The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Even if kids don’t like being in school, there’s always extra-curricular activities. You girls have your school sports, and music, and clubs. I had the FFA. What’s the FFA, Daddy? The FFA is Future Farmers of America and Jack, and Ick, and I were all in it. Well, we grew up on farms, so it made sense. But I’m telling you, we didn’t join the FFA because we planned to be farmers! We joined for the annual trip. See, every year, the school sent their FFA boys to the national convention. We all wanted to go to. A week with no school and no chores sounded like a great idea to us! But there were two downsides to that trip: it meant spending a week with Mr. Pryor and…well, a week with a guy I’ll call Roy. Remember Mr. Pryor? I already told you about Mr. Pryor, the superintendent, and principal of the high school. He didn’t like me too much. He went to keep an eye on us boys and he drove the bus all the way there and back. If you think driving from Oklahoma to the coast is long now, you should have made the trip with…

You know Grandfield’s always been a small place. Shoot, there were only sixteen in my graduating class. And of that bunch, only four of us were boys. I liked that; it meant I had lots of girlfriends. But that also meant Jack, and Ick, and I got put in every school play and program Like the year, they cast us in the senior play. We weren’t seniors but, because we were boys, they cast us anyway. We only had little bitty parts when we had to be onstage. During the rest of the rehearsals, we were supposed to wait in the auditorium. Well, one afternoon, that teacher directing took forever getting to our scenes. That’s when we remembered the First Grade class was down the hall. I told you that school system was small! They taught all twelve grades in one building. And I don’t know if it was Ick, or Jack, or me, but one of us thought we’d wake up the first grade. First, we snuck out the side door of the Auditorium into a school hall. I remember, there were only three doors on that hall: our side door, the one to the janitor’s closet, and the…

It was me, and Jack, and Ick Nault… (Funny, how many of Dad’s stories started that way…) Anyway, we were hangin’ out in your Mimmy’s back yard and I was telling them about John T’s leftover chemicals. You knew John T studied Chemistry, right? He’d go to classes up at Norman during the week, and come home on the weekends with chemicals from the college lab. So, I was tellin’ Jack and Ick about John T’s chemicals: how one of them burned whenever it was exposed to the air, and how another makes all kinda sparks. Anyway, we decided to take some of those leftover chemicals and turn them into fireworks. Now, we didn’t have any rocket launchers or things like that. But we could lay our hands on some empty tomato paste cans. So, we poured some of the chemicals into an old can, added a fuse, and covered it with ash so it wouldn’t catch fire right away. Then we lit the fuse, and Jack or Ick hauled off and threw it as high and far as he could. Then we watched it go, arcin’ and sparkin’ through the air….until it landed …in the next-door neighbor’s garden. That’s…

There are always tributes to male parents close to Father’s Day. Check out Social Media and you’ll see all kinds of posts commemorating the sweetest, the bravest, the kindest fathers, etc. I’m sure all of those plaudits are true. But, when it comes to titles and “Greatest” plastic championship cups, I know which one belongs to my Dad. He was the first and best Storyteller I ever knew. My Dad loved a laugh more than anything else and his jokes were many and varied. (At his funeral, Dad stories brought out as many smiles as tears.) And, as a kid, he and his buddies pulled practical jokes to make each other laugh. And by jokes, I mean the kind of stunts that could get a kid kicked out of school. I know this because he told us about them. Now some parents try to keep their own children from learning what stinkers they were as kids. But not my Dad. He loved spinning tales of his miscreant past and we loved hearing him talk. After all, we knew some of the characters. but Dad had a way of talking that made you feel like you were there. At dinner, Dad…

If you land in the mud long and often enough, you start seeing the funny side of falling down.