Youthful Adventure

“We need a party”, Ashaline, my 10 year old sister said. We called her Ash. Anita my 8 year old sister was nicknamed Nita. Me, I’m Wayne. I’m 6. It was a hot day and we needed an adventure.

Nita and I dragged a couple of wooden peach crates from under the front porch. We placed them in the shade of the maple tree of our front yard. Becoming excited about having a party we ran to the kitchen to gather table settings and three chairs. Ash placed an oilcloth over the peach crates. The tablecloth belonged to our grandmother. It was unique. The pattern had lots of square designs. Each square design had a print of a red heart with a black arrow going through it.

Nita set the make-shift table with plates, silverware and some glasses. I struggled with the big chairs but managed to get them setting steady around the table. The ground wasn’t as level as a floor. I tested each one by sitting on them to make sure they wouldn’t tip over.

Alice, our white fox terrier, jumped onto the chair that was for me. Nita and Ash thought it was great to have Alice join our party, I wasn’t sure. I had to go to the kitchen to get another chair and Alice’s food bowl. Ash had moved my table setting and she placed Alice’s bowl in front of my old chair. Taking our places at the table we were ready for a party.

Ash explained we would have a make believe party and have pretend cakes and pretend ice cream. Nita remembered the barn down on the highway was where they pasteurized milk for Shenandoah’s Pride. They decided we should hike over to the barn and see if we could get ice cream. Down the lane we went to the dairy barn. I was really excited to be at my first party with grown ups. Alice asleep on her chair was left dreaming of whatever dogs dream about. We left her there.

The dairy barn was a one story building used for processing milk. Each day a tank truck would haul the milk to the ice cream plant. I didn’t know what pasteurized or dairy meant, but I understood ice cream.

We stood at the door looking in. We must have been a sight, three kids looking through the door as if to see a big bucket of ice cream. It was a little disappointing when I didn’t see any. I remembered seeing a man spraying a hose at the other end of the building. Nita was the first to see the waterfall of milk. Actually it was milk falling across cooling rods. Milk is heated and cooled quickly by running it over the refrigerated rods. Ash touched the milk that had collected at the bottom saying it was cold. Nita wondered if it tasted like ice cream and she stuck her tongue right into the cascading milk. Ash and I kept watching to see if it did taste like ice cream. If so we would stick our tongues in too. In seconds we realized Nita’s tongue was stuck. She couldn’t get loose. Her tongue was frozen to the cooling rods. Ash started jumping and screaming. I just stood there watching Nita as her eyes were getting bigger and bigger and her tongue started turning purple. I felt something wet on the back of my head. It scared me and I jumped to the side. I was surprised, it was the man with the hose, he yelled for us to get out of the way as he squirted water into Nita’s mouth. Her tongue came loose from the cascade and the guy started laughing and spraying us with the hose. Ash took Nita by the hand and the three of us flew out the door like a bunch of scared kittens. Much later the dairy barn was torn down, but none of us ever went back there again. We still like ice cream.

From the dairy barn we made our way across the field to our house. Nita had trouble talking at first because her tongue was swollen and numb. She kept talking and soon sounded ok. She rattled on about how scared she had been and Ash’s screaming and my staring didn’t help. She was really tough and didn’t even cry. I don’t remember ever seeing her cry. As we walked and talked it was less scary and became funnier.

On arriving at the house we had forgotten about our party. There was our table waiting for us, Alice jumped up from her nap and started eating from her bowl. We sat down and chose our favorite make believe cake. Mine was Grandma Cline’s banana cake it was a four layer yellow cake with quarter size slices of bananas between each layer and on the top layer. The icing was butter cream. I don’t remember what their cakes were. Ash counted out the candles on each of our cakes, then pretended to put them into each cake and light them. She had us blow out our candles and make a wish. My wish was to fly around the world. We had lots of fun celebrating our birthdays and talking about our adventure. It was a great party and the day I learned to sing. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU”

Resurrection

I was in the bathroom with Alice our fox terrier. She was due to have pups any minute. I had no ideal what to do. My assignment was to interrupt the Jack Benny radio program if anything happen. Alice just slept. The show ended, everyone headed for the stairs. I went to bed and fell asleep.

The next morning I went to the bathroom not thinking of Alice. There she was with five pups. She seemed proud. I rushed to get my sisters out of bed. We were excited and talked about how cute the pups were. Ash said not to handle them until their eyes opened. Dad called us to breakfast.

We went downstairs. Ash was my big sister, she was ten years old, my other sister Anita was eight and I was six. Breakfast was slab bacon and gravy bread. As Dad was leaving for work he told Ash, “One of the pups was still born”. The pup was wrapped in a dish towel and put in a shoe box. He instructed her to get the shoe box from the back porch then dig a grave under the old pine tree and bury the pup. Dad went to work and we headed outside for our burial detail. Ash carried the shoe box. Anita carried the pick and I drug the shovel.

Ash put the box down and removed the lid. Inside a little black and white spotted puppy was dead. Ash put the lid back on the shoe box and Anita used the shovel to clear the pine needles from the spot she thought would be a really good grave.

It was a challenge but a rectangular hole appeared. I used the shovel to lift some dirt out of the hole. Not being much help I resigned to watch. It took about half an hour of digging and scraping. Ash informed us that the hole was deep enough for the shoe box. She put the box into the hole and Anita covered it with dirt. Ash made a cross out of some wood slats from a bushel basket top. She wrapped the slats together with some string.

The three of us stood there as she pushed the cross into the pile of dirt over the grave. She said a prayer and we made our way back to the house dragging the pick and shovel. Sitting down at the kitchen table we talked about our experience at being undertakers. I didn’t know what that word meant but figured out it was someone who put dead people into the ground.

Anita remembered the Easter story from her Sunday school lesson and wondered if the puppy would come back to life in three days. Ash didn’t think so and I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. Anita and I trekked to the grave as she talked about how the preacher said Jesus rose from the grave, she called it the resurrection. Another new word I didn’t understand. Anita and I spent a lot of time looking at that grave. I assumed the pup would come back to life and dig itself out of the ground.

The next morning everything looked the same. We stood there wondering how the puppy could get out of the grave. Anita wanted to dig up the box and check. I said no, because it was only the second day. All day long we traveled to the grave and looked, but nothing changed.

The morning of the third day, Anita woke me and told me to get dressed. She was anxious to look at the grave. We made our trek again. The grave looked the same, no changes. That afternoon Anita wanted to see if the pup was in the grave or not. We drug the shovel out and dug up the grave. We uncovered the box and sure enough the pup was still there. We put the lid back on the box and covered the grave. I put the cross back and we decided to tell Ash about the puppy not being resurrected.

We went back to the kitchen and told Ash. We sat around the table talking about all the things we had been doing in the past few days. Ash had made some beef stew. As we ate dinner we talked and laughed about what each one of us thought. Some of my questions were answered. After dinner we gathered around the radio to listen to the program, “The Shadow Knows”.

Gallery Night

Success is in the eyes of the beholder. Ashby and Allison Fine Arts Galleries opened in June 2003. Their first gallery night in Alpine, Texas needed a method of counting visitors for future planning.

The solution, a battery operated electric eye to count the number of visitors who passed through the portal of the gallery. The device was installed at a height of the average waist of a person. Several tests were conducted to determine if the count being recorded was correct. Everything worked to a tee. A simple division by two would account for one customer coming and going. On Friday at 10 am the device was reset to zero. A piece of masking tape was put over the numbers. We decided not to check it until Sunday morning, after the activities of the weekend.

As the weekend progressed we were glad the device was taking care of the counting, business was hopping. We could hear the click as people came and went. Saturday we closed at midnight and headed home exhausted.

The next morning we drove to the gallery. Our first order of business was detaching the tape on the counter. On checking we were surprised, 8,371 visitors passed through our door, we knew this was not possible. The division by 2 meant 4,185 ½ people had been there. We were disappointed; the count could not be accurate, as it was high. We expected between three and five hundred visitors.

We moved to the porch to guesstimate the number of visitors. Stepping through the door we heard the faint click of the counter. As we were drinking our coffee we heard the faint clicking sound again. We looked at the door and both laughed. There was Picatso, our gallery cat, pawing the electric eye. Click, click, click, the mystery was solved.

Killer for Hire

I’m a contract killer. My lifestyle is different from others. I work at night. I have very sensitive hearing and eyesight, especially in the dark. My reflexes are the best in the business. I’m very fast, my muscles are strong and my grip is deadly. My specialty is not leaving any evidence. I don’t relax until my victim or victims are dead.

My contact takes care of everything for me. I’m driven to the site to do my job. I wait as preparations are done for me. I scope the area, looking for ways the victim or victims could possibly escape. I make a mental note of how to handle situations that could be embarrassing.

I verify arrangements for food, drink and the necessary place has been taken care of. My equipment is a gun metal chair with a soft cushion. It is placed by a window where a street light cast a beam of light across the floor or by a door with a back light casting the beam.

Everyone departs. I’m alone waiting on darkness, setting on my comfortable cushion, sometimes for hours, sometimes more than one night. I’m patient and have been known to fall asleep on the job.

I’m always in the shadows and the lighted area is what I consider the dead zone. My victim sets foot into the zone. I jump, race toward the victim. I have the victim in a death grasp before he reaches the outer edge of the beam.

Tonight is different, it has been very busy and none have escaped. I have laid out each of the dead in the light beam as the morning sun warms the area and the bodies.

I hear the key turn in the lock, in walks my contact and the contractor. I hear much pleasure as they count seven dead. I fall to sleep as I hear the rewarding exclamation, “Picatso, the best dang cat I know”.

First Funeral

I don’t like funerals. Here’s a story of my first one.

September 18, 1947, Fairview Church of the Brethren, Court Manor, 5 miles south of New Market, Virginia. Weather was sunny with no rain and warm.

We lived in a farmhouse on the Court Manor plantation. Everyone was busy getting dressed. I just stood around and waited. Finally someone gathered me up, washed my face and hands and dressed me in my best clothes.

I really didn’t know what was happening, I just waited. I know my Dad was very sad. I heard him crying during the night. I had sneaked into his room during the night and slept on the floor at the foot of his bed.

We all loaded into the car and drove to the church. I remember sitting on the front pew and listening to people talk. A big wooden box called a casket was in the center of the pulpit area.

All the talk stopped and everyone was invited up to view the person in the casket. I didn’t go up, but some family member picked me up and took me up to the casket. They told me to look at my mother. I didn’t want to. I looked toward the back of the church. They kept turning around for me to look and I kept looking up or away from the casket.

My dad told her to put me down and he took me by the hand and we walked out of the church. We stood under a tree and people came up to my dad and said they were sorry. I kept hold of his hand.

Some men came out of the church carrying the casket and walked around the corner to the grave yard. The casket was closed. Dad followed behind the casket with me in tow. The rest of our family, Big Bob, Junior, Ash and Netz followed along behind us.

We stood at the grave, a large hole in the ground. Everyone was sad and crying. I didn’t cry because I didn’t understand what was going on.

Someone was talking and praying and then we the family went up and someone was handing us roses. One was put into my hand.

A little later the casket was lower into the ground and more words were spoken. Dad was crying then and I remember saying to him, “Don’t cry, Daddy, you still have me”.

We went back to the house and my life continued with lots of different things happening. I was six years old and had to start school, it was really a tough day.

August 1, 1977. I was visiting my dad, he had terminal cancer. We were setting on his porch step watching traffic go by on Interstate 81. His home was west of interstate 81 opposite the entrance to Endless Caverns.

We were just sitting there talking. He started telling me about his garden which was in front of us. He said that it would never be a garden again. At the time I wasn’t concerned but he was right. Every time I have driven by his home there has never been a garden.

He told me he really like living in his old house, he could sit on the porch and look out over Court Manor and think of my Mom. He could see the Church where she was buried and lately was thinking a lot about her.

He told me that he’d be buried next to her and that she was really a great wife and mother. He said I had made him proud and knew she was proud of me too.

We then talked about his Mother and Dad and that he was about the same age as his dad when he had died. We talked about little things after that, most not worth mentioning.

I stood up and told him I had to leave and drive back to Washington, DC to catch a flight to Miami. He stood up and hugged me. My Dad hadn’t given me a hug since I was a child. It brought tears to my eyes.

He then looked at me and said, “You are a good son and this will be the last time you see me”. I then ask if he thought he’d be in heaven and he said, “I made my decision years ago and we’ll all meet again”.

Driving back to DC was a long tearful hour. I did wonder about him and our conversation. No one had ever told me they wouldn’t see me again. Two days later on Tuesday I received the call, my Dad had passed. I was very fortunate to have a great Dad.