Murchison’s milkshake

That reminds me of the “milkshake”. When I was in third grade, my first school year once we had moved to Tucson, my teacher was Miss Murchison. Miss Murchison was a classic old biddy school teacher that dressed like a prim and proper young lady from the 1930’s and was now approaching 70. Single and showing it, she was a no nonsense schoolmarm that took a bilious approach to the running of her classroom, which compelled the students to look down when she passed by. When a young man misbehaved; her approach was to come up next to him, grasp him by the shoulder and shake him furiously while asking him questions relating to his misbehavior:

“Why are you doing that?”

“Don’t you want to get to 4^th grade?”

“Will you never learn?”, and sometimes, a statement:

“I will not allow this behavior in my classroom!”

All the while shaking and vibrating the young man back and firth until he became a quivering slab of gelatin, some kids even slipping to the floor as she held on and continued her shaking. This last step was largely for show and was rarely if ever a direct result of the shaking, but everyone seemed to enjoy that part, it granted a spot of showmanship to the proceedings and created a finality to the event that allowed her to stop and finally move on to something else. Ah, the “Milkshake”, as we dubbed it, CLASSIC!

hoof in the boot

I heard the Scout drive up, and the garage door open and close. Then I heard my mother chiding, “What the hell did you do now?!? What the hell?!?!…..”. No sound from my dad, but my mom continued on with the interrogation and I could hear a lot of panicked fumbling in the dining room. I slunk in and saw the dining room floor now dyed a lovely and scary crimson color that I had not seen since I almost cut my wrist off in the glass door incident. My dad was sitting on the settee and there was blood seeping out over the top of his right work boot. He always wore these big rubbery work boots when he was working in the field, which was pretty much ALWAYS.

My mom was trying to pull off the boot, but her hands kept slipping from the slick blood and rubber. Each time it would come partway off and then fail and his foot would settle back into the boot as the serum and blood would push over the top and spill on the floor yet again. My dad finally saw me standing there in total horror and yelled at me to get out with that clipped whipsaw way he had of commanding. “Get out – NOW!” I was too scared to move but was able to slowly back out the door and stumble up to my bedroom. I could hear my mother’s accusing voice as she wondered how my dad could have caused such a mess, and it was a long time before the sound faded back into quiet.

I later found out that my dad had been behind a cow that had a problem with its hoof, a common situation where you have to muck out the hoof and apply some sort of medication to it. He had gotten careless and the cow had kicked back at him, missed, and stepped down right into his big rubber boot. It immediately started kicking and trying to free its trapped foot, and had created one hell of a terror inside that boot. His lower leg was badly torn up and it was a long time before he wore that boot again. But I don’t think he ever got careless standing behind a cow or horse after that, you never know when things might go wrong.

death cuts through

Death cuts through. Whether it’s a piece of family or a pet or a stranger in a car on a lonely road, death cuts through. The trick is to understand where to draw the line. If death gets too close to your core and you grieve for every soul lost from this earth, you will see emotional ruination. If you grieve for nothing and no one, you will be a zombie, a lifeless hulk that trudges slowly through this life and never really FEELS anything or cares for anyone. It may take a while to figure out where you stand on a particular death, but you can get there if you keep your mind to it and push ahead. And that’s what it is – pushing ahead. You are in the backyard of life, the sheets are all hung on the line to dry and you push into them, feeling the wet sweet smell against your face as it blinds and tantalizes you. Keep going and the sheet flows over you and drops away – you see bright light and clarity. Then you hit the next sheet and start again. There are a lot of sheets in this big backyard and you have to keep going because what’s the point if you stop? If you’re not moving you’re seeing the same sheet and the same line and the same damn backyard forever. And then you stop bothering to look, you‘ve seen it so many times it’s not going to look any different this time so why even look. Might as well settle in and take it as read, there’s nothing new.

Flintstone phone

I was playing in the living room with one of my two current favorite toys, the Flintstone phone. The Flintstone phone was a marvel of engineering, the hand piece was a hollowed out dinosaur horn and the body was a rough hewn rock made into a phone with small rock buttons. When you picked it up and pushed one of the buttons, you heard a catchphrase from one of the Flintstone characters, “Wilma where did you put my smokes?” Something like that. Life was much more dangerous then…..

The other favorite was this set of Styrofoam blocks that had a set of connectors on top and bottom so you could build walls. Of course as soon as you built any kind of structure the temptation was overwhelming for an older brother to tear it down. Tommy was at school so I was relatively safe during the day. A lot of the blocks were already dicey as far as holding together, because so many of the connectors had been broken off from previous wall of destruction forays by him.

injuring

An excerpt from my writing:

I seemed to be the one to have trouble with injuries. Another time, one of the kids from a few houses down was out front by the highway, had his bike upside down, and was spinning the rear wheel by cranking the pedal by hand. He had been fixing a flat tire and had gotten started turning that wheel and became mesmerized by it. There IS something mesmerizing about a wheel spinning so smoothly and fast as hell. There’s danger and beauty and a whispering swish of sound as the spokes break the air in increments. After a while he throws a little pebble into the spinning vortex…..ping……it hits and goes spinning off. Pretty cool. He throws another one….ping….this is great! He throws a bigger pebble…..pong……wow! It goes wheeling off and clacks onto the highway 100 feet away. I am watching with amazement as the power of this upturned bike becomes revealed to me. It s a form of mobile catapult that could be used for good or evil, its got the power. As he is still chinging small rocks and debris into the wheel and watching them loft away I decide it is time to up the bet and see what this baby can really do. I grab a chunk of asphalt from the deteriorating highway shoulder (everything is old and deteriorating in this town, except for our new house) and stand in front of the spinning wheel of hypnotism. My eyes fixed on the center of the vortex, I slowly lift the chuck and throw it overhand into the wheel…….KONG………..it hits the wheel and the spokes give a sproing we had not heard yet that day. It rebounds from the tension of the spring/spokes and arcs into the air – straight back out trying to leap into my outstretched hand. Unfortunately my forehead was now where my hand had been and the asphalt caught me squarely an inch above the right eye. Momentarily stunned, I backed away and staggered to stay upright. I bent over and looked down at the highway, dazzled by little drops of red spattering around, that swirled in the direction I turned my head. In a moment I realized that this was blood from me and went running the 100 yards down the driveway to the house. I tore through the door (opening it this time) and stomped through the house looking for my mother and leaving a very clear forensic trail of red matter should any detective later need to track me down for details of the event. I finally found her – in front of the television and said bluntly, “I hurt my head…”. By this time the wound had started to pour blood and looked quite impressive. There was no way for my mother to know if I had lost part of my scalp and side of my head (and possibly brain), or just how invasive this wound was. She was rattled but managed to start wiping the blood away, mentally calculating the time it would take to get me back to that small doctor’s office, and if this could be done before the life had completely drained from my now heaving body. Once the most recent era of blood was cleared it became obvious that the damage was not as severe as first indicated and a leisurely ride to the doctor to implant a few fresh stitches would make me good as new, for now.