I plan on this being the last blog for a while. I have been a bit too wordy lately. This one is, perhaps, a bit self-indulgent. I woke up in the wee hours this morning flooded with memories of Mike. It was almost like he was saying to me, "don't you remember....." So, randomly, just for my own satisfaction, I write some personal memories of my brother.
Ping Pong Ball:
It was afternoon. Mom was resting. She rarely did that, so I know that she was extremely exhausted. Mike was sitting in the wing-back chair in the living room playing with a ping pong ball. He dented it and then said, "watch this, Mell." He took a match and held it next to the dent in the ball. The theory was that the heat would make the dent pop out, but, apparently he held the match a bit too closely and caught the ball on fire. It burned his fingers, he dropped in on a small area rug lying over the carpet in front of the chair (most likely placed there to cover up some earlier mishap to the carpet), caught the rug on fire, ran out with it flaming, the ping pong ball melted, and I screamed. The odor was horrendous, and much to our dismay, the ruckus woke Mom up. To say she was not pleased is an understatement.
BB Gun:
Mike and I were home alone. He was playing with his BB gun. "Hey, Mell, watch this," he said. Always eager to please, I sat on the toilet by the bathroom window to watch his amazing display of expert marksmanship. He barely opened the window right above my head, stood in the hall, took aim, fired! The purpose was to show me how he could shoot BB's through the tiny space created by the open window. He failed. Until the day my parents moved from Moran Drive, there were BB's indentions in the window sill. I don't remember if Mom and Daddy knew how they got there...oh, wait, of course they did. Who else in the family would even attempt such a thing?
Mom's Having Company:
Mom is a bit stressed. The Garden Club is coming. Her furniture, being reupholstered, had not arrived at the appointed time. Mike and I were bickering (we did that from time to time) so she sent us out to wash the front porch. The big picture window had just been cleaned. This is an important fact. So, being the good little Do-Bees that we were, Mike with a mop and I with the hose began to wash the porch. The Devil made me do it, I promise, for I took the hose and sprayed him in the face. This proved to be a really bad plan on my part, as he took the mop (an old-fashioned string mop) and wrapped that thing around my head. Well, the spraying of water and flinging of soap turned into a regular melee. Stuff was flying all over that big picture window. Mom was not pleased. She threw the car keys out the back door and told us to leave....please note, Mike drove us, so he was at least 16 at the time.
This time, the company was already at the house. I truly believe it was the Garden Club again, but I could be mistaken. Dessert consisted of something wonderful with Reddi-Whip to top it off. The lovely ladies were discussing their flower designs and their next show, when Mike and I found our way to the kitchen. Oh, my, there in the refrigerator were two cans of Reddi-Whip ~ one for each of us. "Watch this, Mell," he said. "Okay." He took the Reddi-Whip, held his head back, sprayed it from some little distance into his mouth. Well, that was really neat, so I told him to spray it in my mouth. This time, I think the Devil made him do it for instead of spraying it in my mouth, he sprayed it all over my face. With weapon in hand, I sprayed him back, which, well, you guessed it, resulted in quite the melee. Mom was not happy...she was REALLY unhappy!
Spring Cleaning:
Every spring, part of the ritual at our house was the waxing of the hardwood floors. I guess she had discarded the carpet by then. The wax was liquid and came in square gallon cans. Everything was going beautifully. The floors were gleaming, the wax was on the floor, and not anywhere it should not have been. We were the perfect offspring. Then, Mike decided to stick one finger on each hand into the opening of the floor wax cans. Oh, dear, he cannot get his fingers out. He tries, Charlie tries, I know there is no point in my trying if my brothers are unsuccessful. We sit in the living room, Mike with a gallon can of floor wax stuck on each finger as we contemplate what the next move should be. Being the extraordinarily brilliant strategist that I am, I suggested that, perhaps, if we poked holes in the bottoms of the cans, that would create a circumstance where the cans would just slide right off. It was a really hot day, so we opted to stay inside in the cool air-conditioned house. With hammer and screwdriver in hand, Charlie began to create perforations on the bottom of one of the cans. Oh, dear, who could have anticipated this, floor wax began to drip, nay, pour, out of the bottom of the can. Charlie and I each grabbed a can, held it upside down as we rushed from the house. Now, we are all stuck outside without a plan. Mike suggests that Charlie drive him to Bobby Petty's house where Mr. Petty had a fairly well-equipped workshop. After multiple efforts, Mr. Petty was able to free Mike of the burdensome cans, and all was well. Mom was spared too much drama.
Elementary School:
When I was in second grade at Dalewood Elementary School, I had Mrs. Williams for a teacher. I could neither pronounce her name nor mine and called myself Marilyn Wims and her Mrs. Wims. Our classroom was across the hall from the cafeteria. Mike was in 6th grade, and his class would be in line when our class came in from recess. Oh, I was mortified in the winter when we had to wear pants under our dresses to stay warm. The sixth grade girls did not have to do that. Mike's friends called him Willy. When I would, with great embarrassment have to walk by that line, they would shout out, "here comes little Willy!" I sort of loved that. It made me feel pretty special.
Spiderman:
I had a pink piano in my bedroom. I kept my stuffed animals on top of it. I was certain they played and had a grand time when I was gone. I was equally convinced that they thoroughly enjoyed my piano playing. I did not enjoy practicing, but I had embarrassed my mother with my lack of preparedness for a recital one time too many. I was relegated to my room to practice. As I played, correcting wrongly hit notes, I was startled, more like scared to death, by a noise behind me. I turned around with the hair standing up on the back of my neck and my knees feeling like Jello, only to find Mike climbing into the window behind me. Now, our house was one story, but it was situated on a hill, so my bedroom was virtually on the second floor. What in the world?!? He had stood on the door handle of the door to the crawlspace, right beneath my window, climbed on the top of the door, up on the window sill and into my room. What a guy! He would not admit it, but I think he was just trying to rescue me from piano practice.
Holidays:
Christmas - We had Christmas at Thanksgiving the year he was in Vietnam. He left for Camp Pendleton before shipping out sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My daddy cut down a cedar tree and we put it in the corner of the dining room. We decorated it, and had Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same time that year. Another year, when he was much younger, I remember him spraying himself in the eye with the spray snow that we used for a poor man's flocking. The spray mechanism was clogged, so he was looking at it very closely, cleaning it out with a straight pen, when it sprayed him right in the eye. He screamed and carried on for a while. One year, Mom had bought him a Monopoly Game for Christmas. He tried to guess what it was. This went on for quite a few days. Mom eventually told me what it was, which was quite foolish on her part. One afternoon as we sat by the light of the tree, he continued guessing every sort of wrong thing, so I said, "you may think it's a Monopoly game, but it's not." Oh, shoot, he jumped up yelling that he had a Monopoly game. I could not get him to be quiet. Mom was not pleased, but not terribly surprised. I got spanked...with the cardboard roll from wrapping paper.
Halloween - The one I remember most was when Mike was dressed, I guess as Davy Crockett or somebody like that. He had his BB gun (in case he saw an open window, I guess) loaded with firecrackers. As he and his friend, Mike Graves (I think), sat at the kitchen table enjoying a repast of apple cider and ginger snaps between excursions of collecting candy, he held the BB gun over a burning candle in the middle of the table. I was in the living room, Mom was at the other end of the house, but this was not a big house. Oh, my stars, firecrackers unexpectedly going off in a small house will scare the living daylights out of a person, especially the person holding the smoking gun. They were immediately commanded to leave the house, and leave they did.
Speaking of fireworks....my daddy used to have a fireworks stand. We got all kinds of fireworks around New Year's Eves and Fourths of July. Mike would hold Roman candles and bottle rockets in his hand to shoot...at somebody. We had these little things called booby traps that you set up in drawers and when the drawer was opened a large pop would occur. How many times I screamed, or heard Mom scream as one of those things went off. Cherry Bombs were the favorite instrument of fear, however. I think I remember Mike throwing a cherry bomb in the middle of Mom and some of her friends as they sat in a circle in the yard. Perhaps he said beforehand, "watch this, Mell."
blessings
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