Green Side Up

    That was our joke, when I worked for a lawn crew one summer at Leisure Village. (We called it Seizure Village.) Besides other tasks, we installed sod for new lawns, and to relieve the tedium we would shout, "Green side up!" to each other, as we rolled out the sod.
    We were also in charge of maintaining lawns, and the way we zipped around on those big Gravely tractors, we would sometimes give ourselves more work installing fresh sod, because in an instant, you could scalp a nice patch of grass right down to the bone. And being kids, we might tend to laugh like idiots if it happened. However, the homeowners didn't quite see it that way; they were neurotic about their lawns, and intensely competitive with their neighbors, if it came down to the slightest wisp of crabgrass, or heaven forbid a dandelion. They would get furious if we left the least little irregularity in the perfect green carpet, let alone a huge black patch of dirt where grass used to be.
    Now let's say you had one of the more finicky homeowners, who had given our boss trouble in the past, concerning the quality of his lawn service. And let's say that this finicky homeowner also had a prize rose bush in full bloom, nestled in an island in the midst of his expanse of perfect green sward. We were warned about the prized rosebush, and we took the warning seriously. We had to take things seriously, because these beasts of mowing machines that we rode, had an open cowl in front, where the exposed edges of the massive knives whirled just inches behind the opening. But let's say, for argument, that that this massive machine were to crash into the said prize rose bush in full bloom, completely shattering the trunk and spreading shredded roses everywhere, you would be right if you assumed that this would cause some dismay to the property owner.
    And here's the way it happened, and the way I narrowly avoided getting seriously maimed. My friend John Brady was driving the big Gravely that day, and towing the sweeper behind him. We had to leave the lawn immaculate, of course, so naturally we had to sweep up the unsightly clippings left by our mowers. That day I was operating the trimmer, an ordinary push mower, to trim around the bushes.
    In the middle of the lawn of this one house, there was a garden which contained the magnificent rosebush in bloom; the pride and joy of the resident, as we had been warned. I was trimming the bushes next to this garden, and now I had made fresh clippings on a section of the lawn where Brady had already mowed and swept. As he came around the house for his next pass, I motioned with hand signals, over the roar of the tractor, that he should make one more pass through here, so his sweeper could clean up my fresh clippings. Brady didn't understand what I meant, and he motioned to me that he had already mowed there, and he continued on his path around to the other side of the garden. As he approached I kept signaling: "No, this way, this way- go through here."
    At the last second, too late, he panicked and heaved the big machine over, to try to go the way I was motioning. Unfortunately, his maneuver swung the machine directly towards me, and in that split-second I leaped up and sideways. I'm not exaggerating to say that the huge cutting maw of the machine chopped past where my feet had just been, while I was still in the air. In any case, there was a loud rending crash behind me, the roar of the machine was suddenly choked off, and I looked back to see the tractor hanging at a forty-five degree angle on top of the wrecked rosebush, and Brady hanging over the handlebars amidst a swirling dust cloud. My first impression was that Brady's eyes were actually rolling around and around like in a cartoon. In any case, he had a most unusual shattered look, worse even than the rosebush; his panting mouth hung slackly open, his eyes were staring and he looked demented. Having just narrowly escaped getting my feet chopped off, I probably had an odd look myself, but all I could think of was how funny Brady looked, hunched over the ruin, and I began to laugh uncontrollably.
    As I doubled up in laughter, Brady continued to stare blankly right through me, completely in shock; but gradually his eyes focused, and finally a grin spread across his face. We had just averted what could have been a much more serious disaster, and presently, he too was laughing uproariously. So there we were, cracked up like our wits were astray, as our supervisor came around the corner to find out what all the commotion was about. He froze for a moment at what he saw; his icy look taking in the situation. This quickly put a chill upon our hilarity.
    The only thing he said was, "Get the hell out of here before Parker sees you." Parker was the owner of the company. So we slunk away quickly, to occupy ourselves somewhere else. Our long-suffering supervisor presumably made some story to Parker, and Parker presumably made some sort of restitution to the homeowner. What it was, we never found out, nor did we ever ask.
    Amazingly enough, Brady and I weren't fired, but I don't think we shouted "Green side up!" so much, for a while.

 

Click below to leave a comment. ⬇

Itching Powder- a very improbable mistake

     Who put itching powder on their principal's seat when they were in grade school? Just me?
     Well, the fact is, I would never have done it on purpose.
     In our town, there was a little corner store called The Spot, which sold much more interesting novelty items than you can get today. By saving my milk money for two days, I could take the two nickels and buy a tin of cigarette loads. These were little slivers of wood, covered in a white powder (which was highly toxic lead azide, as I found out years later). It did say on the tin, Do Not Put in Mouth, but it didn't mention why, or that the powder was poisonous just to get on your fingers, which it easily did. Or, that it wouldn't be so good for your victim either, when he inhaled the exploding gasses.
    However, what we did know, is that the loads worked really well. You would insert one into the end of a cigarette, and when the unsuspecting smoker applied the match, the load would explode with a ringing crack, shattering the end of the cigarette. I only tried this on my mother once; the shredded bits of tobacco and paper were still fluttering in the air when she rounded on me; she was very free with the back end of a hairbrush for lesser pranks than this, but it was (almost) worth it this one time.
     Another item that could be purchased at The Spot, besides whoopee cushions of course, was itching powder. I have no idea what this material was made of; probably asbestos, or shredded fiberglass. In the instructions on the package, the powder was recommended to be dropped down someone's shirt. Boy, didn't we have fun in those days?
    Now, the principal of our school, Mr. Stouter, was a kindly, balding man who always had a smile for us children when he saw us in the hall. He seemed to always be on our side, whatever might happen.
    For instance, one time Mr. Stouter was called upon by my second grade teacher to reprimand me. The teacher, Miss Skidmore, was a crabby, cross-grained old lady who was always finding something to lose her patience over, and this morning she hauled me down to the office to present my latest crime before the principal.
     Here is what I had done: after the morning's recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, and during the Lord's Prayer, when our heads were bowed and eyes closed, I had been attempting to point with my finger at my girlfriend Carol a few rows away.
    However, what I was not expecting to see when I opened my eyes, was the glowering, outraged face of Miss Skidmore standing right in front of me. She had observed my peculiar gesture (as a matter of fact, my finger was pointing at her), and had interpreted it as some devilish sort of blasphemy.
    "Let us see what Mr. Stouter has to say about this!" she intoned ominously, taking me roughly by the ear. With my face burning with shame and terror, she marched me down to the office.
    When we were standing before the Presence, she commanded, "Tell Mr. Stouter what you were doing!"
    I told him exactly what I had done, and his face took on a look of serious concern, tinged with bewilderment. To my secret relief, I could see that he didn't share Miss Skidmore's high degree of indignation over my behavior, but it was also obvious that he had to support her for the sake of discipline. So he did his best to give me a speech; telling me I must never do such a thing again, etc., and then he dismissed me back to class. He and I understood each other better than my teacher ever suspected.
    So, considering my liking and respect for Mr. Stouter, one would assume that I would never do such a thing as mischievous as putting itching powder on his chair. And I certainly wouldn't have, but it happened anyway.
    It was in the following year, third grade. There was a certain kid in my class who had the unfortunate gift of being the one who always gets picked on by the class brats. So naturally, he's the one I picked on, to test a bag of itching powder that I had recently acquired. I had no idea if it worked; I certainly wasn't going to test it on myself.
    So, before class one day, I sprinkled a liberal amount of the itching powder on the chair of my classmate Eric, and I sat in my own seat to watch and wait. Unfortunately, of all days, this was the day that Eric did not show up for school, and his chair remained vacant. Then, about 15 minutes after class started, our teacher Miss Lane announced that Mr. Stouter would be visiting our class for awhile, and we were all to be on our best behavior while he was here.
    Presently Mr Stouter arrived, beamed his smile of greeting upon the class, and of all confounded bad luck, he chose Eric's desk to sit at, among the several vacant ones in the back of the room.
    In helpless dread, I watched as his posterior settled into the anointed seat. After a short while, he began to shift uneasily in the chair, and his expression became somewhat preoccupied. OK, so the stuff seems to work, but this was not good. I could hardly bear to look at him, between guilt, fear and remorse; mostly fear.  I did manage a few covert glances, and it was obvious that he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, trying not to twitch.
    But being the deep old file that I am, I gave no hint that I was aware of anything unusual going on. Miss Lane was perhaps a bit surprised when Mr. Stouter's visit ended up being shorter than she had expected; however, he soon rose from his seat, gave us a brief smile, and briskly took his leave.
    All of us had noticed that Mr. Stouter hadn't said much on this special occasion, which people found puzzling, even though it did seem that he had approved of our general conduct. In any case, Miss Lane never found any reason to find fault with my good behavior, on this special day.


--------------------
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇

Laundry Bag / Pipe Bomb -unusual adventures of a 14-year old

1960s- A 14-year-old boy gets stopped by the police, for suspicious behavior. What was he doing?
    The boy was riding his bike one-handed down the road in a small town one evening, and with his other arm he was steadying the large canvas sack which was balanced on his shoulder. He had done this many times, and so he was surprised when a cruiser pulled him over with its lights flashing. The boy found the interruption slightly amusing, and he shrugged off the inconvenience with his usual stoicism. It became even more amusing when the officer swaggered up warily, and demanded, "What do you have in that sack?" On demand, the boy was compelled to dump out the sack's contents onto the road, which revealed nothing more than piles of soiled socks, T-shirts, underpants, and the like.
    "I told you it was just my laundry," the boy was telling the now bewildered cop.
    The boy himself found nothing unusual in carrying his sack of laundry down to the local laundromat, for he was used to being a bit out of step with other boys his age. I know this, because the boy was myself. My mother was who-knows-where at the time, possibly off on one of her weekend jaunts with her acting troupe, or perhaps just working late at her hat-check job in our local small-town night club, where swells from New York would often come down to go slumming for the weekend, and see if the local talent was any different than last time. Details are hazy in my memory, of where my mother was at different times; I just got used to not seeing her around sometimes. Starting back when I was about twelve, I remember my brother and I finding a note and some money on the kitchen table, and taking our bikes down to the food store, and coming back with TV dinners and ice cream pops. We would eat that, and do our homework, get our lunches made and bagged, and get ready for school in the morning. It was all just routine to us.
    There were problems though. I once lost a friend, due to my unusual circumstances, and only through mere misunderstanding. I had met another kid when I first started high school, and we found a mutual pleasure in our new acquaintance, talking about life, and music, and all kinds of stuff that we were interested in. He asked me what my phone number was, so we could get together after school. I liked that idea, but I had to inform him sheepishly that we didn't have a phone at home. He found that so unbelievable, that, in short, he didn't believe me. Of course he had no idea of my mother's tendency to run up a large phone bill, and then be unable to pay, so that our phone service would periodically get shut off for extended periods. It was just another one of those strange and inconvenient things that I was used to.
    I tried to explain it to my new friend, but he thought I was trying to trick him or fool him; his feelings were hurt and he was suspicious of me from then on. We drifted apart and never became friends. The memory of that misunderstanding still rankles.
    Probably most normal boys feel at some time or other, that they have no one that they can tell their problems to. In my case, it must have happened a lot, for I developed some unusual leisure time activities, such as making large firecrackers, and pipe bombs. I used to set off explosions in a vacant lot near my house late at night, just to hide in the woods and watch all the lights in the houses go on, up and down the street. It sounds kind of stupid to say it now, especially in these very sensitive times, but I meant no real harm; I just wanted people to know I was there, even if they didn't know who I was.
    Now, picture this same boy getting stopped by the police again, this time carrying not a bag of laundry, but a thick chunk of iron pipe with a plug at each end, and a ten inch section of red fuse sticking out. I was 15 years old, walking down the road with my friend David, in about the same place where the laundry incident happened a year previously. There was a large gravel pit on the edge of the deep woods, behind the shopping center where I used to do my laundry. That's where we were heading, Dave and I. We had not a care in the world, just joy of our newest pipe bomb, and anticipation of the huge boom it was going to make when we got it out there, and lit it up. Now, the cops in my town at that time during the early 60's were actually pretty suspicious, of anything that looked like it was not on the straight and narrow. It was a time of national unrest, and local crime in our town, and I was not unused to being stopped and questioned; for any reason or no reason. Sometimes it just happened when I was riding my bike late at night. Sometimes it was just because I looked like a hippie and they wanted to find drugs. But I never took it personally, and I never got busted for anything.
    David, on the other hand, had a real grudge against the cops. For instance, one time we stopped to investigate a local disturbance. A man was raving and yelling by a store, and it turns out he had been sniffing glue and was acting threatening. Dave and I had just been biking by, and we stopped to gawk at the disturbance and try to see what was going on, with all the cop cars flashing and people stopping to get out and look. Within a minute, two cops approached us out of the milling group of people. Of all weird things, they searched Dave and peppered him with snappy questions, and confiscated his pocketknife, while completely ignoring me. My own knife was in my pocket, as it always was, but they only hassled Dave; of course Dave was showing them his usual bad face, and he ended up never getting his knife back. Stuff like that was always happening to Dave, and he was mad at all cops. Me, I didn't mind 'em. Even when I was carrying a large explosive device, it never occurred to me to worry.
    So on this one occasion, when we were walking down the road on our way out to the gravel pit with our new pipe bomb, Dave said, "Len, could you please stick that thing up your sleeve? What'll you say about it if the cops stop us this time? 'Oh, nothing, officer. Just a little ol' bomb.' "
    Well, I had to admit that Dave was right, there. It couldn't hurt anything to stick it up the sleeve of my coat, so I did, and we had no trouble. We got out into the middle of the gravel pit on that balmy night, and we had a lovely time setting off the bomb under the moon and stars. When the thing went off, it shook the ground with a profound thumping echoing boommm, accompanied by a plaintive whining hum, of shards of iron spinning away into the distance. Then, a moment of silence in the aftermath; Dave and I spellbound with awe. I thought to myself, "I bet they heard that one!"
    An unusual experience, perhaps, in the life of a typical young boy, but not that unusual to me.




--------------------
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇