MEMOIRS, PART 2

Abu Beckr al- Beaumonti cautions:  Read at your peril!

WHAT I REMEMBER, Part 2

7/26/14

So here are a bunch of things I remember from my earliest days.  I can’t put them in chronological order, nor can I even vouch for their absolute authenticity.  We’re talking about things that happened 75 or more years ago – and I have always been a pretty imaginative kid.

I remember my folks bringing my sister Susannah home.  They drove down the driveway to the back yard, where I was playing.  I was a bit perplexed.  We had a dog – Bim, by name I think.  He barked his head off.

A few months later I must have realized that this squalling creature was a threat to my comfort and supremacy.  When my mother left her out front in a baby carriage for a few minutes one day, I pushed it into the street.  Nothing subtle about me.

When I was about five, I guess, my dad was working in the garden while I looked on.  Taking a break, he looked at me and said “Buck, the soil in California is so fertile that you can push a broomstick into the ground and it will sprout.  I believed that implicitly for at least twenty years.  Later in life I wondered how it could be true, but I didn’t think about it too hard.  Only when I had kids of my own did I realize that he had been joking!  Let that be a lesson to you young fathers; your kids adore you and will believe anything you say.

“Buck”, you may have asked.  Why did he call me that?  Well, from my very earliest days my father would tell me stories before I went to bed.  (Later he read to me.)  At the time Jack Benny was the funniest thing on radio; our whole family listened to him every week.  He had a continuing skit called “Buck Benny Rides Again.”  My dad would tell me cowboy stories with Buck Benny as the hero – and I became Buck.  To this day my cousin Bill will call me Buck now and then.  To all the male employees of the BH&L Co I was Buck.  Women called me Myrl, Jr.

When we would listen to Jack Benny my mother would serve each of us a bowl of hot, buttery popcorn, with a large, warm chunk of fudge in the middle.  Lord!, what a treat.  Nobody ever made fudge the way my mother did.  Lots of fresh walnuts imbedded in something that must have been sent from heaven!  My mother also made unapproachable chocolate-chip cookies.  Her fudge and cookies were so good that they ruined the experience for me for the rest of my life.  Some imitations are good – but nothing like I remember!

Early on I had long, curly blond hair.  By high school I had shorter, brown, densely curly hair.  A few decades ago this gradually transformed itself into short, shaggy, vaguely kinky – and scarce - gray hair.  One might call this normal human progression – except that most of us don’t really regard this as progress.

When I was three years old  I contracted cerebral meningitis.  We were visiting in Grand Junction, Colorado, at that time – my mother’s father and mother lived there.  Apparently I was stuck in bed for about a month, and when I finally was cleared to walk, I couldn’t.  I had lost the hearing on my left side (permanently, as it happens) and my sense of balanced was all messed up.  It took me quite a while to relearn the skill of walking.  To compensate for my hearing loss I developed the habit of tilting my head to one side.  I still do it today.  By now the muscle on one side of my neck is so overdeveloped relative to its counterpart that I actually can’t keep my head upright for more than a few minutes. 

Being deaf in one ear, while clearly a bad thing, had its compensations.  For instance, if I ignored my mother when she said things like “Myrl Jr., Come and dry the dishes”, she might convince herself that I actually hadn’t heard her.  (“Poor little deaf kid!”)  Also, if I was at table and somebody annoying was on my left, I could just turn to him/her and say:  “Sorry, but I won’t be able to talk to you – I can’t hear out of my left ear.  If you want me to pass something, punch me in the shoulder.”  Normally they didn’t punch too hard.

One disadvantage of directional deafness is that, if you truly want to be part of a large dinner table conversation, you have to insist on sitting at a corner seat, good ear pointed inward.  People who know me well simply cede the corner seat automatically.  The only serious problem with this arrangement is that I insist on the very seat that left-handed people covet.  Fortunately, there are very few left-handed people, and most of them are polite.

I was good in school, but that cut very little ice with me.  What I wanted to be was a star athlete.  My father tried to help.  He was unsuccessful.  He had been an excellent basketball player (high school and college), in the two-handed set shot and center-jump after each basket era.  By the time I was ten, I had a pretty good two-handed set shot – which got blocked 90% of the time because I was short and slow.    I became good enough (shooting otherwise, of course) to start on the Beaumont Union High School varsity my senior year.  But I was never a star. Dad also tried to teach me how to swim, but finally gave up, speculating that -unlike most people – I was simply a lot denser than water.  To this day I could swim 50 ft. only if my life absolutely depended on it.

I was fairly good at tennis, on the high school level.  I played into my 30s, but the constant overhead shots played hob with my back and I had to quit.  I still miss tennis.  I play golf now, but I stink.  I have come to terms with the fact that the only sports I am any good at are those in which the key to success lies simply in working your ass off.  I was good at distance running and weight lifting.  Now, of course, I am best at getting into and out of the recliner. 

What else?  Well, I excelled at duck tossing.  Actually, what I did was toss rings (at a nickel for three tries) at coke bottles; if one ringed the neck of the bottle you won a baby duck.  This occurred at the annual Cherry Festival, which (in my youthful memories) was a real hoot.  I would spend my allowance and anything I could borrow until I had won two little ducks, which I then brought home to raise. 

There is nothing in this world cuter than a baby duck.  Hold one under your chin for a few minutes, then set it down – and it will run after you, peep peeping its little heart out.  They think you’re their mother, poor little things.

 However, a fully grown duck is not cute.  They are, in fact, downright annoying.  They leave little green globs of duck poop wherever you are likely to walk.  They are pathologically curious, so if you are having an outdoor dinner party or you and your friends are screwing around in the back yard, they are right there – going “Quaaack?”  And depositing more of those little green globs. 

Thus it was a blessing, then, that, shortly after reaching adulthood our ducks invariably “flew away.”  I never noticed that, without exception, we had fried chicken the very next day.  I figured out what was going on when I was about eight.  My aunt Florence was staying with us while she went to summer school in Redlands, I think.  I used to pop out of bed at some God-awful early hour and get in bed with her.  One morning as I lay there I heard a duck making a terrible racket.  Florence was still half asleep.  I asked her “Why is that duck making so much noise?”  She replied, “He’s calling for his mate.  Where is his mate,” I asked?  “In the refrigerator.” I couldn’t believe such evil and treachery could possibly exist!  Sure enough, there in the refrigerator was a cleaned and plucked “chicken”, ready for that evening’s meal.  I didn’t eat anything remotely resembling chicken that night, nor for months thereafter.  Now, of course, I order duck in Thai restaurants all the time.  Duck is good.  Just not your pet duck. 

All of which reminds me that during WWII we kept chickens in the back yard – for eggs, of course, but also for meat.  My father had built some nice coops and we had perhaps a half-dozen chickens, maybe more.  The eggs were fine, but Susannah and I soon made pets of the chickens and my dad, old farm boy that he was, could not summon the strength of character to slaughter them.  They, too, flew away – to a nearby chicken ranch.