If, as has been suggested, life is a box of chocolates, the following stories describe what I found in mine.
I do, however, warn any gleaner of these pages that my family usually admonishes the children to "not let Uncle Gordy tell his stories until after we've eaten," or in some circles, "until after we've prayed."
The box was first opened on a beautiful farm outside of Lewisburg, W. Va.
THE SINUOUS PATH TO A CAREER
When I was a child on the farm, I watched my older brother sit in the pigsty and eat spiders by the handful.
Yes, he's still alive.
As for myself, a less experimental sort, I made pals with our chickens. Their rhythmic plucks and nonchalant struts amused me for hours.
Later, given my military record, my affinity toward chickens appeared prophetic.
And who would have known in those days long ago that I would someday travel both hemispheres to build houses for the distant cousins of my childhood feathered friends.
But I did.
My brother didn't do much with his appetite for spiders, except marry a couple of black widows and have lots of kids.
MY FIRST BOOK
It was my first book. Before I could recognize a letter, those little squiggles around its pictures were read prolifically and sometimes even tasted good. Every nuance in its sublime messages was perfectly understood.
I didn't care about the plot. There was none. Still, I consumed that book.
My first concept of anxiety came from that book. Each year I would await the new edition of that book with feelings I neither understood nor completely enjoyed. While awaiting that book, I discovered stress.
That book had beautiful illustrations that enlivened my dreams. I'm not referring to little dreams. I mean huge dreams. Life-forming dreams.
In a literary sense, that book had no class. With no author or bibliography, and few complete sentences, it added nothing to literature.
In my neonatal eyes, however, that book was a masterpiece.
Now, 50 years later, I look at the new editions of that book with detachment. I'm more illiterate now than when I first read that book.
I'm happily illiterate, however. I don't want the dreams of today's young readers. I liked mine. My minimal interest in the current issue doesn't matter. That book is now thrilling another child as it once enthralled me. He/she will have his/her own dreams.
"Millions of Cats," by Wanda Gag in 1928, is supposed to be the first American illustrated children's book. That's not accurate. Sears Roebuck and Company beat that book by 30 years with its Christmas Wish book.
That was the first book I read.
A LASTING LESSON
(This event was either real or the product of a dream. After 50 years, memory blurs.)
Momma took me to town one day when I was about 5, a real treat when we lived on the farm.
This time, however, while she shopped for groceries, I swiped a pack of gum.
Well, we got home, she saw me chewing, heard my confession and then she got on the phone.
Ten minutes later, we went back to town.
She pulled up in front of the jail where the sheriff was waiting.
The sheriff took me out of the car and said, "I'm going show you what happens to boys who steal."
He opened the jail door, held my hand and walked me down a walkway between cells of stinking men. And the convicts made (staged, I think) attempts to grab me as we passed.
Scared to death, I watered that aisle knee deep in piss and had to sit on newspapers on the way home.
But from then on, I left things untouched in our town.
A PRETTY CADILLAC
West Virginia was a difficult place for Negroes to live during the early '50s.
At that time, the whites had a common joke about how often an African-American would buy a fancy Cadillac yet live in a hovel.
I heard my father ask at that time an old black why he bought a new Cadillac every year instead of fixing up his house.
"Hell," he said, "white folk don't let me buy no nice house. But there ain't no law agin me owning a purdy car. And a Cadillac is the purdiest car they is."
A PATERNITY TEST
A huge rock loomed outside my grandmother's kitchen window. She wanted it moved to improve her view.
My father, a coal miner in his youth, volunteered to do it.
Dad stuck six sticks of dynamite beneath the sedan-sized boulder. The subsequent explosion did nothing. Then he put a whole box of explosives under the rock and set 'er off.
The rock levitated for a second or two and then crashed into the kitchen.
I inherited my father's propensity for, with the best intentions, creating similar havoc. I've done it many times.
I'm definitely a chip off his block.
ANCESTRAL INSTRUCTION?
My brother and I were just young hayseeds when we moved to Kelso, Wash., from West Virginia. And we found immediate problems.
My brother managed to quickly irritate the biggest bully in town and began receiving regular bloody noses for his trouble.
So, I came up with a novel solution.
I built a stock - that Middle Ages device used to punish thieves, gossips, etc. I made the thing out of rough 2-by-4s and didn't bother sanding the neck and arm holes. Plus, I anchored the contraption to the garage walls.
I sought out the bully and said to him, "You are so strong. Would you mind coming to my garage? I built something I know you can break out of. I just want to see if it works."
It would have held a gorilla.
The bully strutted over, full of pride, and stuck his neck and arms into the stocks' rough holes. Then I slammed it shut, locked it and left.
Four hours later my dad came home, heard the kid squalling, went to the garage and found my quarry with cherry red wrists and a skinned neck still locked in the stocks.
I was paddled hard, but my brother and I were never bullied again.
I never did figure out where the stock idea came from. I had never seen one before. Perhaps a vile ancient relative had helped me build it via DNA, as a new bird is told hold to build its first nest.
OH HOW I LOVE JESUS
On the Sunday mornings of my youth, I was shanghaied to church. There I would sit in the pew and listen to the boys choir sing.
With voices that could make the angels cry, the little vermin would belch out a tremendous rendition of "Oh, How I Love Jesus." But I knew damned well that after the singing stopped and the preacher said his last "Amen," those little demons would throw off their fritters and kick my ass.
Those little imps may have loved Jesus, but I was fair game.
Whoever first said, "Children are the Lambs of God," was never a handicapped kid.
THE MISSIONARY
I was walking along one day when I was about 12, delivering newspapers house to house. It wasn't a bad job, but this time a young fat missionary walked with me.
He was going on and on about me going to hell, and as he gesticulated toward the heavens and pointed down to the fires of hell, an angel-white seagull flew over and dropped a huge fecal bomb on the right side of his head.
Well, laugh I did and rolled on the ground, convulsed until I peed my pants.
The route was never finished and the missionary went home in tears.
Two weeks later, I was sitting by a lake when out of the brush came the very same bearer of the cross. However, this time, he was also carrying a thin plastic boat that weighed about four pounds and was guaranteed to handle a quarter-ton.
I looked at the boat, then at my heavy-set friend and said, "It ain't gonna float with you in it!"
Those words stirred the missionary's blood, and he bellowed with that Christian inarguable certainty, "Jesus will protect me!"
Well, the day was cold and the lake was colder when the pious boy placed the boat in the water near shore. Soon he paddled off to the middle of the lake where he stood up in the boat and yelled, "See, Peck! It floats! The LLLooorrrddd is with me!"
Just as the Lord's name echoed off the canyon walls, the boat snapped and sunk. The Baptist disappeared, and then reappeared when the cold waters got him. Hollering and thrashing, he almost ran atop the water to shore.
Well, I threw another laughter fit but finally calmed enough to build a fire to warm my well-anointed Bibled chum.
As he slowly thawed by my fire, I asked, "Am I still going to hell?"
He was still too frozen to talk.
But he shook his head, "No."
EASY MONEY
In the days when a candy bar cost a nickel and I mowed lawns for a quarter, a neighbor's friend prepaid me $100 to paint the back of his house after I guaranteed it would be done on time.
With the owner providing the paint and equipment, I was to employ and organize enough boys to complete the job in one day.
A wedding reception was planned for the day after work completion in the house's beautifully fenced back yard.
With little time to plan, I started figuring and it wasn't long before greed took over and I decided I could do the job alone.
Since the owner was going to be out of town, I could start at daybreak without disturbing anyone and work until dusk. That would be enough time.
Once my plans were etched in stone, I ran out and bought a hugely expensive $80 bike.
At dawn on paint day, nearly penniless, I jumped over the fence.
As soon as I neared a big maple in the back yard, a Doberman came roaring out of the back door's dog slot and flushed me up the tree.
The tricks I tried to distract the dog were useless. I stayed in the tree until 9 a.m. when the caretaker came and retrieved the mutt.
Having lost four hours, I couldn't finish the job.
The owner arrived at sunset, saw the project undone and furiously demanded the $100.
I returned the bike for some of the money and pawned some other stuff for the rest.
"Easy money" has eluded me since.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
Raging hormones replaced limited intellect by the ninth grade. My English teacher that year who had a stentorian voice, abruptly asked the class, "How many of you masticate?"
We all blushed and said nothing.
Copyright Gordon Peck 2007
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