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THE ICE PICK BOY HOAX 10/23/2009 11:20:42 AM
I, like many of us, was once six years old, and, if you’re at all like me, it was a time of fear and stress caused mainly by parents and relatives, peers and predators, the mysteries of school and forced separation from Mom and siblings for one confusing reason or another. It was the worst of times and it was the worst of times. We noted that grandparents, aunts and uncles, sundry pets (especially goldfish) actually died and were no more. And we were told it was going to eventually happen to us, as well. Dead as a doornail, placed in a casket with the lid bolted shut, then buried under six feet of dirt. Buried dead, never to get up again and get dressed in front of the register or radiator to warm our frigid bodies.
The one delight of being six, aside from birthdays and Christmas, was our annual summertime visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s palatial home in Kenton, Ohio. It was an ordinary nice house in an ordinary nice neighborhood in an extremely ordinary, nice town in Midwestern Ohio; but to a six year old who’s dad was an itinerant salesman for J.C. Penney, the homestead in Ohio was truly palatial, compared to the series of cold water flats where my little brother and I groveled beneath frayed and smelly quilts from Watertown and Syracuse, NY, and from Youngstown and Dover, Ohio.
Grandma and Grandpa’s palace was a benevolent respite for a couple of years-—at least, it was until the summer of 1937, that sixth and fateful year. That was the summer I was introduced to collecting lightning bugs.
Freddy Autry was an eight year old boy who lived a block away in Kenton, and he came by one day to play with me. He asked, “What’re you gonna do after dinner?” “I dunno. Sit on the porch, I guess, and get a Coke.” “You wanna catch lightnin’ bugs?” “I dunno--what are they?” “You seen ‘em. They fly around an’ they got flashlights in their tails.” “They do?” “Yeah. You wanna catch ‘em?” “Sure.” “We need a couple of them jars your gran’ma saves rhubarb in. Can you sneak a couple out?” “Sure.” “Don’t forget the lids.”
That night after supper I met Freddy near the garden behind my grandparent’s palace and gave him one of the two Mason jars I had confiscated from Grandma’s workroom in the palace basement. “These ain’t no good,” Freddie groused. “The lids ain’t got no holes in ‘em! Bugs gonna die an’ shut off their flashlights if they can’t breathe.” I panicked. “What we gonna do?” Freddie shrugged, nonplussed. “Gotta get an ice pick and punch holes in the lids, whaddya think, numb nuts!”
An ice pick? The dreaded ice pick? If there was one tool in the kitchen drawers I was forbidden to touch, it was—the ice pick! The can opener was bad enough---but THE ICE PICK?
In 1937 the iceman came and delivered fifty pounds of frozen water each week for my grandmother’s icebox in the kitchen, and the block had to be cut in two with the evil ice pick. Grandpa did this with one well-aimed blow; the pick was also used to break off small pieces for our Cokes as we sat on the glider on the front porch each night and tried to recover from Ohio’s unrelenting, suffocating summer heat. The ice pick was something no one but Grandpa was allowed to touch.
That afternoon I squirreled the infamous axe from the kitchen drawer and met Freddie behind the tool shed near the garden—-I think his eyes actually lit up when he spied the diabolical instrument. “Here! Lemma have that!” he commanded, and reluctantly I handed it over.
Freddie, apparently without thinking, held the Mason jar’s lid in one hand, and, holding the ice pick in much the same fashion Lon Chaney, Jr. would hold a murderous stiletto, plunged the weapon into the lid. Of course, it went right through and impaled its point in the unsuspecting fat of Freddie’s waiting palm.
One scream from my playmate and my worst fears were confirmed. The tip of the pick had penetrated a scant millimeter of flesh, but there was actually a dot of blood where the lid had been. “Jeeper sox!” he cried. “I stabbed myself and it’s all your fault! I’m gonna tell my mother and she’s gonna tell your gran’ma! You did this to me!”
If being petrified means that fear literally numbs your being and transforms all consciousness into a state of solid morbidity, I was petrified. Because I had surreptitiously taken the ice pick from the kitchen drawer without permission and given it to Freddy, it was the same, to my six-year-old reasoning, as if I had stolen the device and thrust it sans mercy into Freddie’s heart. I was doomed. Grandma would tell Grandpa, Grandpa would tell my mother, and my mother would tell my father. Summer-—and life itself-—was over.
Two sucks on the fat of his palm and the blood disappeared; a couple licks later and even the wound was invisible. “I don’t see nuthin,” I whined. “It’s there,” Freddie insisted, “an’ it hurts like all hell! When the infection sets in an’ I get blood poisonin’ you’ll know what it’s like when I die! You’re gonna pay for this!”
And pay for it I did—-but not as I might have expected. For entire month of August 1937, I became Freddie Autry’s slave. Under threat of revelation, I did Freddie’s bidding in all matters necessary, short of brushing his teeth. I paid his admission to movies and bought him Cracker Jack’s (I received no allowance back then, but Grandpa gave me twenty-five cents each week for a movie: fifteen cents for the ticket and ten cents for Cracker Jack’s and a soda pop. I gave the money to Freddie and waited on the curb outside until the movie let out, then walked him home while he begrudgingly gave me a synopsis of Johnny Mack Brown’s latest adventure.)
I don’t know how many Cokes I pilfered from the pantry closet, but Freddie never went thirsty that summer. Sleeping and eating were out of the question; I tossed and turned night after night, and even rhubarb pie held no fascination for me. I don’t know how much sweat I exuded pushing the old rusty reo mower over Freddie’s threadbare lawn, but I thanked my lucky stars Grandpa never asked me to mow his. I can’t count the ice cream cones that went from my fist to Freddie’s, but the worst of it was pulling Freddie’s Red Flyer uphill from Nattin’s Grocery Store Saturday afternoons. There were, I’m sure, many menial tasks I performed to insure his silence, but now I recall only the a fore mentioned.
Finally, it was over; the Sunday before Labor Day we left Kenton and my grandparents’ palatial home. We never returned, as Grandpa lost his job and they moved away-—to a cold water flat in Utica, NY. I never saw Freddie Autry again, and I have no idea what became of him (I often fantasize that he died miserably in Attica, his body covered with festering sores.)
But I had other ghosts to meet, other phantoms of abject fear to overcome: I had to start 1st grade that September.
