Old Settlers’ Picnic II

     “C’mon!” Larry hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me along.

     We ran, but not very far, just around the corner of the grandstand building.  Larry adopted an air of nonchalance and I did my best to imitate him.

       We stood there, leaning against the building, feigning innocence.  We waited.

     Earlier, Larry recruited me.  He must have worked his way through a bunch of other guys and been turned down.  Being three years younger than he was, I was quite a ways down the social totem pole.

     That thought didn’t occur to me then.  I was flattered to be asked to assist.  Why not help Larry?  Because he was doing something stupid?  That thought didn’t occur to me then, either.  Thoughts of consequences never entered my mind—until the time came to face them.

     We watched a man serving homemade ice cream from the crank style ice cream maker.  The scene was another Old Settlers’ Day at Walks Camp Park.  On the backside of the covered grandstand, beneath the higher bleacher seats were booths where vendors could set up and serve a crowd.  The doors to the booths were hinged on top.  When opened, the doors, propped up with rods or sticks, provided a shade for those standing in front of the booth.

     Beneath the lower benches of the grandstand were two crawl spaces, separated by the hallway that ran from the back of the grandstand to the small stage at the very front.  Once in a while, someone would crawl into one of the crawl spaces to retrieve an object that managed to get dropped through the bleacher seats.

     Sheets of corrugated metal ran from top to bottom underneath the bleachers.  The metal served to protect the booths below the dirt from people’s shoes as well as whatever might blow into the mostly open structure.  The metal also channeled water from wind-blown rain or melted snow to the crawl space.

      “Pop!” went the firecracker.  Ladies sitting in the grandstand screamed.  The master of ceremonies was irritated.  This wasn’t the first firecracker set off in the crawl space.  Measures had been taken to prevent such a thing from happening.  Dire punishments had been promised.

     “Let’s have the boys who did that,” the announcer bellowed.  “Let’s get them up here.”

     Larry sauntered off and I followed him as best I could.  The emcee’s appeals to apprehend the miscreants faded, and we reached the safety of the Arikaree Riverbed beneath the cottonwood trees.  There Larry celebrated his mischief.  My own joy was that we got out of there without getting caught.

      Larry needed an accomplice for his naughty deed because the crawl spaces to the grandstand had doors hinged on top, like the booth doors.  Sometimes the trap doors were held open by a hook and eye to provide a little ventilation beneath the seats.  This day, the doors were closed to prevent miscreants from igniting firecrackers in the crawl space. 

     The crawl spaces were attractive nuisances.  They made dandy sound chambers for an explosion.  The explosion never failed to elicit screams from ladies sitting in the stands.  So the doors were closed.

     My job was to hold the door open long enough for Larry to strike a match, light the firecracker fuse, and throw the lit cracker under the grandstand.  I was dumb enough to do it.

     Surely someone saw us do it.  There were people all around.  Why hadn’t someone collared us and taken us up in front of everybody to be disciplined?

           After about thirty minutes or so, we left the shade of the cottonwoods wandered back up to see what was going on.  Things had settled back to normal.  Someone was entertaining the crowd with music of some kind.  The firecracker was history.

      I separated myself from Larry.  I wanted nothing more to do with any of his projects for a while.  I could only imagine what would happen to me if my parents discovered I had been part of that firecracker business.              

       I counted myself lucky that no one “told on us.”  It would take some time for me to figure it out.

     Larry’s father was the Master of Ceremonies that day.  

Old Settler’s Day

     Labor Day was the saddest of all the holidays, when I was a kid.  Leading the charge of morosity was the fact that that holiday marked the end of summer, the end of freedom, the beginning of school.

     Ignore the fact that with the start of school, friends would be reunited, and we would have much more time on the sports fields with three recesses a day than we ever had during the summer.  Freedom is a state of mind.  We were unable to discover that idea as prisoners in the classroom.

     The other thing that happened on Labor Day was the Old Settler’s picnic.  As the name suggested. it was for the folks who had homesteaded in the area during the first decade of the 20^th Century.  In the 1950’s there were still a few of those left, but mostly it was for the descendants of the real settlers. 

      Our Grandfather survived until the end of the sixties.  He certainly qualified to attend the annual celebration, though I don’t remember him ever attending one.  We went to a few of them.

    In my memory, a lady named Lena Martin kept the day alive and spearheaded the event.  When she grew too old to do the job, the tradition quietly passed into history.  No one wanted the job.

      The day was filled with contests of various kinds for every age.  I remember some of the men standing at stations, shotgun at the ready, yelling “Pull!”  A blue rock, or blue rocks, if it were a double, would come flying out of a berm a few yards in front of the shooter.  “Boom!” went the shotgun. The crowd would ooh and ah if the explosion resulted in the blue rock turning into smithereens.  It was sort of an “Oh?” if a chip or two went flying from the rock.  If the blue rock fell and crashed ignominiously to earth where it broke into pieces on the hard old prairie, the crowd groaned.  The shooter had a dead miss.

      It seems the first prize for the shooter who hit the most blue rocks was a turkey, thus the name “turkey shoot”.  I may be confusing this with some other event, however.

      Another contest for men was the nail driving contest.  The contestant got a hammer, and a two-inch board with a big nail, 16 or 20 penny, started in the board.  The object was to set the nail with the least number of hammer blows.

      A couple of guys tried to set the nail with one blow.  The nail always went flying away somewhere.  The contestant was disqualified.  We tried to get Dad to enter this contest, but I don’t think he ever did.     

      There were plenty of contests for kids, sack races, three-legged races, foot races.  I probably tried some of those once or twice, but I soon gave up.  There were two Huffman kids who ran like greased lightning.  If they were entered, there was no sense for me to try.

     I did win a contest at Old Settlers’ Day once, hands down, no questions asked, and it was a source of burning embarrassment.  The picnic was held at Walks Camp Park.  There was a covered grandstand with a softball diamond in front of it.  In the center of the lower level of the grandstand was a stage even with the second row of bleacher seats where a speaker could stand and speak up to the crowd.

      For some reason, I was standing down below the stage.   I think I might have been set up.  The emcee announced the next contest.  Apparently, I didn’t hear what the contest was.  Had I heard, I would have beat feet out of there as fast as I could go.

         Before I could go, a set of great long spidery arms grabbed me, hoisted me over the side rails of the stage and deposited me smack dab in front of the crowd, God and everybody.  The crowd was laughing, applauding, cheering.  I suspect I turned the reddest of reds.

      I looked daggers at Jimmy Lundy.  I always considered him my friend.  Now, he betrayed me.  He was laughing, too.

      The contest?  Who has the most freckles?  There was no need to count spots, no need to look at the competition.  I was awarded first prize by judges, the crowd, everybody.

      I always hated those freckles.  Once I took a washcloth and scrubbed my cheeks until they were quite chapped.  I think there was some Lava soap involved, but the freckles remained.

      We had this Warner Brothers record, Porky Pig on a Safari.  “Ebeelubeelabookala!”  One of the animals he called on more than once was a leopard who was trying to rub away his spots.  I knew what the leopard knew.  On the third visit, there was no leopard.  Only spots on the ground and the washcloth.  The leopard had scrubbed himself away.

      I didn’t go that far.  Dad tried to comfort me.  He said he had two nicknames when he was a kid, “Spots” and “Goose egg.”  He pointed out he no longer had freckles; they would disappear.  No help.  How could anyone like a kid with freckles?  They were ugly!

     It would be many years later when both of my daughters were swooning over a fellow teacher’s son who had a spattering of freckles under his eyes and running across his nose.  Somebody actually liked a person who had freckles?  My own daughters?  Unbelievable!

      There was a reward that infamous Labor Day.  The first prize for the freckles contest was a shoeshine kit.  Some sixty years later, I have lost most of my freckles.  A few light ones mark my hands and arms. 

     But I still have the shoeshine kit.  It was packaged in cardboard with a cellophane window so you could see two dusting/polishing brushes, a black one, a clear one, two applicator brushes, a black one and a brown one, a shining cloth and two cans of Kiwi shoe polish, black and brown.  It all fits into a fake leather case.  The polish cans have been replaced a few times over the years.  The polishing cloth has been replaced.  The original brushes are all still there.  They still polish my leather shoes.

        Looking back, I sense the whole thing was a set up.  I never heard of a freckles contest.  I think Jimmy Lundy made it up, knowing who would win, and picking an appropriate prize.  With friends like that. . . .  Well, it was the right prize,  I guess.

UFO

    Some stories can’t be told.  They haven’t crawled out of the vault containing those stories too painful to share into the realm of amusing.

     On the flip side are the stories that spend little or no time in the painful category.  One such story began on a Friday evening.

     Friday evenings highlight the working person’s week.  With retirement, Friday evening joy has disappeared.  That is partially compensated by Monday morning’s disappearance.

      This particular Friday evening was a late fall evening.  Maybe football season was finished, or it was an out-of-town game.  My presence to either take tickets or run the concession stand was not required.

      I was helping to get supper on the table when the phone rang.  “Let’s go to the movie,” the voice on the phone said.

      “OK!” the Goodwife said.

     “Oh no, please no,” I muttered.  Movie-watching is not my long suit.  Many movies are trite, hackneyed, predictable.   Many times, I pay the price of admission in order to take a nap.

      A lot of Friday evenings, I wanted to get away from everything, to have a little private time away from the noise and bustle.  We had the perfect place for that, on the hill two miles out of town, the nearest neighbor a mile away.  The last thing I wanted to do was go sit in a theater filled with my students and former students.  Not that I disliked them.   I loved them all right.  I just needed a break.

     As the Goodwife hurried about to get supper on the table so we could get to the movie on time, I prevailed upon her to make my excuses to our friends and spare me an unenjoyable evening. Her enthusiasm diminished a little, she hurried through supper, primped a little, threw on her jacket, grabbed purse and keys and headed out the door.

      I earned my reprieve by gathering up soiled dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, scrubbing skillet, pots, and pans, wiping table and counters.  I had already decided that a shower and a book were next on the docket. 

     One of the advantages of living on a hilltop in the country, plains country, was the ability to see everywhere.  Bathrobe and clean underwear in hand, I idled by the south window in the dusk.  It was misty, almost foggy.  Visibility was limited.  But wait, what was that red light in the distance?  I had never seen that before.  Probably an airplane or something.

     Returning from the shower, this time wearing the bathrobe, I checked out the south window again.  The solid, unblinking red light was still there.  It didn’t go away all evening.  I got out the binoculars.  They brought the light closer, but no more details appeared in the cloudy mist.

     A couple of things lurking in the back of my mind came to the forefront.  Late summer, early fall, a family a few miles south, a respected family, the county sheriff’s family reported a UFO sighting in their territory.  Ironically, the other thing that came to mind was a movie I liked, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  “Dah dah dah dah dum.”  The five theme notes flicked through my head.

      I studied the light again.  It appeared to move, but it didn’t go anywhere. 

      I was under standing orders to call Bill any time day or night if I saw either of two events, a tornado, or a UFO.  He wanted to see those things for himself, not just movies or videos of them.

     This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call him immediately.  When the Goodwife’s headlights flahed on the wall, I knew the movie was over.  I picked up the phone and punched the button on the speed dial labeled “Uncle Bill.”

      “Hey Bill, listen, there’s this weird red light up here.”

      “Red lght?”

      “Yes a red light in the sky south of us.”   Click.  He was on his way.  I had exchanged bathrobe for jeans and shirt.  I pointed the phenomenon out to the Goodwife.  She agreed the light had never been there before.  She agreed it was weird hanging there in the midst.

     Bill arrived.  He had seen the light as he came up the road.  We consulted.  He called his wife and ordered her to bring the van pronto.  The other movie-going couple was notified.  Soon six of us were standing in the yard eyeing the red light that none of us had seen before. 

     We all piled in Bill’s van and headed south.  Belonging to the van’s six occupants were eight bachelor’s degrees and four master’s degrees. 

     We didn’t have far to go, four or five miles.  The closer we got, the less the mist and haze interfered with our view. 

     Somewhere about a half mile away from the UFO, we could all see:  the legs and cross braces of the tower.  What had been obscured in the mist, even to the binocular’s scrutiny, was now easily visible in the light’s red glow.

     Bill pulled the van onto the fill that bridged the highway ditch and granted access to the pasture.  We got out and looked.  One doubting Thomas among us slipped the chain on the swinging gate and hurried up the trail for the hundred yards or so to the tower site.  She laid hands on the metal tower rungs and returned to where the other five sat waiting in the van.

    “Yup.  It’s a tower all right.”

     What to do?  There was no question that this adventure would get out. We would be the laughing stock.  It couldn’t be covered up.  It would do no good to swear each other to secrecy.  “Three may keep a secret, if two are dead,” Poor Richard wrote.  Somebody would blab.

      Besides, as the van headed back north, we began to laugh.  The absurdity of it all caught up with us.  It crossed my mind that the blame fell mostly on me.  I sounded the alarm.  But one of the ladies who drove that road twice a day to and from work in Colby confessed that she had not noticed that tower going up.

     Far from covering up our adventure, we all told somebody.  They laughed, we laughed.

     Another acquaintance, when they heard our story, related theirs.  They had gone to Colby in the afternoon, had spent the evening there, dined, shopped, visited friends and headed home in the dark.  They saw the light.  The driver far exceeded the speed limit in the attempt to get there before the UFO departed.  They too saw the tower as they got close enough to clear the mist.  They laughed, too.

     Since that night, we have traveled down that road in the company of our friends several times, going to this meeting or that concert.  It doesn’t happen every time, but every once in a while, somebody will say, “Look, there’s our UFO.”  We laugh.