Backhoe

When I was a young man, I floated from job to job for a couple of years before I finally settled down and stayed put at one place of employment. I stayed longer at some jobs than others, but generally it would take a few weeks or months to decide that I wanted to do something else. I tried working in a hardware store, but didn’t think much of the pay, or the hours. I tried welding, and was good at it, but didn’t like being trapped under that helmet all day every day. I even tried digging ditches. That’s what this story is about.
I had been welding on a production line, in a local factory for several months. It was hard, hot, dirty work and to top it off I had to do a swing shift. That meant two weeks of days then two weeks of nights. I really hated the night shift, and I didn’t like the day shift much better. After nine months I wanted out of that place, so I started looking for something outside.
I come from a farm background, so I was, and still am, quite versatile when it comes to driving or operating just about any kind of machinery. When I saw a listing at the local manpower office for a backhoe operator, I jumped on it. It turned out that a company from Kitchener Ontario had a contract to install underground phone lines in Ingersoll and they were advertising for heavy equipment operators. I applied and was hired over the phone. I gave my notice at the factory the next day. I couldn’t wait to be out of that place. I spent the next two weeks dreaming about sitting at the controls of a shiny new backhoe, looking down on the world from my lofty perch.
There was never any doubt in my mind that I would excel at this new job. After all I had been driving tractors, combines, backhoes, bulldozers and lots of other equipment ever since I was able to reach the pedals on Dad’s old Ford 8N tractor. Why wouldn’t I be successful at this new endeavor? Boy, was I in for a wake-up call.
I was to start on Monday at seven o’clock in the morning. It was raining, but I showed up at the designated spot, (a parking lot near the high school) at the designated time but nobody else was there. I waited for about two hours, before a van pulled up with five men inside.
The driver rolled down his window and shouted to me. "You Taylor?" he said.
"Yup, that’s me."
"Come back tomorrow," he ordered, "There’s no work today. Too wet."
"Same time tomorrow?" I asked, but it was too late. He had already rolled up his window and was backing away.
Tuesday morning at seven o’clock I was back in the parking lot. Again it was raining and again I waited. Again it was nearly nine, when the same van pulled in, but this time there was just the driver present.
Again he pulled up beside me and rolled down his window. "Might as well go home," he said, "Too wet again today."
I drove home wondering if it was ever going to stop raining. This was a great job though. I figured it didn’t get much better than getting paid for sitting at home every day watching it rain. I did want to get to that backhoe however.
The next day the sun was shining when I pulled into the parking lot at six forty-five. The same van pulled in at seven fifteen and out climbed the crew. They went to the back of the van and started unloading . . . shovels, picks, axes and . . . nothing else. Hmm, I wonder where I pick up my backhoe.
The guy who had driven the van each day motioned for me to come over. When I did, he handed me a shovel. He then explained that I was to dig a trench through the roots of a huge maple tree beside the street. Apparently there was some bylaw in Ingersoll, designed to protect the trees, that said we weren’t allowed to cut any root bigger than your thumb. We had to dig around them.
"I was hired to run a backhoe," I told him, "not to dig ditches by hand."
"Well," he said, "this is the only backhoe you’re gonna see today. That trees’ yours."
I had quit a good paying job in a factory to take this one so I started digging. I had car payments to make, and a baby on the way so I was determined to make the best of the situation. Besides, I was sure that this was only a temporary thing. After all I was hired to run a backhoe . . . Wasn’t I?
It was probably the worst day of work I had ever been subjected to. It was the middle of September, but the sun was beating down like it was July. I dug until my hands bled from the blisters. I hadn’t come prepared for this kind of labor. I didn’t wear a hat or bring gloves. I didn’t even have water with me. Still, I persevered and tried to keep up with the more experienced ditch diggers, but it was no use. Hour by hour I fell further and further behind. By noon the rest of the crew had all moved on to their second tree, but I was barely half way done my first.
I had only been out of school for about two years and as I said earlier we were working right by the local High School. The same High School I had attended for four years. Every time I looked up somebody I recognized was walking by, and they all recognized me too. Some of the kids even spoke to me. I was sure all of them were laughing, as they walked on down the street. I had been an honor’s student in High School and here I was digging a ditch. I wanted to climb right down in and pull the dirt in behind me. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that soon enough I would be sitting in a backhoe and it would be doing the hard work for me.
Somehow I made it through the day. At the end of the shift the foreman took me aside and gave me a little pep talk. "You did all right today," he said, "but tomorrow you’re going to have to work harder. You can’t be taking all day to get past one tree. Oh, and bring some gloves tomorrow man. Your hands are a mess."
No kidding. They hurt too. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that my hands were a mess. I could feel it with every heart beat, but I didn’t bother telling him that. I just stood there listening to his expert advice.
"Same time tomorrow?" I finally asked.
"Only if it’s not rainin’," he told me, "No sense in wastin’ gas comin’ over here and not gettin’ paid."
I nodded as I dragged my sorry, tired butt to my car and got in. I was half way home before it hit me. "Not gettin’ paid!" I shouted to nobody, "I’m not gettin’ paid for rain days."
What a shock that was. I though that everybody who worked on construction got paid for rain days. I made up my mind then and there to ask about that the next morning. So far that week I had only worked one day, and the forecast was calling for rain the rest of the week. If I didn’t get paid for rain days, I was going to have a very thin pay envelope. That night I didn’t sleep much, but it didn’t really matter because it was pouring rain Thursday morning and kept it up all day. At least it gave my hands a chance to heal.
Friday morning I woke up to a beautiful sunrise. By the time I got to the construction site it had become another beautiful late summer day. The rest of the crew was already there, sitting on the grass under the trees sipping coffee and waiting for seven o’clock. One of the first things I had been told was that you never start before seven and you never miss a break or lunch. I went to the van to get a shovel. The foreman was sitting in the drivers seat doing some paper work.
"Good morning," I said, "looks like another nice day."
He looked back and nodded at me. "Do ya think ya can pick up the pace a bit today?" he asked.
"I’ll sure try," I promised.
"Did ya bring some gloves today?"
"Yup."
"Well, I hope it helps. You’ve gotta do better than Wednesday or I can’t keep ya on."
"I will," I assured him, "My hands were rally hurting by the end of the day, but they feel a lot better today."
"I hope so," was all he said.
The other guys were heading for their respective trees and my watch told me it was seven o’clock, so I grabbed a shovel that looked like it had a nice smooth handle and picked a spot to start my first hole of the day.
The gloves helped, but I was stiff and sore from work that I wasn’t used to. It took me an hour or so to loosen up and get going well. Every time I looked up the foreman was watching me. I was sure that he was just waiting for his chance to let me go. I don’t exactly know why, but I had the feeling, and I still do that he didn’t like me and that he was looking for any excuse to fire me.
At about the same time as I started to get in the groove, the High School kids started walking by on their way to class. Once again I recognized way too many of them. I pulled my hat down low on my forehead hoping to keep them from noticing me, but some still spoke to me. I was sure again that they were laughing at me when they walked away.
I stewed all morning, wondering about the rain days and whether I would be paid for them. Finally, at lunch, I decided to approach the foreman about it.
"Excuse me," I said, "can I ask you something?"
He just nodded at me.
"Can we talk in private," I continued? The entire crew was sitting there under the same tree eating lunch.
"C’mon," he growled, "we can sit in the van."
I walked with him to the van. As soon as we were out of ear shot of the others the foreman looked at me and rolled his eyes. "OK," he growled "what’s so important."
"It’s something you said the other day," I told him, "about the rain days. Do I get paid for them or not?"
That was the only time I saw that man laugh. "You have to work two hours before you get paid for the day. That’s why we all get in the van and drive up here every day even if it looks like rain. By the time we drive up and drive back we’ve got our two hours. You don’t."
"So you’re saying I don’t get paid?"
"You are dense aren’t you?" he snapped, "I told you. Only if you work two hours in the day before you get rained out. Anything else?"
"No. Thanks," I muttered, "that’s it."
I wasn’t very happy that afternoon as I dug in the hot sun. My hands were still sore and the gloves only helped so much. By mid afternoon many of the blisters had broken open again and were bleeding inside my gloves. I was afraid to take them off because I didn’t want to see how bad, I was sure, they looked. I hung in until the bell rang dismissing the kids from school. When they started to come past agin on their way home, I had taken about all I could take. The foreman had been riding me ever since lunch and even though I was keeping up with the other workers, he seemed to think I should be going faster.
At about two o’clock I put my shovel down and went looking for the foreman. For the first time that afternoon he wasn’t breathing down my neck. I found him in the van sitting there with the air conditioner on full blast. The thought suddenly struck me that he did an awful lot of paperwork for a guy who was in charge of only six men, but I thought better of mentioning it. Instead I asked about my future with the company.
"I was hired here to run a backhoe," I told him, "When do you think I could reasonably expect that to happen?"
He looked at me as though I had suddenly grown a second head. "You were hired here to dig ditches . . . by hand!" he said.
"No," I insisted, "the posting at manpower clearly said ‘backhoe operator.’"
"They all say that you moron," he sneered, "Nobody would take the job if they knew they were going to be a ditch digger. You really are stupid, Man."
That was it. I had been called stupid by this guy one too many times. I dropped my shovel on the ground beside the van. "I’m done," I said.
"See you Monday if it’s not rainin’," he called after me as I stomped toward my car.
I stopped dead in my tracks, turned on a heel and stomped back. "Oh you won’t see me Monday, or any other day for that matter," I fumed, "I’ve had enough of you and of this job. I quit. Oh and by the way, I don’t think I’m the stupid one here . . . MAN!"
As I drove away, I couldn’t help wondering where my next paycheck was going to come from, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life with a shovel in my hands every waking minute. I also knew that I didn’t have to put up with being called stupid, or a moron by anybody.
That was the extent of my career as a backhoe operator.

The Rock

Mom and Dad were probably the most loving couple I ever knew. I can truly say that I never in all my life saw them fight. They sometimes would disagree but they never fought. Each told the other every day that they loved them, not just once but many times. Love in our house was a tangible thing and it was always there. No matter what happened. No matter how angry we got. No matter what you did wrong, the love remained. We never went to bed angry. Whatever had happened that day had to be resolved or we would sit at the kitchen table all night talking it out.
It may have come to light, throughout this narration, that I was not always a perfect angel as a child. My parents understood that and loved me perhaps even more because of it. You see, sometimes, kids are more fun when they aren’t behaving perfectly. I was very good at that.
One fine summer evening I was outside in the barnyard doing some small chores, watching the pigeons flying in and out of the hay mow. They were gathering sticks and pieces of rock and other stuff as pigeons do. Mom and Dad were both in the barn milking the cows. Now, you have to understand that Dad hated pigeons. He called them disease carrying vermin that served no better purpose than to poop (he didn’t say poop) all over everything in a hay mow. The only hunters allowed on our farm were some men with a thick accent. I remember them coming around to shoot pigeons in the barn a couple of times a year. Dad always let them in with an admonition not to shoot any holes in his steel roof. Dad really loved that roof.
Suddenly I had an epiphany. There were tons of small rocks laying around and I had a fairly good arm, so it would naturally follow, that I should pick up a rock and, with all the might and accuracy I could muster, hurl it toward a flying pigeon.
Hey . . . I missed . . . oh there’s another one. Pick up a stone . . . take aim . . . wait for it . . . follow through . . . swoosh . . . dang. Missed again. Ok this time for sure. Here he comes. Nice big rock. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . Swoosh . . . Crash!
Seconds later Dad emerged from the barn holding the rock that just crashed through a window and hit him squarely in the back of the head, as he was bent over milking a cow. He simply held up the rock, rubbed his head and watched me standing there, trying to look as innocent as possible. I was good at it too.
When he asked me why I had thrown a rock through the window I said, "Huh? Rock? What rock?" (It just doesn’t get more convincing than that does it?)
"The one that just hit me in the head!" said Dad.
"Hit you in the head? A Rock? Really? How the heck could that happen Dad?"
"You tell me!" he insisted. (I think you get the idea.)
I was good, but the dust on my hands and the fact that I was the only one out there sort of gave me away. I did what any red blooded boy would do. I lied some more, but Dad was having none of it. I could see that he was starting to get angry. His ears were getting red. That was a sure sign that it was time to come clean, except on hot days when his ears tended to get red all the time. (Another story there too)
I wasn’t a dumb kid. I knew the right thing to do, so I made a snap decision. I stood up straight, looked Dad right in the eye and I lied some more.
I started with something about the neighbor kid, who was probably at home lying to his own father, then went off on a tangent ending with something like "I didn’t do it . . . on purpose . . . sorry." Followed by a flood of tears. Tears always helped. Dad hated to see me cry, and I could do it on command.
By the time all was said and done, Dad was laughing too hard to be mad anymore. After all, as he said, I did have good intentions, if not good sense, and no one was really hurt. The window which had already been badly cracked got fixed and I put some fear of God into those pigeons.
Oh . . . and I really pulled the wool over Dad’s eyes that time.

Reputation By Association

When I was in High school, I was rewarded for my exceptional mental acuity as well as my great manual dexterity by receiving the highest honor our society can bestow upon a teenage boy. I got my drivers license, and it only took me three tries . . . again because of that great dexterity and acuity thing . . . right. Well, it wasn’t my fault if two inspectors didn’t recognize the greatest driver of all time sitting right there beside them. The third one sure did.
I had actually been handling many items of farm equipment since I was old enough to reach the pedals and Dad had been letting me drive the cars and trucks around the farm and even down some gravel roads since I was thirteen so I really could handle a vehicle. The main problem was that I thought I could do it at any speed and I tried to. I had two speeds "stop" and "How fast will this go." By the way, a farm tractor on the right hill with just the right amount of tail wind can achieve speeds of nearly thirty miles per hour . . . but that’s another story.
As soon as I got my license I started hanging around with some guys whom I wouldn’t want my kids hanging out with. They smoked and drank and did some drugs but didn’t really get into any big trouble. That is to say they weren’t in trouble with the cops or the school administration or even their own parents, but the other kids all knew them and they didn’t have a good reputation. I didn’t do drugs and I didn’t drink alcohol even though I was hanging around with these kids who did, but Dad had a saying I’ll never forget. "Reputation by association." It was proving to be true in my case and that bothered me. I didn’t like the idea of folks thinking I was someone I wasn’t.
I was no angel and I got into minor trouble from time to time, but my parents never had to face a police officer standing on the door step with me in handcuffs, or come into the local constabulary to bail my ass out of jail after a night of carousing. In fact my worst encounter ever, with the police, was being pulled over by a local cop who decided it would teach me a lesson if he tore Dads car apart on the main street of town looking for drugs.
With my help, removed the spare tire, the back seat, the hub caps, the floor mats and the lining form the trunk. He found nothing because there was nothing to find. He then told me that I had five minutes to get the car off the street or he would be back to charge me with obstructing traffic. It took me about two minutes to pile all of the stuff into the trunk and the back seat and get out of there. I don’t know to this day whether he came back to check on me or not, but if he did I was long gone.
I never told Dad about that little incident but years later noticed that any time Dad and I drove past that spot, he seemed to have a funny little smile cross his face for just a second. It never happened if he knew I was looking at him though. Hmm, I wonder . . . I never bothered with drugs much or with drinking either. I was afraid of getting caught. Hmm, I wonder . . . Come to think of it, I stopped hanging around with those kids right about then too. HEY!

I'm Coming Back

I havent been able to post for the last few weeks because of problems in many areas of my life. I haope that as of today I can begin again to publish the stories of my and my family's life. My heartfelt thanks to all who have wished us well during our time of tribulation.

Mother passed away in the summer leaving a huge void in our lives that we will never fill. we are only now beginning to get back to normal and resume our day to day routines.

To top everything off my computer crashed and had to be replaced. It took much of my writing with it. I was able to save some, but not all, of my stories but I am getting back into the groove now and there should be new posts here from me soon.

The Pony

The Pony

When I was a young man, in my late teens and early twenties, I loved cars and the cars I loved were fast ones. I even made modifications to Dads car before I owned my own to make it more sporty and faster. It's strange that when I bought my first road worthy vehicle it was a 3/4 ton Dodge pick-up. It wasn't fast and it wasn't sporty but it was affordable and I knew that Dad could really make use of a pick-up truck on the farm. Besides I still lived at home and Dads car was sporty and fairly fast, because I had made it that way, and I could use it whenever I wanted to. In fact before too long we had pretty much traded and Dad was driving my truck all the time while I drove his car.




The guys I was hanging out with at the time were more into girls than cars so for the first time in my life I was the cool one in the group. I was driving an almost new 1970 Plymouth Satellite Sport that was about one and a half heart beats from being a Road Runner. I had taken off the standard two barrel carburetor, put on a four barrel and added headers and dual exhaust. I had also put on a few other performance parts so for a little three-eighteen it rocked. I tweaked the outside too with a nice set of mag wheels and some lace paint. Lace paint was paint sprayed on over a piece of lace so that when the lace was removed the design was left on the car. It was really sharp and stylish too.




Dad didn't know about most of the changes I had made to his car. I just did it without saying anything, probably because I knew he wouldn't agree if I asked. You see, if he didn't say no then I really hadn't done anything wrong. That's how I saw it anyway. Of course he knew about the wheels and paint because he liked that stuff too. Dad was a car guy and he could appreciate a nice ride. I did these changes over a period of a few weeks. I was working and had saved up a bit of money and I spent it all on that car. All was right with the world until Dad took the car into the dealership for its regular warranty maintenance. That's when the rectal excrement hit the rotary oscillating device.




By the time he got I got home from work he had been stewing in his own juices for a few hours and he went off like a gun. He just about as mad as I had ever seen him. I don't really remember what was said but the gist of his tirade was that I had no right changing things on his car that could affect his warranty without asking him first and I had no respect and he thought he could trust me and now he knew he couldn't.




As the lecture went on I began to realize that I had made a big mistake. He wasn't angry because I had made modifications to his car. He was angry because I hadn't asked. He never once suggested that I should change it back to stock but over and over again I heard that I should have asked. By the time we were through I owned a tweaked out 1970 Plymouth and Dad owned a beat up 1969 Dodge Pick-up. To this day I'm not quite sure how he thought I would learn anything from this punishment but I certainly wasn't about to say anything to him about it.




I loved that car. It was really quick and it really looked good. I drove it for four years and I drove it hard but now I'm wandering from the point of this story.




As I said earlier, for the first time in my life I was one of the cool guys. I was driving a sharp, fast car and people actually wanted to be my friend. The other guys respected my opinion too. Instead of blowing me off every time I said something they would actually ask me for my opinion. One young man in particular went out of his way to be my buddy. He was always tagging along with me and inviting me to do things with him. We both had steady girlfriends so we used to double date a lot. In my car of course. He even followed me from job to job as I searched for the career or trade that I wanted to spend my life at.




This fellow didn't own a car and he didn't live far from me so when we were working at the same place he would ride to and from work with me. One day, on our way home, we drove past a car lot and sitting there was a 1967 orange Mustang. It was beautiful and my friend fell in love immediately. Day after day that car was all he could talk about until finally one day I stopped in so we could take a closer look at it.




Up close it was even nicer. The body and paint were perfect. The interior was pristine and when the salesman started it up it sounded positively awesome. He asked us if we would like to take a test drive. I thought my friend was going to turn inside out. He said he would have to go with us but that since I owned the Plymouth over there I could drive.




Just about that time the place came alive with customers and, I'm sure against his better judgement the salesman pointed at me and said, "Go, but be careful!" We went. As soon as we were out of ear shot, I lit that pony up. It was fast and I put it through its paces. After a short run we decided to take it out to show my dad. We both respected his opinion on cars. Dad was a car guy as I said but he didn't think much of this one. If remember right, he called it suicide on wheels. That only made it better.




We then headed back to the dealership to see if Buddy could make a deal. There was about a mile of gravel road before we hit the paved highway so we went really slow. We didn't want to get stone chips in the paint but when we got to the pavement I stopped revved it up and popped the clutch. It lit up like a rocket then died. We coasted off to the side of the road and tried to re-fire the engine but it was no use. It wouldn't even turn over. I was beside myself. I was sure I had blown the engine. If my car hadn't been sitting at the dealership with the keys in it, I think I would have walked away and left the Mustang right there on the side of the road. I certainly thought about it but better judgement took over and I walked across the road to a gas station there and called the salesman.




From the sound of his voice on the phone I think he was as scared as I was. He had let these two young hooligans take off in a high performance Mustang and they had blown the engine. I'll bet he was worried. He showed up in minutes with my car and a can of gas, saying that the Mustang might be empty. We dumped the gas in and the salesman climbed in. When he turned the key, it hesitated then that pony fired and came to life. He dropped the clutch and was gone in a cloud of dust and tire smoke.




We admired that Mustang for a while before it finally disappeared from the lot but we never had the nerve to go back in and try to make a deal. Buddy soon bought a car though. It was an old V W Beetle. Not exactly a Performance Mustang but it got him there and back.

A Big Fan

A Big Fan

I Have always loved music. From the time I was a little boy I have had a tune in my head. It never stops. It changes constantly but it's always there. Maybe that's why I have always loved to sing. I could always be heard outside singing songs and making up my own lyrics to songs. I got that from Dad. He loved music too. He would fall asleep listening to Mozart or Beethoven and his hand or foot would still be keeping time to the music in his sleep. I love all kinds of music form pop and rock to classical but country has always been my first love. There's nothing like a good ole country song.




When I was seven years old, my parents noticed that I seemed to have some musical talent so they signed me up for Hawaiian guitar lessons. Guitar lessons were a cool idea but I wanted to play like Chet Atkins not some guy in a grass skirt. The other problem was that the teacher I had at the conservatory of music was probably the worst music teacher that ever lived. There were about ten kids in one class and he spent most of the hour screaming at us and telling us that we were stupid maggots who didn't deserve his trouble.




Needless to say that turned me off on guitar lessons and when the time came that Mom and Dad had to either buy my guitar or give it back we gave it back and I quit. That was it for me and Hawaiian guitar lessons.




A few years later my cousin bought a Spanish guitar and started trying to learn to play it. It looked like fun so I talked him into showing me everything that he had learned. You know what? It was fun. Now I wanted a guitar. I wanted a guitar more than anything in the world. Every chance I got to play with a guitar had it in my hands. Whenever I saw a guitar at any ones house I would ask if I could play with it. Almost everyone said yes but the problem was that those guitars were often unused and so they were also untuned. That meant that whenever Dad heard me with a guitar in my hands it sounded like hell.




I begged for a guitar. I didn't care. Any old guitar would do. It didn't have to be new. It didn't even have to be in good shape. I didn't know the difference anyway. It just had to have six strings and be tuneable but Dad remembered the Hawaiian guitar fiasco and refused to waste money on a guitar that, "I would just lose interest in a few weeks later."



As I related in an earlier story, I finally got the guitar thanks to Mom. As soon as I got it home I got started. I tuned it up and I was away. A few days later Dad realized that I was really learning and fast too so he set up lessons for me with a man in town. Private lessons and with a real musician and I actually learned stuff. Six months later my teacher said he had taught me everything he knew and I was back on my own. He told me where to get more private lessons but suggested that since he hadn't been able to break me of playing by ear, and he had given me all the basics, perhaps I was best to continue on my own.




Today I sit here a retired musician with twenty-five years of professional music under my belt. Most of that time I was a bass player in Country and Blues bands. From the day I turned professional, until the day I retired I was never without a gig for more than a few weeks, unless I wanted to be. My career as a musician holds many wonderful memories for me. It was a whole other life apart from my real life and I wouldn't trade that time for anything. If it hadn't been for my mother I might never have gotten that guitar and might never have embarked on a part of my life that made me many friends and many wonderful memories.




By the way . . . the guy who wouldn't buy me that guitar bought me a new and better one as soon as I started those lessons he set up. He was my second biggest fan until the day that he died. I played on the night of his memorial service. The entire band dedicated their performance to Dad.

The Road Home

The Road Home

As a kid my parents and I didn't do much visiting around the neighborhood. I think it was because of Dads religion but I don't know for sure. Who am I kidding of course it was because of Dads religion but that's not the point anyway.




Mom and Dad had been raised in the time before everybody had a TV or even a radio for entertainment and people had to find things to entertain themselves. Cards were the entertainment of choice in both of their families and that tradition was passed on down to me. Cribbage was the game that they played the most and at the age of nine I had learned to play crib better than most adults.




Every month there was a cribbage and euchre party held at the local community hall and we would go to that a couple of times a year. I'll never forget how the older ladies would get in a huff and decide that kids shouldn't be allowed to play every time Mom and got close to winning the team prize for the night and it happened pretty much every time. I don't want to brag but we were good and we made a great team. I think that's why we didn't go too often. Just often enough to be considered a part of the community.




Once or twice a year we would be invited to a neighbors for supper or an evening visit but again I think people were hesitant to invite us because of Dads religion. It wasn't that they didn't like Dad or Mom. It was that they were afraid that Dad would start preaching. After all he did spend every Sunday morning knocking on peoples doors with his bible in hand. Again I think the invitations were so we would feel like a part of the community even though we really weren't.




One of those nights when I was about twelve years old, we were all invited to the neighbors just around the corner for supper, a slide-show and some cards. Mom and Dad insisted that I go along even though there were only girls in that family and they were all much younger than I was.




The evening went well enough with a great roast beef supper and a slide show of a trip they had recently taken to some exotic destination. These folks obviously weren't farmers. They had purchased a lot off the farm next door to ours and built a house so they could raise their girls in the country. Now everyone sat down to play cards but I was the odd man out. It's impossible to play crib with five and so I was told to go play with the girls until my folks were ready to go home.




Ok. I like girls but these were little girls and I was almost a teenager. I was so bored. It would have been more fun watching paint dry. I asked Mom if I could walk home. She said no. A few minutes later I asked Dad if I could walk home. He said no. A few minutes later I told everyone that I would really like to walk home. Dad and Mom both said NO! It went on like that for about half an hour till Dad finally said, "Boy. Why don't you shut up and walk home?"




"Are you sure it's ok with you Dad?"




"GO!"




I went. It was about half a mile from their door to ours and we were out in the country. It was dark. In the country there aren't any street lights so if the moon isn't out it's really dark and I have never been, and am still not, too fond of the dark. To say I'm afraid of the dark would be an exaggeration but I do get nervous in the dark sometimes. That night there was no moon and no stars and it was really dark.




I set out for home and the lights from the house were lighting up the way just enough to comfort me but the further I went the darker it got. By the time I was a couple of hundred yards down the road I was in pitch darkness. I had just made a big fuss about wanting to walk home so even though I wanted with every fibre of my being to turn back and Go to the light I had to keep going or look like an idiot. I didn't realize that I already looked like an idiot because of all the bugging to go home I had done so I plodded on into mortal danger.




Each step seemed to take me deeper into the dark night. I could see the outside light shining in the yard at home but it was a long way off and around a corner. That half mile was the longest walk of my life. Every few steps I would stop and listen. The rustling of the grass in the ditch or the leaves on the corn in the field nearby sounded like wild animals stalking me as I walked. Visions of foxes, wolves, bats and any number of other vicious creatures filled my head but still I trudged on.




By the time I got to the corner I was terrified. I had convinced myself that there was indeed a rabid fox stalking me. It was following my every movement just waiting for its chance to pounce. It must have had a quarter mile or better to pounce and hadn't but I was still convinced that it was there and that it was after me. Still I kept going.




Now I was at the bottom of the hill that lead from the corner up to our driveway. That was more than halfway home. I stood still on the side of the road just hoping that a car would come by. I was sure that the noise and lights would scare the fox away but no cars came. I was almost in tears. I was afraid to go on and I if I hadn't been afraid to go back I couldn't because I would look foolish if showed up talking about foxes and wolves.




Then It happened. I heard a noise in the ditch and it wasn't grass or corn leaves rustling. There was something in there and it was coming my way. It had to be the rabid fox that my active imagination had created for me. I ran. I tripped. I fell and it was on me. A ravenous, vicious mass of teeth and claws on my back and then at my face . . . licking my cheek and purring like a locomotive. It was our old house cat, Penny. She must have seen me coming up the hill and come to meet me. Penny was always hungry for a little affection and tonight was no exception. I have seldom been so glad to see any creature as I was to see that cat. I picked her up and with a cat for moral support I walked the rest of the way home.




Dad and Mom came home an hour or so later and never knew what went on that night on the road home. I certainly never would have told them.

Memories

Memories
I’ve read autobiographies from time to time, where the author relates vivid memories of their earliest youth. They tell in great detail of things that happened when they were barely more than toddlers. I don’t have those vivid memories of my early childhood and I don’t think most of us do. My first coherent memories, in fact, begin around the age of five, although I do have one or two fleeting glimpses of a few earlier recollections.

One such fleeting glimpse is the only real memory I have of my maternal grandmother. Unfortunately it isn’t a pleasant memory, even though my mother assured me, on many occasions, that Grandmother doted on me to a fault. No one was allowed to so much as speak harshly to me in her presence. I regret that I remember none of that. All I remember is the one time that she got upset with me.

I don’t know how old I was. All I do remember is that I was playing with a compact Mom had given me. It was gold and had a cover on it made of what can best be described as chain mail. When turned upside down the chain mail would hang down in an arc about the size of a baseball. I loved the feel of the chain on the palm of
my hand and could sit for hours playing with that compact.

One day I was playing with the compact when Grandma came along and saw me. She didn’t realize that Mom had given me permission to play with it and took it away. She then gave me a big lecture about how I shouldn’t touch my mother’s things. I remember being reduced to tears, but then the memory ends.

The next recollection I have of my grandmother is that of an old woman in a bed that had been moved into our livingroom. That turned out to be her death bed. I don’t remember her death, although she died in our home, because I was sent to a relative’s house when the inevitable end drew near. I don’t remember the funeral. I don’t remember anything else about her.

I don’t have any real memories of any of my other grandparents either. Oh, there’s a fleeting recollection of a thin man with a huge mustache puffing on a cigar in the back seat of an early fifties automobile. We’re parked beside the water at Ipperwash Beach on the shores of Lake Huron and I’m playing in the sand near the car. An old man is sitting in the back seat of the car with the door open, a cloud of cigar smoke encircling his head. He is my paternal grandfather, or so I have been told. That is the only recollection I have of him. He died when I was about three years old.

My maternal grandfather died before I was born so the only memories I have of him come from pictures and stories that my parents and other family members passed on to me. The funny thing is that although I never laid eyes on him I have a more vivid image of him in my mind than I do of my other three grandparents, all of whom I met.

I also lost my paternal grandmother when I was very young. Although she was the last of my grandparents to leave us, I remember next to nothing about her. She lived sixty miles away and only rarely came to visit us. My one memory of her involves walking in on her in the bathroom. Enough said. It isn’t a very pleasant one either.

The first real memory, with any real detail and realization of time, is of a day when I was about five. I was sick with the measles. Mom had me laying on a couch in the kitchen. Mom called it a studio couch. It was old then and it turned into a bed of sorts. I can still remember the smell of years of use and dust built up in the worn fabric. It was a comforting smell, the smell of home.

I was sleeping on and off while Mom worked around the kitchen doing her daily duties. Dad had gone off to town on some errand or other. Sometime around mid morning Dad came through the door carrying a red and white tricycle. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my short life. Because I was sick and the trike was new, I was allowed to ride it around the house for the next few days before it was relegated to the back yard where it eventually met its demise beneath the wheels of a tractor, truck or bus. I don’t exactly remember which.

I don’t remember my first day of school or my first report card or the first time I rode the school bus, but I remember the first time I got into trouble at school. I was a prolific talker as a child. I’m told that I still am at times. Year after year I would win awards for the best vocabulary in my class. On the day in question I was sitting in my grade-one class and for some reason that completely escapes me, I was turned almost completely around in my desk talking to the girl sitting behind me. It seems to me now that she wasn’t paying much attention to me. Probably because the teacher was talking as well.

I don’t know just how long I was so preoccupied with my own conversation that I didn’t hear the teacher, but by the time she tapped me on the shoulder she was more than a little irritated. She gently pulled me to my feet, walked me to front of the class room and had me spread out a couple of sheets of newspaper on the floor. I then spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the floor at the head of the class, where there was no one else to talk to. It was the most embarrassing time of my young life. Unfortunately it didn’t curb my enthusiasm for conversation at inappropriate times.

I also remember my next really embarrassing moment. It happened when I was in grade-two. It was on the bus ride home. I was sitting with a cute little girl who was in grade-one. She had been chattering away all the way around the route, but I wasn’t paying much attention. She was hardly more than a minor annoyance to me. Since she was a year younger, I only tolerated her.

I guess she didn’t see it that way, because when the bus stopped in front of her house she planted a great big kiss on my cheek before getting off the bus. Everyone on the bus saw it including the driver, my Dad. I was mortified. I would have crawled in a hole if there had been one handy, but there wasn’t. I had to ride the rest of the way home blushing like Rudolph’s proverbial nose. I though my life was over, but to my surprise by the next day the only people who seemed to remember it were Dad, the little girl and me. It would all have been a distant memory in no time except for one little problem. Dad. When Dad got a hold of something he could tease you about, he didn’t let it go. He teased me about that kiss for years.

He finally let that one go when, again on the bus, another little girl professed her undying love for me to the entire world. This girl was the same age as I was and she was really cute. I never told Dad, but I, sort-of, had a crush on her too. We were only about eight years old and in no time we had moved on, to new loves, or new games. I heard the other day that she recently died of cancer. It really reminds you of your own mortality.

From then on my memories are pretty vivid and detailed. Some are good and I revisit them often. Others are sad, painful, embarrassing and even frightening, but I want to hold on to them all. I watched as my mother slowly lost all of her memories and became a shell before she finally passed away, not even knowing who she was. Too many people suffer the same fate in their last years.

The next time you encounter a memory that you wish you could forget, think those who have lost all of their memories and relish yours. Good bad or indifferent, memories are what makes each of us an individual and what form our personalities. We need our memories and I, for one, want to keep every one of mine. On my death bed, I want to be able to look back over my life and remember it all.

Dad

Dad
Dad was born in 1915. He was the oldest of five children. As such he had to leave school after grade eight to help out at home. He never complained about that. It was simply a fact. That’s the way things were done back then so he did it and got on with life. He worked on the farm at home as well as taking many odd jobs around the area, until his widowed aunt asked him to come to work for her in another town about sixty miles away. She was getting up in years and needed someone to look after the large mansion she lived in.

Dad accepted the offer and moved to Ingersoll in 1939. He became house boy,butler, chauffeur, and gardener to his aunt. That is where he met the love of his life, my mother. She was cook, maid, and everything else that Dad wasn’t. Together the two of them ran the house and looked after Dads aunt even after she became bed ridden. When she finally died in about1950, Dad continued to live in the house until it was sold, then he moved to the farm I grew up on and married Mom.

Two years later, I was born and things got a little more interesting for my folks. I could be a bit of a handful. I wasn’t a bad kid. I was just curious. I grew up on that farm. I left a couple of times and came back but finally moved off the farm for good in 1980. I had a good job driving trucks so I decided that I didn’t want to be a farmer anymore. Not long after that Dad sold his farm and retired to a small house in Thamesford where Brenda and I finally lived with Mom until her death.

Dad enjoyed his retirement for quite a few years. He and Mom traveled a bit and spent a lot of time with their grandchildren. They gardened and enjoyed their life together as a retired couple. The wheels started to come off their wagon when Dad was diagnosed with Diabetes and it was discovered that he had a heart condition. Doctors also said that judging from the scar tissue present he had experienced several small heart attacks in the past. This was scary news for Dad, but as he always had he stepped up to the plate and took his best swing. The only problem was that I don’t think he ever really believed that he had diabetes. He had a hard time staying off sugar.

Things went along pretty well for some time, until Dad had an attack of appendicitis. While they had him on the operating table, they removed his gall bladder and discovered that one of his kidneys had shriveled up to almost nothing. That was the beginning of Dads real health problems. From then on he had went downhill.

They soon told him that it was only a matter of time until his remaining kidney failed and he would have to go on dialysis. It took a long time with Dad getting sicker and sicker, but finally in 1995 they put him on dialysis. He was some better, once they got the dialysis going and working properly, but it meant that he had to spend four hours on a machine three times a week. The day of dialysis he would come home from the hospital and sleep the rest of the day. The next day he would be quite good. But on weekends when he went an extra day without dialysis, he felt quite ill on the extra day. Dad had his ups and downs and we made lots of trips to the emergency room.

Brenda and I would get calls at all hours of the day and night and have to rush Dad to the hospital as did other people. It always surprised me that a man with Dads strong religious belief was so afraid of dying. He said that he firmly believed in a resurrection to eternal life in an earthly paradise, yet he clung to this life like it was all there would ever be. Well I guess we’ll never know now what was really in his mind but it sure makes me wonder. This went on for five years, until dad died of a massive heart attack.

Dad was staying with us while Mom was in the hospital with a broken hip. We had just finished supper and were going to go and see Mom. Dad went into the livingroom to use his oxygen machine for a few minutes. I walked in about two minutes later and found him not breathing. We called 911. They were at our house in five minutes but, it was just too big a heart attack. We had him cremated and held a well-attended memorial service for him at the local Kingdom Hall.

His mind was as clear as a bell until the day he died. His body just wore out. I like to think that if Dad could have choreographed his own death it wouldn’t have been much different. He went quickly and quietly and he was surrounded by people he loved and who loved him.

I hope you found what you were looking for Dad.

The Ghost

The Ghost
One of the things I was not allowed to enjoy as a child was Halloween. Christmas and birthdays were also taboo, as were quite a few other things that most kids take for granted. Not allowing me to celebrate these things didn’t, however, work to insulate them from the inundation of advertising and hype that surrounded these
events. I was by no means stupid. I took in most of what was presented to me and the Halloween season was filled with stories of ghosts, goblins, vampires and an array of other creatures.

I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween, or to go trick or treating, but I sure did love to listen to all the scary tales. On dark fall nights I was as likely as any other kid to let my imagination run away on me. Nights are dark in the country, so trees become witches, the wind becomes a demon and any shadow that moves can become a ghost.

Most years the cattle are spending nights in the barn at the end of October. Sometimes, however, Dad would leave some of the dry cows and yearlings outside a little longer to save on space in the barn. One of my evening chores was to go up into the hay mow, throw down enough hay to feed the cows over night and distribute it among my hungry customers.

There were lights inside the stable and one light in the hay mow, but no lights at all outside the barn. That meant that on a cloudy night it was really dark out there. As there were no stairs from the stable to the mow you had to walk around the outside of the barn, up the barn hill and in a door on the back of the barn. You could then throw the hay down a chute that was more like a hole in the floor. This made a nice big pile of hay under the chute that you could just jump into so as not to have to walk around the barn again in the dark.

Now, that little point was very important to me, because I didn’t like the dark much. In fact I still don’t care much for it. I would always try to make that pile of hay high enough to jump into, but there was no avoiding the trip outside to get up to the mow each night. Dad thought that I was crazy for being scared. He told me to suck it up and do my chores.

One Halloween night I was doing my regular evening duties and the time came to go up to the mow. This night it was really dark. It had rained all day and was threatening to keep it up all night. I could barley see two steps ahead as I walked.

Suddenly, as I rounded the corner of the barn, something white swept across in front of me and disappeared into the night. I stopped dead in my tracks and stood there frozen to the spot. My heart pounded in my chest. I could hardly draw a breath. After several seconds I regained my composure and told myself that I hadn’t really seen anything. I continued around the barn and up the barn hill toward the door. Then it happened again. Just as I got to the door a white form swept in front of my face. Not just once but several times.

That was enough for me. I was off down that hill at a dead run, slipping and sliding on the wet grass. I ran right back to the stable and through a flood of tears told Dad that I had just seen a ghost and that I was too scared to goo back out there alone. Dad didn’t get angry or laugh at me. He just threw on his coat, grabbed my hand and headed for the door. I tried to hold back but when Dad had a hold of your hand you were going where he went and at his speed.

We went around the barn and up the hill but just outside the door Dad stopped dead in his tracks. There it was. A white wisp of . . . something swooping and diving in the air. I was right. There was the phantom wraith. A ghost, and Dad could see it too. I looked up at Dad to see how scared he was and saw that he was laughing under his breath. Not out loud, but he was certainly laughing. I recognized that jigglie thing his belly did. He was laughing.

“Dad,” I whispered, “What are we gonna do?”

With that he pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and shone the beam at the ghost. There, bold as brass, stood a black cow with a white tip on her tail. She was quietly munching at some hay on the ground just outside the door. Every few seconds she would give that tail a flip and it would whoosh through the air like a spirit.

Dad put my apparition back in the pasture and went to finish his chores. I went to finish mine as well. I don’t think we ever spoke of that night again and I also don’t think that Dad ever told anyone else about our bovine specter. I know he was laughing when I looked up at him but he sure did stop fast when he first saw that white thing fly across in front of us. I’ll never know for sure, but my money says that at first glance he didn’t know what he was seeing either.

Mom's Eulogy

My Mother passed away July 21st 2004 and we had her memorial service on Saturday. This is the eulogy I presented there.

My to Eulogy Mom (Presented at her Memorial Service July 31, 2004)

Welcome Everyone and thank-you for coming. In case anyone doesn’t know me, I’m Bob. Helen’s son. We wanted to gather our family and close friends together today to remember Mom.

Mom told us a long time ago that she didn’t want a formal funeral, but we felt that it was important to gather our family and close friends together today to remember her.

She passed away quietly on July 21st. We were there with her as she left this old world behind.

Mom lived her life the best way she knew how. She was one of the finest people I ever met. She didn’t gossip. She never held a grudge and she never felt the need to get even when someone slighted her. She was always willing to lend a helping hand even to a stranger. One summer she even took in a bunch of kids she had never met before, and looked after them while their mother was in the hospital for surgery. She had never met the mother before then either.

In times of bereavement the bible offers Christians some solace by promising something better than this earthly existence for righteous people. Whether its eternal life on a paradise earth that has been cleansed of all wickedness and evil, or the promise of sitting at the right hand of your creator in a heavenly home surrounded by your loved ones, I know Mom will be there.

I would encourage each of you to turn to your faith for comfort until we meet her again.

I hope that this can be not so much a memorial of Mom, as a celebration of her life. Of course we all want to remember her and we will each do so in our own way. In fact she will live on in our hearts and minds as long as we keep remembering.

If anyone would like to get up and say a few words about Mom please feel free to do so. She was loved by many and respected by all who knew her as a fine upstanding woman who lived a good, long wholesome life. That’s why we’re here today. Not just to say goodbye but to remember her, so if you have a story or something you’d like to share please do so.

I’d like to offer everybody a bit of an explanation of what’s been happening in our home over the last couple of years. It’s been brought to my attention recently that some feel slighted or that we’ve been trying to keep them away. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When Dad died in 2000, we packed our boys up and moved into the house he and Mom lived in. We soon realized what Dad had meant all those times when he told us how Mom was failing.

I had often told Dad to shush for saying, right in front of Mom, how badly she was on the decline. When we moved into their house, we began to realize exactly what he had meant. We had always thought that he was referring to her physical condition. We all knew she was failing physically. She was having trouble walking and trouble with her feet, but he wasn’t talking about that. He had been concerned about her mind.

We hadn’t noticed before, but now we began to see that she couldn’t remember the little things that we all take for granted. Things like her address, how old she was, what day it was, what happened yesterday, or even a couple of hours ago. Oh, she could sit and carry on a great conversation with you and chances where you wouldn’t notice anything wrong, but when you were around her constantly, like Dad had been and we now were, you started to notice certain little signs and inconsistences.

First we began to notice lots of little things. Things like the fact that every time Bren asked her if she would like some help to take a shower or to wash her hair, she would always say she had just done that yesterday, when we knew for a fact that she hadn’t.

Soon she began to do dangerous things. At a totally inappropriate times, and always when no one was looking, she would half peel some potatoes or carrots and put them on the stove to cook with no water. We would smell smoke and come to the rescue.

When Mom began to forget people, I made a conscious decision to do two things. The first was to try to retain as much of Mom’s dignity as we possibly could. If that meant not asking people to visit at certain times so we wouldn’t be trying to handle delicate situations in public then so-be-it.

The second thing was to try to get people to remember her as she had been, a dynamic intelligent woman who always put others ahead of herself. If anyone was, or is offended by those decisions then I apologise, It was never my intention to slight or offend anyone, but they were my decisions to make and I still think I was right. I wouldn’t want anybody to see me that way and I didn’t think Mom would have either.

For the last couple of years she didn’t recognize anyone other than Brenda, myself and our kids anyway. Even the kids were a problem a lot of the time.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about Mom’s life.

Mom was born in 1913 right here in Ingersoll and was raised just around the corner on Canterbury Street. She lived within ten miles of her place of birth all her life. She went to public school at Victory memorial when it was a brand-new school and graduated high school from IDCI . She didn’t marry until late in life because she stayed at home to look after her aging parents.

Mom met the love of her life when she was working as a house keeper at the Norsworthy house out on King Street East. Dad and mom courted for thirteen years while they both worked there and looked after Dad’s aunt. After she passed away, they bought a farm between Ingersoll and Thamesford and settled down to raise a large family of one. Me.

Mom worked hard on that farm. She drove tractors, milked cows, and did any other job that was required of her. At the same time she looked after the house and cooked all the meals. We often used to joke that all dad could cook was eggs and it was pretty much true. Mom however was a fantastic cook.

She was always up for a game of cards and she played crib and euchre like a pro. You see, Mom had grown up in a time when there were no TVs or video games. You had to make your own fun and Mom knew how to do that. She was fun. She knew how to laugh and have a good time. She wasn’t above a little prank now and then either.

I remember walking into the barn one day and Mom was hiding inside the door with a milker hose in her hand. She swatted me across the bum with it and if you’ve ever been hit with one you know it hurt a lot. When She realized how much it hurt Mom sat and cried right along with me. You see Mom would never hurt anyone on purpose.

Mom was always busy but she always had time for me. When I needed help with home work, or some encouragement or even just a shoulder to cry on Mom was always there. Even after I married and left home she was always just a phone call away. She was never judgmental and she always supported me in everything I ever did.

If not for Mom, I might never have learned to cook, to iron clothes or even play a guitar. She insisted that I learn to cook, mend, iron and do laundry. She told me that I might not always have someone around to do it for me. Turns out she was right for a while too.

The guitar was a good story though. When I was about fifteen or sixteen, Larry got a guitar and started learning to play. Being an only child, Larry was the closest thing I had to an older brother and everything Larry did I wanted to do too, he was my idol, so I wanted a guitar too. And I mean I really wanted one . . . badly.

I had been through a brief fling with the Hawaiian guitar when I was about seven that ended quite badly, ( I quit after a couple of months) so Dad was determined that he would not buy me a guitar. “You’ll just leave it in the corner to collect dust,” he said.

Well, I still wanted one. In fact I had my eye on a certain guitar in a store in Town. It had a black body with tiger stripes across the front. It was nice alright. Every chance I got I would go into the store and gaze longingly at it.

Now, Dad didn’t say I couldn’t have a guitar, he just said that he wouldn’t buy me one so I started saving my nickels, dimes and quarters, after several months of saving I was about half way there.

I went into town with Mom one day and while she did whatever it was she had to do I went to Fosters and ogled my guitar. When Mom came to get me, she must have seen something in my eyes because she asked me how much the guitar was. I told her and she wanted to know how much I had saved. I told her. “You really want that guitar don’t you,” she asked. I told her that I did.

She thought for a minute then said, ”You had better learn to play it.” She took it down off the wall and we paid for it and I walked out with a brand-new guitar and a beginners book on learning to play and I did learn to play. For many years music has been a huge part of my life. Thanks to Mom.

She wasn’t just an old softie though. She knew how to put her foot down and when she did it stayed down. I could whine and cry all I wanted if Mom had made up her mind she could not be swayed.

I remember biking home from somewhere one afternoon and I came to the big hill leading up the road from the corner to our driveway. That hill was pretty steep and I was pretty pudgy, so I got off of my bike and started pushing it along up the hill. The hill was probably about a hundred yards from bottom to top and about half way up I heard a car coming. I moved over to the edge of the road and turned to see Mom coming home from town. I flagged her down. When she stopped, I asked if I could put my bike in the trunk and get a ride the rest of the way home. Needless to say, the answer was no. She told me that the house was just up at the top of the hill. “Don’t be so lazy,” she said.

I argued, but to no avail. Mom simply put the car in drive, and drove. Now I wasn’t happy. In a bit of a temper I pushed my bike down into the ditch, then stood and watched in a huff as mom drove into our driveway and disappeared. After a short pout I gathered up my bike and walked it the rest of the way home. I had forgotten however that cars had rear-view mirrors, and Mom had been looking in hers. As I walked into the kitchen Mom turned around, looked at me, and in a very matter-of-fact voice said, “Go put your bike in the shed.”

I put my bike away and came back to the house just a little bit confused because I always kept my bike inside the door of the back porch. Mom simply looked at me again said, “Now, it can stay there for two weeks and then maybe you’ll know how to take care of it.”

I walked for the next two weeks.

Now I’m a parent of six kids. Six of the most deviant, underhanded, sneaky, irreverent, cute, smart, loving and perfect kids to ever grace a dinner table. I love each and every one of the six as much as the others, but all for different reasons.

When one of them does something that disappoints me, I often wonder how my parents were able to handle those moments and there were plenty of them. I have five other kids, and at any given time it’s quite certain that at least one, of them is doing something that will make me proud. Something that will make up for another’s complete lack of whatever it is he or she happens to be lacking today.

My parents only had me. All they could do was hope that tomorrow would be better, that tomorrow I would somehow miraculously gain some insight into what makes a man a man. They didn’t have any other kids to fall back on. If I was a jerk then all of their kids were jerks that day. All I can say is that it must be hard for parents of just one child. Oh . . . I can say this too . . .

Thanks Mom. I think you did a great job, considering what you had to work with. I just hope that I can do as well with my kids as you did with me.

The Silo

The Silo
Only a few times in my life have I actually been truly scared. I mean really afraid. So afraid that you think you’re about to die and you’re no so sure that it’s a bad thing. So afraid that you don’t care who knows or who sees. The only thing that matters is the fear. You have to have actually lived through a moment like that to understand. You literally have to have been there, and I have.

I was about thirteen or fourteen years old at the time. The farmer down the road had just built a brand-new silo and it was the talk of the neighborhood. It stood there beside his barn gleaming white, new poured concrete reflecting the rays of the late summer sun. Its red and white domed roof looked like a hot air balloon rising into the sky. It was a beacon of hope at a time when the farmers were holding tight to every penny they had. It shouted that somebody, at least, was making some money.

He was proud of it too. All of the farmers around had been given the grand tour and had been shown the new delivery system that automatically unloaded the silage into a cart to be pushed through the barn and fed to the pigs. Nobody had to go up there to throw the silage out of the silo and down the chute. It’s very low tech by current standards but in 1968 it was state of the art.

The silo was eighty feet high. That’s not high compared to the Space Needle or the CN Tower but to a fourteen-year-old kid who isn’t too sure about heights, that’s a long way up. Not only that, but it’s a long way down too. A very long way down.

Mr. Silo was right on the ball when it came time to fill silo. He was among the first farmers in the area to have his silo full. He then sealed it up to wait the appropriate length of time for the corn to ferment and all traces of silo gas to disappear. Silo gas is a gas produced inside recently filled silos by the fermenting vegetation. It has killed many careless farmers. One was an old school chum of mine.

Now at this point I should probably mention that since Mr. Silos son was my best friend and since Dad knew all about the dangers of silo gas, I had been admonished several times to stay out of said silo. Actually I think a better word is “ordered.” I think what Dad said was: “If the silo gas doesn’t kill you I will.”

Heck Dad, why not just ask me to climb the Silo? That would have done more to keep me on the ground.

The day the silo was opened my buddy looked me right in the eye and asked me if I was scared to climb up to the top. I looked him right in the eye and laughed. Me? Scared? Oh man, I was so scared that my knees were actually shaking and we were still on the ground. I said, “Let’s go!”.

Out to the silo we went and started to climb. Ten feet . . . Not so bad. Twenty feet . . . Still not too bad but this was gonna be a long climb. At forty feet my legs were getting a bit sore and I had stopped looking down. By the time we had reached sixty feet I was more than ready for a little rest but Buddy wouldn’t stop. I was puffing like a steam engine, my ears were burning and my face was drenched with sweat by the time we hit the top. We hoisted ourselves through the hatch and there we were. Eighty feet up, inside a silo, with absolutely nothing to see but concrete, a brand-new silo unloader, silage and the underside of a red and white dome. By the way, those domes are only red and white on the outside. This was sure worth the climb.

I was bushed so we sat there staring at the scenery for half an hour or so and resting up for the climb back down. Finally we were ready and as usual Buddy took the lead. He swung his feet out of the hatch and disappeared. I was next. I crawled over to the hatch and stuck one foot tentatively over the edge. Hmmm . . . no rung. I felt around a bit with my foot but still no rung. Buddy below me was coaching me to just slide out a bit further and the rung was right there below my foot. I couldn’t feel a rung and I sure as heck wasn’t going to slide any more of my pudgy little body out of that hatch until I could.

I crawled back in and sat against the wall. To say that I was terrified would be an understatement. I could hardly breathe. We weren’t supposed to up here at all and now I was stuck. I was not about to stick my feet over that edge again. I told Buddy to go for help. He said no, but being a good friend he tried to offer me a little encouragement.

“I think I can smell silo gas!” he said.

Too bad. That could only be a blessing to me at this point. If they dragged my cold dead body out of that silo then at least, I wouldn’t have to stick my feet over that edge again. I stayed put. After what seemed like hours and several more lies about things like spiders, rats, bats and assorted fictional creatures buddy finally gave in and went for help.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the wait, or about the trip down with Mr. Silo's arms wrapped around me, guiding my progress. I do, however, remember sitting at their kitchen table with Buddy and being chewed out for what seemed like hours by Mr. Silo. I also remember his parting words to me that day.

“I don’t see any need for your father to hear about this unless you do.”

Not a Clue Dad

Not a Clue Dad

Tractors are a great invention. They make a farmer’s life more bearable and make it possible to do many, many times as much work as with horses. It should be noted however that tractors, in the twenty first century, bear little resemblance to the tractors I grew up driving in the 1950s and 60s. Steel seats with little or no padding mounted directly on the read differential have given way to climate controlled cabs with stereo systems, cell phones and many other conveniences. The price of these 200 plus horse power monsters also far outweighs the price Dad would pay for a tractor.

By the same token, farms are much larger than those of the mid twentieth century. When I was a teenager, it was unusual to see a farmer, in our area, who was farming more than two or three hundred acres. Today the sky’s the limit. With huge farms come huge tractors and equipment, and also huge prices.

Those of us fortunate enough to have grown up on a farm in those days were allowed to drive tractors from, in many cases, a very young age. In my case it was five years of age because that’s when I could push the clutch all the way in without taking my bum off the front edge of the seat. The tractor was a Ford 8N. If memory serves me, it had about 24 horsepower and could pull a two-furrow plow with twelve inch bottoms. That meant that with each pass down the field you could turn over a whopping two feet of soil. It was our only tractor at that time and we farmed fifty acres with it. I know that’s a hobby farm today but we made a decent living from it back then.

I said decent, not great. Dad also owned and drove a school bus and a few years later he drove a feed truck part time as well. Nobody thought anything of that, because it wasn’t unusual at all for the farmers in the area, or their wives to have jobs off the farm to generate that little extra cash they always needed. One neighbor drove the road grader, another ran the mill at the feed store in town and yet another drove big-rigs and would be gone for days at a time while his wife and kids held down the fort at home. My uncle had a full time job off his farm operating heavy equipment.

If you were lucky, enough or the bank trusted you enough, to be able to acquire a new piece of equipment it was a big deal. When I was about seven years old, Dad decided to buy a hay bailer. Up until then he had either hired the bailing done or used a hay rack and hays forks the way it was done in the really old days. This was actually equipment that had been converted from horse drawn to power drawn. It was my job to drive the tractor on the bailer and it had to be done right. It was a brand-new bailer and Dad insisted that it was going to last us a long time. Dad still had it when he retired. He sold it to a neighbor who used it for many years after that.

We managed with that small tractor for a few years, until Dad found a slightly larger one for a good price. It was a used Fords on Delta. It had a front end loader and we thought we had the world by the tail. It still only pulled a small plow but I soon discovered that it would do it a lot faster. I was about twelve by now and to me fast was good. On the road with nothing behind it and a good tail wind down hill I could get that tractor up to nearly thirty miles an hour. I was warned that this tractor had to last a long time, “So don’t abuse it!”

Now, you have to realize that I was becoming a teenager, and teenage boys like to drive fast. They also love to compete with each other and show off a bit. Put this all together with what I have already said about the fathers in the area having jobs off their farms, and what you get is a bunch of young teenagers with access to tractors and little or no supervision around. Thus evolved, The Tractor Races. You may not believe this but we never got caught either. At least if we did, our fathers chose to say nothing to us about it and that wasn’t at all like our fathers, so I believe the former.

These tractor races were never prearranged. It was always something spontaneous. I would, for instance, see my friend across the road on the tractor and, having seen his father leave for work earlier, I would wave him over. It only takes two tractors for a race and we were off. Some times we’d have a third or a fourth show up but never more than that. You see our farm was on a corner so the other guys could see the tractor going down the road with nothing in tow and would have a very good idea what was up. Too many tractors would attract attention and we knew it.

At the very back of our farm there was a lane that ran along the front edge of a bush lot. It was quite straight, at the bottom of a hill and it couldn’t be seen from the road because of hills and trees. The other good thing about it was that Dad didn’t go back there much, so he wasn’t likely to notice if it got trampled down or torn up a bit. We would use that lane as our race track. The races never lasted long. After one or two runs each, we would declare a winner and be back to work before anyone was the wiser.

The scariest part of the tractor races certainly wasn’t the speed we went. It was the track. It was, as I called it earlier, just a lane. It wasn’t graded or graveled. It was just a grass lane that grew weeds instead of crops. There were pot holes, rocks, tree branches and any manner of other stuff laying around, not to mention the wildlife that a noisy tractor would scare up out of the underbrush. It was usually littered with tree limbs, leaves, stones and other assorted items that could seriously impede the forward progress of a tractor.

Our Dads were just as scary. If we got caught racing we would be in trouble with both our parents, but if we broke a tractor in a pothole or on a rock we would be in trouble with our fathers and nobody wanted to be in trouble with their Dad. When you were in trouble with your parents, Dad would always be a little bit on your side because after all “Boys will be Boys” but when you were in trouble with your dad only, the almighty himself could help, or wasn’t about to.

Dad set out the work schedule. It was only because the Dads trusted us that we were allowed access to the tractors when they were away. If any of us broke a tractor we would all be relegated to shoveling manure away from behind the animal of each father’s choice, until we once again proved ourselves worthy to handle the keys to power. Shoveling manure is not fun. Thank good luck but we never broke a tractor, or got caught. I came really close once though.

I was racing with my best friend one fall day when a cock pheasant flew out of the brush along the lane. I wish I could say that he startled me but he didn’t. A male pheasant is a beautiful bird. If you haven’t seen one, they are about the size of a chicken, but with bright plumage reminiscent of all the fall colors rolled into one bird. They have long tail feathers that trail out behind them when they take flight. They are truly magnificent. I was so far ahead in the race that I watched him flying across the freshly picked corn field instead of paying attention to where I was going. At full throttle, I dropped the front wheel of the tractor into a large hole. Now this wouldn’t have even been a huge problem, had I been paying attention. I would have bumped through and kept on going, but oh no. I was looking over my right shoulder, at the magnificent creature I had just sent flying into the air, and only had one hand on the steering wheel. The wheel was unceremoniously torn from my hand and the tractor made a sharp left turn. I have been told that it was actually up on two wheels for several seconds, before hitting a large rock with the right rear tire and being thrown
back on all four wheels.

The tractor had stalled at some point during its unguided journey and on impact I had been thrown off into a scrub tree that grew along the lane. A small tree, but it bit. It had thorns about an inch long that showed no mercy. All I was thinking about at that point was my funeral. I might have survived the accident but I would surely, I believed, not survive the wrath of DAD.

Once I managed to scramble out of the tree with more than a little help from my best friend, I looked the tractor over and to my amazement there was no visible damage. The world began to brighten, as I climbed back aboard. Still, no visible damage. I turned the key and pressed the starter button. The engine roared to life like it was born to race and wanted nothing more than to get back at it.

There was no more racing that day. As a matter of fact that was the last time I ever remember a tractor race taking place on our farm. I drove the tractor, carefully, back to the shed and put it away, just as Dad had left it the night before.

If he ever knew anything about those races, he never said a word to me about it. He did, however, mention many times that the tractor had somehow developed a strange wobble in the right rear wheel and wondered if I knew anything about it. Of course I told him the truth.

“I haven’t got a clue Dad!”

The Rock

The Rock
Mom and Dad were probably the most loving couple I ever knew. I can truly say that I never in all my life saw them fight. They sometimes would disagree but they never fought. Each told the other every day that they loved them, not just once but many times. Love in our house was a tangible thing and it was always there. No
matter what happened. No matter how angry we got. No matter what you did wrong, the love remained. We never went to bed angry. Whatever had happened that day had to be resolved or we would sit at the kitchen table all night talking it out.

It may have come to light, throughout this narration, that I was not always a perfect angel as a child. My parents understood that and loved me perhaps even more because of it. You see, sometimes, kids are more fun when they aren’t behaving perfectly. I was very good at that.

One fine summer evening I was outside in the barnyard doing some small chores, watching the pigeons flying in and out of the hay mow. They were gathering sticks and pieces of rock and other stuff as pigeons do. Mom and Dad were both in the barn milking the cows. Now, you have to understand that Dad hated pigeons. He called them disease carrying vermin that served no better purpose than to poop (he didn’t say poop) all over everything in a hay mow. The only hunters allowed on our farm were some men with a thick accent. I remember them coming around to shoot pigeons in the barn a couple of times a year. Dad always let them in with an admonition not to shoot any holes in his steel roof. Dad really loved that roof.

Suddenly I had an epiphany. There were tons of small rocks laying around and I had a fairly good arm, so it would naturally follow, that I should pick up a rock and, with all the might and accuracy I could muster, hurl it toward a flying pigeon.

Hey . . . I missed . . . oh there’s another one. Pick up a stone . . . take aim . . . wait for it . . . follow through . . . swoosh . . . dang. Missed again. Ok this time for
sure. Here he comes. Nice big rock. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . Swoosh . . . Crash!

Seconds later Dad emerged from the barn holding the rock that just crashed through a window and hit him squarely in the back of the head, as he was bent over milking a cow. He simply held up the rock, rubbed his head and watched me standing there, trying to look as innocent as possible. I was good at it too.

When he asked me why I had thrown a rock through the window I said, ”Huh? Rock? What rock?” (It just doesn’t get more convincing than that, does it?)

“The one that just hit me in the head!” said Dad.

“Hit you in the head? A Rock? Really? How the heck could that happen Dad?”

“You tell me!” he insisted. (I think you get the idea.)

I was good, but the dust on my hands and the fact that I was the only one out there sort of gave me away. I did what any red blooded boy would do. I lied some more, but Dad was having none of it. I could see that he was starting to get angry. His ears were getting red. That was a sure sign that it was time to come clean, except on hot days when his ears tended to get red all the time. (Another story there too)

I wasn’t a dumb kid. I knew the right thing to do, so I made a snap decision. I stood up straight, looked Dad right in the eye and I lied some more.

I started with something about the neighbor kid, who was probably at home lying to his own father, then went off on a tangent ending with something like “I didn’t do it . . . on purpose . . . sorry.” Followed by a flood of tears. Tears always helped. Dad hated to see me cry, and I could do it on command.

By the time all was said and done, Dad was laughing too hard to be mad anymore. After all, as he said, I did have good intentions, if not good sense, and no one was really hurt. The window which had already been badly cracked got fixed and I put some fear of God into those pigeons.

Oh . . . and I really pulled the wool over Dad’s eyes that time.

Reputation by Association

Reputation by Association

When I was in High school, I was rewarded for my exceptional mental acuity as well as my great manual dexterity by receiving the highest honor our society can bestow upon a teenage boy. I got my drivers license, and it only took me three tries . . . again because of that great dexterity and acuity thing . . . right. Well, it wasn’t my fault if two inspectors didn’t recognize the greatest driver of all time sitting right there beside them. The third one sure did.

I had actually been handling many items of farm equipment since I was old enough to reach the pedals and Dad had been letting me drive the cars and trucks around the farm and even down some gravel roads since I was thirteen so I really could handle a vehicle. The main problem was that I thought I could do it at any speed and I tried to. I had two speeds “stop” and “How fast will this go.” By the way, a farm tractor on the right hill with just the right amount of tail wind can achieve speeds of nearly thirty miles per hour . . . but that’s another story.

As soon as I got my license I started hanging around with some guys whom I wouldn’t want my kids hanging out with. They smoked and drank and did some drugs but didn’t really get into any big trouble. That is to say they weren’t in trouble with the cops or the school administration or even their own parents, but the other kids all knew them and they didn’t have a good reputation. I didn’t do drugs and I didn’t drink alcohol even though I was hanging around with these kids who did, but Dad had a saying I’ll never forget. “Reputation by association.” It was proving to be true in my case and that bothered me. I didn’t like the idea of folks thinking I was someone I wasn’t.

I was no angel and I got into minor trouble from time to time, but my parents never had to face a police officer standing on the door step with me in handcuffs, or come into the local constabulary to bail my ass out of jail after a night of carousing. In fact my worst encounter ever, with the police, was being pulled over by a local cop who decided it would teach me a lesson if he tore Dads car apart on the main street of town looking for drugs.

With my help, removed the spare tire, the back seat, the hub caps, the floor mats and the lining form the trunk. He found nothing because there was nothing to find. He then told me that I had five minutes to get the car off the street or he would be back to charge me with obstructing traffic. It took me about two minutes to pile all of the stuff into the trunk and the back seat and get out of there. I don’t know to this day whether he came back to check on me or not, but if he did I was long gone.

I never told Dad about that little incident but years later noticed that any time Dad and I drove past that spot, he seemed to have a funny little smile cross his face for just a second. It never happened if he knew I was looking at him though. Hmm, I wonder . . . I never bothered with drugs much or with drinking either. I was afraid of getting caught. Hmm, I wonder . . . Come to think of it, I stopped hanging around with those kids right about then too. HEY!

Milage

Milage

Although Mom and Dad were always reasonable people, they didn’t always listen to me and when it came to my usual list of excuses. They had heard them all so many times that I’m sure they knew which one I was going to use in any given situation even before I did.

I didn’t always tell the entire truth, so I guess they sometimes had reason to be a bit skeptical. I was not, however, a liar trough and through. I knew when the jig was up and when it was time to come clean. A story can only be stretched so far and then it’s going to snap like an elastic band. The trick to being a convincing liar is knowing when to stop. It’s knowing when that story is going to break and come flying back at your ass, like a giant elastic boot. I never knew that.

I think almost every lie I ever told my parents came back, at some point, and kicked me in the ass in one way or another. If I said my watch had stopped and that was why I was late, Mom would have wound it that morning or she would grab my arm and tell me that it was “right now.” That’s just one example.

When I was older and took Dads car into town one evening he asked, in passing, where we had gone last night. I told him that we had just met some friends at the local teen hangout , three miles from home, and had spent the evening there. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t even sound aggravated. His only comment was, “Wow! I didn’t know town was two hundred and forty-seven miles from here. What’cha doin’ tonight . . . without the car.”

I thought, at the time, that there should be some kind of law against parental entrapment. It should be illegal for parents not give full disclosure of everything they know about any given situation before beginning questioning of the offending minor(s).

Now, however, I am a parent of six. Six of the most deviant, underhanded, sneaky, irreverent, cute, smart, loving, perfect kids to ever walk the face of the earth. I love each and every one of the six as much as the others, but all for different reasons. When one of them does something that disappoints me, I wonder how my parents were able to handle those moments. I have five other kids, and at any given time it’s quite certain that at least one, of them is doing something that will make me proud.
Something that will make up for another’s complete lack of whatever it is he or she happens to be lacking today.

My parents only had me. All they could do was hope that tomorrow would be better, that tomorrow I would miraculously gain some insight into what makes a man a man. They didn’t have any other kids to fall back on. If I was a jerk then all of their kids were jerks that day. That must be hard for parents of just one child.
Thanks Mom and Dad. I think you did a great job, considering what you had to work with. I just hope that I can do as well with my kids.

A Lot of Bull

A Lot of Bull

A bull is a very dangerous animal. They are mean and extremely unpredictable. Because Dad knew that, he usually used artificial insemination on our cattle, but sometimes he would keep a bull around to do the job naturally. Dad always kept a ring in the bull’s nose with a chain hanging from it. The chain would dangle, just shy of the ground, as the bull walked around. If the bull lowered his head to charge he would step on the chain and stumble. We all knew how this worked, so we weren’t nearly as afraid as we should have been to go out into the barnyard when the bull was out. We gave him a wide berth, but we knew the chain would keep him from charging. In the heat of the summer Dad and I would take wagon loads of hay out into the pasture and unload them by hand with a pitchfork, never giving the bull a second thought. After all, he had
a chain in his nose.

A stream ran through the pasture, where we used to fish and swim all summer. We never worried about the bull though. He had a chain in his nose.

Dad used to walk out into the pasture and lead that bull back to the barn by . . . you guessed it. . . . The chain in his nose

We had a bolt embedded in the concrete wall of the stable where, when we ran out of stalls, we would tie the bull up by . . . the chain in his nose. Chains are great but like everything else they can fail.

One day Mom was out in the barnyard, doing who knows what. She didn’t see the bull coming. He walked, quietly, up behind her, put his head under her rump and threw her over his back.

You see, he never ran, he never lowered his head while he was moving and he never charged, so the chain couldn’t do its job. Mom landed beside him but she was stunned and couldn’t get up. By the time dad saw what was going on, the bull had rolled her over and over across the barnyard and under a fence.

Dad grabbed a pitch fork and drove the bull off. Mom was covered in dirt and manure and lay unconscious, under the barbed wire fence. I’m sure that fence saved her life, because the bull couldn’t get through to finish what he had started. Sore and bruised she was soon back to her normal routine, with no injury worse than a sprained wrist, but one thing changed.

Bright and early the next morning Dad led that bull up a ramp into a truck headed for the meat packing plant. We never again had a bull on our farm. By the way, Dad led the bull up that ramp by . . . the chain in his nose.

Bike Toss

Bike Toss
Every few years my parents would reward me for all the hard work I did on the farm, with a new bike. Dad loved his cars and he understood that bike to me, was like his car to him . I know, I know, it’s a guy thing, but it’s still true. If you think those little girls didn’t take a second look at me on that shiny new two-wheeler, you can think again.

I ruined my first bike learning to ride, but that’s another story. A friend left the second bike behind a tractor. It fell victim to a set of dual wheels. After about the third or fourth bike, Dad passed a new law at our farm. “Want a new bike? You pay for it.” It’s that second bike that plays a part in this little story.

I came home from school one bright day early in the spring to find a present waiting for me. It was a brand new twenty-six inch Supercylce bike. It was state of the art, red and white with lots of chrome and whitewall tires. I was the envy of all the neighborhood kids.

I was biking home from a neighbor’s house and I came to the large hill leading up the road to our driveway. The hill was very steep so I got off of my bike and continued toward home pushing the bike along up the hill. The hill was probably about two hundred yards from bottom to top and about half way up I heard a car coming. I moved over to the edge of the road and turned to see that it was Mom coming home from town. I flagged her down. When she stopped, I asked if I could put my bike in the trunk and get a ride the rest of the way home. Needless to say, the answer was no. She told me that the house was just up at the top of the hill. “Don’t be so lazy,” she said.

I argued, but to no avail. Mom simply put the car in drive, and drove. I wasn’t happy. In a fit of temper I threw my bike down into the ditch then stood and watched in a huff as mom drove into our driveway and disappeared. Now by threw I mean more like pushed. I didn’t pick it up over my head and toss it. I shoved it away from me and it tumbled into the ditch. Not the way to treat a bike, but no real damage done or so I thought. After a short pout I gathered up my bike and walked it the rest of the way home. I had forgotten however that cars had rear-view mirrors, and Mom had been looking in hers. As I walked into the kitchen Mom turned around, looked at me, and in a very matter-of-fact voice said, “Go put your bike in the shed.”

Mom was born before the First Word War and lived through The Great Depression, so she understood the value of a dollar. She didn’t waste anything and she expected me to take care of what I was given.

I put my bike away and came back to the house just a little bit confused because I always kept my bike inside the door of the back porch. Mom simply looked at me again said, “Now, it can stay there for two weeks and then maybe you’ll know how to take care of
it.”

I was by no means a perfect kid. I was known to argue and even talk back at times, but something in Moms tone told me that I had better keep my mouth shut. I walked for the next two weeks.

The Ruler

The Ruler
I was an only child but it never really seemed so, because there were always lots of other kids at our home. Both friends and cousins spent lots and lots of time at our place, and Mom and Dad treated them all like their own kids. They both loved kids. I think that’s why Dad drove a school bus. I must admit, though, that sometimes I felt that they treated other kids better than me, but I could never deny that they loved me dearly. I was never abused but both my parents new how to give me a good spanking when it was deserved.

One of the saddest things we ever had to do was telling Dad that he had to give up his driver’s license, because he was getting too dangerous on the road. All we had to do was ask him how he would feel if he were to kill someone on the road, and he gave in. Dad was a school bus driver for many years and was extremely proud of his perfect driving record. He never had a ticket or any kind of driving accident while behind the wheel of a school bus. He was often heard quoting that fact as proof that he was a very good driver. He was too, until his eyes began to fail him. Nothing seemed to bother him on the road. He was in a sort of zone when he drove.

There were times when the kids on the bus would make lots of noise. Now, that’s just being kids, so Dad would toddle on down the road seemingly oblivious to the cacophony echoing from his bus. He always noted, when talking about the noise on the bus, that it only happened on the night run when the kids were on their way home. They weren’t nearly as exited in the morning to be going to school.

I remember one Friday evening in particular when the racket on the bus had reached an ear splitting volume. I can’t say for sure but I think it was the last day of school, before Christmas holidays. Dad was, as usual, puttering down the road with a bus full of noisy kids when finally the noise became too much to take. He didn’t start to scream at us all to shut-up, or threaten to kick somebody off the bus. He didn’t threaten to call parents, or get anyone in trouble at school. He simply pulled the bus over to the side of the road, set the parking brake and shut the engine off. There he sat staring out the windshield as the world went by.

One by one the kids noticed that something was different and fell silent. We waited, then we waited some more. We probably only sat on the side of that road for a couple of minutes, but to a rowdy bunch of kids just aching to get home it seemed like an eternity. When the crowd was sufficiently settled Dad simply said, “Now can we be a bit quieter, or shall we sit some more?” The rest of the ride was made in near silence.

As I said, Dad loved kids, but he did expect them to behave on his bus. No cursing, no fighting and no destruction of anyone else’s property was ever tolerated. At the time the boys all carried a comb in their back pockets, and we all carried six inch rulers in our geometry kits. Some of the older boys took to snatching combs and rulers from other kids and snapping them in half. Dad hated this. Whenever he swept out the bus and found the broken pieces of comb or ruler he would bless Mom and me with a, not so short, tirade on the values of respecting other people’s property.

One day we were sitting on the bus waiting for the last of the stragglers to get on and we all heard a resounding snap. Yup, someone had just broken a ruler and Dad knew who it was. The bus immediately became as silent as a tomb. Dad stood up addressed the offending boy with a pointed finger, and ordered him to sit in the seat just off the driver’s right shoulder by the door. The punishment seat. He was to remain seated there for the next week at the end of which time Dad hoped he would have learned his lesson and to respect other people’s property. That done, Dad sat back down in the driver’s seat and started the bus.

Suddenly there was another resounding snap. In one motion Dad shut down the engine and was on his feet surveying the entire bus. Just a couple of seats back sat a very silly boy, with a piece of ruler in each hand. It was me. I had picked up one of the previously broken halves from the floor and while fiddling with it broke it in half again. It had been an accident, but there was no point in trying to tell Dad that.

If you think Dad was angry with the other kid, you should have seen him with me. I was immediately kicked off the bus and had to walk home. I was banned from riding the bus for the remainder of that week. And for the rest of the school year I sat in “the punishment seat.”

I tried to explain, but Dad would have none of it. He told me over and over again that he didn’t play favorites and that nobody got special treatment on his bus. Still, today, it seems to me that I did get special treatment. I got punished much worse for breaking what was now a piece of garbage than the other boy did for breaking the original ruler. I survived, and was none the worse for it but that incident still bothers me a bit to this day, but I never broke another ruler, or a piece of one again.