33. The Obstacle Course ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Robert glanced toward the front gate and saw Alan, the boys’ cousin, about to come in. Alan lived in Ladoga and was visiting his grandmother, Lena Rhode, who lived in Pine Village. Lena resembled the sweet old woman in the illustrations in one of the children’s books that Ida had read to Robert when he was small: white hair in a braid encircling her head, wire-rim glasses, and an embroidered apron. In the book, the woman popped corn, and Robert wondered how often Lena did the same.

Robert ran to meet Alan, whom he looked up to. A visit from Alan meant fun on the farm. Charles sauntered through the screen door and waved at Alan.

Alan was closer to Charles’ age, and the two of them devised what Robert considered fascinating games that he could not have imagined on his own.

Ida came to the door to greet Alan.

“Can you stay with us for dinner?” she asked Alan.

“Yes,” Alan said simply.

“Then you boys play for an hour, and I’ll have dinner ready by then.”

“What would you like to do?” Charles asked Alan, who glanced at a red Schwinn bicycle lying on its side.

“Let’s ride the bike,” he suggested.

After taking turns riding back and forth on the sidewalk a few times within the yard, Alan and Charles decided to take the bicycle through the south gate into the chicken yard.

The boys cleared an oval track around the westernmost chicken house. They had to move a five-gallon metal bucket out of the way, and they had to pull up gypsum weeds by their roots along the south side of the chicken house. Soon, Charles and Alan were alternating fast rides around the building while Robert watched.

“Would you like to ride next?” Alan asked Robert.

“Yes, I would!” Robert exclaimed.

Alan turned toward Charles. “I think your brother would like to take a turn.”

Charles yielded the bike to Robert, who pedaled slowly at first but eventually gained enough speed to keep the bike from wobbling. The boys had gone around the track often enough that the path had grown dusty. It felt soft beneath the tires.

After Robert had made two circuits, Alan said, “You know what we need. We need an obstacle course.”

Charles agreed. He and Alan placed the metal bucket directly in the path. Then they took turns steering around it while riding at top speed.

While Charles rode, Alan looked over a small metal drum and the unhinged door from a hog house. When Charles came to a stop, Alan said, “Why don’t we lay this barrel on its side and lean this door on it to make a ramp? Then we could ride the bike up the ramp, fly through the air, and come down on the other side.”

Charles smiled broadly the moment he heard the plan. He and Alan tugged the drum into place and propped the door to make the ramp, which was steeper than either he or Alan had realized it would be.

“What do you think?” Alan asked. “Can we keep the bike upright after flying through the air?”

“I think so,” Charles said.

“I dare you to go first,” Alan said.

“I double dare you to go first,” Charles replied.

“Well, alright!” Alan said. “If you’re going to double dare me, I suppose I’ll have to show you how it’s done.”

He set the bucket out of the way, so that the oval was clear, except for the ramp, which seemed pointed at the sky. Alan rode once around the chicken house to gain speed. On the second pass, he bounced the front wheel over the edge of the wooden door. The bike dashed up the incline and dropped heavily just beyond the upper edge. Alan stayed standing on the pedals as a cloud of dust arose, and, wobbling to the right and back to the left, he kept the bike upright. The stunt was magnificent! Robert applauded in glee!

“Now it’s your turn,” Alan said to Charles.

Having had the advantage of watching Alan, Charles imitated his predecessor’s strategy as exactly as he could. He built up his speed around the track, and, the second time around, he flew up the ramp. With his legs almost straight up from the pedals, he rode the bike in its short arc back to Mother Earth and managed to pedal the bicycle forward beyond the dust cloud marking the point of impact.

“That was impressive,” Alan said, in his customary droll manner.

“Robert, would you like to try?”

Robert quickly declined the opportunity. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not old enough.”

“Shall we go again?” Alan asked. He accepted the handlebars from Charles and made his second attempt, which was less wobbly than his first. Then it was Charles’ turn again.

This time, Charles had a little less speed than he had on his first effort. When he reached the top of the ramp, the bike leaned to one side, and he and the bike fell.

“Oh, no!” Alan said. “Are you alright?”

Charles dusted himself off. He had torn the knee of his jeans, and he had a small cut on one elbow; otherwise, he had come away unscathed.

“Boys!” Ida called from the back door. “Dinner’s ready! Charles, go get your father!”

Charles walked to the barn to tell Joe it was time to eat the noon meal.

When everyone entered the kitchen, Ida looked at Charles and asked, “How did you rip your jeans?”

“I fell off the bike,” Charles said.

“You should have seen it!” Robert said, but a look from Charles made Robert understand he was not to reveal the dangerous ramp, which the boys had dismantled. “He just … fell … off!” Robert extemporized.

“Put some tincture Merthiolate on his elbow while I give the boys their Fizzies,” Ida said to Joe.

Alan, Charles, and Robert eagerly dropped the Fizzies tablets in their glasses and watched as the flavored bubbles rose through the water.

After the meal, Ida told Charles to change his pants and to bring her the torn jeans. When she straightened out the rolled up cuffs, a handful of dust fell from each one.

“What were you boys doing?” she asked, with an inkling of the truth.

No one replied.

“Whatever it was, nobody was seriously hurt, at least,” she said, as she prepared a patch for the jeans.

As Joe had to go to Keith’s shop for a tractor part anyway, he drove Alan back to Lena’s house. Having had great fun, Robert looked forward to more adventures the next time Alan would visit.

27. The Red Coat ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

For that winter, Ida bought Robert and Charles new parkas. Robert asked if, rather than the usual dark blue or gray coats, he could have the red one on the rack at Sears, and—surprise!—Ida consented.

Robert loved his red coat! It was bright red throughout. Even the fuzzy stuff that took the place of fur around the hood was the same red! He could hardly wait to wear it on the playground at school.

He had fewer chances to wear it than he might have. The onslaught of childhood diseases had begun, and he had to remain at home with them, as well as being “quarantined” with what he eventually came to expect: his Christmas flu.

Over the next few years, Robert had the chicken pox, measles, mumps (on both sides), and a different kind of measles that was much more virulent than the first kind had been. He heard his parents referring to “the German measles,” so that must have been what the bad ones were.

Robert hated missing school and falling behind in his assignments—even while he tried to keep up from home.

… and he hated Vicks VapoRub. Whenever he had a cold or flu, his mother smeared the intensely aromatic VapoRub on his chest, covered the gooey mess with a square torn from a worn-out pair of flannel pajamas, and buttoned up his new flannel pajama top over the square. Even when she had pulled the sheet, the bedspread, the gray woolen blanket, and the crazy quilt with its thick batting up to Robert’s eyes, Robert could still smell the VapoRub. While he slowly baked beneath the heavy bedding, he felt sick because he smelled VapoRub, which he associated with feeling sick. It was a vicious cycle.

Robert was not terribly fond of the vitamins, either. They were in a brown bottle. Ida would pour the thick liquid into a teaspoon and hold out the spoon for Robert to take the vitamins, which had a strong aroma from the sulfur in the composition.

In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink were other medicines. There was tincture Merthiolate for cuts. It was applied from a thin glass rod attached to the inside of the cap, and it colored the cut a glaring reddish orange. For inflamed membranes or rashes, the light pink salve from the tube of Taloin ointment did the trick. Rubbing alcohol cleaned scratches.

Whenever Robert experienced a particularly stubborn bout of flu, Ida took him to see Dr. Scheurich. The good doctor might or might not set his cigar aside long enough to insert a tongue depressor in Robert’s mouth and to peer down Robert’s throat. Then, invariably, he would hand Ida a bottle of little red pills. Did the pills help? Not that Robert could determine.  

Behind one of the upper hinged doors of the Hoosier was Joe’s arsenal of aspirin. There was also an extra tin of the udder balm, with which Joe soothed his cows’ sensitive skin after milking them. Joe and Ida applied udder balm to any dry patches that appeared on their hands, arms, or legs during the winter months.

Illnesses could not hold out forever, and—finally!—Robert got to wear his red coat on the playground! Alan and Terry led Robert’s class in building a beauty of a snow fort. Simultaneously, the two Steves of the class above Robert’s class guided their classmates in fashioning a most menacing fort within a snowball’s distance of the other fort.

One of the Steves yelled across the no-man’s-land, “I dare you to be the first to throw a snowball.” At the same time, to taunt Alan and Terry’s side, the other Steve stood on his head and waggled his legs.

“I say we attack ‘em now,” Terry advised.

“Have we made enough snowballs?” Alan asked.

“Sure! There are plenty.”

“They’re asking for it,” Robert said.

“Fire at will!” Alan commanded.

Suddenly, the air between the two forts was full of snowballs. With several allies from older and younger classes, each fort numbered as many as twenty troops. Steve the Taunter nimbly dodged multiple snowballs hurled in his direction. His arm was a blur as he gave back as good as he got, firing snowball after snowball at his opponents.

A snowball found its mark on the right side of Robert’s face, shattering lightly all about. Robert laughed as a chunk of the cold stuff went down his neck. Almost immediately, another snowball burst off the left side of his face, and more snow rolled inside his collar and down his neck. Robert was laughing so hard that he was almost incapacitated.

Gasping for air and laughing uncontrollably, he yelled, “Stop! Stop!”

Wham! Another snowball hit him on a shoulder.

“It’s your coat,” Terry shouted over the din of the battle. “The red is a target!”

Robert ducked behind the highest wall of the fort and regained his breath.

Nearby, Dennis jumped up to throw a massive snowball toward the enemy fort. At the same instant, he was hit full in the face.

“Oh, they got me,” he said, falling to the ground and pretending to be a casualty—but only for a second. Then he was back on his feet and sending snowballs through the frosty air.

Susan, Linda, Randy, and Jean had reinforced the fort. They scurried out the back, formed snowballs in their gloved hands, ran inside the enclosure, and threw them as hard as they could, many of them finding their mark.

Before long, the sides had increased to over thirty troops apiece.

Just when the fight was becoming the best in history, someone heard Mrs. Arvin calling. The recess was over. Laughing and chuckling, the students filed from both forts across the playground to the school building. There were no hard feelings. Students that had been enemies only seconds earlier were swapping tales of valor with one another on the way back to the classrooms.

As Robert thought about it later, it may well have been the best snowball fight in history. By the next day, an abrupt warming trend had melted much of the snow, and the forts were destined to disappear from the playground landscape. The bonds of friendship that the battle had only strengthened were strong enough to endure the vicissitudes of lifetimes.