Orange Crush
Noel Laflin
3-29-15
My father
became a Den Mother somewhere back in the late fall of 1955 – right around the
time my sister was born.
He gladly
took over the position of hosting, within our old garage, a squirrely bunch of
nine and ten-year-old neighborhood boys – my older brother being one of the
squirrels – as my mother suddenly had her hands full with my kid sister and had
to resign her volunteering duties for a spell.
Den Fathers
were pretty rare back then, but my dad was up for the challenge. In fact, looking back on it, I am certain
that he relished the position.
The first
thing he did was to enlist the help of the other fathers. They joined
in as it gave them all an excuse to have a new weekly guy’s group and see what
trouble they could generate in tandem with their kids.
Now, I do
not have a clear recollection of all that they did that next year – I mean,
only being three years old at the time does limit one’s perspective.
However, I do remember one afternoon in particular when I, the den’s unofficial
pain-in-the-butt kid-brother mascot, was unceremoniously packed into a variety
of old rickety orange crates and then jettisoned about the neighborhood via the
renegade scooter gang.
You see, homemade
orange crate scooters were all the rage in the mid fifties. Just picture the
scene in “Back to the Future,” where Marty highjack’s a young boy’s scooter,
removes the handle and box, then makes his getaway from Biff and pals on just
a board and wheels. So it was that my
dad and his buddies had their boys building their own orange crate scooters at the weekly
den meeting in our garage.
I vaguely
remember all of the sawing, sanding, and painting of boards before they were
attached to disembodied sets of old metal roller skate wheels. Additionally, I have dim recall of the flimsy
upended orange crates and wooden handles being secured to the skate boards as
well. Being small and in the way mostly, I was usually shooed about from cub to cub.
But where
the really vivid memories come to life, and when I was suddenly in demand, is when my brother and his pals took
turns stuffing me into those crates as they took their new contraptions out for
a test drive.
Apparently I
fit rather well and added the right amount of counter-weight to the front of
the scooter. It was either me or a sack
of potatoes I suppose. But, as I was
more of a challenge to run down and actually catch, then say a boring sack of
potatoes, well, you can see the logic in
their decision making process.
So there I
would find myself – in a splintery, flimsy, airy box - chubby fingers clutching
the thin strips of pine wood - screaming for all I was worth for someone to let
me out as I watched the houses race by in sickening backward fashion.
Sometimes
the rides ended smoothly enough – sometimes in the gutter. Either way, it was one long afternoon.
When it came
time for the next meeting, a short week later, I made sure that I was nowhere to be
found.
And I honestly do believe that it was the very first time that I was missed by that squirrely den of thieves hanging out in our old garage.
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