23b: Cruising the Town

The 23b repair sled was on-call for the evening but the boss seemed to be having a good night and it looked like we were not going to have to work. For a delivery guy who only works one night out of the year, he has a pretty good record of satisfied customers.

Anyway, it was a quiet but cold Christmas Eve here in Princeton, so I thought I would take the team out for a spin around town. I laid down the better half of my leftover burrito, harnessed the team and popped the whip just over their antlers. They turned and looked back at me as if to say, "Are you crazy??"

"Uh...fellows...?" I said, as the sled suddenly lurched forward.

We zipped out across the yard and banked up to the left, clearing a split rail fence and clipping the top of the neighbors hackberry tree before leveling off at a couple hundred feet above an asthmatic barking dog on Cadiz Street. I could see the Christmas lights around the court house as we cruised out along North Jefferson.

As we approached the city limits, the team suddenly dipped and made a hard left. I realized that we were lining up on the East bound lanes of I-69, specifically, the overpass under Providence Rd. I pulled the reins hard as the steel and concrete whizzed just over head. We just squeaked by an oncoming eighteen-wheeler and buzzed the top of a family in a white SUV with fuzzy antlers on the luggage racks.

It was close...I counted 8 points.

We made the turn back towards town and stopped next to Wal-mart where I went in and bought some donuts and a couple of banana moon pies for Rude and Nasty and we were off again, just missing the power lines along the highway.

Passing just south of Main Street on the way home, I could see a white SUV at the Police Dept. with a mess on it's roof. I guess I know where the other half of my burrito went.

He's not called Nasty for nothing.

I was a Robot

It was in the fall of 1963, when I was nine years old, that I began to prepare for that ultimate costume celebration.  At that time, robots were big. All a fellow needed was a couple of big boxes, some silver paint, lots of duct tape, and after a few craftily made cuts with one of Mom’s steak knives, it was “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”

I was a skinny kid and, of course, there were no skinny legged robots, so I decided that I would beef up my appearance with those round tube boxes from the Quaker Oats company. I really felt brilliant as they were just about the right size to fit inside my pants legs with one at the thigh and another at the shin with a space in between for my knees. I finished it off with a torso wrap of cardboard and duct tape and a box for a head.

Man, I was ready.

I grabbed an appropriate sized pillow case and set out to plunder the neighborhood in the quest for the treasure more precious than gold: Trick-or-treat candy.

As the evening progressed, and the pillow case filled up, gravity began to tug at the oatmeal boxes and it wasn’t long before the space designated for knees was no more. So, while I could still sort-of walk and drag my loot, we decided to finish up at a couple of high porch houses along the home stretch.

I managed the stairs and collected a popcorn ball, and dropped it into the sack amongst caramel apples, Milk Duds, Sugar Daddies, a black banana, 47 different chocolate bars, eighteen and a half pounds of everything else and 38 cents in nickels and pennies from people who just wanted the varmints off of their porch. I turned and reached out for a non-existent hand rail and found myself in free fall without a chute.

I crashed through the prickly top of an evergreen shrub and rolled out into the yard, a broken robot. I limped home dragging the bottom out of the bag and leaving a trail of hard candy and licorice.

 The rest of the night would find me sorting and eating the inventory and feeding the piggy bank.

A Taunting

I remember a really good story teller from my younger days who could make my hair stand up with her ghost stories and tall tales. She was mother to a friend of mine when we were guitar players dreaming of fame.

One night when she was walking home after visiting a nearby nieghbor, we dicided to hide in a late summer garden alongside the road, to see if we could rattle the great rattler.

As she walked by, we tossed corn cobbs into the road and made noises, which she ignored at first. After a couple more attempts to get a rise from her, she stopped, turned to face the garden, and took one step forward, pulling a 10-inch butcher knife from her purse.

"C'mon out, ye sons-o-bitches!" she scowled. "I'll cut yer guts out!"

We came out...the other side of the garden...running.

Careful who you mess with.