Chapter 18: Simple Solutions

Pa and I were headed toward the JC Penny's store after a football game one Saturday afternoon after school. Whenever I was in a game Pa always took time away from his chores to watch me play. Ma sighed and shook her head each time Pa called the Baxters on the farm next to ours and offered to pay Teddy Baxter a dollar to milk the cows for us. Ma always shook her head at Pa's extravagance and never argued.

Because of my size and strength the coach placed me in the line. I played right or left guard on both offense and defense.

Woodman High was not a large school. This meant we had a first string and a few wishfuls. We didn't have enough players for much else. Ma attended only one game and decided football was not her game. The first and last game she attended was an unusually rough one, even for the Thirties.

On one play I broke through the opposing line and nailed the other side's receiver before he ever got a chance to take a step. He fumbled and dropped the ball and I covered it. When one of the opposing team's players tried the same thing he ended up with a broken arm. Three players were taken out of the game because I accidentally injured them.

Again, let me say I did not mean to hurt anyone. The game that day was one where things went bad for some guys on the other team. For some reason I was always in the middle of whatever happened that day. Their coach admited I had done nothing wrong.

As soon as the game was over I ran tired and sweaty into the locker room to change and join my folks so we could ride home together. Pa and I loved to rehash every play. He had played first string for Woodman High when he attended there and we were both football fanatics.

"You know, Davy, I felt sorry for the other team. I been thinking that maybe you ought to at least tie one hand behind your back. You know, just to make things a little fairer. You didn't even need the rest of the team to win today."

Ma interrupted us. "David, I don't know whether you should be permitted to play such an awful game any more," she said without any warning.

"What?" Pa and I both exclaimed at the same time. This was the first and only time Ma had come to watch me play.

"Well, you do play too rough, David," she told me. "I hated it when you hurt those poor boys. I don't think you should engage in football until you learn to be less rough. You might seriously injure someone. It's just too dangerous." Pa told me later he thought she was joking.

"Yup, dangerous for the other team," Pa said. He looked sideways out of the corner of his eye and turned his concentration back to his driving.

Ma's parents were teachers at a private school for rich kids in St Louis. Their sports program consisted of "friendly" games of touch football and softball. They played what we boys called "girls sports" and "sissy games." Ma told us later that school played softball instead of baseball because a teacher got beaned once by a wild foul and was knocked out. I figured if he'd had his mind on the game instead of something else, he would have ducked.

A sprained wrist was as bad as it got for them. So Ma didn't have any concept of old fashioned Oklahoma and Texas style full body contact football. We always played serious as a heart attack hold nothing back football. This of course meant more people did get hurt during a game between two strong competitive teams.

After she watched me play football that one time, Ma went shopping during the games and Pa and I picked her up later when the game was over, or she stayed home. The only real disagreements my parents ever had were over me playing football and wrestling. Pa was proud that his only son, a freshman, competed with the seniors and held his own. Since I inherited Pa's build, combined with Ma's great cooking and hard work all my life I was bigger and stronger than all my "townie" classmates.

Wrestling was the same thing. Ma came once when my opponent, a slightly heavier boy, and I started in the Sugar Side Stance and when I slipped around and caught him in a Half Nelson he tried to roll out of it and twisted his knee and dislocated it. He screamed and the match was stopped. I won by default.

Our other heavyweight wrestler ate too many hot dogs before the same match and got sick. I volunteered to take his place and slammed the other guy to the mat too hard and he ended up with a pulled back muscle. Ma was horrified. Pa and I both explained how sometimes bad things happened. Ma refused to watch me wrestle after that. Then after that fatal football game she stayed away from all of my school sports activities.

In an attempt to joke about something she couldn't understand, she said, "David, if you entered the debating contest you would probably raise your voice to make a point and cause the other boy to end up with a broken eardrum." Pa snorted.

The good thing about the latest football game was there were no injuries on either side. Sam and Ma were waiting for us. Sam had no interest in any kind of sports. All she knew about sports was how to tally the odds, thanks to her deceased father. On the day of the latest game, Sam decided to come out and visit for the weekend.

Pa and I rehashed the game, play-by-play when we were stopped by a line of cars that extended from the underpass known as "Franklin's Folly" all the way past the curve leading into town. It got that name because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our thirty-second president instituted a system of public works projects to give unemployed people jobs.

Unfortunately, the political appointees who ran these projects were not the best talent around. The "Folly" was one such example of what happens when an incompetent bureaucrat helps design something and has it built by an even less talented contractor. "The blind leading the blind" comes to mind as an apt description of how "The Folly" was built.

The road going out of town east at one time had a curving state road and a simple railroad crossing complete with a warning sign. People saw the Railroad Crossing sign, slowed down and looked both ways. Then, if the way was clear, they proceeded on their ways. That was too simple for a bureaucrat. Since it worked and was simple, the bureaucrat felt obligated to fix it.

Along came the expert who designed an underpass to replace the simple crossing we had used and had worked fine for years. The trains were all rerouted and the work began. With all the changes ordered by the expert, the measurements were wrong and the underpass was built too shallow and too narrow. Two cars could pass each other safely; even a car and a truck if care was taken. However two wide trucks couldn't make it. They dented each other badly every time.

Bratty Betty May Henderson's father made a fortune off those mishaps. He put up warning signs proclaiming, "After You Hit The Oncoming Truck At The Underpass, Remember Henderson's Garage," All the locals thought it was the funniest sign in the county. Here he warned them and got their business when they ignored the warning.

This time there was a truck and trailer stuck in the underpass. The limit sign at the underpass stated "CLEARANCE 12 Ft. – 2 In," and it was originally. But then after the underpass was completed the same government bureaucrat came back and ordered the roadway paved with asphalt topping.

The contractor who did the job neglected to scrape out enough dirt when he made the new roadbed. As a result the sign should have been changed to read eleven feet three inches. Truckers with high loads who were driving through our part of the country for the first time invariably got stuck under the overhang.

Pa stopped the car and we got out and walked past the twenty or so other cars stalled on the curve. There, with it's load jammed tight inside the underpass was an old Kelly flat bed with an International Harvester farm tractor sticking up above the cab. The tractor was saved from damage by the heavy crates piled up on the bed in front of it.

They stood a few inches above the cab and were jammed solid under the overhead. People were yelling, some were cussing and a couple of the angriest wanted to whip the truck driver for getting stuck.

"Look here, fellers," the truck driver said, "My load measures eleven feet and ten inches high at the top most point. The dad gummed sign says 'CLEARANCE 12 feet 2 INCHES." Now you tell me what is wrong here."

One of the men who wanted to whip the driver said, "Yer a plumb dumb eedjut if ya believe everything you read."