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.
4 comments:
John, this is your best yet!! It's time to submit your writing for publishing. Seriously.
My good name has been DEFAMED!!!. I insist that you provide coroborative evedince, or retract the slanderous accusation that I was an informant.
As for various somatic medical complaints. Yes, I may have been a bit of a hypochondriac but the migrains were real an most dreadful. Dr. M (as with quacks of the day) did not belive kids could have maigrain headaches. He told mom (right in front of me) That Joe is not having headeachs...he is just trying to get attention. It years later that I learned that the sick headaches were migrains .
The planes boarding now, but I have much more to add.
...as to what really happend...your account seems to coinside closely with my recollections,up until the point of the foot race. Shy, quiet Joe would have never dreamed of barging into the house to tattle on John when strange church ladies were being entertained. I submit that Joe was only playing with John when he issued the idle, but horrific threat of "I'm gonna tell". John panicked! He charged toward home. Joe immediatlly charged after him to try and save John from himself but his big clumpy shoes and having been weakened from a migrain the night before, (He couldn't even complain about the terible pain of these sick headaches because of Dr. M's councel to his mother. He could not even cry because it hurt so bad. When the vomiting would begin, the throbing in the head cause him to wish that death would come quickly to relieve his suffering...but I digress)
John raced home but by the time Joe had caught up to him, he had already raced into the house and spilled his guts to his mother right in front of the church ladies. Now if John had not been in such a panic, he might have noticed that his mother did not seem to be particularly angry but maybe a bit embaressed. She seemed in fact to make light of the interuption. When She told John to "go cut your switch" it was as if were a joke for the benifit of the church ladies and was not meant to be taken seriously. John could not read such subtle nuance even when he was not in a state of panic. Still in a terrible emotional state, John left the house heading towards the brick porch. His very much concerned older brother followed him. When Joe saw John climb onto the ledge and begin reaching precariously toward the branches of the magnolia tree, a flash of terror ran from the top of his head to the bottom of his clunky shoes. He knew what was going to happen next. Joe had failed in his effort to stop John from confession to his mother. Joe knew now that he must somehow prevent Jonh from doing serious bodily harm to himself. Joe valiantly tried running around to the bottem of the garden wall in order to risk his own bodily harm by heroicly catching his beloved baby brother in mid air before he could crash to the cruel, hard ground. Alas, Joe's clunky shoes and the reminants of the previous nights migrain once again foiled his attempt to protect John from himself. As Joe rounded then corner of the wall he watched in horror, as if in slow motition, the form of his brother, curled up in a little ball , floated toward the ground. Time returned to normal speed with the sound of a terible THUD as the curve of John's spine hit the ground. Joe thought he was a gonner for sure.
As it turns out, he had only had the wind knocked out of him. When his breath returned to him he began wailing. He was laying there on his back with arms and legs flailing in the air like a turtle turned on his back while being poked with a cattle prod. It was then that mother and the chuch ladies came to the rescue and the ambulance was called. To this day Joe does not realy know if the drama after the fall was just John's attmemt to get out of a wupp'n, was really hurt, or it was a sinister plot to inflict emotional trauma on his brother for theating "to tell"
We will let your readers be the judge.
Duely signed and submited on this twenty third day of our lord in the year twenty,aught,aught,five.
Forest, Forest Gump
LOL! LOL! LOL!
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