Clubs

 

CHAPTER SIX

CLUBS

Although Foo knew enough about chemistry to remember the name nitric ammonium sulphate, he was not really much interested in science - nor was Billy. Our playing together was nearly always more active in nature - fantasy games, basketball, hiking, and later, Boy Scouts. I pursued my more sedentary interests in reading, chemistry, biology, and aeronautics alone for a while; making liquids change color, setting off explosive mixtures on the back walkway, breeding Monarch butterflies with milkweed plants, and collecting varieties of moss for a terrarium. But finally I ran across a boy named Garland Fairchild that shared some of these interests. He lived on the avenue that intersected Eighth Street on the crest of the hill. Garland introduced me to Durward Owen (we called him "Durwood"), who liked to read. They took an interest in my projects and my laboratory; and we subsequently began to put together a second lab at Garland's house. That summer, Durward and I had a little reading competition to see which one could read more books in a month. I introduced both of my new friends to Billy and Foo; and for a while after that, we incorporated one or both of them into our games.

During those depression years home budgets were tight, and we didn't get many toys for Christmas. But we managed to optimize our fun at Christmas time by a kind of systematic sharing plan. After we had played with our new gifts for a while, we would get together in groups of two, three, or four and play with each other's toys. One Christmas afternoon, Billy and I found that both Garland and Foo had family visitors for the day, so I telephoned Durward, who promptly invited us over. But when I asked him what toys he got for Christmas, he said that he didn't get any. Billy and I gathered up as many toys as we could carry - a tinkertoy set, a box of "fiddlesticks", some toy soldiers, and a wind-up tractor - and climbed the hill to his house. Sure enough, Santa Claus had brought him a set of encyclopedias and two books: Ivanhoe and Treasure Island - and no toys. For the first time in my life I felt truly sorry for someone else - and not just because he didn't get toys for Christmas. Being a child myself, I knew nothing of child psychology or theories of parent-child relationships; but I understood exactly why his parents had done that to him, and I felt a bitter anger in my heart. Neither Billy nor I commented on it, and Durward didn't express any disappointment, but we could tell by the eagerness with which he played with our toys and the sad emptiness in his eyes that the Spirit of Christmas had somehow failed him that year.

As time passed by, our diverging interests began to separate us into smaller groups. Billy and Foo didn't care to sit around while they were out of school for summer vacation, whether it was in the chemistry lab or on a shady porch reading or playing Monopoly. Garland and Durward had never been overly enthusiastic about fantasy games or ball games of any kind, and they gradually withdrew from them. I divided my time between the two groups and occasionally rubbed everybody the wrong way when I would get so tied up in one of my books or science projects that I didn't want to play at all.

This divergence of interests led us to form clubs. To start one, all it took was a few members, but it helped to have common interests, and what made it a real success was a "cool" club house - a meeting place with privacy. Garland's mother let us meet in the basement of their house to plan our scientific researches, but Billy had the best club house. His father had built a large garage at the back of their lot and had planked over a small attic - which we called "the loft". With the slant roof of the garage it was just high enough in the center for us to stand up. Toward the sides it was necessary to crouch down. At the rear of the garage a steep flight of stairs led up to a trap door that opened into the loft. During the middle of the summer it would get too hot to play there, but at other times various groups of the neighborhood children would get together there for hours. One favorite game was to have one team attempt an assault on the other, which was "walled up" in the loft. Eventually, however, Billy's father would go on night shift, and we had to vacate the premises so that he could sleep in the daytime, because we were incapable of playing quietly for any length of time.

Those were the days of the superhero comics. Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, The Flash, The Green Lantern, all arrived just at the time that we could appreciate them the most. The comic books, however, included more than hero stories. Each issue included a page or two of small print advertisements designed to appeal to children's - or childlike - minds. I'm not certain but I think that Durward got his scientific supply catalog by answering one of those ads. He, Garland, and I spent hours fingering through its pages, making lists of chemicals and lab equipment, and totaling up their prices. The items were expensive, but we pooled enough cash from our allowances and earnings to place a small order. We waited for the postman each day, but it was weeks before the package arrived, containing a few chemicals and test tubes.

My enthusiasms were intense but childishly short-lived. We could perform a number of new experiments with the extra equipment, but it just didn't seem worth the expense, the trouble of placing the orders, and the long wait for delivery. My interest waned, and I began to spend more and more time with Billy, Foo, and the other children on Eighth Street. For several weeks I didn't even see Garland or Durward. But finally my science cycle began another upswing. I needed someone to share my latest experimental results with, so I sought them out. My attempts to make up, after so callously dropping out of their club, met a cool reception. They were reluctant to discuss their own activities, but it was quite clear, from their attitude and the expressions on their faces, that they had a Big Secret that I was not privy to. Eventually, however, they could no longer contain themselves. The ice melted, and after making me promise not to tell anyone what they were going to show me, they led me to their new club house. Garland's mother had given him permission to use a small narrow shed in their back yard. When I walked in, I was amazed to see a work bench covered with a variety of chemistry equipment: test tubes of several sizes, a couple of beakers, a retort, a professional test tube holder, and a bunsen burner. They had been having lots of fun playing "scientist", but I honestly believe that they got a greater kick out of seeing the expression on my face than they did from a hundred experiments.

The three of us secretly engaged in this relatively esoteric pursuit for weeks, but then another interest came along that distracted me and drew me away from both of the clubs temporarily. In one of my comic books I came across an advertisement for a correspondence course that purported to teach the principles of aircraft flight; and I promptly subscribed. I had received two or three of the monthly lessons, when my mother became suspicious because of a letter that arrived with an underlined message: "IMPORTANT NOTICE!". It contained a bill and a rather threatening note demanding payment for the course. When she realized what I had done, my mother hit the ceiling - naturally. Writing letters was one of the things that she most disliked, but she composed a rather lengthy one, explaining that I was only eleven years old and didn't understand just what I was getting involved in. She included a payment for three lessons, which was later extracted from my allowance. The publishing company was gracious about letting me off the hook; but that episode marked the end of my mail order activities.

Airplanes were a kind of novelty in the thirties. Several of the older boys in the neighborhood had purchased kits for making flying models. They were assembled by gluing together a balsa wood framework of spars and ribs, and then covering this shaped grid with tissue paper. The propeller was activated by a long wound-up rubber band. I tried my hand with one but soon found that it was more difficult than I had thought. If it had not been for the help of an older boy, Kenneth Preas, who lived next door, I would never have got it to fly.

When World War II escalated and air warfare began to take on a crucial role, scale models of actual warplanes hit the toy departments. These were called "solid models", as opposed to flying models, because they required the builder to carve an accurate scale model of the fuselage, wings, and other components from solid blocks of balsa wood. I bought a couple of kits, but I was even less skillful at carving solid models than I was at gluing together flying models. Kenneth, on the other hand, had both the skill and the patience to produce very lifelike reproductions. He had made a first rate model of a P-38 and, even though he was several years older, he spent a lot of time playing airplanes with Billy, Foo, and me. He seemed to appreciate the more-or-less casual interest we had in "his" hobby.

Then, suddenly he withdrew from this play and seemed to ignore us when we were playing with our models in my backyard. We would catch glimpses of him as disappeared into the back door of his house, or into the garage behind the house, but for weeks he refused to acknowledge our presence. Then, one day when Billy and I were playing with our P-41's in my backyard, he seemed to appear out of nowhere. Each of his hands held a Messerschmidt fighter which, catching us off-guard, easily shot down our planes. Billy and I were amazed at the stunning craftsmanship of the fighters and at their color. They were both painted solid black.

Kenneth led us to the little shed attached to the garage in his yard, and showed us the fruits of weeks of concentrated work. There, laid out before our eyes, were at least two dozen models of fighters and bombers, including Japanese Zeros and German Junkers, Fokkers, and Messerschmidts - all painted black. The reason for this coloring was that the Department of Defense had requested contributions of accurately scaled models painted black to help spotters identify various aircraft designs by their silhouettes.

The club that met in the loft of Billy's garage varied in size as the need arose. If we needed a fourth member because we had two "sides" and wanted them to have equal numbers, we would include a boy named Herbert Overstreet, who lived on Seventh Street, or even let Gerald play with us. At one time we drafted a large boy named Richard Harmon to protect us from a bully that had begun wandering into our neighborhood. But many of our projects were best carried out with a bare minimum of members – projects like stealing cherries. The house next door to Billy's - the one at the upper corner of the block - had a huge cherry tree in the back yard. A single, middle-aged man lived there. I don't think he picked the cherries himself, but he still didn't want us messing around in his tree. We couldn't help noticing the clusters of cherries as they began to ripen. From the club house window we could easily monitor their progress, and the redder they got the more the temptation grew, until finally we could no longer resist it, and we planned a raid on the tree.

We waited until well after dark, then slipped through the back gate, and climbed into the tree, staying on the lower branches in case we should have to beat a hasty retreat. We had heard a rumor that the tree owner kept a shotgun in his kitchen. There was barely enough light from the partial moon to enable us to distinguish the red cherries from the green ones. We quickly gorged ourselves, then sneaked down from the tree and out the gate.

That success gave us confidence, and we decided to return the next night. This time we found the gate wired shut, but that didn't pose much of a problem because we were adept at climbing wire fences. Billy and I kept to the lower branches again, but Foo courageously mounted to a higher position where he had a better selection of cherries. We were having a great time feasting on the forbidden fruit when suddenly a screen door banged open and a gruff voice shouted, "You boys get down out of that tree! I'm calling the police!". And get down we did. Billy and I dropped to the ground, struggled to our feet, and headed for the fence. But Foo half-slid, half-fell out of the tree, and wound up with some pretty bad scratches on his arms and legs.

The next day we licked our wounds and our egos, and analyzed our tactical errors. We decided that the tree owner had probably heard us whispering in the tree. The quiet that fell on that neighborhood after dark was nearly absolute - with no traffic noise, no airplane noise, no air conditioners, not even window fans. The windows were kept wide open on summer nights. Our muted voices, which would easily have gone unnoticed during the daytime, had carried right into the house.

We were frightened - almost terrified - when Foo said that he thought he had heard the click of the shotgun hammer being cocked. Nevertheless, after a three night cooling off period, we carried out another daring raid; mostly to keep our egos intact. By then I had had my fill of cherries as well as the anxiety that went along with stealing them, and I, for one, was glad to call a halt to that particular recreation.

When we joined the Cub Scouts, our enthusiasm for hiking soared, because that activity seemed to dominate the most interesting pages of the scout manual. Unfortunately, we did not have a Cub scoutmaster, only a den mother, who had neither the time nor the inclination for hiking; so we formed our own little hiking group. We began with just the three of us - Billy, Foo, and I - and planned a trek to Mill Mountain. We started out one summer afternoon with some essentials in a knapsack, which we took turns carrying.

The mountain was so near, and yet so far. It was near because its base could not have been much more than half a mile away, if we could have taken a direct route through the silk mill grounds and across the bridge over the river. However, since the silk mill property was off limits to non-employees, we had to take a roundabout route - a good mile or so along the railroad track to the Walnut Avenue bridge, and then nearly a half mile before we began to climb the mountain.

We had scaled no more than half the mountain height when time ran out. I noticed that the sun was starting to get low, and I didn't want to get spanked for being late at supper, so I insisted that we give it up for the day. Our inclination toward exploring led us to take a different route down the mountain. We had not gone far when, to our delight, we came upon a sheer precipice of about fifteen feet - the vertical face of what appeared to be an outcropping of granite. We looped a rope around a tree trunk, and lowered ourselves down the wall of stone one by one. We found ourselves in a relatively flat area filled with low bushy weeds, which, we suddenly realized, was poison oak. We couldn't reverse our course. We had already pulled the rope down, but even if we hadn't, I don't think any of us would have been capable of scaling that rock. There was no choice but to wade through about a hundred feet of poison oak and then try to get back home for some salve as soon as possible. By the time we arrived, Billy and Foo were already beginning to scratch, and for the next couple of days the salve-covered splotches hampered their play. What I learned from the experience was to allow much more time for a hike up the mountain, and that I was immune to poison oak.

Foo often mentioned a former friend, Beverly Carter, one of his playmates before he moved to Southeast. Apparently Beverly had not forgotten Foo either, because one day he showed up at Foo's house. I don't know whether he rode the streetcar to our neighborhood, or whether his father drove him, but the visit gave Billy and me the opportunity to meet him at last. In appearance he was less than impressive, being slightly smaller than any of us, although he was just a few months older. He seemed to fit smoothly into our fun and games, and when he left, he left as one of our buddies. It was not long before he appeared in our neighborhood again, and then, during summer vacation from school, his visits became frequent. He proved to be a real "off the wall" character - not funny the way Foo was with his little improvised skits - but full of ideas for crazy things to do, and having the daring and the bravado to carry them out.

Beverly had a grandmother that lived a short distance off of Hollins Road, in the countryside near the northeast edge of Roanoke. When she offered to let us camp out in her yard one night, we quickly got permission from our parents and made preparations. We borrowed a couple of pup tents from the Boy Scout troop at the church, packed some snacks, piled everything into Billy's wagon, and took turns pulling it. The trek was no more than three miles, but it seemed to take all afternoon. It took longer than we had anticipated to pitch our tents and eat our dinners of sandwiches and cookies, and, by the time we got down to serious play, the sun was beginning to set. We had a wonderful playground. Across the road lay the fairways and greens of a golf course. The last golfer had vanished, and now the rolling grassland became a wild-west range and, later, a battlefield. The darker it grew, the better the conditions for having fun - up to a point. It grew darker and darker - incredibly dark - with no streetlights on the country road, and the few house lights extinguished shortly after dark. The thin crescent moon had long since set, and the stars furnished the only light.

By this light I could see a body perhaps three or four feet away at best. We could judge locations and distances relative to each other by calling out, but that method posed the problem of giving away our positions to the enemy. I became disoriented, with no idea how to get back to the road or the tents; and, to be honest, I was frightened. When someone finally proposed calling off the games for the night, I was glad to hear the voice. As I made my way toward it, someone turned on a flashlight, and it felt wonderful to be able to see at last.

Sleeping was another problem. I had constructed a mattress of pine needles, which would have worked just fine if I had gone to the trouble to remove them from the twigs that bore them. I thought that the effects of the few small branches would be smoothed out by the blanket that I laid over them but, as the night wore on, those little branches seemed to grow into hard rods and pipes, and I tossed and turned through an interminable night, praying that dawn would soon come. I was amazed that the other boys, whose mattress making skills were no more sophisticated than mine, were apparently able to sleep soundly. When daylight finally came, we breakfasted on some leftover cookies, and decided to head for home.

By the time we had broken camp and packed our things, the sun was up and seemed to grow hotter by the minute. Pulling the wagon became a terrible chore as we trudged along, and somehow the return trip must have been longer than the trip out. By the time we arrived in Billy's backyard and unpacked the wagon, we were all in a pretty grouchy mood. When I made a bedraggled appearance at the back door of our house, my mother asked if we had had fun, but the expression on her face seemed to say, "I told you so". Once again home seemed awfully welcome with its real food, warm bath water, and soft bed.

That less-than-satisfying experience dampened our enthusiasm for hiking, but only temporarily. One of the older boys in the neighborhood took Billy and me for a hike around the east end of Mill Mountain to a small secluded clearing where a spring bubbled up out of the ground. With the trees, boulders, and animal paths, it would have been a great play area even without the spring, but with the spring it was perfect. There is nothing that satisfies thirst on a hot summer day better than lying on one's stomach and slurping deep draughts of cold unchlorinated, unflouridated water.

Billy and I could hardly wait to show the rest of the club this new place to play. For this outing we decided against trying to spend the night (there were animals in those woods), but we did plan to spend the day and to cook a midday meal rather than rely on sandwiches, which for some reason seemed to symbolize civilization. This time we couldn't transport our supplies in a wagon because of the rough terrain, but we borrowed some knapsacks which we loaded up with food, cooking and eating utensils, and toy guns. Beverly, who already had some Boy Scout experience, brought along a couple of canteens of water because he had learned to "be prepared". We started out early from Foo's house, headed up the railroad track, across the bridge, and through a small residential area, to reach the foot of the mountain. A short climb to the path that led around the east end of the mountain, and we were less than a mile from our destination. When we arrived, we still had plenty of time to play before cooking the meal, but we cut our playing a bit short because we were hungry and anxious to try our hand at cooking.

I don't think any of us had ever cooked anything before, but it looked easy, and I had received some advice from my mother on the subject. We built up piles of flat rocks around the fireplace to rest the skillet on. Then we built a fire, and I separated strips of bacon into the skillet while the others peeled and sliced potatoes. Our plan was to fry the potato slices in the grease left over from cooking the bacon. Sure enough, the bacon generated plenty of grease as the strips shrank and shriveled into short thin curls. A pound of bacon had seemed plenty, but what was left after cooking amounted only to a couple of sizable bites for each of us. But we still had the potatoes to look forward to. We dumped the first batch into the fire and watched them sizzle. Beverly turned and stirred the potatoes with a spatula, and Foo salted them. Then he started to add pepper, and that's when disaster struck. The top came off the pepper shaker, and he dropped a good tablespoon of pepper onto the potatoes.

It didn't seem like such a big problem at first. We could just scrape the excess pepper off of the potatoes; and we liked spicy foods anyway. Spicy they were, as was the next batch, and the next. Although we didn't add any more seasoning to the grease, it contained enough pepper to season a dozen pans of potatoes. But the cold spring water was just the right thing to allay the effect of the pepper.

After we had cleaned up our dishes, we decided that, rather than spend the afternoon playing, we would rather explore the mountain. We elected to return home by climbing over the mountain instead of following the path around it. We packed our knapsacks, Beverly filled his canteens, and we started out through the trees and undergrowth in a generally upward direction. We had gone perhaps a hundred yards when I began to feel thirsty. Someone suggested that we take a drink from the canteens, but we knew that it was far too soon to start depleting our water supply. We tried to resist but, by the time we had climbed another hundred yards or so, the demon in the pepper went to work in earnest. Gerald was begging for water, and my mouth was on fire. We agreed to have a gulp of water each, but that round exhausted the better part of one canteen. No more than a minute later, my mouth was as hot as ever. My body screamed for water, and I kept thinking about that spring that we had so recently left.

But we forced ourselves upward, Billy, Foo and I leading the way, with the others trailing. It was only a few minutes later - but it seemed forever - that someone demanded a drink. This time when we stopped, the truth came out. Beverly - and possibly Herbert, too - had been tippling at the canteens. Barely half a container remained. My share was perhaps a couple of tablespoons of water, and then the supply was gone. We were still well shy of the top of the mountain. The trees that blessed us by shading us from the sun also cursed us by shielding off the breeze that stirred their topmost leaves. We were hot and thirsty, and mad as hornets at Beverly. And it didn't help his case one bit when he reminded us that he was the one who had insisted on bringing the canteens in the first place.

By the time we reached the top of Mill Mountain, we were too miserable even to complain; but, at least, the downhill trek would be easier. It would have been wonderful if we could have just run or rolled down the slope, but it was too steep for that, and the terrain was rough, with stumps, vines, and outcroppings of stone. We slipped, slid, and scrambled down, and reached the bottom with more than a few scraped arms and legs. But then we were on smooth ground, making our way along the city street to the bridge, across it, and down to the railroad tracks. Now we were marching along silently in the full heat of the summer sun, an infinite distance down the tracks, then up the hill to Buena Vista Avenue, and finally to Foo's house. Our eyes fell on the garden hose that was still connected to the faucet on the side of the house. We passed it back and forth for a full fifteen minutes, gulping water like whales. I'm sure I must have drunk over a quart before I was willing to call it quits. But now that last little climb up Eighth Street that I had dreaded was no longer an insurmountable problem. And suddenly Beverly didn't seem like such a bad guy after all.

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