Our Victorian Home on Jefferson Street in Wausau

Roger and I weren't troublemakers. Somehow we had a good sense of right and wrong, but we were adventurous and that got us in trouble from time to time. I was a bit more adventuresome than Roger, and I generally was described as the instigator and therefore, took most of the blame. I deserved it.

The earliest I remember us getting in trouble involved the short, quarter-mile walk to school when we were in the first grade. We walked on the south side of busy Highway 29. I don't remember how we crossed over from the north side, but I don't recall our mother helping us cross. Our farmhouse was on the west edge of town. Halfway between where we lived and the school, across from where Owen's main street intersected the highway, was a mill pond on the north side with the dam and a railroad bridge in the far distance. The place where my dad learned how to swim, but at our age, we never ventured there. Probably why we walked on the south side.

Our daily walk crossed a bridge overlooking the small Brick Creek that flowed from the mill pond into the Popple River and around back behind our school. Like all young people of age 6, that creek was an attraction and I do recall checking on it a time or two, but we didn't get into trouble for it, except maybe some wet shoes.

But one day, we were about halfway home, when a very nice car and a really nice well-dressed woman, with a young girl in the car, beckoned for us to ride with her. Of course, it was a very short drive home, but we got in the car anyway and rode. When we told Mom that we got a ride, she scolded us and told us never to get in any car with strangers again!

But when we moved to Wausau, that's where our real troubles began. The neighborhood was changing. What had once been a prosperous, close to downtown neighborhood, had probably been affected by the Great Depression and WWII. While elderly people in nice houses still remained on the local streets. Some, like our rambling Victorian our parents bought, were deteriorating and rented out. On the corner of 7th was an old cigar factory that had long shut down. Our next-door neighbor, old Mr. Brown and his wife, had worked in that factory, but now was a custodian in the YMCA, some blocks away.

There was an alley behind our house. Across the alley to the right was the well-kept home of a dentist. His son, John, who had failed the first grade, was in our second grade class with us, but a year older. We quickly became friends. To the left behind our house was an overgrown lot and a low-lying house with a wheelchair ramp in the front that we never saw anyone come or go from and might as well have been haunted, it was so dark at night. A stark contrast to the dentist's nicely painted and landscaped house next door. But that's the way the neighborhood was. Very mixed in terms of the condition of the houses and the lots. And the people living there.

One thing was constant though. In the fall, leaves were raked, snow was cleared from the sidewalks in winter, and the grass was mowed (except for that one lot that I already mentioned) and the small, overgrown, Jewish synagogue on the corner across from the delicatessen on 6th in the summer. Neighbors sometimes cleared the sidewalks for older people who couldn't. Still, the neighborhood contained an element that was low class, if not criminal. We generally stayed away from those kids. But once in a while we did run across some. Mostly on the playground at school.

For example, there was one kid I befriended one summer who was younger. I don't remember his name or even what we did together. But, we were standing side-by-side one day when he pulled out a jackknife and stabbed it at my belly. I don't know what made him angry, but my survival instinct had me sucking in my gut to the point where his thrust stopped, tickling my shirt. I immediately backed away from him and he no longer was my friend. That was trouble I was glad not to get into. If I had not moved quickly he would've buried that knife in my midsection.

When we were seven, the summer after second grade, we roamed the neighborhood freely looking for rhubarb and carrots to pull from gardens like the Browns' next door, plums ripening on unattended trees like at the synagogue, and other pursuits, mostly with John or a corner classmate, Kenny, with his divorced mother. By that time, I was regularly buying cigarettes for my father by the pack at the local delicatessen on the corner of 6th Street and the street John lived on. Just a block away.

Anyway, we loved playing with matches and someone got the idea to smoke butts. Everyone smoked in those days and there were a lot of cigarette butts on the ground to pick up. We quickly got tired of butts, so we pooled our change and I bought a 25¢ pack of cigarettes. We wanted to hide from being observed by neighbors and parents, so we found a space between buildings halfway up the block off the alley that was secluded enough so we could smoke without being observed.

But soon, we were running out of matches, so we decided to start a little fire to light our cigarettes on. That worked well, and we were puffing away, when all of a sudden, we noticed that the building next to the fire was smoking. We immediately pushed the fire away and started digging away at the rotten wood under the building that was smoldering. We even peed on it, but it just kept smoldering and wouldn't go out.

We started to panic, but John said that he knew the woman that lived at that house and he would go tell her. I was glad that he did because I didn't have the courage. It wasn't long before the fire trucks came and there was a lot of noise and the fireman got the smoldering out. I remember staying away so as not to be seen anywhere near, but I think John even went up and talked to the firemen. He was dumb like that.

A week later, a car drove up to where we were playing, and a woman called out to us from the car. She called us by name and said she was a policewoman and that we should get in the car. She also picked up John and we rode uptown to the police department. We sat on a couch and I clearly remember a big board on the wall that was covered with confiscated blackjacks, switchblade knives, brass knuckles and other weapons that thugs and bad kids carried for protection and mayhem. I didn't want any part of it. Although I had seen did show us their switch blades. Some really nice knives they used for protection.

The policewoman came and gave us a lecture about smoking "nasty" cigarette butts and smoking in general. She made a lot of sense. Convinced me never to smoke again. It also told me not to venture into things that were dangerous to my health or well-being. It just wasn't smart or worth it. A very good lesson learned that I practiced all my life after that.

John's father called our father and us over to their house that evening. He was very upset. The dentist said, "Who put my son up to this? My son would never do a thing like that. He's a good kid."

Dad told him, "It was probably my boys. They're troublemakers." So I admitted that I was the instigator just to get the talking over with. Luckily, the whole incident blew over quite quickly except for one thing…

The next weekend when we went to my grandfather's farm. My grandfather came out to greet us with, "Where are the firebugs? Are you them?" I was really embarrassed over that. Grandpa Hull’s brother was the Fire Chief of Sheboygan. He hated firebugs.

But there was one more trouble, that we really didn't get in trouble for. There was a bad girl in the house next to the old cigar factory. She was younger than us, maybe 5 or 6. We ended up in the garage by her house that was empty. We asked her if she would pull down her panties and show us. Without hesitation, she did. And then, she asked and one of us, not me, obliged. All curiosities were met and we left happy that we had seen it for the first time. My younger sister at two didn't count.

One morning I was out back of the house batting rocks from the driveway that made little dents in our small sized bat for kids. I was a bit frustrated because the rocks seemed to spin and only fly about 4 or 5 feet. But then, I hit one and it disappeared from sight. I was amazed, but grabbed another rock to hit. I heard a crash in the distance, but didn't think anything of it. I recall looking at the dentist's Nash after hearing the crash and thinking that it's rear window was frosted over, stupidly.

Later that day or the next, Dad came home from work and told us, "Doc told me that the back window of his Nash was broken today. You guys know anything about that?"

I admitted, "I was batting rocks this morning, but none of them went anywhere." Then, I remembered hearing the crash and knew that I had hit a homerun.

We went over to see the car and talk to Doc. The curved rear window on the back of the car was clearly shattered in tiny pieces. They talked about something like $27 to get it replace and I was shocked thinking how much I would have to work to pay that off. But Doc eased our minds when he said, "Insurance will take care of it."

I learned the value of insurance even if one is an idiot. After that, I always made sure I had insured everything that might get damaged by my or others' stupidity.

When we were 9 and picking beans, we encountered some cute but, rather bad girls that accompanied us out in the fields. One day, I suggested that a pair of the girls accompany Roger and me during our lunch period where we could do a little mischief. We found a bank in the woods and sat down with the girl that I asked on my left and Roger with another girl a little bit from us. The word got out and almost everyone there joined us in the woods. So much for hanky-panky.

We just started opening our lunch when someone came to sit down on my right side and yelled, "Snake!"

There was some discussion about what kind of snake it was and I thought it was a fox snake that we often saw in the woods and didn't think much of it. So I took a stick and poked it. Immediately, its head came up. And then, its tail came up and started rattling. I was sitting right next to a rattlesnake that I could have sat on earlier! Of course, everybody got up and ran from the woods. But a much older, retarded guy went back in the woods and killed it, bring it out into the field to show to our farmer employers.

The farmers told us that timber and Massasauga rattlesnakes were common in those low lands near the Wisconsin River. The timber rattlers brought $0.50 a rattle bounty and the smaller Massasauga rattlers $0.25. In all my years in the woods after that, I never saw another rattlesnake. Some hunted them for the bounty though.

I wasn't through with those girls, though. We heard that the Caine Mutiny was playing at the main theater downtown. But there was another theater nearby that showed sexy, sleazy B movies.

That Saturday, we told Mom that we were going to see the Caine Mutiny during the matinee. Mom approved they gave us money to go see it.

We went to the other theater and caught up with the girls. There was some dumb movie playing that didn't have any thanks sexy and it and the girls didn't like the movie either.

Two days later I was in the kitchen helping Mom with the dishes when she suddenly asked, "How was the Caine Mutiny?"

At that point I didn't even know that Marlon Brando was in the movie, and I thought a bit before I answered, saying something like, "Oh, it was a good movie."

Knowing Mom, she knew we didn't go. She always knew when we lied to her. She had a sixth sense about things like that. Disciplined us fairly with not letting us have some privileges. I do remember being confined to our yard once for a week, but I don't remember what for.

If it was serious, Dad would crack the belt when she asked him. But I only remember being hit with that belt only once or twice. And those were probably for fighting with Roger and nothing more.

We also got in trouble with our bikes, but I'll leave that to the tail, Bicycles.

Copyright 2019 © Ronald W. Hull

7/16/19