Some Very Dangerous Diversions
If mothers could see everything, they would know that life is very unfair. They want to know what's going on with their children. That's the way it should be. But, given their wish, they would be in perpetual emotional shambles. They could hire spies to watch the kids. After some early reports came in they would dismiss the agents. The information would be considered wrong, exaggerated or simply too much to bear. It's better not to know everything.
I did a lot of rotten things with co-conspirators. It's important to know that others were involved. That lessens suspicion that might arise about my basic behavior. Don't blame me for everything.
*Once I was allowed to escape absolute supervision I had no difficulty finding adventurous stuff to do, the earliest being on nature's own props. Boys climb trees. The challenge, when friends are around, escalated (like a lot of things we did) into dares. We made figurative bets to see who could climb the highest tree and then swing from fragile upper limbs and hang from branches. Moms would shit if they came upon their kids swaying back and forth high up on a poplar or maple. But then, mothers are anxious.
They were always unreasonable. "Don't climb up on those rocks." "Stay away from the railroad and the quarry." "I don't want you hanging around the dump." "Get out of that tree." It's like God telling Eve not to munch on apples. "Don't run into traffic."
*Some admonitions were respected. "Don't eat toadstools; you'll die." Alright! Others were tested. "Don't play with matches." That one didn't always work. (Adults didn't eat toadstools but they lit up a lot of matches.) I lit up some piles of leaves, but then so did a lot of grown-ups. I set some brush fires in the fields beyond the old quarry. Kids were always back there thinning things out and the little blazes were ignored by the fire department.
When we visited my grandmother, I spent a lot of time at play in the yard or the field beyond the yard or the woods behind her cousin's house. "Don't play in the quarry." If I had a nickel I would go to Dettrey's Drug Store and saddle-up at the soda-fountain with a drink of lemon soda or root-beer. One day I poked around in his trash-bin and found a lot of bottles of liquid mixtures of mysterious origin. I mixed them into a jug and took a sniff.
"Ooock!" Obviously it wasn't fit for drinking. There was a handy trash-fire nearby so I poured some of my secret formula into a tin-can and threw it into the flames. Whoosh! A ball of fire and acrid smoke demonstrated what a close call with disaster meant. Our country was at war and I thought our government might be interested. Maybe not! Maybe I duplicated the mix that was bottled with Lydia Pinkham's picture on it. I smelled a bottle of that once. "Ooock!"
Matches came in a number of forms. Book matches were somewhat difficult to light. Take care or you'll burn your thumb and first finger. Adroit moves had to be learned. Box matches were made from wood and could be held longer. Both the book and box types had to be struck on a special surface to ignite. Stove matches were different, and bigger and you could light them up striking them on your ass. After these were invented all others were called safety matches.
When we visited my uncle's house at Blue Bell Hill I had a lot of latitude of movement. I could explore the attic. I could play in the yard and pick grapes (in season). I could go to the woods nearby. I could roam around the cellar. It was dark down there and more in tune with the archeologist's way of looking at things if I didn't turn the light-switch on. Aucott's cellar was a cave, the bowels of a pyramid, a lost city. I found a box of matches down there. And a candle. Fun is serious to kids. It's heightened when conditions are made ripe. And there, in an imaginary place that I had imposed because I left the lights off, I moved about in the dim light of the wick of the candle I held over my head. The flame passed against a clump of ancient cob-webs. For a moment or so it seemed that the whole house would catch fire. As quickly as it flashed, the new fire went out (beat out, I might add, by my own quick thinking: swatting the flames with my jacket).
"Good God! Look at you. How did you get so dirty. Stay out of the cellar. Dress you up and....." That's the kind of note adults, especially moms, make after unsung heroics that probably saved their lives and the house as well. Gee! The only thing worse than catching hell for unexplained conditions would be to rationalize it. Can you imagine me describing the recent events that almost set the house alight? I don't think anyone would have said: "How cute" or "Isn't he imaginative...and brave" or "Thank you."
*Firecrackers were prohibited in our house. They still could be bought legally just over the border in Wyndmoor, but the law prohibited their sale in Philadelphia and that was not going to be sneered at in our house. My parents rightly believed that boys were irresponsible handlers. I would hear lectures from them, especially in firecracker seasons around Decoration Day and The Fourth of July. Fingers, hands, eye-balls and even lives were lost, even by adults, who seemed to be exposed as irresponsible once we found out they weren't infallible. The maimed were a sorry lot.
Lectures, threats and even police presence had to compete against full page advertisements in comic-books. For $3.95 or $5.95 you could get a box of fireworks that could blow-up the train that took them from Virginia or Arkansas to the post-office so that our mailman could be at risk for delivering them. A lot of kids slobbered over the ads that they couldn't respond to.
*It's inevitable that cap-pistols, toy-rifles and water-pistols will be thrown away sometime in our middle-age of childhood. Playing at cowboys and soldiers doesn't have a lot of lasting appeal when you want to be something better: a soda-jerk, a paper-boy, a mechanic, the object of attention of a particular girl. Or a teenager in a land full of peers who threw away cap-pistols and toy-rifles. Water pistols survived for legal mischief acceptable to the gang.
The industry can't survive a gap. Shooting galleries are set up at carnivals, in fairgrounds, and at amusement parks to keep boys and men alike at the ready in case war comes or they choose to hunt for supper or they plan to settle grudges in an uneven way. Comic books keep interest up with ads for air pistols and BB rifles that had "Daisy" or Red Ryder's autograph impressed on their stocks. It's logical that if you own a bike you should own a BB gun. On one page there was an ad for a bicycle, on the one facing it, Red Ryder and Little Beaver were touting BB rifles. It's natural, it's like America, apple-pie, a pen-knife, marbles, bubble-gum and comic-books and baseball cards.
Extremists might get a BB rifle and use it to get a bicycle. That's the sort of thing that spoils things and makes mothers wonder what their kids define as targets.
When I was thirteen BB guns were still out of the question at my house. It wouldn't get any better in the years that followed. I bought one anyway from a kid who lived in another neighborhood. I kept it in secret places (for a couple of days in my locker at school), at the "lots," and at the quarry. Owning it wasn't much fun because I was always sneaking it out to solitary practices with the barrel shoved down the inside of my trousers and the stock hidden under my shirt. I walked like a cripple. Let's face it! Girls in the neighborhood would tell my sister; adults would tell my mom. It wasn't stored in the right place and soon got rusty and became useless.
A BB rifle in a school locker is a good reason for those in charge to call the cops. There aren't adequate excuses to cover that behavior. However, soon after the rot set in on that gun I was offered another piece. An older kid sold me his 22 five shot revolver. That's a weapon. I wrapped it in a rag and kept it in my locker. If those in charge were alerted, the cops would appear and I would have been transferred to another school full of guys whose idea of education was learning of the successes of John Dillinger, Baby-Face Nelson and Al Capone. Their real teachers were older, more experienced inmates. Guns in school can, to some, become a more logical way of settling differences than with puny fists. I didn't have any squabbles worth that. Then again, there's no guarantee against doing irrational things by the most predictable people. To me it was too uncomfortable to own something that my parents would have to turn over to the police. The police would want me too as part of the deal.
*The law sets ages for entitlements like voting, marrying and drinking. Libertarians argue against straight-laced stuff these days but in my time two out of three seemed fair.
Eight year olds are sometimes no less qualified nor no more irresponsible than most of the herd that go to polling places and yank levers to shape our collective destiny by electing people who talk to voters like they are a bunch of eight year olds. (When I was sixteen I heard that put in more elementary language. "A horse show is a show where a bunch of horses show their horses asses to a bunch of horses asses who show their horses.") Like I said, don't blame me (yet).
It's no good for ten year olds to tie the knot. Who will mind their kids? Besides, they're too immature to think about old-fashioned logic that's distilled into marriage vows. "Old fashioned," when understood to mean "silly" or "irrelevant," has turned marriage into convenience. Any further reduction would obviate the reason for vows and we might as well let ten year olds-or whatever-marry. We weren't familiar with that kind of reasoning.
They say kids can't drink. I've seen adults who've made the chunky yawn classic. The government should have included them on the proscribed list with the American Indians. Instead, they got excessive and tried to make people behave through the Volsted Act. That caused some other problems so they reverted but still protected twelve-year olds and those a little older too and lumped us with the Indians. If we drank, we made the Indians look good. So did some non-Indians who were "of age."
The proof:
I didn't like the taste of beer. When our relatives gathered for picnics at my grandmother's house a barrel of beer lay out in the yard. On those days the kids could pour a glass of suds for themselves. Or, they would be directly invited to have a sip by adults who should have known better. "Wanna sip?" I took a sip and it had a lousy taste. Maybe my relatives bought cheap beer.
When my Uncle Jim married we all went up to the wedding and then to the reception in the bride's parents cellar. That was in the days before limousines were common, accessible to anyone but the really rich, or rented instead of sold. The guests walked from the church to the wedding feast.
That was in a time when bartenders weren't hired by the common folk. None of the guests would want to draw beer all night so the logical choice could be a sixteen year old nephew who wouldn't spend time with his lips around the tap. Me!
Was it a request? Or an order? Either way, it was an honor. My sister was a bridesmaid. I was too old to be a ring-bearer. Still, I was given an appointment, a participant in the day's drama.
Sixteen year olds know how to ingratiate themselves with adults. Generous people might give them a tip (especially after a few drinks when they would show off). They become privy to stories that adults tell each other (especially after a few drinks and let down their guard). They'll hear rude jokes and dirty stories that would be screened (censored) when people are sober and more discreet. They'd hear what goes on during honeymoons.
Kids can't drink. I had uncles and aunts who thought little kids at six or so looked cute when they were whoozie; nephews and nieces wobbling around. If it was their kid their sense of humor might not be so liberal. Even if a six, or twelve year old, was sober he'd be useless dispensing suds to an Irish mob.
Things went as expected until my uncle's youngest brother arrived, late because of the delivery that day of the first child of his own marriage, and late considering it was cause for some other celebration. He was drunk already while other relatives were still in church. He arrived at the reception with his own bottle of whiskey and chose me to guzzle with him.
"But..." I began to explain.
That was cut off before I could muster any protest. I never took a taste to the cheap beer served at picnics and my only previous experience with whiskey didn't do much for libertarian arguments that kids can drink. They can drink. They can get sick. They can wreck Christmas trees, too.
The new daddy reasoned that everyone could pour their own beer. We sat in the coal bin and drank the bottle of whiskey.
My father would have put a stop to this nonsense if he was there, but he had left earlier to go to his shift at the firehouse. Later, we were driven home by other relatives. My mom, somewhat unhappy with my behavior in the time after I retired as bartender gave hints that things would be unpleasant in the morning when pop came home from work.
What did I do?
Did I puke in the punch bowl?
Did I pinch the bride?
Did I tell my mom to shaddup?
Did I make an ass of myself?
Did I fall down?
All of the above? None of the above?
Drunks don't remember. Drunks don't feel so good afterward and they make pledges that are a waste of time no matter how sincere they are. These usually are the second dumb statement that drunks with brains say. The first is to beg God to kill them.
Well, that's the proof. You don't have to heed the proof. It's just there. The lesson is a different matter. "Learning a lesson" is a decision you can make, could make or might make, or forget, or ignore.
On the day after the wedding I recovered at Billy Sandrow's house and made oaths that I would never drink again. I had rightly reasoned that throwing-up was a signal that certain substances didn't belong in my stomach and my body was a little smarter than my brain.
If my mom said. "Don't eat toadstools. You'll die," she had a point. When my uncle passed the whiskey bottle to me he wasn't working at the same level of logic as mom. Billy had more sense than my uncle; he didn't offer the hair of the hound that bit me.
Guys that forgot they threw-up prevailed. It wasn't too long that Bill Pira and others were treated to the spectacle of some projectile vomiting (by me) in and out of Jackie Brooks' old Pontiac. And Dave Wagner's grandmother got a taste of mortification the night she chaperoned a kids' party and I repeated the same act after downing everything that could be poured out of bottles that the Volsted Act made legal again.
*"Stop that fighting!" Our neighborhood wasn't a fist factory full of psychos. There were moments, though, when kids were drawn in to a punch-out to resolve some sort of idiocy or other. Most fights were fair by the unwritten standards that were passed along by experience that recognized some things had to be fought-out. Usually when a fight was over, it was over. Only bullies and nuts spent un-natural time pursuing the weak. In our society older brothers and bigger kids with common sense would often put an end to that crap. That's civilized balance.
The idea of beating someone senseless and then getting some more punches and kicks was rare and those who did those sort of things didn't have much of a following. In some places people who did these things might recognize each other and bond as a gang because the neighborhood defense was wanting. The cops would have to be relied on and their arrival was to correct what people couldn't do for themselves-and the people welcomed them. That's civilized balance.
Police might be called to settle things that today will be ignored; the legendary getting a cat out of a tree, moving loafers off someone's steps, removing bums and loiterers. Dial the cops and their arrival was swift and sure.
We were hauled-in on an autumn afternoon for disturbing the peace. We stood at the desk at the police station, five kids who made a little too much noise playing street football that irritated a crabby old woman. The cops arrived. We got a ride in the "wagon." We got a sympathetic lecture from the sergeant. We got advice to play football somewhere else. We were told to go home. One of the guys (not me) asked the sergeant if we could get a ride home in the "wagon." I remember the look on the sergeant's face. It was the kind of impudence that could tempt him to call our daddies (who would smack us around for their inconvenience) or keep us overnight in a cell. The crisis was averted when another kid smacked dummy number one on the back of the head. We walked. On the way home (a long walk) we began to believe that the police should have driven us back home where we imagined younger kids who would see us emptying out of the van would hail us as heroes.
Cresheim Valley Road was a place where lovers went to make out (in various degrees) in automobiles. The cars were parked in a long line next to the road. These people were generally left alone. Periodically, a cop might come by and shine his flashlight through windows to make sure the occupants weren't dead or hostages. We didn't go up there because most of us didn't have cars or girlfriends who we thought would want to go to lovers-lane.
Moms who ask their sons where they are going and what they are going to do have to expect vague answers rather than lies. The classic interrogation afterward goes like this:
"Where did you go?"
"Out!"
"What did you do?"
"Nothing!"
That's fair because that's the way it usually is. Often, when we went out we had plans (movies, pizza, dances) but just as often we might go to someone's house. "What are you going to do?" is sometimes like supposing we could read the future. So we would say, "nothing" before we went over to someone's house to do nothing which sometimes evolved to something.
On the night that I went over to play cards at Gordon's house with three other pals I didn't have to answer questions that moms might ask. Mine was in Florida (with my dad). Gordon's mom and pop were out for the evening. We played cards. Gordon found some home-made wine his dad forgot to secure.
Those who were more intelligent than us were up at Cresheim Valley Road smooching their girlfriends in cars. We knew people who were doing it. Fortified with white lightning Gordon's dad made for others to drink, we set out, by car, for lovers' lane to annoy them. We took a flash camera: no film, but lots of flash-bulbs.
Guys who park in cars with their girlfriends aren't amused by clowns. They're not going to leap out and join the revelry even if the fun makers are their friends. And when we got to the site we met some beer-drinking kids from Springfield, a town just over the city line. Thirteen troublemakers weren't going to be tolerated and someone called the police. They arrived in force. The incident was reported the next day in the newspaper.
Accuracy in news is always for want. The report wouldn't have been so sensational if the reporters noted the two bullets were fired into the trunk of a parked car, not one that was trying to escape. Other shots were fired into the woods at us.
When it was over the police net had caught seven; six from Springfield, one from Germantown (our driver).
What time was it? I reckoned that I had lain in the ditch in the woodland for over two hours. Were the police waiting me out? Me! Where were the other guys? If any were caught I wondered if they would "squeal." There are a lot of questions that can oscillate the mental condition between terror and panic. I got control and leaned toward terror. Then I slipped out of my hideout and cautiously walked home, about four miles. I was relieved that a police car wasn't parked outside my house.
The phone was ringing. It was Gordon's mom the worried caller. I told her I thought he was staying over at Dave's house... or John's house. She was relieved. I lied.
Maybe all the guys were dead. I was the only survivor. I knew nothing except the worst scenario. If I was caught my father would be furious. If I had been wounded he might hit me where the bullet went in. If I was killed the feeling, by all, would have been that it wouldn't have happened if I didn't act so foolish.
End of Story.
I wasn't a disciple of Billy Conn and that wasn't because he fought Joe Louis. The Brown Bomber let Billy dance around for a while and then knocked him out. Joe had a habit of knocking out those who had the temerity to jump into the ring to do what likely was impossible. I wasn't a disciple of Joe Lewis, either.
Some kids got in a lot more fights than I did. Others never fought and some of them might have been tougher than those trying to prove how good they were. Others were sissies.
My cousin, Billy Thornton gave me some elementary boxing lessons. There was no incentive. I couldn't reach him. I got in some tussles in the neighborhood and a few when I was away visiting in Wyndmoor, South Philadelphia and Easton. There's nothing worth more than passing note. I wasn't the best fighter around.
Confrontations with strangers might be termed "turf-wars." We might go up on the railroad tracks if the Railroad Dicks weren't around. More than once we got into rock-throwing incidents with other kids. It was a territorial sort of thing and there would be small advances and retreats until one side retired. The winners would throw hoots and insults. Thank God no-one was hit by a rock.
Uneven fights are no good. The best policy is to run away. I ran from a gang and had a bad fall. I hid my wounded forearm from my parents thinking it would heal on its own. It got worse, as all things do, and I was taken to the doctor for some delicate surgery.
Weapons are trouble. Rocks are primitive and are useless if you are out of their reach. I got into a close range fight with bottles. Can you imagine that. The melee ended when I slit an artery and my foes, not shy about fighting with broken bottles, got squeamish about seeing blood and fled. I got confused. The worse thing was that I cut myself. A bad samaritan came by and applied a poor tourniquet and left me. A good samaritan came by soon after and took me to the hospital. I was, I think, about twelve years old.
My perspective of things was reckless and cautious: reckless toward things that older folks viewed as dangerous and cautious regarding more natural courses.
*The same greater danger confronted me whether it was when I dug tunnels at The Lots or when I skipped homework and went to school the next day unprepared. The effects of the danger were not similar. The physical consequences from chances taken could be debilitating, or fatal. The percentage was lower than from eating toadstools and the lack of certain doom keep us off-guard. These were gambles worth the applause. We're not powerful enough to avoid danger altogether and our parents are forced to live with a certain amount of helplessness once we're out of their sight. Even when we are caught, like swinging to and fro high up in the old oak tree, they might scream, they might shit (an unlikely metaphor), they might give us advice that doesn't quite approach the effect that the one on toadstools would. The most unrealistic approach would be to put us in isolation because that's the most dangerous of all.
It's like judging the company we keep. We even have a chance of surviving those influences. Here again parents might inadvertently lead us into bad company. But that's the risk that has to be weighed against an unacceptable alternative of raising us as hermits.
When parents "nag" about our homework, they have to trust us to give answers that will make them happy. We might make them happy with lies. And once we get away with lying we'll extend our fibs to those somewhat less important to us. Even lying can be seen as heroic and we might, at some point, choose to follow those who lie because we noted that they got away with it. Once that idea gets currency we are tempted to cheat.
In the best of circumstance loyalty to home diminishes as it grows toward "friends" who thirty or forty years later will more likely themselves be forgotten. Will "home" be re-appreciated? Has it really depreciated as much as we thought it seemed to because we were too busy elsewhere?
The idea that when a man lies, he murders some part of the world is not understated. We weren't hammered with that kind of language when we were little. We were taught both at home and at school that lying (and not being truthful) was wrong. In time, those who were smarter, more attractive, and easier to please than our parents would teach us to be clever at the expense of what was right.
The effect of detouring away from homework and arriving at class not prepared for the work at hand and deprived of foundations for subsequent days would always be my fault. From those days when I was in school, until whatever present when people offer excuses, I hear an echo.
"It's the teacher's fault." Or, "The teacher hates me." Or "The teacher doesn't know anything." Statements like these send up a red flag. It's a good bet that the deficiency lies with the student who has developed other priorities and when chits come due he'll cover his rear-end with excuses. He'll find sympathizers, to be sure. Check their credentials. Kids who blame the teacher don't have evidence. All thirty-two students aren't going to fail. Tilting against authority behind the big desk up front is absurd. The teacher has the advantage. When she's (he's) wrong, she's still right. Agitating to some is easier than paying attention and doing the work that those who passed did all the way through to judgement day.
