All the people there were having a wonderful time, and every one of them seemed to know my father and to be his friend. Dad introduced me all around, then picked me up and set me on this long table-like contraption I think was called “the bar.” The man behind the bar set a large mug of beer in front of my father and a bottle of pop in front of me, and the wonderful time started, with Dad telling stories and everybody laughing themselves sick, and the bar man renewing our drinks whenever they ran out. After a while, we left the establishment, climbed back on the wagon, and headed home. The ride back seemed a lot shorter than the ride to town, something less than an eternity anyway. Dad said, “Let our visit to the bar be our own little secret, OK?”
“You bet,” I said. I could hardly wait to grow up. I’d had no idea grownups had these secret places where everybody was happy and shouted and joked and had a wonderful time.
The next day Dad prepared to blow up the giant cedar stump.
Mom supervised the operation. “Good heavens, Frank!” she exclaimed. “How many sticks have you put under the stump now?”
Dad told her a number.
“Good heavens!” she said again. “I think that’s way too many.”
“It’s an awfully big stump,” Dad said. “I’ll put in a few more sticks, just to be on the safe side.”
Finally, he lit the fuse and he, Mom, and I ran out into the middle of our hayfield. I don’t recall exactly how far that was but it wasn’t far enough. I still have dreams about . . . well, I won’t go into that.
We waited and waited for the dynamite to go off. “Maybe something happened to the fuse,” Dad said, or something like that. “Maybe it went out. I should go check—!”
KA–BAMMMM!
That giant cedar stump rose straight up in the air like a rocket taking off for the moon. It sailed over the top of the house and came crashing down on the white picket fence. That is how I know the stump remained in the backyard when the photo was taken. The picket fence was still there.
Scrabble’s Powers of Observation
E
ven as I piloted my classy new pickup truck into my driveway, I could feel Scrabble’s eyes on me, a disgusting sensation if there ever was one. He was undoubtedly manning the observation post in his domicile across the street, said observation post being equipped with the most advanced and sensitive electronic surveillance gear for the detection of any new purchase I happened to make. I turned off the purring engine, leaped out, and sprinted for my front door, but too late. Scrabble had already streaked across the street and cut me off . . .
“Wait up a sec!” he shouted breathlessly. “I see—gasp— you got yourself a—gasp—new truck.”
I slid to a stop and shrugged in acceptance of defeat. Scrabble would have gotten to me sooner or later anyway. Still, it would have been nice to enjoy my new truck defect-free for another hour or two.
“Nice paint,” Scrabble said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I thought about buying one of these myself,” he went on, “until I found out they have a lot of problems with the cranker points. That wouldn’t be a problem, of course, if they was covered by the warranty, which they ain’t. Costs about $18,000 to have your cranker points replaced. But that’s not the big problem.”
“What’s the big problem?”
“The gunker welds. They tend to bust at any speed over thirty-five, and the engine falls out and goes skittering down the highway. Oh, I see they’re still equipping these trucks with Zop headlights. They’re OK, but the only way you can buy replacements is by trekking into a remote village in the Himalayas, where local craftsmen build them by hand and sell them only after you have proved your worthiness by walking barefoot over a hot bed of coals.”
OK, so I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea. As far as I know, Scrabble doesn’t have a job. He may have had one once, but I think the stress of worrying that I might buy something while he was away at work proved too much for him and he retired on disability. He now seems in perfect health, thanks to the miraculously recuperative powers derived from his critiquing not only any new purchase I happen to make but also my existing possessions.
Explosions are a specialty of Scrabble’s. Any product I buy powered by gasoline has a history of killing or maiming several dozen people, not the least of whom is the object’s owner. Despite the fact that none of my machines have ever exploded, Scrabble has instilled in my mind that potential. Every time I start a gasoline motor, I have the vague feeling I may be igniting a fuse. Several other neighbors have commented on my tendency to leap back whenever I pull the starter cord on my lawn motor. “It’s just a precaution,” I tell them. Scrabble, by the way, doesn’t live across the street from any of them.
If I show up with a plastic bag containing a few groceries, Scrabble rushes over. “I see you’re using one of them plastic bags. You know they don’t disintegrate for three million years and are starting to clog up all the oceans.”
If I show up with a paper bag, I learn from Scrabble that every day a forest the size of Vermont is cut down to make paper bags.
Lately, I’ve taken to carrying groceries home concealed in my clothes.
“Where’s the tomato sauce?” my wife asks.
“Right here in my inside vest pocket. Why do you ask?”
“And the box of cornflakes?”
“Tied to my chest, where else?”
The criterion for engaging Scrabble’s critical scrutiny seems to be only that I possess the object. I’ve owned a fine little outboard motor for upward of ten years. Unlike most of the hundred or so machines I’ve owned, the outboard actually runs. Indeed, it has never failed me. One rip of its starter cord and it purrs like a kitten. It will hum along all day long on a couple pints of gas. I love that little motor.
“Uh-oh,” Scrabble said, peering into my garage. “You got yourself one of those little outboard motors.
“Yes,” I said triumphantly, “and it has served me impeccably for over ten years. So what do you think of that, Scrabble?
“Excellent motors,” he replied.
“Really? You mean my motor has the Scrabble seal of approval?”
“Yes, indeed. I assume you have never once heard it ticking.”
“Ticking? No, I don’t believe I have.”
“Good,” he said. “Just to be on the safe side, though, you might want to listen for a ticking sound. If you hear it, you might want to shut the motor off instantly.”
Only once afterward did I think I heard a ticking sound coming from the motor. I had to laugh at my own reaction to Scrabble’s outrageous powers of suggestion. I calmly picked up an oar and used it to push the off button.
A while back I managed to sneak home a new suit without Scrabble’s detecting it. I actually don’t wear the suit that much, not that I’m worried Scrabble will see me in it and rush over to point out its defects. It’s mostly because I haven’t been able to discover why it makes that slight ticking sound.
The Dark and Other Dangers
A
young fellow recently wrote to tell me that he and some of his friends had been thinking about sleeping out in his backyard. He wanted to know if I had any advice for them. I did. Since the age of eight, I have slept out in backyards, although not for quite a few years now. Sleeping out in the backyard is the kid’s version of Peary going to the North Pole, Amundsen to the South Pole, Livingstone to Africa, and McManus to the backyard. I must admit in all modesty that the adventures of those other explorers dim to insignificance compared with mine.
It is my belief that the proper location of the heart of any true explorer is in the throat. I say this based on my own experience of spending a night out alone in the backyard. The fact that those other adventurers failed to mention this significant fact makes me suspicious of the veracity of their various written accounts.
I don’t recall the specific date of my outing, but I probably could look it up on the Internet. It was the longest night in the history of the world
, so I shouldn’t have trouble finding it.
Why did I put myself through this ordeal? Why does any explorer? It is in our blood to venture forth and probe the unknown. For me, the backyard at night constituted the great unknown. It fairly begged for discovery. Also, I had grown sick of school and had made up my mind to become a mountain man. If I could have become a mountain man only in daylight, I would have headed for the mountains like a shot. But there is always an obstacle between the true explorer and the achievement of his ambition. In my case, it was the dark.
I do not mean to imply that up until the age of eight I’d had no experience with the dark. Why, you might ask, didn’t my mother provide my room with a night light? To even ask that question would identify your parent as a member of the Wimp Generation. Had I even raised the question of a night light, Mom would have laughed so hard she might have hurt herself, and I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for that. Admittedly, the dark of my room was not voluminous. It was a block-shaped cube of about eight feet. Over the years, I learned to deal with this cube and even came to appreciate its limits.
Outside in our backyard at night, however, dark appeared to have engulfed the whole world, or at least the portion of it that I could see. In its vastness, the outside dark contained wolves, cougars, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes, bats, poisonous spiders, and nonpoisonous spiders. As a member of the select club of explorers, I could easily imagine Dr. Livingstone getting a little nervous as he looked out of his tent suddenly to see the last strands of daylight being slurped up the trunks of tall trees to disappear into the open maw of night.
As I grew older and started to camp out in the mountains with a little group of friends, I was pleased to detect a fear of the dark in at least one of them. We slept out in the open air, exposed to the dark every night. On at least one occasion, a kid I’ll call Homer suddenly stopped unrolling his sleeping bag as night closed in around us. Then he stuffed the sleeping bag back in his pack and without even bothering to say “Goodbye,” disappeared back down the trail we had come up. His early arrival home apparently caused his parents to think he might be afraid of the dark. So they bought him a little white tent, just big enough for the four of us to sleep wedged in side by side.
That tent was a great comfort to me. Sure, it got dark inside at night but it was a tiny cube of darkness, something I found easily manageable.
The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories Page 17
