I could take in the full absurdity
of it all.
But, do you know, Nina, that as a kid I didn’t think
it was that bad, because my buddy, Junior, and I would climb to the top of that
belly and slide down it. I can still feel my bare feet stepping on that
distended belly, and still feel my fingers digging into that taut, hairy
horsehide as I struggled to reach the top. Yep, we lost an unusual sliding
board, which I’ll bet no other kid ever had, when the flies and the stink got
so bad that Pop had to pay a skinner to haul it away.
Standing there that evening, hands on hips, thinking
about Jack’s misfortune last summer, I had lost track of time. Night had fallen
and a hoot owl from the deep woods broke my trance with his question; I bolted for
the house, and after leaping up the steps and entering, heard the screen door
slam behind me, punctuating the end of another day. [To be
continued Friday, 2/24/2012]
With that, Uncle Ernest went in for another drink and I jumped up and began to wrestle with Wiggsey, my big Chesapeake Bay Retriever. At supper time, Wiggsey would always be under our table, thumping our legs and the chair legs with his long, wagging tail. Wiggsey was always on the alert for table scraps that we’d toss under to him, catching them with a snap of his jaws before they hit the floor. He’d sometimes lick my plate so clean, that it would make less work for Granny, for she could place it right back on the shelf, clean as a whistle. He was also a fine, ever-present, portable napkin. For whenever I ate fried chicken or ribs, I could reach down and wipe my hands on his thick coat.
And Wiggsey could certainly hold his own in a fight. I once watched him kill a huge groundhog after a long, fierce battle. I was amazed that the groundhog could fight so viciously. And do you know what? I skinned and gutted that hog and got Granny to bake it for dinner. To tell the truth, Nina, I don’t recommend groundhog meat; if it’s ever offered to you, pass it by. It has the strongest taste of any wild game I have ever eaten.
Then Uncle Ernest ambled out, played with Wiggsey for a while, and continued his tale. “One evening, Moose, a couple of days after Rocco and I enjoyed the partying life in Rio, I went into Dolph’s hovel just to see if he was as miserable as Ricco had said he was. When I walked in, before I could even say ‘Hi,’ he bellowed, ‘Ock toong, lowlife,’ so I stood up a little straighter from the shock. ‘Are you ready to serve me,’ he sneered in a heavy German accent. ‘Sure thing,’ I answered, humoring him. ‘Sitsen zee alf,’ he commanded. ‘Ick vant eina challenge.’
“And, bragging that he was a great genius of tactics and strategy, he pulled out a chess board and had me help him set up the pieces. He looked at me with small, black, darting eyes, eyes that suited his arrogant voice, eyes of fear and guilt, eyes that peered from within that ridiculous hair-covered face. I could tell that I was dealing with a lunatic. He said that we would play the best out of seven games to decide the battle, as he called it. Well, Moose, he won the first two games. After each victory he raised his hands in the air and cried, ‘Superior! I am superior, the best of the master race.’ "
In the background, Nina, as Uncle Ernest's voice rumbled on, I could hear, as night descended on the farm, the gradually-increasing drone of untold crickets, katydids, frogs, and other living things.
“Then I won the third and he won the fourth," Uncle Ernest went on, "and with that win, he jumped up, snapped his heels together, thrust his arm straight out in some kind of weird salute, and began goose stepping all around the room. Moose, I thought he was going nuts. But then he sat down, sneered at me and said, ‘Let’s go, dumbkopf; Ich vill annihilate you now sehr snell!’ And I must admit that I thought I would lose the match, because I had to win the next three games in a row. But guess what? I did just that. He tried to over-extend his men, tried to advance his pieces in too many directions, and I was able to figure him out and checkmate him three games in a row.
“Well, Dolph was furious. He started shouting obscenities in German, said that I had cheated, and that he would rule the world, and then he screamed that his kind would rule the world for a thousand years, whatever that meant, and as I tried to get out of that shack, away from that madman, he grabbed a German rifle equipped with a glistening bayonet and came after me.”
Uncle Ernest hesitated for a few seconds for effect. The vocal night creatures were louder now, not having to compete with his voice as he related his story, as I sat there entranced with apprehension. Then he continued. “Dolph lunged at my body and, stepping aside, using his own force against him, I flipped him through the air. When he came down he landed on the bayonet and it went through his neck and severed his carotid artery. He died almost immediately, and they buried him next to the manure pile. I felt a bit responsible, yet he really brought about his own end. But could you imagine, Moose, what would happen if that maniac had become a leader of some country that had military power?”
“That would have been a disaster all right,” I said, “because a lot of people would have probably gotten killed for sure.”
“I came on home after that and, do you know, Brazil was fun, but I was glad to be back in the good old U.S. of A.” It was almost fully dark now, and the din of the creatures—as we swung gently, gently, silently—seemed to take control of my brain. And when I looked at Uncle Ernest’s face I could just make out the biggest smile I had ever seen him make. [To be continued Tuesday, 2/21/2012]
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Tales of Uncle Ernest – (Continued)
Section 3, “The Pig” – Chapter 4
When Uncle Ernest traipsed across the lawn to the house to freshen his drink, I swung there, gently, in that whitewashed, wood-slatted swing, under the spell of his tale. Suddenly, I was scolded by our blue jay, which was flitting back and forth on the rim of our water barrel at the corner of the house. And, from an underbrush somewhere on the farm, when I least expected it, I would hear the sharp, clear “bob-white” call of a quail. Then his mate would answer a “bob-bob-white” from some point, either nearer or farther away on the farm.
As Uncle Ernest lumbered toward the swing, the whippoorwills in the deep woods started their love songs; “Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will” echoed their cries, as they echo still in my mind—as if I were sitting there still in that swing as a boy at dusk, under our ancient maple.
“After we settled in,” Uncle Ernest continued. “Ricco took us on a tour of the facility. I mean to tell you, Moose, there were pigs everywhere. We saw piglets with their mothers, shoats scampering around, barrows and gilts at the feeders, and large, lazy sows and boars lounging in the sun and wallowing in the mud puddles.”
“When we entered the farrowing house, an enormous building with two hundred stalls where sows had their litters, we saw a strange sight. Shoveling hog manure from one of the stalls was an odd looking man. He had a full, black beard and large, bushy eyebrows— so much facial hair that it seemed as if he was trying to hide his face, but his head was as bald as an ostrich egg. He was a small man and wore filthy coveralls, and when he saw Ricco he shoved his arm forward and shouted to us, ‘Ock toong, snell, snell!’
“ ‘Shut up, Dolph, and keep shoveling!’ Ricco told him in broken English.”
“Why was Ricco so mean to him?” I asked Uncle Ernest.
“You’ll find out in a few minutes,” Uncle Ernest answered, rising to return to the house once more.
“Great,” I said, leaping off the swing to the grass. While Uncle Ernest was gone I felt pretty good, so I did a few cartwheels, tried a full flip and landed on my back in the grass. Sitting there in pain, I looked up to see a crow rowing effortlessly across the yard. He navigated through the branches nicely, swooped under the clothesline, and, with wings spread and landing gear outstretched, alighted with a sort of upward and backward lurch on the grape arbor post. Settling his feathers with a haughty shuffle, he tilted his head from side to side, pecked at the post a couple of times and, crouching for the spring, flew off towards the stable with a shrill “Caw, caw, caw.” I looked over at the swing and saw Uncle Ernest grinning at me, so I hopped back on and waited for him to continue.
“You know, Moose, Ricco told me that he had no respect at all for that bald-headed Dolph. Ricco said that he was a nasty weasel, and told me everything he knew about him: one evening, about two years before we arrived, a tug boat captain saw a rubber dingy with three people aboard making its way towards the shore. They were coming from the open sea, but the captain didn’t see a vessel of any kind on the horizon. When he looked more closely, however, he saw an object sticking out of the water about 200 feet off shore. Then it hit him: it was a periscope; they came out of a submarine. Later that day, Ricco told us, the three of them came to his hog farm looking for employment.
“Since he needed help at the time, he hired Dolph and his girlfriend, Eve. He told the other man that he could probably get a job at a beef farm five miles down the road. His name was Fox, and Ricco found out later from Eve that he had been some kind of desert fighter in Northern Africa.
“Laughing and slapping his thigh, Ricco told me, in that weird, Portuguese accent: ‘That gal must have thought I was a real country boob to believe that kind of nonsense.’ This is how Ricco explained to us what happened:‘I gave Dolph and Eve a place to stay and explained their duties, but I guess Eve couldn’t stand that goofy Dolph, because a week later she left him and went to live with Fox on the other farm. When I found out what a total jerk Dolph was, I tripled his work load so he now has to shovel hog manure about sixteen hours a day. The guy acts as if he has something to hide, as if he's a mass murderer or something.’
“ ‘He is,’ Ricco said, ‘without a doubt, the most undesirable human being I’ve ever met.’ When Ricco finished his description, Rocco and I said that Dolph must be deranged, and that we’d be sure to keep an eye on him. Yeah, Moose, the guy was bad news; wait till you hear what he did to me.” [To be continued Friday, 2/17/2012]
That evening we were sitting across from each other on a double-seated swing underneath our maple tree. I remember bring pleasantly surprised when a june bug whirled by our ears towards the grape arbor, so I leapt off the swing and ran under the arbor to try to catch it. A June bug made a fine toy when tied to a string by its leg. The bug would fly in circles around your head and dive in different directions with a loud buzzing sound. But it was no good; I couldn’t find it among the broad grape leaves. When I plopped back on the swing, dejected, Uncle Ernest whispered, “Listen!” And, in a few seconds, I heard it too, the cry in the distance of a killdeer guarding her eggs. She had laid them on the bare ground of our field, and I was never able to find them, Nina, no matter how hard I searched.
Then Uncle Ernest went into the house and returned with his refreshed drink. I could tell he was as contented as he could have been under the circumstances. It was hot, and I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead and on his upper lip. After a long, grateful draw on his whiskey glass, and after wiping the sweat from his face and neck with his red handkerchief, he said, “Moose, do you want to hear more about my trip with Rocco?”
“You bet I do, Unk. I thought you’d never get around to finishing that story.” You do remember don’t you, Nina, when, the year before in Wilmington, Uncle Ernest started telling me about his adventures with Rocco on their way to Brazil? Good. I know I wanted to hear more of the story, so I asked him, "Do you have time to tell the whole thing?” Tilting his glass tentatively, teasing me with his hesitation, he said, “Uhhh … why sure, Moose, we should have plenty of time for that. Where did I leave off? My word, that was last year.”
“You and that wrestler, Rocco, had just got rid of that nasty, bearded loudmouth who wanted to invade Cuba.”
“Oh sure,” Uncle Ernest said, nodding his head, “now I remember. We were below Cuba, on a cattle boat, headed for Brazil. We were going to stay on Rocco’s brother’s ostrich farm and Rocco was going to show me around the country.
“Yes, indeed, we steamed along nicely off the coast of South America. We passed Venezuela, Guyana, the mouth of the great Amazon River, and after a while the captain told us that we had just sailed through the equator and that we were now in the Southern Hemisphere. I felt good about that, Moose, because I would finally get to see my bath water swirl down the tub counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, something I’ve always wondered about.
“Continuing on, entering Brazilian waters, we passed Salvador, went through the Tropic of Capricorn, and docked at the seaport city of Rio de Janeiro. After hopping on a turnip wagon headed for Rocco’s brother’s farm, we arrived and I met Rocco’s brother, Ricco.
“Ricco, a likable fellow like his brother, told us that he had turned his ostrich farm into a hog farm. He ran a complete swine operation, from sows farrowing piglets six inches long, to 300 pound porkers ready for market. He took us to our sleeping area, a straw barn next to a large farrowing house."[To be continued Tuesday, 2/14/2012]
Now, Nina, talking about our bridge reminds me of something I’ve wanted to tell you. It was near the end of July, 1942 when a ship hit and destroyed our lift bridge. For the next seven years we rode a ferry back and forth. I knew the pilot of the Gotham ferryboat very well and, Nina, he was one funny man. His name was Captain Ed, my best friend’s father.
The old timers still talk about Captain Ed and his antics. One story they tell is when Ed was a student, just like you. Years ago, back in the 20s, all the schools in the county would get together for Rally Day, which was a track and field event held in Elkton. They held the event on Railroad Avenue, near the Armory, in a big area behind the schoolhouse.
The kids competed in all kinds of sports: sprint racing, distance runs, broad jumping, high jumping, and all kinds of other activities. Anyway, Nina, Ed was in one of those races, one of the sprints, and he ran it and broke the county record. He didn't have any track shoes or sneakers so, unlikely as it sounds, he ran on that cinder track in his bare feet. I didn't see the race, Nina, but a friend of mine did, and he told me that Ed would have run even faster if he hadn't stopped and turned around to see who was shot when the gun went off.
Anyway, the official came right up to him and said, “Son, you’ve just broken the county record!” And Ed, still panting from the race, said, “Well, my gosh, I certainly am sorry; I didn’t mean to do it! How much do I owe you?”
Believe it or not, Nina, Ed was our cousin. And the other story that old timers tell about him concerns his abilities as a pilot, and how he got his job as captain of our ferry, the Gotham. When they first brought the ferry to ChesapeakeCity from New York, men were running it back and forth across the canal, giving it test runs, you see.
Well, Ed had his tug boat tied up at Rees’ Wharf (now PellGardens), and was standing there watching the ferry go across and back, and at that time the wind and current were really bad. In fact, when vessels would go out of the Basin—out into the canal into that current—they didn’t know whether they were going to wind up far to the east in Bethel or far to the west, down at the Chesapeake Boat Company. At any rate, on that day, Ed was watching them struggle with the ferry, and one time as it was coming over from the North Side to the South Side, and it was cutting all kinds of capers, our Ed hollered over at the captain: “Hey, what the hail’s the matter with you that you can’t handle that thing any better than that?”
And the fellow yelled back, “All right, wise guy, if you can do any better than this, then come the hail over here.” So Ed went around to the ferry slip, went up into the pilothouse, took her across, and showed them how to do it. And they hired him right then and there. So Captain Ed piloted that ferry for the whole length of time she ran, till the bridge was finished in 1949. After that he was the pilot of the Port Welcome, a large touring boat that ran out of Baltimore.
Now, returning to an earlier time, a few years after the lift bridge was destroyed, Captain Ed’s son, Dick, and I, as teenagers, used to stay overnight at each other’s houses. After hours of basketball until dark, and after shooting the breeze on Postell’s corner, we would eventually get to bed, where we’d talk and listen to radio music long into the night.
Well, one night, Nina, when we had finally drifted off to sleep (at about as I recall), Captain Ed came in from work and yelled up the stairs: “Get on down here boys; get on down here.” So Dick and I trudged on down, so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open. Ed had a big pan of bacon and slimy, half-raw eggs on the kitchen table. He was diving into them and when we sat down he slopped some on plates for us to eat too. I sat there in a daze, picking at the disgusting eggs, and Ed looked up at me and said, “What’s the matter, Wheeeezle?” His friend, George Cordrey, had a speech defect, so that instead of saying "Hazel" he would say "Weasel." Ed was just having fun at my expense.
Captain Ed was also a very fast talker. His slurred words emitted at breakneck speed could hardly be understood. You know, Nina, about the group called the Slow Talkers’ Association? Well, Ed was a member of the Fast Talkers’ Association. “Eat them eggs boys; come on; eat ‘em up now,” he said. Then, after a bit, he jumped up, threw the dishes into the sink, and cried out, “Get in the car boys; get in the car; let’s go.” Fully awake now, Dick and I went out and got into the back of Ed’s old Chevy.
“Now what?” I asked Dick.
“Sharptown. Mom’s down there and we have to go pick her up.”
“At ?” I asked, astonished. Sharptown was on the lower Eastern Shore, about 100 miles away. Then, Nina, our Ed got into the car, fired her up, and took off down George Street. He hung a left on Saint Augustine Road, motored past my farm, swung around old man McNolt’s curve, and headed towards Sam Caldwell’s S turn.
It was at this S turn that it started: Ed couldn’t keep the car on the road. He’d swerve off to the right onto the grass, wake up from the jolt, keep her straight for a while, and then swerve off to the left and wake up again. I’ll tell you, Nina, Dick and I were afraid we were going to die. But Ed kept going, and somewhere past Middletown he plowed into a ditch and got stuck. After the three of us pushed the car back onto the road, Ed looked at me and said, “Weasel, can you drive?”
“Sure,” I was quick to answer. Nina, I was 14 and thought I could do anything. I didn’t have a license and I had never driven on the highway before. I had driven my Model A around the farm a good bit, but that’s a far cry from driving at high speed in traffic.
“Get in there then, Wheeeezle!” So we took off with Dick next to me and Captain Ed stretched out on the back seat. I realized later that he had not slept for 24 hours or more. Now, Nina, you might imagine how excited I was, steering on down Route 13 with the other cars and trucks at with my nervous buddy next to me. And, do you know, I almost killed the three of us that morning, because as I sped along at sixty miles an hour, bolt upright with both hands firmly on the steering wheel, a tractor-trailer was creeping along in the right lane, and I jerked the steering wheel to the left at the last millisecond before crashing into the back of it. I just happened to see its lights in time. It was the closest call I’ve ever had, and it was because I didn’t have any road experience. Dick yelled, “Geez, slow down for crap sake; slow down!” But from the back seat I just heard a long sleepy moan. From then on I kept that old car at about fifty.
Something else happened that morning that I’ll never forget. That 1940 Chevy had a metal rim running around the inside of the steering wheel. It was the horn, and I was driving with both hands at the top of the wheel. Well, at every red light my arm would sound that horn accidentally, and every time Ed would wake up from the back seat and say something like, “My God, what was that?” Then he’d moan for a while and fall back to sleep.
So there you have it, Nina. That’s the way we finally got to Sharptown. My first driving experience at 14 was a 100-mile night drive on a major highway, with no license. Later that day, Captain Ed was full of life and having fun, but Dick and I were too tired to enjoy anything. But for now, let me take you back to an earlier, less stressful time, a time when Uncle Ernest was in his glory.[To be continued Friday, 2/10/2012]
The following summer, Nina, Uncle Ernest came to stay with us on our farm to give us a hand with the chores. One lazy afternoon he strolled out of the house, and, as the old screen door slammed behind him, rubbed me on the head with his hard knuckles as I was sitting on the cement part of our well, with its erect, wooden pump and its long wooden handle, and said, “So long, Moose the Goose.”
I was seven that summer and a sorry sight. Just recovering from whooping cough, my sun-browned body was skinny; it was so skinny that the sides of my chest looked like the rippled washboard that my Granny used to labor over in those past days of glory.
“Oh, by the way Moose,” he said, turning back to me with his hands on his hips. “Do you know what’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” I was sitting, bare except for my shorts, with my back up against the wooden trough used to catch the well water, eating a large apple that I had snatched from the top of one of the ancient trees in our orchard. The trees were never sprayed, so the apples, although delicious, had worm holes, and I was, naturally, eating around them.
“Nope,” I answered. “How?”
“Finding half a worm,” he said, chuckling as he headed off.
With swaying strides Uncle Ernest made his way down the long, dirt lane of our farm. The dust from his tread rose behind him in little puffs of smoke. To see him depart I had to turn my head, like an owl, around to the far right. I had been sitting, maneuvering around the worm holes in my apple, looking off in the distance between the corn crib and the stable at the mysterious woods—the deep woods where thoughts of deer, rabbits, quail, hawks, squirrels, and owls stimulated my young mind, making me eager for the days when I would be old enough to hunt.
Images of other creatures, in those ancient times, stimulated my brain, especially the eerie whippoorwills, whose night songs shaped me for life on those evenings before the deep sleep that clears so effortlessly the apprehensions of youth.
Uncle Ernest had been gone for quite a while that day, long enough for me to climb monkey-like into the top branches of our gnarled maple tree that stood ten feet from the front porch of our house. He had been gone long enough for me to eventually descend and lie with dangling feet and arms in our cloth hammock that hung between the maple and a small cedar tree. With uneasy boredom I lay and gazed up into the clear-blue August sky. The texture and odor of that mildew-scented, cotton hammock linger still in my memory, centuries after that lonely, unforgettable summer.
Our farm was about a half mile from the canal town of Chesapeake City. The canal connected the Chesapeake Bay with the Delaware Bay—a canal of two towns you might say, because the waterway divided the town into a south side and a north side. Connecting the two sides was a vertical lift bridge constructed of black steel. It was managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, which employed men in the area to raise and lower the span to allow ships and large boats to steam through.
From our farm we could see the bridge outlined jet black against the clear sky. That summer morning, I remember flipping from the hammock to gather stones from the lane to throw at the telephone pole. As I returned to the shade, cradling the stones in hands and arms against my chest, I heard a muffled, metallic clank in the distance. Looking north towards the sound, I saw that the bridge—my bridge that I had peered at all my life—had disappeared.
Pop, who came home from work a short time later, was upset, but not as much as my mother, because Uncle Ernest, her older and only brother, was known to walk across that bridge often to visit the North Side bars. Well, all hail broke loose. “Ralph!” she screeched. “We have to go in there to find out where he is and maybe identify his body when they drag it out of the crick.” Consoling her, Pop said that it was unlikely that Ernest would be walking across that bridge at the precise time it was smashed into. We found out later that a German tanker veered out of control and plowed into it.
That evening we took off for town in our blue Ford, with my mother sobbing and moaning in an awful way, in search of Uncle Ernest or his remains. This was in fact the same sorry ‘41 Ford that Pop, after a new, huge, overhead bridge was build years later, would have to drive a mile away from town in order to get a running start to be able to slowly ascend, belching more and more billowing clouds of blue smoke as it got closer and closer and slower and slower to the top. Then it would zip down, happily, as if it were the noblest vehicle on the road.
To our relief, Nina, Uncle Ernest was just fine. We found him dead drunk, oblivious to the sirens, outcries, and mayhem surrounding him. One local said that Uncle Ernest had made it from the Hole-in-the-Wall bar to the drug store singing “♪ Oh, doo da, doo da, day ♪” before collapsing in the drainage ditch that ran along the store.
The next morning he was in high spirits. Years ahead of his time, he knew the value of eating roughage, because I remember that he showed me at breakfast how to eat a banana, skin and all, and how to save time and trouble by eating peanuts without shelling them.[To be continued Tuesday, 2/7/2012]
And as it turned out, Nina, it sure was a long time before Uncle Ernest and I could get together long enough for him to tell me. In fact, it was not until the following summer on the farm that he finished the tale. Believe me, it was worth waiting for. And it will be worth your waiting for, also.
But, for the time being, I'll bet you'll enjoy hearing about something that happened to me when I was a few years older. It occurred in the summer of 1946, when my father got the notice from the Chesapeake City Post Office. World War II had just ended the summer before when the Japanese surrendered, and I was sure glad they did. I was nine when they gave up and for some time had worried my head off about them. They were responsible for the red rationing tokens that my mother had to use at the American Store; they were responsible for white margarine that we kneaded to give the appearance of butter; they were responsible for the frightening news reports on the radio.
I had dreamed about them, Nina, and one of the nightmares I remember clearly. In my dream, I had cycled into town to Bieswanger’s for an ice cream cone. Well, instead of old, stooped Mrs. Bieswanger grudgingly dipping out the ice cream, and short, dapper Mr. Bieswanger fumbling around in the back, there—replacing them in the store—were three or four Japanese clerks. And there, looking right at me from over the ice cream counter was one with protruding teeth and a demented, kamikaze smile. Before I turned and ran, I looked around to where Mr. Bieswanger usually was and saw another Japanese, who was even wearing a leather aviator’s helmet—with goggles.
Then the dream ended, Nina. But the worry remained even though they had surrendered, and by that summer of 1946 I was still not over the fear. My Uncle Warren was in the war and at that time was in occupied Japan. We all worried about him, yet we were pretty sure that he would be home soon. But on that Saturday morning, when my father told me what the notice from the post office said, I was pretty excited. It said that we were to go to the Elkton Train Station to pick up a large package addressed to me.
“What’s in it, Pop?” I asked.
“Don’t know, boy. We’ll go get ’er and find out.”
So after we fed the chickens, dumped some scraps and corn into the hog trough, and made sure that they had water, Pop changed out of his work clothes and we drove down our long lane, swerving to avoid the areas mined with potholes. Then we reached the asphalt road, and we were off—bound for Elkton. At that time Pop had a black ’41 Ford. Oh, she was beautiful on the outside, but under the hood she was dirt-ugly. The thing would hardly run, so going anywhere was always an adventure.
We chugged into town, up the hill to George Street, past Foard’s Hardware Store, turned right onto Third Street, past the Methodist church, and headed down Ferry Slip Road. Halfway down we had to stop to wait in line to board the ferry. But riding the ferry, Nina, was nothing new to me; it had been there since 1942, when our bridge was taken out by a tanker, so I had ridden it many times.
Finally, we saw it enter the slip and after a while we drove up the ramp and boarded it, coasting in on one side and braking abruptly behind the car in front of us. We made the crossing and Pop drove off the ramp with a clatter and soon we started laboring up Sisters’ Hill. The rings were worn out in the old V8 and about halfway up the hill large puffs of blue-black smoke began flowing from the exhaust pipe, causing the car behind us to fall behind. Pop just shook his head and kept the accelerator down. For a minute or two I thought we’d have to get out and push, but she finally made it, barely creeping over the crest and leaving an amazing cloud of smoke behind us.
We made it to Elkton all right, crossing over the bridge at Elk Creek and rolling into the parking area of the train depot. We went in and I followed the clerk and Pop to a dark room cluttered with packages and large articles of all kinds. The clerk rummaged around for a while but then found our item standing up in the corner. It was a long, slim wooden crate, addressed to me. I started carrying it out, but soon realized that it was too unwieldy, so Pop put it over his shoulder and took it to the car.
The thing wouldn’t fit across the back seat so we put it lengthwise from the back window ledge and across the seat between our heads. The crate was about five feet long, eight inches wide, and four inches thick. It was exciting—mysterious—to me because I had no idea what would be in such an unusual package. And I don’t think that Pop knew either. I read the label on the crate; it was to me all right, in “Chesapeake City, Maryland, USA.” The crate was made of rough wooden slats, nailed together - solid.
We drove on back from Elkton and our Ford descended Sisters’ Hill like the most powerful vehicle on the road. When we got to the ferry slip the boat was just pulling out. We were the first car in line, Nina, so we sat there with the gate down in front of us and peered across at the South Side. We could see the MindyBuilding over at the government peninsula, where the old Causeway used to be. We watched a tug surging against the current with a barge in tow. In the distance, next to the wharf, loomed Rees’ warehouse and, of course, the famous Hole-in-the-Wall beer garden where, Pop said, the drunks would have riotous fights when everybody else was home in bed.
Then we saw the ferry on its way across. But something was wrong, Nina. The current was strong and the wind had picked up. And both were taking the ferry east, away from the slip. Oh, it was struggling hard for sure—bereft, askew—and belching black smoke from its stack. Smack in the middle of the canal, it lost its battle and was blown east about as far as the old waterwheel at the Corps of Engineers’ office. I sat bewildered as Pop explained what was happening. Then, somehow, Nina, it straightened itself and, favoring the North Side, fought its way back to beyond the ferry slip.
It made a big circle and came in towards the slip, sideways like a crab in the current. Then it came roaring in, churning swirls of water as it maneuvered through the black, heavy pilings. It bounced off the east pilings and sloshed, banged, and hissed into the slip like some squat, bulky sea monster. Pop looked at me, chuckled, and said that Captain Ed must not be on duty today. Captain Ed Sheridan was our cousin and the best pilot on the water.
So we boarded and got back to the farm without incident, and Pop put the crate on a bench in the shed, and with a hammer and a small crow bar opened it. And Nina, I couldn’t believe what lay in that box. Filmed with a thin coat of grease was a full-sized Japanese rifle. It had a heavy wooden stock and a shiny black barrel. The front sight was bigger than any I had ever seen, and the back sight could be adjusted for long-distance firing. Pop read the note that was in the box: “For Bobby from Uncle Warren. Hope you like it.”
Pop lifted it out of the crate and wiped off some of the packing grease. We took it outside and he let me aim it at the corn crib in the distance. I could hardly hold it level it was so heavy. But it was wonderful; my Uncle Warren was wonderful. Pop put it back in the crate and we stored it in the corner of the shed for years to come. As I grew up there on the farm, I would take it out once in a while and have great fun with it. Because we had no shells to fit it, there was no danger. Then, later Nina, in my late teens, I bought some 7.7 millimeter shells and fired it a few times.
About six months after the rifle arrived, Uncle Warren returned home to his family in Wilmington, bringing with him a framed picture of himself in uniform, painted by a Japanese artist. He was to visit our farm often on Sundays and, tilting his beer, he’d joke about the Geisha girls in Tokyo.
But on his first visit after his arrival from Japan, I ran to his car, and when I smiled at him through the open window he said, “Do you like the gun?” And I could tell by his eyes and his voice how much pleasure he got from sending it to me. And I’m sure that he could tell just how much the gift meant to his ten-year-old nephew. After that I didn’t worry or dream any more about the Japanese invading our town. Why should I, Nina? I had their gun. [To be continued Friday, 2/3/2012]
