Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (5 page)

I struggled frantically to my feet, spilling Diet Pepsi over the front of my brocade smoking jacket as I flailed about. There wasn't a second to lose. Lurching forward, grasping for the knob, I fell heavily over the coffee table. On hands and knees, I scrambled forward, hoping to kill the TV set before it was too late. With a groan, I realized that once again, I had lost. The late-late-movie curse had struck again. I sat back to accept my fate.

I was trapped by one of the worst ever, a bucolic horror that I had taken care to avoid, when it was first released, by walking on the opposite side of the street from any moviehouse that played it. In a sky-blue suit and straw skimmer, Dick Haymes stood framed against the movie version of the Indiana countryside, dotted with quaint corn shocks and tinted with lurid oranges and greens, at the entrance to an archetypal Hollywood state fair. A few minutes later, there was the mandatory Old Gramps perched atop a sulky in the big trotting race, and The
Girl, rosy-cheeked and beribboned, who watched walleyed while Dick soulfully serenaded the Indiana moon.

Vainly I watched for a single glimpse of the Indiana fairs I had known—the Indiana fairs nobody makes movies about—but it never came. As Haymes warbled on, his eyes twinkling with boyish sincerity, my own grainy movie of a real Indiana fair began to unwind in memory.

As the scene opens, Schwartz, Flick, Junior Kissel and I are standing around back of the Sherwin-Williams paint sign in a misty drizzle. We are discussing current events, as was our wont. Schwartz had found half a can of Copenhagen snuff in the weeds, which we had all tried. After sneezing and gagging violently for 15 minutes, we took up our conversation where it had been interrupted by Schwartz' discovery. The dialog begins:

“My old man says if you ride on the whip too often, it scrambles your brains and you cant think good anymore,” said Flick, whose nose was running copiously as a result of the snuff. “And it stunts your growth.”

“That must have been what happened to
you,
Kissel,” said Schwartz, spitting out a shred of snuff between his teeth. “That's why you're such a shrimp. You musta rode that thing fifty times last year.”

Kissel, a full half head shorter than any of us, said nothing at this, realizing that it was the truth.

“Well, I don't care what your old man says, Flick,” I said. “I'm gonna ride on the whip—and the caterpillar, too. There are so many things that stunt your growth and make you crazy, you might as well do it that way as any other.” My wisdom, as usual was profound.

The rain drizzled down steadily, carrying with it its full load of blast-furnace dust and other by-products of the steel mills and oil refineries that ringed the town like iron dinosaurs. We wandered down the alley, kicking Carnation milk cans into imaginary goals as our conversation dragged on.

“One thing I'm gonna get is one of them red taffy apples!” Kissel shouted as he rooted around in somebody's garbage, looking for another can to kick.

“My old man says they stunt your growth, too. That red stuff clamps your teeth together so you can't grow good,” said Schwartz as he pretended to sink an imaginary basket against a sagging backboard hanging on one of the garages that lined the alley.

“Yeah, well, your old man should know. He's about three feet tall,” Kissel lashed back, cackling fiendishly, as Schwartz threw a half-eaten potato in his direction.

The next scene is a couple of hours later. My old man, my mother, my kid brother, Randy, and I are sitting around the kitchen table eating meat loaf, mashed potatoes and red cabbage. The old man takes a swallow of his beer and says, “It doesn't make any difference to me if you want to look at the quilts and raspberry preserves, as long as we get to see the first heat.”

‘Then Randy and I'll meet you two after the races,” said my mother as she got up to put the coffee on. My kid brother immediately began to whimper piteously.

“You can have a taffy apple,” she said to him from the stove. He stopped sobbing.

“One of those red ones?” he sniffed.

“Any color you want.”

That was enough for him.

“Well, kid….” The old man batted my arm.

“We'll watch Iron Man Gabruzzi give 'em hell tomorrow.” As far as he was concerned, county fairs
were
dirt-track races. All that farm stuff was for the birds.

I went to bed happy. My brother and I whispered back and forth about the great stuff that would happen the next day. He was a Ferris-wheel nut who would have been glad to spend his whole life going around and around on a big wheel that creaked. Come to think of it, that's as good a way to spend it as any.

“I'll get that son of a bitch yet!” my old mans voice hissed suddenly and venomously through the darkened house.

Gawhang! Whap! Gawhang! Whap! Gawhang! Whap-whap!

My parents' bed squeaked dangerously as he leaped up and down on it, batting away at his old enemy. Every night in the late summer and early autumn, mosquito squadrons flew miles from the swamp to seek him out. The minute the lights were off, they dove to the attack. Flying in tight formations, they strafed again and again. The old man loved every minute of it. Fighting mosquitoes was his favorite sport. He slept with his personal fly swatter always at his side; he also had a loaded flit-gun, but he preferred the swatter. It was more sporting, somehow.

Whap! Whap! Bang! Something crashed in the darkness.

“Got the bastard!” He laughed exultantly. The battle was over—until the next hot puff of air brought in reinforcements. Our screens served only to keep the more enormous mosquitoes out of the house, allowing the smaller, lither, angrier types free access. During the second lull between attacks, I drifted off to sleep.

ZZZZZZRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGGG!

The alarm clock blasted me hysterically into consciousness. Gray Saturday-morning light filled the house. The old man cursed and muttered sleepily as my mother padded out into the kitchen in her bathrobe and curlers to get the scrambled eggs started.

An hour later, we were in the Pontiac on the way to the county fair. The ill-fated Pontiac was an inexplicable interruption of the old man's lifelong devotion to the Oldsmobile. He was an Oldsmobile man the way others were Baptists, Methodists, Catholics or Holy Rollers. He later recanted after this episode of backsliding and returned to the fold with the purchase of a 1942 Oldsmobile station wagon that appealed far more deeply to his flamboyantly masochistic nature. A block or so ahead of us, Ludlow Kissel's battered Nash, loaded with kids and Mrs. Kissel (who weighed 360 pounds and read
True Romance),
struggled toward the fairgrounds. His Nash laid down a steady cloud of blue-white exhaust that hung over Cleveland Street like a destroyer's smoke screen. Junior Kissel peered out of the grimy back window, grinning wildly.

“Old Lud is sober. That makes the second time this summer,” said my father as he struggled with the Pontiac,
which had started shimmying again. It had bad kingpins.

Ten minutes later, we were out on Route 41, bumper to bumper in the great tangle of cars all headed for the fair. The sun rose higher over the distant steel mills. Steadily, the temperature and humidity rose until the sky was one vast copper sheet. We inched along like an endless procession of ants across a sizzling grill.

In the front seat, my mother fanned herself with a paper fan marked ORVILLE KLEEBER COAL AND ICE—REASONABLE. The flat fan was cut in the shape of a lump of coal. It had a wooden handle. She always kept it in the car for days like this.

“WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING, JERK?” barked the old man, head stuck aggressively out the window, at the driver ahead of us. His neck was red from sweat; his pongee shirt clung limply to his wiry frame; and his drugstore sunglasses dripped sweat as he glared through the heat waves and exhaust fumes at the idiot ahead.

“SLEEPING JESUS, YOU GONNA PARK THAT WRECK OR DRIVE IT?”

“Little pitchers have big ears,” my mother intoned automatically, gazing placidly out her window at a Burma-Shave sign. The old man's latest curse—one of an endless lexicon—was a new one to me. I filed it away for future use. It might come in handy during a ball game or an argument with Schwartz.

It was now well past noon, but we were getting close. Far ahead, we could see the enormous, billowing cloud of dust that rose from the fairgrounds. Excitement
mounted in the Pontiac as we shimmied closer and closer to the scene of action. Suddenly, with a great hissing, scalding roar, the radiator of the car ahead boiled over. Drops of red, rusty sludge streaked down over our windshield and spattered on the hood.

“OH, NO! FER CHRISSAKE, NO!”

The old man pounded on the steering wheel in rage as the lumbering Buick wheezed to a halt. The driver, a beet-faced man wearing a stiff blue-serge suit and a Panama hat, stumbled out of the car and raised the hood. A white cloud of steam enveloped him from head to toe.

“Goddamn it! There goes the first heat. Son of a bitch! Gimme a bottle of pop.”

Silently, my mother opened a bottle of Nehi orange and handed it to him. She passed one back to me and gave my kid brother another. I felt the stinging carbonation sizzle through my nostrils as I guzzled the lukewarm contents.

Ahead, the other occupants of the Buick had gathered around the car and were fanning the hood with somebody's white shirt. The steam rose higher into the heavens. The car behind us began honking; then others joined in. This only bugged the old man even more. Out the window went his head.

“SHUT UP, YOU JERKS!.” he yelled at the line of cars. They honked even louder.

The Buick was not the only car giving off steam. Several others had begun to percolate in the heat around us. The crowd ahead had begun to push the Buick off
the road, like some great wounded whale. There is nothing deader than a dead Buick.

Finally, we were able to squeeze past the stragglers and once again move on toward the fairgrounds. A biplane towing a red-and-white streamer droned over the line of traffic: FISH DINNER ALL YOU CAN EAT $1.69 JOE'S DINER RTE. 6.

We were so close now that the sounds of the fair began to drift in over the roar of motors: calliopes bleating, whistles, merry-go-round music, bells ringing, barkers. Two cops in short-sleeved blue shirts waved the cars in through the main gate and past a cornfield to the jam-packed, rutted parking lot just inside the grounds. Flushed and sweaty, these two men faced the pressing horde of hissing, steaming, dusty rattletraps with the look of men who are struggling with a totally uncontrollable force that threatens to engulf them at any moment.

One blew his whistle in short, sharp blasts that matched every breath he took. With his left hand, he seemed to gather the cars in a steady hooking motion that pushed them on past his right hand, which moved like a piston in the air, shoving the heaps through the narrow gate. The other cop, taller and sadder, stood astride the center line of the asphalt road and glared slowly and deliberately at each car as it rolled past him.

The old man, by now totally hot under the collar, muttered barely audible obscenities as we drew abreast of the first cop.

“What was that, buddy?” The cop's voice was level
and menacing, cutting through the racket of the Pontiacs piston slap like an ice cube going down your back on a hot day. Instantly, an electric feeling of imminent danger whipped through the car. Even my brother stopped whining.

“Uh … pardon me, officer?” The old man had turned on his innocent voice, which always sounded a little like he was slightly hard of hearing. He stuck his head out the window with exaggerated politeness.

“Did I hear you call me a son of a bitch, buddy?” The tall cop was approaching the side of the car, his eyes piercing the old man like a pair of hot ice picks.

“Uh … what was that, officer? Sir?”

“You heard me.” A hamlike hand rested authoritatively on the door handle; a heavy foot clunked solidly on the running board. The line came to a halt behind us.

“I'm sorry, officer. What was it you said, sir?”

“Did you call me a son of a bitch?”

“Oh, heavens no! Mercy me! Why, good gracious, you must have heard me sneeze. I am troubled with hay fever.” The old man sounded amazingly like an Episcopalian minister.

He sneezed loudly into his sleeve as a demonstration. I had seen the old man get out of many a tight squeak before, but this performance topped them all. I drank it in, knowing that I was seeing a master at work. My mother said nothing through it all, just looked nervously pathetic, which seemed to help the old man's act.

“OK, buster. Just watch yer lip, y'hear?”

“Why, bless my buttons, officer, I certainly will. Yes,
indeed! That is fine advice. Heavens to Betsy, I certainly will.”

With a flick of his wrist, the cop waved us on. The emergency was over. The old man let the clutch out so suddenly that the car jerked heavily twice before lurching forward.

An elderly, toilworn Chevy pickup truck carrying a farmer, his wife, seven kids and a Bluetick hound had stalled just ahead of us. The old man, out of pure reflex, muttered: “Son of a bitch!” Realizing he wasn't yet out of earshot, he covered it with a loud, juicy sneeze.