Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
Weewee had an older brother and sister but there was such a gap in their ages that Weewee was treated much like an 'only' child; accordingly he was envied by the older boys. He was generous in sharing his privileges, however, and for that reason alone he was not picked on as much as any other 'only child'. Another reason was that he was a big, husky lad and could, if he were so inclined, beat the living shit out of anyone who crossed him.
Once, when he and I had snared some gophers up near the Currie Army Barracks, we had been allowed to construct a 'gopher zoo' in the yard just beyond the side door of Weewee's house. We covered the floor of an old plywood packing case with about eight inches of dirt from the back garden and put a discarded window screen over the top just in case the gophers developed high jumping capabilities. Then we allowed a limited number of our cronies to view our captives--no girls allowed!
Everyone seemed pleased except the gophers, who immediately began burrowing downward in search of freedom, not unlike the Count of Monte Cristo.
'They ain't goin' nowhere,' Wee-wee stated confidently. 'They're jist diggin' themselves a home!' He was further reassured by the conviction that the wooden bottom of the packing case would frustrate any serious escape attempts.
My mother was not pleased; while I was in the bathtub that night she came into the bathroom to do a routine 'dirty neck' check.
'Good Lord! What are those?' she said, pointing at my mid-section.
'What are what?' I said guiltily, looking down. I noticed for the first time that there was a row of bright red spots arrayed diagonally across my abdomen.
'You've been messing around with gophers again, haven't you? Those are flea bites!' my mother exclaimed, the pitch of her voice rising sharply. 'Where did you put your clothes? Everything will have to be washed in disinfectant, now!'
I couldn't understand my mother's agitation. What harm could a couple of little flea bites do anyway? To hear her carry on you'd think the Black Plague was about to break out at any moment.
'That won't hold a couple of healthy gophers,' she said dryly when I described the holding pen we had constructed.
'They ain't goin' nowhere!' I replied glumly, imitating Weewee in speech and manner.
'And don't say ain't!' my mother said, getting the last word, as usual.
I had to admit that the appearance of the flea bites had come as a bit of a surprise, but upon reflection I realized that it shouldn't have. Weewee and I had skinned the first three gophers we'd caught and carried the skins back to Weewee's house in our pockets. The gophers destined for the zoo had been left at the ends of their snares and half-dragged, half-carried back to Weewee's place. Then we had tied them to the leg of a garden table while we tacked the gopher skins out on cedar shingles and salted them down with generous portions of Mrs. Weecher's table salt; they'd already begun to stink.
I concluded that the offending flea, realizing that the game was up, had deserted its original host's pelt and transitted to my belly, snacking en route. I was back at Weewee's place early the next day, but the gophers had gone underground and still not made an appearance by noon. The bits of oatmeal and wilted lettuce that had been set out for their sustenance remained untouched.
'They're probably sulking,' I volunteered.
'I can't say as I blame 'em,' Weewee said philosophically, 'We'll just have to outwait 'em!' By mid-morning his patience was exhausted and he began to kick the side of the packing box in the hope of generating a response.
'Maybe you could drown 'em out!' offered Bobby Potts, who had recently arrived.
'Forget it, beanbrain,' Weewee said scornfully, 'This is a zoo, not a mud pie!' Then he walked around to the back of the packing case, having in mind to lift the corner up and down gently to animate the occupants. It would be embarrassing to have a group of spectators arriving to view their wildlife with nothing to be seen. That's when he discovered the escape hole.
'I can't believe those little buggers could chew through that plywood so fast,' Weewee said later, when we had overturned the packing case and confirmed that the residents had departed.
'I can't believe they could chew through it at all,' I lamented. 'They must have some beaver blood in them, or something.' I hesitated to admit that my mother had warned me of the possibility. That would have required me to confess to the fact that I had told her of the project in its entirety. It was out of the question. We were both bitterly disappointed at first, but gradually became philosophical about it all. The next day we were congratulating ouselves on our humane behaviour and expressing the hope that our temporary captives hadn't been run over in traffic.
On Friday morning Mrs. Weecher donned her rubber kitchen gloves and gingerly carried the salted pelts, shingles and all, out to the garbage can. A couple of days after that, Weewee noticed that our skinning trophies were missing, but decided not to make an issue of it.
-o-
During the summer months these days the sound of the power grass mower is heard in the land. In the early thirties there were no power mowers. But there were putt-putt boats! I haven't seen a putt-putt boat for years; I wonder what ever happened to them?
Putt-putt boats were little tin boats lithographed in various bright colours with the amazing capability of cruising about under their own steam power. How could this be? It was basically simple in concept. There was a tiny hollow boiler about the size of two postage stamps and just under a quarter of an inch thick which was affixed to two tiny tubes which passed back through the stern of the little vessel. The unit came complete with a small metal pan with a handle in which a candle could be placed to provide heat from below the boiler. A cover complete with lithographed topsides could then be slid over the complete hull and the rig was prepared to cruise. There needed to be only the final preparations made. The boat was upended and water poured carefully into one of the tailpipes until the boiler was full, then the boat refloated and the candle lighted and put in place beneath the boiler. Like a steam kettle put on to boil, the boiler would slowly start to hiss then, eventually, after a preliminary pop or two, the pops ran together in staccato fashion and, lo and behold, the boat began to steam forward, jet-style.
Weewee was one of the first guys in the neighborhood to own a putt-putt boat. We started in his back yard by watching it go round and round in one of his mother's washtubs. We felt that this was boring and that enlarging the 'marina' would be more interesting in an enlarged version. This required dispensing with the washtub, of course, and excavating a few depressions in the back yard lawn. We decided it hadn't been much of a lawn to begin with.
There were two basic models of putt-putt boats. There was your basic model about five inches long which I think cost an unbelievably low fifteen cents; then there was the super deluxe model which cost an astronomical thirty-five cents. Weewee and I stayed busy for several days digging holes in the back yard until we had an elaborate interlocking system of lakes, pools and canals providing ample room for navigation. Our efforts had not gone unnoticed by other boys in the neighborhood, however, and within a few days there were another six or seven boats plying the waters of Lake Weewee.
Naturally, it was not long before we tired of paying the retail prices for candles. Virtually all of our mothers had little cardboard boxes containing several blocks of paraffin wax used at canning time; melted and poured for airtight sealing of the jars of jellies, jams and other contraceptives. One block of the wax would produce about one hundred candles which we made by rolling ordinary grocery string into soft balls of the wax.
When I reminded Al of this activity he was somewhat vague in his memory of the details but was astonished when I said I couldn't clearly remember the huge caragana hedge that surrounded the yard.
'Surely you can remember that hedge,' he said. 'You and Kenny and I would hide in there when we saw someone coming and they wouldn't even know we were there!'
'What was the point of all that?' I asked, to his annoyance. 'Here I am discussing the fascinating hydraulics of the most cleverly-designed boats in a coon's age and you interrupt with a meaningless statement like that!'
'I was just wonderin' if you could remember somethin' so obvious.'
'It's always been that way with me, either I remember something in excruciating detail or I forget about it completely. I tend to forget about things that have unpleasant overtones.' I said.
'Whatta you mean?'
'Well, in the case of your claim that we were huddled together hiding in the caragana I assume that there was something extremely unpleasant connected with it.'
'Such as?'
'Well, I suspect that one of us was guilty of easing out a silent but deadly green one. I've eliminated myself because it's well known that my farts don't stink. Kenny is a suspect because I've stood in his kitchen watching him make a Worcestershire sauce sandwich. I don't know all the details of your diet but from what I gather from your comments you're rather heavily into cabbage and beans and other gas-generating items.'
'Good Lord! Talk about meaningless statements! I mention a simple thing like the caragana hedge and you drone on arrogantly about our eating habits.'
'I've been meaning to say something for some time,' I said, sanctimoniously.
'Get stuffed!' Al said.
Weewee was left pretty well on his own, so far as I could see. I know his mother was a 'presence' but I have no clear recollection of her. I remember his father more clearly. He was a tall, conservatively-dressed man with rimless spectacles that gave him a stern look. I remember that we had the run of the house as long as we were with Weewee but I have no recollection of him talking to her. Perhaps she suffered from migraine headaches and spent most of her time lying on on the bed in a darkened bedroom.
Meanwhile, Weewee's Dad watched the encroachment of the corrugated box invasion gradually assume the position the waxed butter boxes had assumed for so long. The butter boxes were things of beauty! There were close-fitting mortise and tenon joints holding the sideboards together and the insides of the box were covered with paraffin wax to protect the contents. They were just too good!
Whether the old boy saw the handwriting on the wall and just didn't have the funding to convert to the competition, or decided that it wasn't worth the effort we'll never know. There wasn't much left for the sons to inherit, assuming they were interested. The last ime I saw Weewee's older brother he was working for Air Canada (Trans-Canada Airlines in those days) as a counter clerk in their office across from the Palliser Hotel. He'd be well over eighty now if he's still living. After a heroic period as a rushing fullback for the Central High School senior football team, Weewee abjured a higher education and ended up as as a service station lessee in the Okanogan somewhere.
It's possible that the ultimate panacea for the old boy was his religion.
'They say they're members of the Oxford Group,' my mother said to Dad one night at dinner. She made it sound as though the parents were both victims of terminal cancer. According to Webster's dictionary, the Oxford movement consisted of a move toward High Church principles in the Church of England which originated in 1833 at Oxford University. The Oxford Group, on the other hand, was a movement founded in 1921 by Frank Buchman and dedicated to world improvement through private and public morality. It was also known as Moral Rearmament or Buchmanism.
If Weewee's father were facing bankruptcy or the demise of a previously profitable business it seems possible that a cult-like organization like the Oxford Group would be just what the doctor ordered. A World War came along in 1939 and may have proved to be the final straw that broke the camel's back.
— The End —