Orange Crush

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.