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STEPS 12/13/2014 12:06:12 PM
We were in their house in Kenton, Ohio less than an hour when my mother volunteered to go into the basement to get us a fresh and unopened bottle of Ketchup. Grandma Lasch had just that afternoon gone to the store and replenished her stock of what she knew was my favorite additive.
What neither she nor grandpa Lasch nor Aunt Stevie knew (the three of them lived in the house on Kington St.) was that my mother did not know where the cellar light switch was located.
Anyway, she missed the last step and went flying.
By the time we reached her, her right foot was bent under her, she was moaning in pain, and none of us knew what to do for her. Except stop screaming and try to picker her up.
The outcome, after the doctor had left, was that my mother had broken her ankle and would be in a cast for at least a month. And she would not be able to so much as walk for the first week or so.
Thus, was our inconspicuous introduction to grandma, grandpa and Aunt Stevie’s new house on Kingston Street.
But that was not the worst of it. That occurred the next morning when I met Orlando Putzio just after breakfast.
Orlando (who by his own insistence preferred to be called ‘Orly’) was a boy three or four months older than I and eight or nine inches taller. Plus, he seemed to have several years on me.
“Wanna go play on the railroad tracks?” Orly immediately asked.
“My gran’ma told me to always stay away from those tracks,” I told him.
The tracks, east and west bound, were part of a wooden trestle a block away that had been the scene of more than one homeless vagrant being hit and cut in half by a full-speed, unsuspicious train. It was usually on its way to Toledo or Cleveland.
“You always do what your gran’ma says you do?”
We spent the morning playing on the wooden trestle; I particularly liked the part where we hung for dear life by our fingers while an entire train roared on passed us just inches overhead.
I remember once when I agreed to openly handle the guts and innards of a tramp that had been cut in half by a train. It was much like hamburger.
The real tragedy happened, however, the day I took the tiny awl from gran’pa Lasch’s workbench, so Orly could punch holes in the top of a tin can for the collection of butterflies he hoped to get from gran’ma Lasch’s vegetable garden outback.
Instead, he held the awl wrong and promptly punched a small hole in the palm of his hand.
“Ouch, look what you’ve caused! Look at the hole in my hand! Wait till I tell your gran’pa it’s what you stold from him that made me hurt myself! Ow! Ouch!”
“You ain’t even bleeding!”
“So what! I will be soon!”
I was so deathly afraid he would tell my gran’pa about the awl I had stold from his workbench — which would lead to a story about playing on train trestle and touching the ‘hamburger’ — I barely slept.
The happiest day that summer came when my mother’s cast came off, and I said goodbye to Orlando Putzio, when his vacation ended, and he likewise said goodbye and returned with his parents to his regular home in St. Louis.
“Goodbye, Orlando.”
“I told you my name was Orly!”
“Goodbye, Orlando.”
Every Saturday gran’pa Lasch took me to the Kentonan for the matinee showing of the latest Cowboy flick, starring Hoppa Long Cassidy, or Wild Bill Hickcock, or Jack LaRue, or Buck Jones, or Gene Autry, or Roy Rogers -- in fact, Rogers was appearing in person on Saturday afternoon Aug. 20 to give away 50 ‘Roy Rogers 6-shooters’ to the first 50 kids there for the show.
I just had to have one! What they didn’t tell was he would be throwing them under the marquee to any who could catch ‘em before they hit the ground.
I stood in the crowd until one came my way. I waited for it -- and waited. It turned over and over in the air, and finally came to rest -- smack dab on my forehead before plummeting into someone else’s outstretched hands.
The gun’s grip was made of genuine dolcemighty ivory, imprinted with R.R. stamped in red, was visable on my forehead for about 36 hours.
“I don’t see it,” Aunt Stevie said.
“I don’t, either,” affirmed my mother.
“Well, it’s there!” I shouted, in case Orly could hear me in St. Louis. I knew it was there, and you could actually see it, if you looked.
Gran’ma Lasch had a garden behind her house that had a row of rhubarb, stalks and all. I never knew what rhubarb tasted like or anybody who grew it in their garden or who made rhubarb pie of
it -- which became my favorite over the summer. And it still is.
That fall I got a letter from gran’ma Lasch; the only letter from her I ever received. She said, “I baked you a rebarb (sic) pie from me own gRbedane (sic).
GRANDMOTHER Misse9 yo (sic).
E.D.M.
