John of God

The six-year-old version of myself stood in the kitchen in a white suit, “Can I drink water, before?”

My mother looked at me in disgust, “If you don’t know the answer to that question then maybe you’re not ready!”

Not ready? I was just an hour away from the big moment.  I had sat, attentively, through the Saturday morning catechism classes, soaking in the wisdom of the nuns.  And not twenty-four hours earlier, I cleansed my soul with my first confession - kneeling in the dark closet with the little sliding door and confessing all my sins to the priest on the other side.  “I hit my sister, twice,” I said in my meek-and-ashamed voice.

 I really couldn’t remember how many times I hit my sister.  But the nuns told me it was important to attach a numerical qualifier to your sin report.  And I wasn’t certain how far back in time I was required to go so I only reported what had happened during the van-ride to church.  “I disobeyed my parents three times.”

“Is that all?” the stern voice behind the screen inquired. I knew it was Father Sexton.  Who else could it be?  He was the only priest in the parish and I had heard that droning, chiding voice, Sunday-after-Sunday at Mass.  The Protestant kids had it easy – they got to saunter off to “Sunday School” and color pictures of Jesus.  We had to sit still in the pew and listen to homilies about how Father Sexton had found a disgusting mess in the Men’s room toilet and how parents need to better supervise their children. 

“Yes, that’s all,” I replied.

“For your penance, make an act of contrition and say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys”

The old five-and-five as I would come to think of it.  It was a baseline of sorts.  If you confessed a sin like stealing quarters from your Dad’s change bowl, the penance would really climb – ten and ten, or ten and fifteen.  But there were legends of people being given the ENTIRE Rosary as penance.  A fate, I assumed, reserved for only the most wretched of sinners.

In preparation for the big day, we had even practiced receiving the wafers.  Not real, holy ones , wafers that had not been consecrated.  “Do not touch the host!” Sister Mary Agnes, reiterated.  “Keep your hands in front of you, together, pointing upward in a prayerful attitude.  Open your mouth and present your tongue – not gaping like a cow! But politely.  And with dignity.  Then swallow.  No CHEWING!” 

The stand-in for the priest intoned, “The Body of Christ,” and we had to say, “amen.”  It was our only line.  The adults always said AH-men, like open your mouth and say “ahhh.”  So I knew it was important to get the pronunciation correct and not to sound like a Protestant.  And I knew what Protestants sounded like because after we came home from Mass, the service at the Church of the Nazarene, a few houses down at the end of the alley, would still be in full swing.  The front door was open and the sound of exuberant worship would travel out,  “A-MEN, Brother.  A-MEN!” , always emphasizing the “A.”

The practice wafer was placed on my tongue and I was shocked at how bland it was – no flavor at all! I concentrated on swallowing and not chewing.  And the more I did, the dryer my mouth became so it took all my effort to get the host down without choking. That Sunday morning in the kitchen, the recollection made my mouth dry up again, and now I wanted a drink of water.  That’s why I needed clarification on the fasting rules.  I WAS ready for the real thing, I was just so anxious – a bundle of nerves.   I had to get it right.

I wanted to understand what kept my parents trudging off to church every Sunday morning.  The answer had to be in this Holy Communion thing.  Once I got a taste of God, it would all come into focus.  Only nothing happened.  The priest presented the host, I received it, swallowed it, and felt no different.  Except that it reminded me how hungry I was because I hadn't had breakfast.

Anyone looking at my bookshelves would quickly understand that my quest for God continued forward from that day.  It was a journey that took me out of Catholicism and into a fundamentalist group so strict it made Catholics look like Unitarians by comparison. In retrospect, my attraction to the group may have been a subconscious desire to outdo my Dad – to develop a worldview that was even more concrete and black and white than his was.   Overtime my views moderated, taking me back to mainstream Christianity, through various evangelical churches and then into the ranks of the dreaded "unchurched” – a place I occupy while I try to find a community that allows me to stay near my spiritual roots without having to accept the doctrine that God will ultimately condemn two-thirds of the world’s population to eternity in Hell.

    

And while I still enjoy a good theological discussion, I now believe it’s less about the questions and more about the journey.  Shalom.

Bedtime Stories

My granddaughter, Eliza’s birthday was yesterday.  Tim and Tina threw a party and Lori and I stayed until after Eliza and Oliver went to bed so we began talking about bedtime stories.  Tim explained that Eliza now gives specific direction about her bedtime stories, telling her parents what elements the story must contain, “I want a story with Elsa (from Frozen) an evil queen and a dog.”  Tim is then required to tell a story with all the necessary elements.  

As we talked, I had a flashback to my mother reading us a bedtime story.  I looked it up on the internet and showed it to Tim who then read it aloud. It’s amazing how bedtime stories have changed through the years.  As you can see, parents in the 50’s and 60’s thought nothing of using stories to terrify their children into submission.  The fact that I remember the stories over fifty years later is proof that it made a lasting impression.

For your reading pleasure:

Little Orphant Annie

James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,

An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,

An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,

An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;

An’ all us other childern, when the supper things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun

A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,

An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you

             Ef you

                Don’t

                   Watch

                      Out!

                                                                                                            

Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,--

So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs,

His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,

An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!

An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,

An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’wheres, I guess;

But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout--

An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you

             Ef you

                Don’t

                   Watch

                      Out!

                                                                                                            

An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,

An’ make fun of ever’one, an’ all her blood an’ kin;

An’ onc’t, when they was “company," an’ ole folks was there,

She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care!

An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,

They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,

An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!

An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you

             Ef you

                Don’t

                   Watch

                      Out!

                                                                                                            

An’ little Orphant Annie says when the blaze is blue,

An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!

An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,

An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--

You better mind yer parents, an’ yer teachers fond an’ dear,

An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,

An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,

Er the Gobble-uns’ll git you

             Ef you

                Don’t

                   Watch

                      Out!

The Paper Route

At a distance the old woman might have passed for a member of a pentecostal-holiness denomination.  Her long hair was swirled around her head several times and then pinned up in back.  But all illusion of holiness vanished as soon as she opened her mouth, “Goddam Armstrong! What the hell do you want!”

The comments were directed at one of the friends I’d made in my new neighborhood.  I had been freshly transplanted from Brooklyn, Indiana to Oconomowoc Wisconsin.  Dave lived half-a-block down the street and like me had a whole houseful of brothers and sisters. He was part of a gang that gathered at tiny Westover Park to play baseball after supper where we crowded a diamond between the street and the tennis court and put all the surrounding windows at risk.

I needed income, especially now, since my family had move to a city with dozens of stores.  I could walk to the Ace Hardware where there was a bicycle section and in that bicycle section there was a candy-apple red stingray with a chopper-style front fork.  It was calling out to me. I wanted to ride up to my first day at St. Jerome’s school on that bike.  In Indiana, at my old Junior High, I had not joined the ranks of the cool kids – but in Wisconsin, that could all change.  I was going into the 8^th grade.  It would be my chance to start over – to be cool.  And that bike was definitely cool. I needed that bike.

“Who the hell is this?” the gruff old lady spat the words out in my general direction.

“He wants a paper route,” Dave replied.

“Why? So he can quit like you did?”

I jumped in, “I had a route in Indiana – I delivered the Indianapolis Star.” As soon as I opened my mouth it was clear I was not a local boy, my southern twang coming through.

The paper lady just stared at me.  She slowly looked me up and down with disgust on her face like someone examining dog poop on the bottom of their shoe. It was clear that Dave’s introduction hurt more than it helped, I was guilty by association.

 

I pressed on, “I got the route from my bother when I was ten,” pointing out that I had experience.

Esther, the paper lady, turned to scream at some kids who were roughhousing, “you take that outside, goddam ya!” Then she stepped over to a long metal table where bundles of papers were staged.  She took a wire cutter out of a pocket on her smock, clipped open the bundle and started counting papers all while I was trying to figure out if our conversation was over.

“We don’t have any afternoon routes open,” she finally chimed in, “we only have morning routes." And then she went back to counting papers and I went back to wondering if the conversation was over. 

After another long pause she continued, “there’s a route coming open in a week.  The kids name is Russell, you can ride with him.”

More counting.

“Be here at five AM!”

Now she was stacking papers.

“And I don’t know what the hell they do in Indiana but up here we don’t throw the papers! All the papers have to go up to the house in between the doors!”

I nodded vigorously.

“And all the papers have to be picked up by six!”, she barked.

I continued to nod – the red stingray was nearly mine.

“And if you take the route you can’t quit in the middle of winter you have to keep it till spring, got it!

“Yes, I got it.  I won’t quit.”

“And you sure as hell can’t quit after Christmas – after you get all the Christmas tips!"

“I won’t quit,” I promised.

Then she turned around and yelled, “you kids get the hell out of here and go pedal your papers!” and then stormed into her office and slammed the door.  The interview was over.

I got the route, I got the bike and I went on to work for Esther Schroeder for six years, eventually ascending to the lofty position of station captain and filling in on motor routes.  If you got the Sunday Milwaukee Journal in Oconomowoc anytime in the early 70’s, it was very likely my brother, Dennis, and I assembled it. Years later, when I return to Oconomowoc after school, it was my experience working for Esther that got me my first real job as Circulation Manager for the Oconomowoc Enterprise at C.W. Brown Printing Company.  Bruce Brown took me under his wing and taught me about printing and that led to a 36-year career in the printing industry - all because I needed that candy-apple red stringray.

A Fireside Christmas Story

Dad was a very busy man.  He was a high-level employee of DCASMA – the Defense Contract Administration Services Management Area.  He was an important FEDERAL employee.  It was rumored that he was on a secret presidential succession list.  In the Cold War era, lists like these were necessary to define exactly who would be in charge if all the branches of the Federal Government perished in a nuclear holocaust.  In that case, the Federal Bureaucrats would have taken over and my Dad was on the leadership succession list.  If enough bureaucrats had been vaporized by the H-bomb, my Dad might have been in charge of the whole country!

So of course it was completely understandable that my Father had no time for Christmas shopping. And although my sainted mother was given a budget for Christmas presents, my father wanted each of his nine children to open something exclusively from him.  Dad had a solution for his dilemma. At some point during the Christmas-morning-gift-opening madness, he would produce a stack of envelopes with each of our names carefully written in longhand.  He would call out our names and we would step up to receive our gift.  Each envelope was filled with an eye-popping amount of cash.

Another hallmark of Witmer-family Christmases was documenting the event with photography.  My dad was all about using the latest cutting-edge technology to photograph the tribe.  He got his first Polaroid in the early ‘60's, long before it was mainstream.  He had one of the very first Instamatics, a camera that used drop-in film cartridges.  He used flash cubes when they first came out.  And since he was an early adopter of the latest-and-greatest camera technology, it was a given that there would be a camera malfunction on Christmas Day. Which inevitably led to my Dad getting all worked up and then exploding in frustration – which led to a child crying – which led to the crying child being scolded for ruining the picture with their unhappiness. 

So it was on such a Christmas Morning, probably after a camera malfunction that wasted both a flash bulb and a frame of color film, that my dad set the stack of cash filled envelopes near a pile of discarded gift wrap.  And somewhere during the crying and yelling and picture taking, the pile of discarded wrapping paper was thrown into the fireplace.  And since the cash-filled envelopes were nowhere to be found after that, we could only assume that the envelopes were mixed in and burned with the paper.  What followed made the fuss over the spoiled pictures seem pleasant by comparison.  As my father’s tirade ramped up, we all began slinking away, leaving my sainted mother to deal with the fallout.

The next year, the tradition of the envelopes continued.  But from then on, when we opened the envelopes, we found a personal check from my Dad.

Merry Christmas!

P.S.: I will point out that shortly after the fireplace incident,  my older brother suddenly came up with enough money to buy his first car …

When Mom Went Shopping

I’ve owed my sister this story for over two years now. I promised I would write it down for her, finishing the collection of stories I had written about growing up in southern Indiana in the sixties, each one highlighting one of my eight brothers and sisters. But I could never quite get this one out. It’s because even after all these years anyone that hears it says, “John Michael Witmer! What kind of monster were you!”

-----------------

There were eleven of us in the family, Mom, Dad, six boys and three girls, an island of Catholicism in a sea of Protestants. Mom didn’t get out much. Between having all the children to care for and the community shunning us for being pope-lovers, she didn’t have much of a social life. But when the invitation to go shopping in Indianapolis came up, she did something very out of character: She accepted.

Normally Marilyn, our big sister, would have been in charge but for some reason she was shirking her responsibilities, so my brother Ron was left in charge of us, his five younger siblings (I have no idea where baby Howie was.) The minute my mother’s car left the driveway, dark storm clouds rolled in and blotted out the Sun. Tropical vines sprang up and completely covered the house. The yard was overtaken by six-foot-tall saw grass. We became savages in our own little jungle.

Big brother Ron, at Eleven years-old, was much too powerful to be overcome by any of one of his three younger brothers so we formed an alliance. We agreed to collectively lie to Ron, telling him that we had chosen this moment to share a deep, dark family secret. We told him he was adopted and not only was he adopted, he was retarded. It took some time to convince him but eventually Ron fled the house screaming, breaking a chair as he left.

Next we turned on the weakest member of the tribe, dear little Anna, not yet in the first grade. Now the alliance explained to Anna that she was really a ghost because we had killed her. We held up the murder weapon, a punch can opener, for little Anna to examine. Anna wailed. We patiently explained, to Anna, that there was no use in crying because we could not hear her; she was dead and everyone knows you can’t hear someone cry after they’re dead. Our proceedings were interrupted by the sound of gravel crunching under tires; a car coming up the driveway.

The vines retracted, the saw grass vanished and along with it, the alliance of the younger brothers. Now, it was every savage for himself as we raced down the driveway, each of us trying to reach the car first, each of us wanting to give our version of events, shouting over one another before the car had even come to a stop.

At this point, the memory becomes fuzzy, but I do remember getting in line for my licking.

Dennis and Joe

I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. Joe’s Birthday was April 10th and Dennis’ FIFTYTH birthday was May 26th. This entry is dedicated to my OLDER brothers, Dennis and Joe.
(Anna, your Birthday posting is coming!)

The details are now in dispute. We're not sure who hit whom in the head with a shovel. But there was a shovel and some one did get hit with it. The picture, above, is the scene of the crime. I’m hoping, by posing it, some deep-seated memory will be jarred loose and we will finally get to the truth of the matter.

I invite Dennis and Joe to enter their testimony in the comments section of this blog. And I invite the rest of you to be the jury.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

John Rotten

Loveland Stories

Follow me, if you will, on a walk through our past. This is a view of the Loveland house as you come up the hill to the corner of 2nd and Oak. Note the porch roof over the front door. Which wee child wandered out on this roof, nearly giving our mother a heart attack?

Howard Everett

This is what they call, in the news industry, a "teaser." I will be posting more about our Cincinnati trip in the near future, but I'm behind on my birthday postings so I have to get caught up.

I know I still owe Joe a posting (April 10th) but I skipped ahead to Howard, for now...

In honor of Howard's birthday on May 1st, I've posted a picture of the Loveland homestead of Howard Everett Conley.

Did you ever wonder why Howard was named "Howard?" Mom bore ten children and Howard is the only one named after a family member.
We will ponder these and other questions, in the days and weeks ahead, in my new series "Loveland Stories."

Stay Tuned....

The Wayback

I know this is very late, but I wanted to remember Teresa’s Birthday on March 20th with this entry.

In the event that all eleven of us were going to the same place at the same time, we had to squeeze into the VW Microbus. Dad drove, Howard was in the front middle and Mom had the passenger seat, which was specially equipped with a mirror to allow her to keep tabs on the back seats. Douglas Paul, Marilyn Ruth and Ronald David got the middle bench seat; Joseph Stephen, Dennis Waldo and I got the rear bench seat. This meant the girls, AKA Teresa Mary and Anna Marie had to ride in “The Wayback.”

This was in the days before the country went "safety" crazy. We played on metal monkey bars stretched over concrete. If you fell and broke your leg, you pushed the bone back in, rubbed dirt on it and went right back to playing. That’s the way it was AND WE LIKED IT!

So what’s the big deal if two small children had to sit on a hard, thinly carpeted platform, with no restraints, perched right over the gas tank? They were HAPPY to sit there in the wintertime with the engine heat and the exhaust fumes to keep them warm. And they got to pretend that the Wayback had magical powers, like the Way-Back Machine in the "Peabody & Sherman" cartoons.

Does it get any better than this?

Happy Birthday Teresa!

Ambassador Witmer

I almost forgot Dad's Birthday (March 3rd.) This one's for you Pop.



I’m not sure why we decided to stop in Mooresville. We had been on the road for quite some time, headed home from Beaver Island so it was odd that we would stop in Mooresville, just a few miles from the finish line. We stopped to see the Conley’s and the visit became even more peculiar when Aunt Rae told Dad, “You’d better sit down.”

My father drove totally forgettable cars. The dreadfully underpowered VW Micro Bus, nicked named “The Blue Goose” had just transported us to Beaver Island and back. The Blue Goose was preceded by a red-and-white VW, which was eventually sold to Grandpa Waldo. Before that, a mint green Plymouth station wagon served as the family’s transportation. Mom had charge of the family car during the week and Dad usually drove a boxy little rambler back and forth to the office.

In his entire life, Dad made only one exception to his I-have-to-drive-a-really-boring-car rule: The 1965 Ambassador convertible. This baby had a 351 cubic inch V-8 engine and an Auto-Glide transmission that you could push through the gears. With the top down it looked fast, even when it was parked. I can only remember riding in the Ambassador a couple of times and then I was told, “Don’t touch anything!”

After Dad sat down, with worry and anticipation written all over his face, Aunt Rae explained that the neighbor-boy, Kenny Krause, had stolen the convertible. Aunt Rae went on to say that Lenny drove the car in to the ditch, tearing up the whole side of the vehicle. Kenny succeed in getting the convertible back on the road only to run it into another ditch, this time damaging the other side. Aunt Rae said that, "Kenny Krause was blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other" and had no business behind the wheel of any car, let alone one he had stolen. Dad got on the phone and talked to the police and I don’t remember how the rest of the day played out.

A few weeks later, Dad got the Ambassador back from the body shop, but only after he had taken the opportunity to upgrade the tail lights to the, snazzier, 1966 style. Dad eventually sold the car when the timing chain broke and, for some reason, went back to driving boring cars, replacing the Ambassador with, of all things, a Hornet. This may have been due to the damage the ambassador had done to Dad's driving record. Dad racked up a few speeding tickets behind the wheel of the convertible, and as a result, the insurance premiums were sky high.

So Dad, if you were with us today, my birthday wish for you would be that you could drive a Stingray or a Mustang. Who knows, maybe your driving one right now.

But I know, for a fact, that Gremlins and Hornets aren’t allowed in heaven.

Happy Birthday Mom - (A little late.)

I had the best of intentions: To post a story about each of my siblings on their birthday. As Mom's birthday approached, I realized that I need to write a story about her, too. But Mom's Birthday is the same day as Michelle and Charity's Birthday and to be honest, I got a little depressed thinking about it and I put off writing anything for several weeks. But now it's April and the sun is out and I've made it through both Michelle's Birthday and the anniversary of her passing and I must get back in the saddle, so here goes...

I can’t iron a shirt without thinking about her.

First the collar, then the yoke, then the sleeves, then the front left. Rotate the shirt on the ironing board until you finish on the front right.

“You’re going to learn to iron a shirt! You’re going to learn to take care of yourself! Don’t you EVER make your wife iron your shirts!” She gave me this lecture, one morning, when she had become particularly frustrated with the fact that she had married a man who could barely dress himself, let alone do laundry. You never knew what would trigger these episodes of activism, but Dad’s morning refrain of “Gail!Where are my socks!” never helped matters.

Mom was a closet feminist. She never marched for equal rights, but she quietly worked, to instill in her boys, a respect for Women. It was not the first time Mom gave me the don’t-you-ever-treat-a-woman-like-that speech and it would not be the last.

By my calculations, Mom was just seventeen when Douglas Paul entered the world, and she was thirty-three by the time Howard Everett was born sixteen years later. She had ten Pregnancies in sixteen years.

You do a lot of living between Seventeen and Thirty-three. Mom told me later in life that by the time she had me, at the age of twenty-six, she had learned to relax. That’s why I turned out so good. She did all her practicing on you older kids.

I have many stories to share about our remarkable mother, but you have only limited time to read so I will save, for later, the descriptions of how she kept order in the VW micro bus and why the Blue Goose had a round dent on the front bumper.

The Oracle

I post the following in honor of Marilyn's Birthday on January 30th...

When you’re six-years old, six years is a lifetime. Marilyn is six-years older than I am, so from my perspective, when I was in the first grade, she was already a grown-up; an all-powerful sixth-grader. She always seemed to know everything. There wasn’t a question I could ask her that she could not, immediately, answer with confidence and conviction. I remember being amazed at her wisdom, when she stopped me from playing with a kitchen-cabinet door; one I was opening and closing over and over again:

“Stop it”
“Why”
“Because a door has only so many swings in it.”

There it was, a profound truth: Everything will one day wear out, so we must use these things wisely (grasshopper.)

Her ancient wisdom was not confined to kitchen cabinets. She could also expound on Catholic theology. One Sunday morning, our parents, determined to fulfill their Sunday obligation, left us behind, deeming the journey through the blizzard too risky for children. Marilyn was instructed to conduct informal services with us little kids. At that time, Catholic women were required to wear head coverings at Mass, usually lacy scarves.

“What if the woman couldn’t afford a scarf?” I quizzed Marilyn.
“Then she would have to use whatever she could find.”
“What if the ONLY thing in the WHOLE house was a rug?”
“Then she would have to wear the rug over her head when she went to church (grasshopper.)

How did she know all these things!

So here it is, Marilyn’s Birthday Quiz:

· What was the name of Marilyn’s best friend (The one that went on vacation with us?)
· What was the name of her Barber-Boyfriend-Fiancée who pulled the piece of wood out of Teresa’s foot when she impaled herself, sliding across the dining room floor in her stocking feet?
· And last but not least what is the significance of this question: “Who brought the bottles?!”

If you know the answers to these questions, write them on the back of a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and send it to me. The Grand Prize is a throw-rug that will double as a head-covering.

Born to Be Wild

Doug Witmer was born on January 17th, 57 years ago so it’s his turn to be the subject of the trivia contest:

-Where was Douglas Paul Witmer born?

-What was he driving when Marshal Hubbard chased him through the town of Brooklyn?

-Name two of his fellow Brooklyn Hoodlums.

-How old was he when he joined the United States Marine Corp? What was his rank when he finished his hitch?

If you know the answer to these questions, write them on the back of the first edition of Mad Magazine and send them to me. The Grand Prize is an Army-surplus-ammo box and a stick of dynamite.

Hobo Scramble

I know this blog is supposed to be dedicated to our Brooklyn years but it seems our trips down memory lane have jarred lose memories from “the before time.” Some of those memories are so intense that certain ones of us have purposed to travel back, looking for answers.

· Who was that old lady who lived in the shack behind our house? Was it really a shack? Was it in the woods?

· Did Douglas really dig a swimming pool?

· Was Tony, the neighbor boy, really, as he claimed, “suppose to be twins” or was their another reason for his childhood obesity? (Was that REALLY a second belly button?)

· Are there teeth marks in the concrete by the garage left by Teresa when she made a swan dive into the sidewalk from the swing? Or was it a grapevine?

· Why did Dennis hit Joe in the head with a shovel when they were playing in the sandbox?

· Was there really a secret stairway to the attic?

· Who masterminded the whole peeing-in-the-register thing?

· Why did that neighborhood lady, Shirley, always give us candy?

· Why do I always connect the name Denny Defenball to Marilyn?

· What was the name of that little Dog that bit me?

· Should I take the blame for spoiling the surprise about the flashlight on Dad’s birthday or was it really Dennis’ fault?

· Did mom really send me to the store when I was only four?


The list could go on and on. The point is inquiring minds want to know! Ron and I are traveling to Cincinnati, the first week in May, to run in the Flying Pig race. It’s officially the Flying Pig Marathon, but we’re only running a half marathon. It’s actually a collection of walks and runs, so anyone can find something to match their fitness level.

If you decide to participate, you too will be seeking the answer to the biggest question left from our Ohio years: Will the Hobo’s REALLY cut off your toes if they catch you in the woods?

That’s why I’m calling this trip The Hobo Scramble.

See you in Cinci?


http://www.flyingpigmarathon.com

Ode to Rotten Tater

On the Occasion of Ronald David’s birthday, I feel it only appropriate that I post some "Ron" Trivia Questions:

1) Who gave Ron the nickname “Rotten Tater?”
2) What rank did he achieve as a Boy Scout?
3) What vehicle did he first drive?

If you would like to enter the Rotten Tater trivia contest, write your answers on the back of a twenty dollar bill and send it to me. The grand prize is an all expense paid trip to Orleans, Indiana.

Siren Song

I’ve been asked to share more paper-route stories so I will set about sharing one of the most famous paper-route stories in the history of our family, perhaps, in the history of newspaper-passing.

---

Late one clear, cloudless night the entire town of Brooklyn was roused by the shrieking of a tornado siren. The siren was perched high above the town on the Brooklyn water tower and from that great height it could be heard for miles around.

It wasn’t tornado season and when we checked the radio, there was nothing about bad weather or tornados, still the siren continued to wail. For some reason, the siren had malfunctioned and was now stuck on. The town engineer had to be summoned and, in the middle of the night, he scaled the tower and silenced the siren.

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We called it “collecting.” In the old days, we had to knock on the door of each of our customers and ask for payment. In return, we would tear a tiny little square from a collection ticket and give it to the subscriber as a receipt. We would then turn around and pay the “Bill.” The bill came from the newspaper publisher and it was an invoice for the wholesale cost of the papers. Anything left over, after paying the bill, was “profit.” So if a customer didn’t pay, it came right out of our spending money. We were motivated to see that every subscriber was paid-up.

But there were always those subscribers who felt compelled to stiff the paperboy. The excuses were legion. “My wife has all the money and she’s not home” or “My husband has all the money and he’s not home.” “I get paid on Friday, come back then.” Sometimes they would simply ignore the knock on the door; all this over a bill that could be paid with the loose change under the sofa cushions. It probably had more to do with power and control than it did with money. How many other bill collectors could you simply tell to “go away?” The last thing you had to worry about was the lowly paperboy, right?

That was before Douglas entered the picture.

Douglas was constantly in motion. He was drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame. Mom said that when he was two years old, he bolted out of the house, scaled the fence, and took off down the street, buck-naked! As a teenager, he actually blew-up the neighbors brick incinerator with chemicals he cobbed (Indiana slang for stole) from chemistry class. Then there was the incident with the moped and the Town Marshal…suffice it to say that Doug’s unique combination of technical genius and fearlessness created plenty of excitement.

So it was natural for Douglas to take matters into his own hands when subscribers refused to pay up, and as it happened, the Town Engineer was one of the worst offenders. Legend has it, that when the Engineer scaled the water tower, that star-lit night, not only did he find that the siren's switch had been purposely shorted; he found a tiny little coupon that read “Indianapolis Star: PAID.”

Run, Forest Run!

The church ladies were coming over and Mom was in a panic. These were not the ladies from our church; we were Catholics, and our church was miles away in Martinsville. These ladies were from the neighborhood church, probably coming by to do their missionary work, trying to keep the Witmer’s from being put in the “Straight To Hell” chute when they died. Whatever the reason for their stopping by, the result was we were told to “go outside,” so as not to be an annoyance during this rare visit from neighbors.

Now we had to find something to do. The boys meandered in the general direction of the Dyer Twin’s house and the little girls drifted across the street to play with Maxine Hubbard. I noticed that Big Bob Dyer’s white Ford Fairlane station wagon was parked on the street. He was known as “Big Bob” so as not to be confused with Bob Junior, the oldest of the Dyer boys who was approximately the same age as Marilyn. Big Bob also fit his name because he was of exceptional girth.

With nothing better to do, I walked closer to the station wagon to look it over. Then I noticed it, It was fascinating! Two little air valves protruded from behind the back bumper, just under each taillight. Now the Witmer boys were all very mechanical, we had to be. If our bikes were broken, we had to walk our paper routes, carrying our load in canvas bags, slung over our shoulders. Learning to fix our bikes was a matter of survival. We knew all about tires and tubes. The Streets of Brooklyn were loaded with broken glass, nails, old car parts and other sharp objects so we got really good at patching tires. When I notice these two air valves sticking out of a bumper, not even close to a tire, curiosity possessed me. I immediately set about forming and testing hypothesizes:

If these valves are somehow attached to a tire, then if I use a small stone to press down on the valve, I will hear a hissing sound.

I tried it. No noise. When I pressed the valve it was silent. I went to the second valve. Same result. Now my mind was racing:

Perhaps Ford Fairlane air valves are unlike the valves on bicycle tires. Perhaps these air valves are activated in some other way.

To rule this out I would have to test one of the car's tire valves. If the valve failed to emit a hiss, then I would know that I was dealing with an, as yet, unknown technology.

I knelt beside the tire with the little stone I was using as an improvised tool and I press on the stem. The tire let out a HISSSSSS.

Very interesting…

My thoughts were interrupted by my brother Joe’s voice, “I saw that! You’re letting the air out of that tire! I’m TELLIN!” Joe bolted in the direction of our house.

Is he insane! How could he confuse this scientific research with vandalism! He must be stopped!

Joe had about a 10-yard head start as he dashed home to tell on me. I took off after him and began gaining on him. This was not hard to do because of his shoes, his big, black, clunky shoes. They were “corrective” shoes and they probably weighed ten pounds apiece.

I must digress and explain that my brother Joe loved to tinker, even at an early age. He scrounged an ancient TV set off of some junk pile and then fiddled with, changing out tubes and such, until he got it to work. Then he put in the bedroom, the one he and I shared with Dennis. When the rest of us were sleeping, Joe would turn on the set, with the volume low, and watch TV until the wee hours of the morning. The result was Joe was always tired. He often complained of vague ailments, such as headaches, in his efforts to convince Mom to let him stay home from school and sleep.

Mom became convinced that Joe had some mysterious illness and hauled him off to a doctor in Martinsville who was happy to find all kinds of things wrong with him. The Doctor had boat payments to make and Joe’s mysterious “illness” was a gold mine. The corrective shoes where one of many 'cures" prescribed by Dr. Martinsville. Dr. M. explained: Because Joe was slightly pigeon toed and flat-footed, he had poor posture which stressed the muscles in the back and neck causing headaches; therefore, corrective shoes could cure Joe’s headaches. My parents paid dearly for the black-leather-headache fixers and so Joe had to wear them; all the time. He was lucky Mom and Dad didn’t make him sleep with those shoes on.

So that day, when I was racing Joe back to the house, it was easy to catch up to him. In fact, by the time we got to our yard, I was way ahead of him. I burst in to the living room and screamed, “HE’S LYING!" I was like an actor who had missed his cue. The room went silent and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. No one knew what to make of my outburst until Joe came huffing and puffing behind me and said, “John was letting the air out of car tires!”

Mom was mortified. The Church Ladies wagged their heads. They didn’t actually say anything but, “That’s appalling!,” was written all over their faces. Mom moved quickly to save face, “John Michael! Go and get me a switch!” I tried to explain. I tried to tell her that Joe was lying, that there was a big difference between letting the air out of some ones tires and testing a hypothisis. It was no use. Mom had been humiliated in front of the church ladies and now she had to demonstrate that she knew how to deal with unruly children.

The injustice of it all brought me to tears and I cried as I walked out the front door and on to the porch, searching for the switch that would be used on my bare legs; to give me an Indiana-Lickin.

The first thing I saw was the magnolia tree that hung over the porch wall. The porch wall was high, ten or twelve feet off the ground, and the tree branches just barely reached the wall. I climbed up on the ledge and was attempting to break off a switch when I lost my balance and fell, hitting the ground with a thud, the same thud a pumpkin makes when you drop it off a roof.

During all this, Joe had followed me out to the porch to watch and enjoy my agony. When he saw me fall, he yelled, into the house, “John fell off the porch!” Everyone scrambled out of the house and Mom came to me as I lay on the ground. I surveyed myself. The fall had knocked the wind out of me but my brain was still working.

If they think I'm really hurt, there's no way I'm getting a lickin!

"OHHHHHHH!", I let out a long pitiful moan.

“Is his back broken!?,” asked one of the Church Ladies.

"OHHHHHHHHHH!" came my reply

“Call an ambulance!" someone yelled.

And then it all took on a life of it’s own. The ambulance showed up and I was whisked away to the hospital in Martinsville where we learn, suprise, suprise, there were no broken bones. “Just shaken up a little,” the doctor told Mom, “he should take it easy for a day or two.” I laid it on thick for the rest of the day, moaning every time I got up from sitting in front of the television. But the next day, I was good as new.

Of course none of this would have happened if Joe would have simply minded his own beezwax. But life has a way of evening the score. Joe paid for his sins at the hands of Dr. Martinsville, who had plenty of other "cures" waiting for him. But I'll let Joe tell the rest of that story. I will only say that, from that time till this, I have never heard of such a bizarre surgical procedure.

Halloween in Brooklyn

In honor of Halloween, I decided to post another memory jogger. Do you remember this little episode?

In the olden days, one of the common Halloween pranks was “soaping windows.” You would take a bar of soap and draw all over the windows, forcing the occupants to wash the windows if they ever wanted to see through them again. This was generally reserved for the stingy souls who did not “treat” the trick-or-treaters.” Ron made an exception, in the case of the Meers family, deciding to soap their windows on general principle because, Shelia Meers, who was about Ron's age, was mean and nasty.

We knocked on the door and yelled, “Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!” The Meers complied, but when they closed the door, Ron went to work on their windows with a bar of soap. As we were walking away from the house, evil Shelia Meers began screaming, “They soaped our windows!” We fled the scene of the crime, by running across the street and hiding behind the mobile homes. We were home-free until Anna started crying, giving up our location. Mrs. Meers began screaming threats about calling the Marshal and having us all put in jail and Anna, being only six or seven years old, lost it.

Ron tried to settle things down by offering to clean the windows. Because we were all in costume, Mrs. Meers didn’t know who we were. And even though she was screaming at us, she was not brave enough to pull Ron’s mask off. “You was treated!” she yelled, as Ron cleaned the windows. She continued her diatribe while Ron was washing and we were watching. When we finally walked away, Ron told us that he was holding the mask on his face by biting it with his teeth.

Chime in...Do you remember?

Cracked Corn

Church Street, where we lived, gently ascended, over a two block stretch, to Mill Street. In front of our house, the ground sloped away from the street providing a bank where you could duck out of sight if it was dark outside. In the Hubbard's yard, across the street, the bank was even more pronounced and provided an even better nighttime hiding spot. This was important given the fact that we often needed to run and hide.

RD (I will protect his identity by using only his initials) got a hold of some feed corn, the kind that is dry and hard, and got some of the neighborhood boys together for a little nighttime trouble making. The boys laid on the side of the road, shielded by the bank and waited for cars to drive by. At just the right moment, they would pop-up and hurl a handful of feed corn at the passing car. A shower of corn would hit the car causing all kinds of racket, usually scaring the beejeebers out of the driver. Sometimes the driver would slam on their brakes, roll-down the window and scream obscenities into the blackness. The boys rolled around in the darkness, hands over their mouths, trying to keep from laughing and giving away their position. (I have no first-hand knowledge of this, I'm simply relaying what I was told.)

RD got more than he bargained for when, after whipping a handful of corn at a car, the driver not only brought his car to a screeching halt, he jumped out and went looking for the perpetrators. When he started moving toward RD, RD jumped up and started running. The angry driver ran after him. RD panicked and ran into the house (our house!) The angry driver FOLLOWED HIM INTO THE HOUSE! My Dad came to the rescue, threatening to call the police if the man didn't leave immediately! Because my Dad was obviously an important FEDERAL employee, the angry driver realized that he must comply.

Dad had some words with RD but I can't remember what happened after that. I will leave it to the rest of you to fill in the blanks.

Capture the Flag

Do you recognize the building in the background?
What was the name of the Scout Troop that met there?
What was the name of the troop leaders?
Do you remember Snipe Hunts, Indian Dances and "Tapping Out?"

Get busy and respond or I'll write embarassing things about you!
(And don't think I won't...does Mae, Wooba, Shelia and Glenda mean anything to you boys!)

With Love,

Brother John

When Teresa Tried to Kill Me

Sometimes it’s only in retrospect that you see the patterns. I will relay this incident from my original perspective and then ask you to reconsider it in light of newly discovered information.

It was 1965. I was in the third grade. It was beautiful autumn day. The kind of day that starts out crisp but moves to sunny and warm by the afternoon. The students, at Brooklyn Elementary School, were taking their morning recess and the playground was teaming with children swinging on swings, climbing monkey bars and riding teeter-totters. These were the days when a playground was a mixture of concrete, gravel and steel. By today’s standards it was almost industrial. But this was before liability lawsuits produced a kinder, gentler American playground.

The teeter-totters, of the good old days, were massive boards that mounted on big steel pipes. The teeter-totter designers recognized that not all children were of equal size so the teeter-totter board had multiple center-point settings. You could shift the teeter-totter, to accommodate unequal loads. About 18 inches from each end, a metal handle was mounted to the wood.

We were particularly fond of giving “bumps.” This usually involved a larger person on one end of the teeter-totter. As the larger person was coming down, he or she made no attempt to stop the teeter-totter from hitting the ground. When that end of the teeter-totter came smashing down, the lighter rider would be jolted into the air, like a rodeo cowboy, with only their frantic grip on the cold, metal handle preventing them from being launched into space.

On this particular morning there were four of us on the teeter-totter, two on each end. Teresa and a playmate were on one end and I and another friend, rode the other. My side out-weighed Teresa’s side so we made the necessary adjustments to the center-point, extending Teresa’s side to give the light end more leverage. It was a wonderful time. I would smash my end into the ground, Teresa, in her bright little school dress, would fly into the air. She looked like a rag doll whose hands were tethered to the metal handle.

Now this may seem hard to believe, but someone got hurt. Teresa was unable to completely recover from being nearly thrown off, and on the down stroke, her ankle got caught under the teeter-totter. I hopped down, leaving only one person on my end. Teresa’s end came down and I ran around to see how badly she was hurt. Her friend was sitting behind her, and when I bent over to examine Teresa’s ankle, they both slid back, off the teeter-totter.

As you may recall, there was still one person on the other end of the teeter-totter. The forces of gravity prevailed and the unoccupied end of the see-saw lifted, abruptly, off the ground, quickly accelerating, until it reached an obstruction: my forehead. The force of the collision sent me sailing through the air. As I completed my arc, from teeter-totter to earth, I looked up into the into the bright, morning sky, and oddly enough, saw stars.

I crawled over to the teacher, on playground duty, who had not yet noticed me. I got to my feet and tried to get her attention, “Mrs. Barkheimer…” I stammered in a pitiful voice. She was in an animated conversation with another student, “…Mrs. Barkheimer…” Still no response, her head was turned away, but her body langage suggested that she was ignoring my rude interruption. “MRS. BARKHEIMER!” I blurted out. “John, can’t you see I’m…” She never finished her sentence. As her eyes focused on me, she stopped short and gasped. She took me by the shoulders and steered me to the principals office where there was a makeshift infirmary, and sat me on a chair.

The knot on my head grew until it became a thing of wonder. The school staff filed by, staring in amazement, wagging their heads, and clucking their tongues. The discussion centered on determining whether or not I had a concussion. I was warned not to go to sleep. If I had a concussion and went to sleep "I WOULD DIE!" Shortly after the discussion on death and dying, they called Mom and told me to walk home. I can only assume that they reasoned I couldn't fall asleep if I was walking the two blocks to my house.

This wasn't all bad. I got the day off School! When I showed up at home, my knot was large enough to astound even my mother, a woman who had seen many a serious injury in her day. She called Glenna Jean Rassmussen, our back-door neighbor, to tell her I would be coming by to show her my knot and then sent me on my way. Mrs. Rassmussen was equally impressed. I walked home and, tired from all the walking, sat in a big chair and fell asleep. Mom woke me up a couple of times, to make sure I wasn’t dead and, later, I spent the afternoon goofing around in the back yard.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned my sweet little sister, Teresa, had a dark-side. She once lured Joe off the tree-house ladder by holding a piece of candy just out of his reach. Joe plummeted to earth, breaking his arm!

Is it possible that Teresa had planned the teeter-totter incident? Feigning injury to lure me to her side, then sliding off when my head was in just the right spot?

I have presented my case. I leave it to you, the jury to decide.

The Clown

The wood and cloth box mounted above the chalkboard crackled to life, “Miss White, would you send John Witmer to my office.” It was Mr. Satters, the principal, and as I made my way from music class down the long hallway, my life, or at least the last few months of it, flashed before my eyes.

Seven weeks early, I began my career as the sixth-grade class clown when I discovered that, over the summer, I had developed a talent. With very little effort, I could get my fellow students to laugh, out loud, in the middle of class, at totally inappropriate times. A wisecrack here, a funny voice there, an occasional goofy face and I could have them in stitches. It was intoxicating and I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough!

Mr. Meyer sat in front of the class, looking like a cross between Dragnet’s Joe Friday and Mayberry’s Deputy Barney Fife. He wore a gray sport coat, dark slacks, white shirt and a bow tie. He wore this everyday. He was regimented and he liked order and decorum. The fixed rhythm of the elementary-school schedule fit him well. But there I was, messing up his world, destined to be a thorn in his side for the balance of the school year.

I was a low-level irritant. My antics had never quite risen to the level of drawing any serious punishment because I was smart enough to back off if Mr. Meyer’s patience began to wear thin. And I saved some of my acting out for Mr. Morgan, the other, cooler sixth-grade teacher. The sixth-grade population of Brooklyn Elementary School was so large that it was split into two classes. Besides teaching history to both groups, Mr. Morgan was the football, basketball and baseball coach. Since Mr. Morgan was not my “real” teacher, I goofed around a little more in History class.

At eleven, you begin to think you’re smarter than some of the adults around you. I thought I had Mr. Meyer’s figured out. I thought I had him under control. But at eleven, you tend to overlook important things, like the fact that reports cards come out every six weeks. My grades were tolerable, not good, but not bad, B’s and C’s mostly. It was the “Checkmarks” that did me in. The report card read, “A checkmark indicates that the student needs to improve.” Under that statement was a list of behaviors:

-Respects his Teacher – Checkmark.
-Displays appropriate behavior in class – Checkmark.
-Demonstrates self-control – Checkmark.
-Completes assignments on-time – Checkmark.

…the list went on. The only box that wasn’t checked was the one that said, “Plays well with others.”

Now I was shuffling past the Gym, on my way to the office, recalling how this nightmare began. The day before, I was given my report card. After taking in the checkmark section I was in shock. I knew I was going to get an Indiana-lickin when I got home, there were no two ways about it. Hiding the report card was out of the question. All reports cards had to be returned to the school with a parent’s signature.

There was nothing to do but face the music. Mom was so stunned she handed the matter over to Dad and he was in a particularly foul mood when he inspected my report card. He took me upstairs, took off his belt and, on my bare legs, gave me one stripe for every checkmark on my report card. He sent me to bed crying and I was still smarting when I woke up the next morning. Dad had put the fear of God in me and I was determined to avoid any future run-ins with the belt. I planned to stay out of trouble. But my resolution was short-lived.

I was supposed to have completed a worksheet for my homework assignment, but seeing that being beaten, within and inch of my life, had taken up most the evening, I came to school with a blank worksheet. It was really a minor issue. Mr. Meyer assigned stacks of worksheets and each one was only a small part of the grade in any given subject. That’s how I managed to get decent grades while still receiving a checkmark for “Completes Assignments on-time.” But with Dad’s thrashing fresh in my mind, I was bound and determined I would not start the next grade period on the wrong foot.

Mr. Meyer had a practice of letting us self-grade our worksheets. He would call out the answers and we would score ourselves. He would, then, ask for our score, in roll-call order, and record it in the grade book. We rarely handed in our papers. If it was an important quiz, he would have us swap papers with our “neighbor,” and then, after grading, we handed the paper’s forward. For seven weeks, that was the drill. It never varied, at least not until that fateful day in October of 1968.

My plan was simple. I would pretend to correct my unfinished paper, and thereby avoid getting docked for another incomplete assignment, eliminating the possibility of any future report-card-related lickins. As usual, we graded our own homework assignments and, as usual, Mr. Meyer called for our grades. Then he did something, he had never done before, he told us to hand in our papers. It was time to go to Music class and he wanted us to put the papers on his desk as we left the room!

This doesn’t make sense! He has the score! He doesn’t need the paper! Has he gone mad! Why is he asking for the papers? Think, John, THINK! There has to be a way out of this. I know! I can casually drop my pencil and paper on the floor and then, when I lean over to pick them up, write the answers with Superman-like speed! …Yes!...that’s it. But I have to remember to answer one question incorrectly so it matchs the score I gave Mr. Meyer.

From the front of the room I heard, “John, what are you doing?”

“I dropped my pencil.” I said, still down on the floor behind my desk.

Write like the wind, you can do this!

“John, you need to go to Music class.” Mr. Meyer was closing in.

This isn’t working…I need a new strategy…maybe he won’t notice if I don’t hand in my paper. Maybe he’ll forget to check the papers. He’s already got the scores…Maybe he won’t check them…get rid of the evidence!

I quickly crumpled the paper into a little ball and stuffed it in my desk. When I came back from Music class, I planned to destroy the evidence when no one was looking. As I walked down the hall, I tried to relax and once I got to my seat I almost succeeded in forgetting about the whole, ugly mess, that is, until the intercom crackled to life.

As I rounded the corner and went into the office I could see Mr. Satters. Seated across from him was Mr. Meyer and in his hand was a paper, my paper, a paper that had obviously been, at one point in time, a crumpled ball.

I cannot remember the opening exchange. The utter fear of hearing the door to the Principal’s office close behind me caused me to blank out. It’s possible they said nothing before I tearfully shrieked, “Oh please, please, don’t call my parents! My father will BEAT ME!”

They seemed stunned. I tried to explain that my bad report card had caused Clarence to come down like the wrath of God and that now I feared for my life. They seemed to struggle with how to proceed, in light of these revelations. In the end, Mr. Meyer gave me a short warning against any future tomfoolery and he closed with a statement that would have seemed just as fitting come out of the mouth of his look-alike, Joe Friday, “…and if we have any more trouble with you, young man, we will call your father, and that’s not a threat, it’s a promise!”

I left the office with both the joy and exhaustion of one who has narrowly escaped death. I turned over a new leaf that day. I gave up the Class-Clown mantle, ceding it to Charlie Wilson, whose father wasn’t around to deal out the consequences of a bad report card. My next report card was checkmark-free. Although my behavior had improved, I will always wondered if the checkmark-free report card was the result of me shaping up, or the result of my Oscar-winning performance, in the principals office that October day in 1968.

Do You Remember?

The Goops

by Gillette Burgess

The Goops they lick their fingers

And the Goops they lick their knives:

They spill their froth on the tablecloth

Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

The Goops they talk while eating,

And loud and fast they chew;

And that is why I'm glad that I

Am not a Goop, are you?

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I seem to remember Dad being able to recite this poem from memory. I also remember Dad yelling, "You GOOP!" when I spilt things or made a mess at the dinner table. On the subject of family literature," do you remember when Mom used to read us this?

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THE BEAR STORY

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That Alex "ist maked up his-own-se'f"

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W'y, wunst they wuz a Little Boy went outIn the woods to shoot a Bear. So, he went out'Way in the grea'-big woods - he did, - An' heWuz goin' along -an' goin' along, you know,An' purty soon he heerd somepin' go "Wooh!"Ist thataway - "Woo-ooh!" An' he wuz skeered,He wuz. An' so he runned an' clumbed a tree -A grea'-big tree, he did, - a sicka-more tree...

Happy Birthday to Me!

I wanted to share this birthday collage Teresa sent me. The question is, "Who is the boy standing beside Ron in the picture at the top middle, wearing the Russian hat?

(Click the Picture to Enlarge it)

Thanks Tweet!

Paper Routes

It was a dynasty; a paper-route dynasty. If you lived in the town of Brooklyn, Indiana, and you subscribed to a newspaper, chances are a Witmer-kid brought it to your door. Paper routes and Witmer kids were like bacon and eggs, like fire and smoke, like VW-micro buses and car trouble, they always came together.

Douglas was probably the first to get a paper route in Brooklyn, but Ron was the one who solidified the family’s position as the paper route kings of Brooklyn. Ron was almost single-handedly responsible for the famous spike in circulation of the Indianapolis Star in the mid-sixties. If you look up newspaper-subscription salesman in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Ron alongside the definition. Joe and Dennis carried the afternoon papers, the Indianapolis News and the Martinsville Reporter and they sold a few newspaper subscriptions of their own. Me? I occupied myself with the Pennsylvania Grit.

I was limited to The Grit because I was not old enough for a real paper route. You were supposed to be twelve years old, but the Witmer boys were able to sneak in at ten because, well, because we were the famous paper-route Witmers! I’m not sure which of my older brothers, spurred on by a picture of a beefy boy, holding a stack of cash, was the first to clip the coupon from the back of a comic book and request more information on “how to make real money selling The Pennsylvania Grit,” but it wasn’t long before a bundle of the newspapers began showing up the middle of every week. As the older boys moved on to the big money, carrying the daily papers, I took over the Grit route. The face price, of the paper, was fifteen cents, my cost was ten cents, which gave me a nickel profit margin on each one I could sell. If I didn’t sell all of them, I had to pay for the leftovers out of my own pocket. It was risky business, but most the time I did okay. I made enough to keep me in Polar Bars, RC cola and Pixie Stixs. What else do you need when your eight going on nine?

The Dynasty did not go unchallenged. The evil Kirk boys (Rusty and Randy) began to horn in, passing daily papers on the north side and selling The Grit willy-nilly all over town. I remember the utter shock of knocking on the door of one of my regular Grit customers only to find that one of the Kirk boys had already been there. To make matters worse, their mom was helping them! She was driving them around town in the family station wagon! I pictured them at the Post Office, waiting for the mail to come in, grabbing their bundle of Grits, and racing ahead of me to all my formerly loyal customers. Something had to be done. I found myself knocking on the Kirk’s front door. I asked if I might come in to chat.

I had never seen anything like the inside of the Kirk house. It was nearly impossible to move from one room to another. The clutter was so thick, the family had gone to clearing walking paths through it, just wide enough to to put one foot in front of another. The paths were worn into the carpet, a testament to the long-standing presence of the piles of junk. In a flash, it came to me. I now had the advantage. I suggested that the Kirk’s confine their Grit sales to the area south of Mill Street. I suggested that if they ventured into my side of Brooklyn again, I might be forced to mention, to Mrs. Collins, the town gossip, that the inside of their house looked like a landfill. We quickly came to terms. I know it seems hard to believe that a boy of nine years old could be so clever, but as I remember it, I was an amazing child.

This was not the first, or the last time the Witmer family had to defend its newspaper dynasty and I cannot, in one entry, begin to tell you of all the adventures related to our paper routes. I will need another entry or two to tell you of the trips Ron and Joe won for selling subscriptions, the challenges of collecting from our customers and the interesting people we met as a result.

P.S.: This weeks quiz question: Do you remember “Neighbor.”