The Dog Says How (5 page)

After dinner, I’m in the backyard with my dad and my airplane sits in the driveway. Two control wires run to the middle of the yard. My dad walks up to the plane, hits the propeller, and wheeee, it whines like it’s in pain. I want to faint but I know I have to stay at attention because I’m going to fly it after my father. My dad pulls one of the controls and the war bird rolls down the driveway. He pulls another control and it lifts up and flies over our heads. He pulls another control and it does a loop-de-loop. Another control and it banks into a turn. Then, he pulls another control and the plane goes straight up in the air and—Mayday! Mayday, Mayday! It crashes into the ground into a million pieces! I look over at my dad. He’s looking at the controls. Obviously, that’s where the fault lies.

Then, we both start cracking up. We both start laughing our heads off. I don’t know why he’s laughing but I know why I am, because I don’t have to wreck my plane! My dad did it for me! We’re standing there laughing. My brother comes out of the house and we’re all three laughing. I mean, face it, none of our toys made it through Christmas Day. My brother’s G.I. Joe was a vet inside of two hours. My sister’s Chatty Kathy, the string in its back hanging out, just sat there staring at my sister, who was having a one-sided conversation, which was fine with her. My dad turns to me and says, “Well, Kev, I happen to know where Santa got that plane, so we can always get you another one.”

I look up and say, “Or a squirrel monkey.”

We’re called into the house for leftovers. We fix turkey sandwiches and put them on paper plates and set them on trays in front of the TV, trays that are specially designed to eat while you watch TV. This is one of the first colored TVs—a Zenith—that hums as it warms up, which we know now is radiation. If we would have known then what we know now, we could have probably cooked the turkey right there on our laps. We watch
Ben Hur
with my mom and dad laughing as my brother and I count the polio vaccination scars on the galley slaves and gladiators. When it’s over, we climb upstairs, put on our pajamas with the feet in the bottoms, and crawl into our beds with the chenille bedspreads and go to sleep.

In the morning, we wake up, take our broken toys, our pillows, and our blankets and load ’em into the way back of the station wagon. We climb in and drive across Iowa, along the trail mapped out by Uncle Johnny, back to Minnesota, back to home.

drive-in

When I was a kid
there were milkmen who would deliver dairy products every morning in the neighborhood. If you didn’t get out early and collect your delivery, a Basset Hound named Huckleberry usually came by and licked the butter and the top off your cream. Then he’d lie down in the road. Nobody ever hit him with a car; for one thing, there weren’t as many cars back then and the ones that were there knew to drive around him. We’d pass Huckleberry on the way walking to school and on the way home for lunch.

After finishing our sandwich or SpaghettiOs we’d quick go to the TV set and turn on Casey Jones. This was a cartoon show hosted by the railroad legend Casey Jones and his sidekick Roundhouse Rodney. Casey mostly introduced the cartoons while Roundhouse was always doing pranks and riddles, trying to make Casey laugh. But the best segment of all was Kids Korner, where Roundhouse would demonstrate how to make stuff that kids enjoy . . . like a sword made out of two slats from a snow fence (that one didn’t go over so well with the parents), or when he taught us how to make whistles out of willow sticks. The whole neighborhood was alive with whistles . . . for days, parents yelling at first with anger—“You kids stop that this instant!”—then two days later breaking down and pleading, “Please, for God’s sake, stop.”

The best thing about Roundhouse was his hat. He wore this beautiful round hat, like a little dunce cap. One day Roundhouse told us how to make a hat like his. All you had to do was take an old felt hat and put it over a football, bring it into the bathroom, and then turn the hot on in the shower. Close the door and leave it inside for half an hour. Take the hat and ball out of the steam, let it cool, and voilà, a Roundhouse hat. We quick grabbed our dad’s Sunday felt hat and made it into a Roundhouse hat. That night my dad saw his good Sunday hat, now a Roundhouse hat, proudly displayed on my brother’s head. Instead of being grateful, as we had imagined, he became very upset and enraged. This confused us not only because of the obvious improvement we’d brought to its style but also because he could still use it on Sunday, as we would only need it during the week for school. I think a lot of dads felt the same because the next day Roundhouse said, “Stop making hats. Please forget I ever showed you.” I never saw a Roundhouse hat on any other kid after that.

Sometimes on weekends we’d put on our pajamas, pile up in the back seat of the car with blankets and pillows, and head to the Starlight Drive-In movie theater. Dad popped a grocery bag full of popcorn; we brought all kinds of soda pop. We’d park in the movie lot and put the speaker in the window. That window crack always let in some mosquitoes and every speaker sounded like there was a piece of wax paper inside, but, man, we were in heaven. A car full of teenagers pulls in front of us and so many kids climb out of the trunk it looks like a clown car. We get permission to go to the playground they have in front of the concession stand. It’s a really lame playground—gravel under the swingsets, slivers in the teeter-totter—but it’s full of kids in pajamas.

“Did you make a Roundhouse hat?”

“Yeah, me too, worst decision of my life.”

“Me too.”

We hit the swings. A cartoon is on but we can barely see it because it’s not quite dark yet. When it looks like an animated box of popcorn announcing six minutes left to the feature, we hurry back to the car in time to see the first cartoon. It’s one of those special features put out by Disney as a community service. This one features the Seven Dwarfs and an alarming statistic about the diseases carried by mosquitoes. The dwarfs, under the instructions of a humorous voiceover, drain the oil out of the crankcase of their car. I never knew they had a car. Then they take the bucket of oil down to the lake and dump it in. A microscope shows a mosquito larva smothering in the oil. Of course by the end Dopey is covered in oil and the proud dwarfs sing their way home. My mom turns to my brother and me and says, “Don’t even think about it.”

As it becomes dark my dad says, “Look kids,” and we looked up to see birds—night hawks, swallows, and bats eating mosquitoes. “Get ’em boys. Let’s take care of business,” says Dad. He loved aerial combat movies. Then the fogger comes by, a small lawn tractor pulling a fogging machine for the bugs, and my sister and her friend are dancing behind it like fairy princesses, spinning and twirling like magic in the DDT.

Then the cartoon box of popcorn says its show time. I hope it’s a Clint Eastwood. No music ever tortured the speaker like Ennio Morricone’s. But I rarely saw the feature. The next thing I knew I was waking up in my own bed and Huckleberry had already made his rounds.

Nowadays the Starlight is covered in grass. The speakers have been clear-cut, leaving metal stumps lined up in front of the screen, which is missing panels and looks like a sad face. You can’t go back, I know that, but the other day I heard whistles the neighbor boys made. They played them straight for two days until the neighbors cried, “For God’s sake, stop.” I have a Basset Hound now and he has to wear a leash so he won’t sleep in the road. But sometimes I’ll let him lick the butter. I know it’s not as good as stealing, but he really likes it.

mom’s purse

Long before there
was
Jackass: The Movie
there was me and my brother.

WE WERE ALWAYS
going to the emergency room for something “done in the name of science.” One time we pulled into the hospital parking lot—it was my turn to get stitched up—and were headed for the door when we heard a honking horn. We turned to see a van with the side door wide open and a woman inside giving birth to a baby. Attending her was a doctor and a nurse but obviously this was as far as she was going. What drew our attention to the van was the honking horn. In the front seat were two young boys, one honking the horn furiously while the other dumped the contents of the glove compartment out the passenger side window. Between pushes the woman was yelling, “RILEY, KNOCK IT OFF.”

I remember my mom staring blankly at the scene. I was thinking, “See Mom, you have normal sons.”

THERE IS ONE MAY
weekend in Minnesota that is the annual Clash of the Titans: Mother’s Day versus the fishing season opener. Mom and fishing are two great loves going head to head. The choice is a dilemma that nourishes the essential demons of Lutheran guilt. Because look, you gotta Mom and you gotta fish. So, if you’re like me, you’re either loading up your gear or sitting in the boat, hoping you mailed the card in time and thinking your gonna make them fish pay for what they’re doing to your mom. And over the weekend in those long lulls, when the bobber sits there like a painting, all those times Mom wiped away the tears, held you when you were scared, and nursed you back to health, come creeping in like holes in the boat.

Voices emerge from the lapping waters.

“What are you kids doing in there?”

“What’s going on? It sure is quiet.”

“You better not be doing what I think you’re doing.”

When mom did find out what we were doing her reprimands always held an amazing sense of optimism. Like, “What if everybody did that?” Yeah, what if everybody did roll their brother up in a carpet ’til he screamed and looked like a giant insane Pez dispenser? That would be great.

Another one of her favorites was “There is a time and a place for everything.” Oh, so the issue isn’t that we blew up my sister’s Barbie doll with an M-80? It’s more of a time and place problem. Amazing. Then there was mom’s purse, a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in Naugahyde. The magic bag of Felix the Cat had nothing on mom’s purse. At any given time it was a hospital, a smorgasbord, a washroom, or a beauty parlor. Whatever the situation called for, the purse held the answer. Got a cut? Dirty face? Try a little spit on a hanky.

The Sloans’s mother carried old bubble gum wrappers. When something stinky would roll through, she’d hand out the gum wrappers to hold over your nose.

But I remember one year mom’s purse was put to the test. Every Christmas we went from Minnesota to Missouri to visit our relatives. Our station wagon would be full of presents and we’d sing Christmas songs. It was the best. But this year my sister had decided to stay at college. Then my dad announced he wouldn’t be able to get away either. My mom said she didn’t care. She was spending Christmas with her family, and my brother and I were going with her. We loaded up her car and on Christmas Eve, headed through Iowa, where we were immediately pulled over by a cop for going ninety-five miles an hour. I think that cop had a mom, too, because after that look my mom shot him, he turned right around and walked back to his car. Case closed.

As we were approaching Des Moines, the first snowflakes began to fall. All of a sudden a clunking, tearing racket emerged from under the car. It sounded like a piano and a plumber falling down the stairs.

We wheeled into a truck stop where we learned the transmission had gone, and they weren’t sure if they had the parts. Even if they did, we were going to be there a long time. We went to the cafeteria and my mom held her head in her hands. Being in junior high I did what I could to make matters worse.

“If Dad was here . . .”

“Well, he’s not.”

I knew I was supposed to act older, but I didn’t. It was pretty clear by then our family was falling apart and I wanted to cry. So did my brother. Just before the tears started to flow, my mom reached into her purse and pulled out a drinking straw still wrapped in paper. She held it upright, tore the paper off one end, and slipped the paper down the straw until it made like a tiny concertina at the bottom. She removed the paper and laid it on its side. Then she put the tip of the straw into her water, pulled out a drop and said, “Look boys, the magic snake.”

She dropped the water on the scrunched paper and it began to move like a snake. Then it stopped. I would have to say it was the lamest trick I ever saw. We sat there staring at the wet piece of paper when my mom put her hands over her eyes and started shaking. In our family it wasn’t proper to comfort someone. You generally let them work through it. But mom was shaking pretty badly. As I reached toward her I noticed she was laughing her head off. The tragedy had hit bottom and was rapidly heading for the surface. Then my brother and I started laughing, too. I grabbed two white non-dairy creamer containers, shoved ’em in my eyes and sang, “The sun will come out tomorrow.”

My brother showed how long he could keep a milk bubble on the end of his tongue, and we continued our talent contest until the table was strewn with garbage, and then the waitress asked my mom, “What if everyone did that?” Then we laughed and my brother’s talent-milk shot out of his nose. Mom, like a candle to the dark.

So on fishing opener, whether we catch fish or not, the boat may have my body. But my heart is with my mom.

snow day

“Academy of
The Holy Angels. Ada-Borup, public and parochial; Adrian, public and parochial.”

I wake up to the sound of the radio in the kitchen. “Aitkin, public and parochial.”

WCCO, good neighbor to the north, is announcing school closings. “Albert Lea, public and parochial.” It’s also been announced that Minnesota has just been hit by the snowstorm of the century. I’m only nine years old and this is already my third snowstorm of the century. I look over at my brother, still asleep on his twin bed, which is identical to my twin bed. When he sleeps, he looks so harmless, so innocent. I get a feeling of actual affection for him when he’s out cold. I look over at my shirt and pants in the corner of the room. I quick get out of bed, run and grab them, thinking “time me, time me.” I get back under the covers and hold them until they warm up. “Alden-Conger, public and parochial.”

In the kitchen, mom is staring out the window at the new blanket of snow, leaning on one elbow on the counter, holding a cup of coffee.

“Forest Lake, public and parochial.” She’s waiting for the Os.

“Osseo, have they said Osseo?” I say.

“Not yet,” she says.

“I hope . . .”

“Shhhhh . . .”

“Orono, private and parochial.”

Please, oh please, Osseo. Say Osseo. I’m about ready to make a deal with God when—“Osseo, public and parochial.”

“Yahoo, so long suckers, no school and it’s a weekday, and I’m not sick.” There is a God, there is, there is.

“No school today,” says mom.

“Boy, don’t I know it.”

“Now you’ll have time to spend with Grandmother.”

“Ahhhh, nooooo.”

Grandmother is visiting from Missouri and granted, I don’t see her very often, like twice a year maybe. And I do love her, I swear, but this is a snow day. Come on, it may never happen again. I gotta be out in it. Something big is going to happen out there and I need to be out in it.

Then I notice Grandmother standing in the kitchen in her robe. Grandmother, public and parochial. I think she’s heard everything. I’m busted. She comes over and hugs me.

“I have some things to do this morning,” she says to my mom. “We can catch up at lunch.”

I know by mom’s look I’m supposed to argue, but I can’t. I’m sorry, warden, but the governor called and I gotta go.

My brother and I get down to the hockey rink just as Paul Puncochar finishes shoveling off the last bit of the storm of the century. It’s time for hockey. We choose teams, sing the national anthem, make the public address—“there’s no smoking in the arena”—drop the puck, and it’s nonstop action.

I have to use my mom’s figure skates. At first the guys laughed because the skates were white and had a ring of grey fur around the top. But because of the grip-toes on the front, I could beat anyone in a short burst of speed. Besides, nobody had skates that actually fit, or were new. In fact, Hank and Frank Haines, the twins from down the block, had racing skates with the long blades. They were fast, but they couldn’t turn. The blades were too long, so they had to go straight ’til they hit a snow bank and then turned around.

Nobody had equipment either, like shin pads. So we made the rule “NO RAISES.” The puck had to stay on the ice. After about five minutes nobody followed the rule, and besides, if you broke it, the penalty was the other team saying, “Knock it off, NO RAISES.” And action would continue.

As a kid the worst pain I can think of is a raised puck to the ankle. Especially in white figure skates with fur on top. And Pat Gilligan takes a slap shot from the point. The puck, like a deadly, ankle-seeking missile on a mission from hell, finds its bony target. Ahhh! First I’m nailed in the ankle. Ahhh! Then my toe catches and I fall forward and hit my head on the ice. I feel a coldness flowing up from the point of impact. It spreads through my head and as I turn and look up, the world is framed in blue. My body tingles and there’s a single high note in my head, and I want to throw up. My brother stands over me and says the magic words to take away pain. They’re from an episode of
Star Trek
: “A Vulcan would not cry out so.” But the magic words don’t work. I’m in pain. I’m going home.

I get there just in time for lunch. SpaghettiOs are usually my favorite. No other food was the same color, texture, or flavor as SpaghettiOs, made by a real chef. And nothing cuts authentic Italian food like grilled cheese with Velveeta and a large glass of milk. But when I look in my bowl of SpaghettiOs they seem even more vibrant than ever. Then they start to do a strange little dance in the bowl. I told mom I felt sick. She looks at my eyes and immediately calls the doctor.

I have a concussion. I have to stay awake for a whole day and night because, according to the doctor, if I go to sleep, I might never wake up. I decide to stay awake—for Pat Gilligan. Pat Gilligan, you’re dead meat.

That night I want to sleep so bad. Mom takes the first shift to keep me awake. She reads from the storybook Bible, Moses after Moses after Moses; then we watch Johnny Carson and she explains the need for Ed McMahon. Then I need sleep. Grandmother takes the second shift.

“Grandmother, help. I’m going to sleep.” And every time I do, the Lord’s Prayer goes through my head and when I hit the part, “if I should die before I wake,” it scares me, but not enough to keep my eyes open.

Grandmother wraps me in an afghan and says, “Are you comfy?”

“Yes, but that could mean death, Grandmother.”

But then she starts in. She tells me of growing up in Holland, learning to skate behind a chair along the canals. I say, “That’s how I learned to skate.” She knows. She tells how she ran away from home at age sixteen and went to the city. Grandmother tells me about being a flapper. In my delirium I imagine her arms going up and down really fast. Her hairdo was called a bob. I imagine it named after our neighbor Bob, who was bald and used to say he shampooed with Mop and Glow. She tells me about Grandpa, and Mom as a little girl, and by the time she got to me, the sun is coming up and I hadn’t died.

The next night we’re huddled around the TV watching
Gilligan’s Island
, the one where the monkey is throwing plates made of explosives. There is a fire going in our fireplace. I looked over at Grandmother. She is looking in the fire with that look she has when she is talking about meeting Grandpa. Gilligan was on TV. I wonder who is in the fire.

We go to bed that night. I finally get to go to sleep. Sleep. School tomorrow. I don’t even care. I throw my pants in the corner. My brother gets in his twin bed.

“Good night, Steve.”

“Shut up.”

No problem. In a couple of minutes he’ll be out cold and I’ll love him again.