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by
bud simpson |
May
17, 2006 |
Dirt
Tossing for trouble back when all it took for
fun was a bunch of clods
As a boy
I lived in a house at 11th and Spruce that my mom and dad rented
from the late Mary Cirese. It was certainly no palace, but from
1954, when we moved in, until 1977 when my widowed mom finally
moved out, Mary never once raised the rent – $60 always.
May she ever rest in peace.
Our little clapboard house sat at the northwest corner of three
empty lots, the other two houses long-gone years before, and
while the lack of houses gave us a unencumbered view of the
12th Street bus turnaround, Chuck Capo’s salvage yard
and the Jackson Hoe Bar, it also gave us a huge yard, at least
half of which was given to garden every year. Hundred-foot rows
of corn, countless tomato and zucchini plants, sky-high pole
beans and pumpkins as big as Cadillacs. Well, maybe not Cadillacs,
but they were really big pumpkins.
The rites of summer included the “March of the Zucchini,”
when dad and I tried to foist the product of the overabundant
squash harvest on anyone who wasn’t at home to say “no,
thanks.” It was also time for the “Tossing of the
Big Boys.” I’d stand on the north side of Chuck’s
fence, safe from the junk yard dogs that protected his dump
trucks and diesel Caterpillars, and lob tomatoes over to Chuck.
Chuck was always appreciative, and a pretty darned good catch
– he never once dropped a tomato.
For the bunch of us kids, though, the harvest wasn’t in
the summer or fall, it was in the spring, when Mr. Taylor from
next door trailered his old blue Ford tractor in and plowed
whatever was left of the previous year’s stubble and rot
under. By the time he had turned it all under and disked it
a couple of times, it was pretty smooth as dirt goes, but there
were plenty of baseball-sized dirt clods. Since they were already
an appropriate size, it seemed only logical that they were meant
for throwing, and when a dry Missouri dirt clod hits asphalt,
it gives off a satisfying puff of “smoke,” as we
imagined a hand grenade might, if a hand grenade needed the
power of imagination to properly function.
Dirt was our reason to exist. We played in it, dug in it, ate
it, breathed it. I credit nothing more than good old middle-American
humus and clay for building an immune system that has kept me
(knock wood) remarkably healthy in spite of myself for all these
years. There is research to back up my hypothesis – you
could probably look it up.
The 11th Street neighborhood kids – Tommy, Steve, Leonard
and I, along with whatever kids happened to drift through the
neighborhood’s rental houses – would fortify a position
up close to the short strand of houses on Jackson Court and
heave those dirt clods at enemies both imaginary and exotic.
One year we single-handedly killed off the entire Third Reich
with nothing more than plain garden dirt, and we were only 10.
Spruce Avenue was our usual target – no houses between
11th and 12th, and a hollow tree next to the street from which
we could ambush the armored assault vehicles that we imagined
were cruising back and forth in front of us. A typical day of
this entertainment left the street looking as if it could be
plowed and planted.
Late one afternoon, Steve (not his real name) and I were lofting
the last few sorties of the day toward the enemy lines, when
he decided to change to aerial mode, sending his clods high
into the twilight. This was a mistake. As we stood in plain
sight, we watched a fist-sized hunk of dirt arc gracefully through
the deepening sky, break apart in mid-air, and land with a sickening
thud on top of a Kansas City police car. To make matters worse
(if that’s possible) part of the clod had sailed right
into the open window of the car, and landed right smack in the
lap of one very surprised Sergeant Williams. The horror.
In the 10 seconds that it took Williams to turn left on 11th
and into our gravel driveway, lights and siren at full neighborhood-alerting,
end-of-the-world intensity, Steve and I had come up with 16
different alibis as to how we were just standing there watching
dirt fall from the sky, horrified to see one of Kansas City’s
Finest in the line of fire. When he motioned us over to the
car, Sgt. Williams could see that we were pale and trembling
in abject terror, just a heartbeat away from losing control
of all our excretory functions. We were quite sure that we’d
be getting our meals slid under barred iron doors from that
day forward.
The Sergeant put us the back seat of the ‘60 Ford cruiser
and went inside the house for what seemed an eternity to talk
to my dad. By now, the commotion had the whole neighborhood
on high Cold War alert, and Steve’s mom had walked up
the street, only to find her son in the back seat of a police
cruiser with “that Simpson boy.” As she squawked
and hollered at Steve, and he and I were thinking of making
a break for it – 10 year-old dirt clod fugitives –
my dad and the Sergeant came back out of the house. Dad, always
the strong, silent type, just stood there, arms crossed, shaking
his head as the Sergeant gave us the full Broderick Crawford,
Highway Patrol treatment. After a suitable scare in the back
of a Kansas City black-and-white, we were released to the horrors
of our own homes and parents. Jail would surely have been far
less intense than what awaited us there.
Bud
Simpson is a member of the infamous Northeast High School Class
of 1968 and a professional photographer. Learn more at www.budzilla.com.
