Tiny People and Giants

One blistering hot summer morning I knocked on Darleen’s back door to collect my 80 cents and to give either her, her daughter Judy or her massive son-in-law the tiny, coveted “paid in full” newspaper receipt, torn dutifully from my metal binder. Colossal Dan answered the door. He was not wearing a bandana or a leather jacket, but big, black glasses, sweatpants and no shirt. He was not conducting a meeting but had been sitting at the table sipping coffee and leafing through a sale circular from Sears.

I had never seen that much flesh on one person in my life. Standing all of seven feet, and fresh from his win at the heating oil company, Dan asked me what I wanted in his booming, tremulous and impatient voice. I looked way, way up at him and told him I was collecting for the newspaper, and it was 80 cents. He snorted and rumbled off through the kitchen, disappearing into the den somewhere.

Every oversize wrinkle and fold in his mammoth chest quivered as he lumbered back in from the den, ducking way under the door, clutching a one dollar bill. He handed me the dollar and sat back down, his kitchen chair screaming in protest. Since he was only the second collection of the morning, I did not have correct change – I only had three quarters and a nickel from my previous stop, who was an elderly gentleman next door named Buck, who always paid me with 3 quarters and a nickel. I counted out the change in my pocket three times. I owed Dan two dimes, which I did not have. I stood motionless in his door, frozen in indecision, unable to either leave or ask for change and risk pissing off this bargain-hunting Goliath, who seemed to simmer in impatience. I was afraid he would go “Andre the Giant” on me.

“Uh,” I finally asked timidly, mentally preparing for the inevitable over-the-head airplane spin and slam to the mat, “Do you have a nickel? All I have are quarters.”

“I don’t have no nickel.” He answered flatly, unwilling to go locate one and never looking up from his Sears flyer. Unlike the other giant in the trailer with curtains instead of doors, he was not willing to tip me the 20 cents. Or maybe he was, he didn’t say. I nervously tore out the receipt and handed it to him with one of my coveted quarters. He did not seem appreciative. I lost a nickel on colossal Dan that morning. I guess it was OK, since I heard he was on disability of some sort and certainly was not obligated to share his heating oil winnings. . .

-From Three Buck Naked Commodes: and 18 More Tales from a Small Town

Fort Woody

. . . We were on a roll. We were no longer Jeff and Dale, pre-teen fort constructers; no, we were now Buck Fuller and Ray Loewy, master engineers and designers, putting our heads together to create the world’s first pre-tensile, 4-D dymaxion Geodesic dome fort (or reasonable equivalent) and we were going to utilize the same (or so we thought) innovative construction techniques and materials utilized by those giants of modern-day 1960s construction.

We, however, had to compromise on some of the components: instead of tetrahedron-octet trusses, molded from aircraft magnesium, we used scrap 2x4s found in a muddy vacant lot. Instead of a stainless steel tensegrity mast to support the structure, we were going to use a tree limb. And instead of vacuum-flask windows, set in air-tight gasket locks, we were going to leave gaping holes in the plywood, both for viewing approaching bullies and airing out the mold smells. Still, we were giants in the field of fort construction, and our creation compared favorably with any of those dymaxion and streamlined innovations produced by those snooty world-class engineers.

We began by nailing together several 6-ft 2x4s we acquired from dubious sources, sort of aiming for the overhead limb some five or six feet over our heads, with some vague notion of how we were going to make it work. I’m sure Bucky Fuller made educated guesses sometimes, too. We beat and banged and pounded, only the second-story was hesitant to reveal itself. We walked around and around, looking and suggesting, pointing out possible support areas and gaps to avoid.

Finally we forced several boards together into reaching toward the overhead limb. Jeff was up on the limb, hammer and nail pouch on standby, ready to pound into place whatever board I got up to him in some reasonable constructive-like way. I nailed the bottom of a 4 ft long 2x6 and swung it up to him. When he drove a nail into it the entire structure started sagging, then with a depressing crash tumbled over like a house of cards – which by the way, probably had only minimally more structural integrity than Fort Woody. . .

-From Three Buck Naked Commodes: And 18 More Tales from a Small Town

Driver and the Metal Detectors

Driver and Bill were drinking buddies in our small town. Every morning around 11 AM Driver pulled his world-weary, pea-green 1964 Buick up to the boarded-up small town garage by our side yard and parked. Around noon Bill rolled out of his house, walked the hundred or so feet to Driver’s car and got in. That was all the exercise Bill got. He and Driver sat in that stinky old Buick all day and drank themselves to oblivion.

While Bill and Driver drank, my buddy Steve bought a $4 metal detector at a flea market. Steve was a very intelligent, overly-tall, heavyset seventh-grader with an entrepreneurial streak: since a major civil war battle occurred near our small town there in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia, he figured he could detect and dig up civil war relics and sell them to local collectors, either to earn simple pocket money or to get himself out of the crappy poverty in which he and his family lived. I don’t know how grand his designs were.

I was the town newspaper delivery boy. I did it for pocket money, not to escape poverty. I had twenty-one subscribers spread out over six miles. Every other Saturday I had to go around and collect the previous week’s premium – about $1.00 per household. One morning I knocked on Steve’s front door, and when his brother Ricky opened it, a furious chicken ran out between my feet.

“Thanks,” Ricky said, “I’ve been trying to get that chicken out of the house all morning.”

Bill made the front page of the local newspapers as a 17-year-old boy scout in 1949. His troop was camping up in the mountains west of Harrisonburg near the town of Stokesville when they got stranded by torrential rains. The boys were missing for almost three days when Bill led them all to safety, where they were eventually reunited with their frantic parents. I know this story because I found and read it in a yellowed copy of the local paper in the attic of an old house.
Bill was hailed as a hero that day, but this day, like most days, he sat in a car, drinking himself silly, perhaps describing to Driver for the umpteenth time the story of his heroism during the Stokesville flood of ’49.

To my knowledge Driver never made the papers but his oldest son did on October 31, 1959 when he was struck by a car on Main Street in Waynesboro. He was five years of age, and luckily only sustained scratches to his face and neck. I also found this story in an old newspaper. While Driver’s son was being treated, I read that my sister was attending a Halloween party at her nursery school. This story was on the same page of that paper. . .

-From Three Buck Naked Commodes: and 18 More Tales from a Small Town

Poindexters, Poop and Parasites

I wore shiny corrective shoes for six years. I was also in girl scouts three of those years. Yes, I am indeed a guy, but I still attended three years of girl scouts in corrective shoes. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Here’s why: My sister was a scout and my mom was a scoutmaster, or whatever they call them in girl scouts.Scout mistress, perhaps. My dad worked weird hours at DuPont, so I had to go to the Girl Scout meetings with my mom and sister because I was too young to stay home by myself for those two hours every Thursday afternoon from 4-6 PM. I would have done inappropriate things, like rifle through my sister’s dresser drawer, or watch grown-up television shows like Divorce Court or Peyton Place, or eat horrible things.

I wish I stayed home, because I was a club-footed, pigeon-toed punching bag for those malicious, pig-tailed, 11-year-old green-skirted brats. For some inexplicable reason I was not perceived as the loveable “little feller”; the scampy but endearing kid brother and tow-headed son of the scout mistress who had to tag along; oh no, I was the lamest chicken in the barnyard – the only bleeding wildebeest on the plain, clicking and slipping away from predators in my shiny corrective shoes. Perhaps the girls hated my haircut, or maybe I was perceived as lame due to my malformed feet and a regrettable encounter with a less-than-talented barber. I was a geeky little kid, they had many reasons to peck on me. To them I was a poindexter of the lowest order. . .

-From Three Buck naked Commodes: and 18 More Tales from a Small Town

Creepy’s last Funeral

Creepy’s last funeral was not his own. Wondering who prepares a funeral director’s body for burial is like asking how subway drivers in New York get to work in the morning; outside of the business, no one really knows.

Creepy was a local entrepreneur and all-purpose businessman in the small town; a miniature, benevolent Boss Tweed. He stopped climbing and trimming trees at age 88. He gave up funeral directing at age 89. He closed his general store at age 90. He then died at age 91. He decided to slowly phase into death rather than stop everything all at once.

It is disingenuous to report that Creepy died a colorful, legendary death. I can’t gather my children ‘round my knee and recount that he was shot coming out of a brothel, or that he lost it on dead man’s curve, wrapping his 1949 DeSoto (the one he painted robin eggshell blue with a bucket and a brush) around an abandoned telegraph pole. Or, most scandalous of all, that he passed away Nelson Rockefeller-style: in the throes of intimacy with a woman half or even one-third his age. But the fact is, Creepy was not only a community industrialist but a dedicated family man, and died quietly in his sleep. He went to bed and woke up dead. I heard he died 92 days after his 91^st birthday, but I cannot confirm this.

I was recently asked if I knew how he acquired the moniker “Creepy”. I have no idea. I think his real name was Victor. The kids who called him Creepy were not being disrespectful; they just called him as they saw him. . .

-From Three Buck Naked Commodes: and 18 More Tales from a Small Town