Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (7 page)

This kind of stuff really got to the old man. He snapped more pictures and walked all the way around the cheese, examining it from every angle. All it did was make my kid brother hungry again.

It was late in the afternoon now and the crowd was really warmed up, moving in straggly columns around huge, black-wheeled tractors, cultivators, threshing machines and other agricultural exotica. Salesmen, the collars of their shirts opened, ties hanging limply, shouted over bullhorns as we wandered dazedly amid the shuffling throng, kicking up bread crusts and paper cups as we eddied on.

“I'm hungry,” my brother droned, his voice barely audible above the uproar.

“You've just gone. You'll have to wait” said my mother, pushing the damp hair back off her forehead.

“I don't have to go! I'm
hungry!”
Randy never gave up.

“You heard what your mother said.” My father got into the act “I said I'm HUNGRY!”

“You're
what?
You've had three taffy apples, four hot dogs and two root beers. That's enough for a while.”

“I wanna PICKLE!”

As it happened, we were passing a stand where a guy in a red vest and a white chef's hat was selling giant dark-green pickles from barrels. People eat strange stuff at county fairs.

“I want one, too!” I said.

We all bought pickles in wax paper and rejoined the moiling mob. My pickle must have weighed two pounds. Every time I bit into it, it squirted down the front of my shirt.

It was getting dark now and 50 times more exciting as the bright lights began to flash on. I washed down the tart, puckery taste of the pickle with some cold buttermilk from a paper cup with a picture on it of a red cow wearing a green hat. My knees had begun to ache from the endless trudging through sawdust and over piles of debris. On either side of us, a sparkling ribbon of spinning yellow wheels, blue-white neon lights and hot orange flames under cooking grills stretched to the horizon. Guys with leather jackets and great mops of carefully combed, greasy hair ranged through the crowds, looking for fights and girls.

On a high platform, two blondes wearing silver helmets sat on the saddles of enormous bright-red Harley-Davidsons. They gunned the motors deafeningly sending thin blue exhaust smoke into the crowd that stood around the platform with glazed eyes and gaping mouths.

“Dee-fying death every second, straight from the world championships in Paris, France, Melba and Bonnie stare into the very jaws of eternity!” yelled the barker.

BBBBRRRROOOOOOOMMMMMMMIBAAAARRR-OOOOOOOMMMMI Another cloud of acrid smoke drifted out over the mob.

The barker spieled on: “There is time for just one more big show tonight, just one more! Never in your life have you seen anything to equal THE DEVIL RIDE!”

BAAARRROOOOOOM! BBBBBRRRRRRROOOOOO-OMMMMMI

“Bee-ginning in just one minute. In just sixty seconds! Beautiful Melba and lovely Bonnie stare into the jaws of death!”

The two blondes, thin-faced and pallid, peered out from under their spectacular helmets, chewing gum steadily as they gunned their Harleys.

“I gotta see that!” This act was
designed
for my old man. Anything that had to do with roaring motors and crash helmets hit him in the vitals. Add the fact that these were skinny blonde women, another weakness, and you had bigtime showbiz, as far as he was concerned.

With a couple of final, provocative roars, the two raced down the ramp and disappeared through a doorway
outlined in yellow with a string of colored light bulbs festooning a blood-red Devil's face with green eyes.

We followed close behind my father as he elbowed his way through the sweaty throng of daredevil fans to the head of the line inside the tent. We found ourselves standing at the rim of a circular pit ten or fifteen feet deep. The noise was deafening; the wooden floor vibrated and creaked under our feet. The air was thick with burning gasoline. Down in the pit, the two motorcycles boomed round and round, chasing each other madly in faster and faster circles, rising up the curved walls until they were riding almost horizontally under the chicken wire that separated the Harleys from us.

A white-faced, blue-veined minister, his high collar spotted with catsup, stood next to us in tense excitement. Kids ran wildly in and out of the crowd, throwing peanut shells at the riders as they screamed round and round in their tight spiral. The old man peered down into the maelstrom, pounding the rail in excitement as the motorcycles accelerated faster and faster.

“M, DEFYING GRAVITY ON THEIR SPECIALLY BUILT HARLEY-DAVIDSONS, MELBA AND BONNIE WILL NOW PERFORM A DEATH-DEFYING FEAT NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN THE UNITED STATES!” shouted the voice on the P.A. system over the racket. Down in the gloom of the hell pit, the exhausts trailed smoke as the motorcycles rode abreast.

“MELBA AND BONNIE WILL CHANGE MOTORCYCLES AT TOP SPEED!”

The crowd hunched forward with expectancy. Even the kids were quiet. The thunder of the motorcycles had reached the point where no more sound could be endured. The whole structure—the floor, the guy wires, the back teeth, everything—vibrated to the scream of the Harleys. Down in the pit, there was a quick shuffling of bodies and it was done.

“Fer Chrissake, how d'y like that! I wouldna' believed it!” said the oldman to no one in particular. The minister, his black hat hanging at a rakish angle, applauded frantically.

Once again we were out on the midway, 50 cents poorer but infinitely richer in worldly experience.

My mother, who was eating a piece of watermelon, said plaintively, “I haven t seen the quilts yet

“I wanna go on the Ferris wheel,” whined my brother for the 298th time.

“I thought you were gonna see em when we went to the races,” said the old man, ignoring him for the 298th time.

“We went to the cookie tasting instead.”

“The what?”

“The cookie tasting. Over by where they were having the artistic flower arranging.”

The old man said nothing and headed for a three-story-high orange face that laughed madly under a sign that read FUN HOUSE. He hoped that by not answering, she would forget the quilts.

“Mrs. Wimple has a quilt in this year,” she persisted. “Bernice Wimple, from the club.”

My mother belonged to a dart-ball club that staged mysterious contests in the church basement every Thursday. Bernice Wimple played for the La Porte, Indiana, Bearcats, a legendary dart-ball team.

It's a Thomas Jefferson quilt,” she continued, wiping a watermelon seed off her chin with a paper napkin that said HAVE FUN in blue letters over an American flag.

My father, realizing he'd have to say
something,
stalled for time: “What the hell kinda quilt is that?”

“Well, it's a patriotic quilt that has the face of Thomas Jefferson on it, done in cross-stitch.”

“Oh, well!
That
I gotta see!” said my father sarcastically.

After a ten-minute search, we finally found the tent with the quilt exhibit, under strings of yellow light bulbs. The quilts were tacked up all around, stretched tight, so that their designs could be admired respectfully from behind a rope by the motley throng of art lovers. Mrs. Wimple's entry was among them. We stood before the portrait

“He looks a little cross-eyed to me,” the old man observed accurately.

“I think it's very pretty. Mrs. Wimple worked seven years on it.”

We peered at the third-place ribbon it sported and moved on to look at the others. The winning quilt had a stand to itself. It bore a spectacular portrait of Old Faithful on a yellow background framed by purple mountains and surrounded by a herd of animals: a moose, an elk,
two bighorn sheep, a bunny with pink eyes and what appeared to be a hippopotamus. Above this scene in Old English-style red, white and blue letters was the following profundity:

“Now, that's what I call pretty,” said my father solemnly, reading the inscription. We all agreed that it was pretty.

Most of the quilts ran heavily to such patriotic themes, except for one that had a ribbon for UNUSUAL SUBJECT-HONORABLE MENTION. It was a full-color portrait done on a background of grass green. The eyes of the subject, staring beadily out from under his familiar cap, stopped the old man dead in his tracks.

“Well, I'll be damned. I'll be a son of a bitch!”

We stood in awe before this transcendent work of art

“I never thought I'd see Luke Appling on a quilt!” Sure enough, it was a ruddy likeness of old Luke himself, the foul-ball king of the American League. My father, a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan, was visibly moved. Under the picture streamed the legend, woven in golden thread:

(I wonder what a genuine Luke Appling quilt would go for today in the chic, high-camp
boutiques
along Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

“Let's go, all you great lovers, all you he-men,” barked a man in a purple derby at the next concession. “Let's see what kind of man you really are. Show that beautiful girl you're with just what kind of man you really are. Here you are, here you are, here you are, here's your chance to get up and really ring the bell. Everybody wins. It's good healthful exercise and everybody wins. Ring the bell. I said everybody wins. All right, you lovers, show that little lady what kind of muscles you really got. Ring the bell.”

We joined a circle of gawkers at the foot of a 30-foot pole that had a wire running up its length, with a big gong at the top. At the bottom was a round metal plate. The pole, candy-striped red and white, was marked with gradations. Beginning at the bottom, they read:

And way up at the top: wow! A REAL HE-MAN.

A huge, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired tractor-driver type, wearing Sears, Roebuck pants and a checkered cowboy shirt, stepped into the arena.

“Let's see how the young man swings. Look at those shoulders, folks, look at those arms! Swing the hammer nice and smooth; hit it right on the button. Let's see you ring the bell.”

The barker handed the behemoth a big mallet. His friends jeered and snorted noisily in derision.

“Belt the hell out of it, Caleb!” one yelled.

“Aw, come on. He cain't make it past the LADIES' mark. He ain't got no lead in his pencil!”

The crowd snickered contemptuously. Caleb grabbed the handle and swung wildly. K-THUNK! The iron weight rose feebly up the cable and fell back with a clank.

“No wonder yew cain't make out with Minnie!” hooted one of his friends.

Caleb spat on his hands, swung again. The hammer whistled. KER-THUNK!

The weight rose higher this time, almost reaching the AVERAGE mark halfway up the pole. Caleb looked thoughtful, as the distant sound of the merry-go-round calliope switched from
Alexander's Ragtime Band
to
The Valkyrie.
It was, indeed, a Wagnerian moment, the twilight of the gods.

He peered upward at the gong, which now seemed twice as high as it had before. He kicked the dirt like a batter digging in at the batters box, wiped his hands on his trousers and once again grabbed the mallet. His biceps rippled under the tight-fitting cowboy shirt. Dark circles of sweat stained the armpits. His back arched. This time, he swung the hammer from the ground, then
up in a great, swinging arc. K-THUNK! The metal weight drifted up the wire, slowed and stopped at CASPAR MILQUETOAST.

“Man, yew better quit before that thing don't move at all!”

Caleb dropped the hammer, his face bathed in sweat and red from humiliation, paid the barker and left the arena, a broken man. I had a suspicion of what was going to happen next. If there was ever a sucker for that kind of thing, it was my old man.

“I think I'm gonna try whacking that thing,” he whispered.

“Now, don't make a fool of yourself.” My mother was always afraid of his making a fool of himself. She had good reason to be.

“Aw, just for fun. I mean, what the hell.”

“All right, you lovers, you saw cousin Caleb get all the way up there to AVERAGE. Let's see how you can do. Ring the bell, ring the bell, who can ring the bell?”

As Caleb snarled at the Greek chorus of hisses and boos from his corn-liquored buddies, the old man stepped into the clearing without a word, gave the guy a quarter, grabbed the hammer and swung. K-THWACK! He didn't hit it with anywhere near the thump that Caleb got into her. But: ZZZIIIIIIIIP … BONG!

The iron weight raced to the top and rang the bell so loud it could be heard a block away.

“Y'see that, Caleb? That there guy's got lead in
his
pencil!” The nasal bray of rustic wit opened up again.

“The little man wins a box of genuwine Swiss-chocolate
bonbons. All ya gotta do is have a good swing. Who's gonna win the next big prize, all you lovers?”

My father, stunned at his totally unprecedented success, grabbed the box of chocolates amid the applause of the rabble.

The last we saw of Caleb was the hammer rising and falling at two bits a swing, being milked by that barker for every cent he owned.

This moment was to become a sacred gem in the family archives. The more it was told, the greater the feat became. Caleb grew into Paul Bunyan, and the old man's hammer swing rose to Olympic proportions. It wasn't until I was 16 that I read an article in
Popular Mechanics
and discovered that the barker operated the thing with his foot. The old man, fortunately, never found out.

As we moved from one marvel to the next, my brother and I began to list heavily to starboard; we hadn't stopped eating since we stepped onto the fairgrounds: homemade popcorn balls, red, white and blue, made by the 4-H; girl-scout cookies; French fries; boiled corn on the cob dripping butter; Nehi orange and Hires root beer; peanuts; pumpkin pie; hot dogs; pickles; American Legion Auxiliary crullers; baked beans on paper plates; lemonade; Ladies of the Moose angel-food cake; taffy apples; and a thousand free samples, including Purina Chick Chow, which my brother and I both ate avidly. Added to this was the real specialty of any Indiana fair—homemade black-walnut chocolate fudge, displayed in thick, fly-crawling slabs at stands operated by beaming Kiwanians wearing funny hats and badges. We also
scoffed down about five pounds each of peculiarly native candy called vanilla angel breath, an airy concoction so cloyingly sweet that a bite-sized portion could rot teeth at 50 paces. A fundamental ground rule of the county fair was that kids could have anything they wanted to eat, just this once. Steadily, we chewed our way toward Armageddon.