Backyard Adventures: The Great Escape Part 2

It was a submachine gun; light in the hand and touting an impressive 500 rounds per minute.  With black plastic cold as real steel, a blazing orange barrel that moved and made sound when you pulled the trigger, and a red light adorning the tip of the muzzle that would flash in time with the realistic recoil. Its status on the backyard battlefield was unmatched. Once, Sargent Steel took the whole of occupied Normandy with nothing but that perfect piece of childhood armament and his warrior spirit. It was Zeus’ lightning bolt, Thor’s hammer, and Mikey’s nun-chucks all combined into one piece of legendary weaponry. And the guard outside prisoner barracks #21 was holding it.

“Where are we with the plan?”  I said to a group of POWs as we huddled in a tight circle inside our prison bunkhouse.

Sargent Steel had just been hauled back to the carport confines of barracks #21, strawberry soda still fizzing on my shirt. The interrogation that I had just endured left me tattered and beaten, but it had also served its purpose.

“Doc hasn’t returned yet, but the boys on latrine duty said they saw him enter without incident.”

Corporal Doc Nowak was my stuffed Teddy bear and a core member of my GI squad. Small, with red and black patchwork fabric that I had decided was his camouflage, Doc was a perfect agent for subterfuge. He was so good at sneaking around, in fact, that he had actually crept into Sargent Steel’s POW camp to assist in the escape. Now, with my interrogation acting as the diversion, he had stealthily slipped through a window and into the Gestapo officer’s personal quarters.

“Good,” I said resolutely.  “The moment he brings us those keys we strike. Got it?”

Backyard Adventures: The Great Escape Part 1

“Steel, Sergeant, United States Army, 3-44-44-33.”

I sat with my back against the concrete wall behind my family’s car port; my arms stretched out and held by imaginary chains. Hid from the world, and more importantly from my mother thanks to the large tree that blocked the kitchen window from the backyard, I underwent torturous interrogations. Only three days prior my grizzled World War II persona had been captured following a disastrous trampoline drop behind enemy lines, and now, locked in a dark room deep within a Nazi POW camp, I was paying the price.  

“Uuse zee metal pipe. This time akross zee face.”

A uniformed guard wearing the dual lightning bolt patch of the SS obeyed the order. He walked slowly to a nearby table, picked up an old copper pipe from an array of tools, needles, and knifes and then, facing me again, raised his arm to attack.

I smiled and laughed, “Ha! You think I’ve never been beaten before? Never tortured?”

Down came the copper pipe striking me flush against the cheek. Pain seared from loosened teeth and a lightly fractured jaw, but I only laughed again and raised an eyebrow to the Gestapo officer performing the interrogation. “Where’d you find this guy, the flag corps?” 

Class Gives Me Gas

I had been sitting in the same chair for two hours, and I was only two thirds of the way through my once a week Intro to American History class. The gas pains in my gut were growing stronger and I knew that if the professor didn’t grant us a break soon that my delicate 18 year old frame would explode outward into a giant skin-ball before retracting into a black hole with my navel as the epicenter.

Fifteen more minutes passed and still no break. I only had to hold on for another forty five minutes, but the building pressure inside was starting to make me twitch with uncontrollable spats of seizure. My choices were limited—do the unthinkable and pass gas in class or die. I was young, only a freshman, so for me the choice was clear.

“I got this” I thought, “I’ve done it before. Junior year of high school, third period chemistry, blamed it on spilled sulfur. Just relax and let it happen. Wait till the pressure subsides, give it an exit strategy, and don’t interfere. It’s as simple as that.”

Backyard Adventures: Capitan Steck and Sargent Steel

I was a solider.  Well mostly.  Sometimes I was a pirate or a lone cowboy sheriff defending my small town from a gang of bandits.  Typically I got the girl, though often I died valiantly (This was my favorite because I could orchestrate my own funeral.  Such lovely words were spoken). 

From Caribbean seas and dusty Wild West cattle towns to the shores of Normandy and VC packed Asian jungles, my backyard and childhood imagination took me across the panorama of space and time.  With a simple flexing of will the tri-level landscape of a half-acre transformed into the three decks of a nineteenth century man-o-war battleship.  And, being Commanding General Admiral Over-All-Fleets-Everywhere, it was hard work. 

Capitan Carver Steck, my sea-dog persona, ran from the bridge deck on the top tier of the yard - where I shouted orders, manned a radio that hadn’t been invented yet, and navigated the helm - to the gun decks - where I loaded, aimed, and fired all one hundred cannon by myself - before rushing to the bottom level of the yard to plug holes in my ship.  In times of clear sailing this bottom deck became the party deck.  It housed the galley with its long wooden tables and free flowing spirits.  There, I, the captain, mingled riotously with the crew getting sloshed on 7-up and Root Beer while trading exaggerated stories of holding hands with the Bavarian barmaid our ship held on retainer. 

One time this lower level was the sight of my heroic death; while all my men escaped, I single-handedly held back the in-flowing tides with nothing more than a mop and my grit.  Again, the services were lovely and came complete with a 25 gun salute (I figured the additional guns meant I was extra special), as well as floating wreathes and flowers thrown from the ship and, of course, multiple heartbroken women. It was a grandiose farewell at sea, although drowning really freaked me out so after that all of my naval deaths derived from hand fighting with the enemy or an exploding shell. Why those ends would scare me less I have no idea.

The Academic Benefits of Being Cultured

Quiz day in my Religious History class. Typically a piece of cake, but that day I was stumped on two questions:

1) Name the centurion who received a revelation about Peter at the same time that Peter received a revelation about him.

2) Name the woman whom Peter raised from the dead.

I had no clue other than the centurions name started with the letter “C”. But then the instructor gave two hints that saved me. The first was that the woman's name was also the name of one of the brides in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the second hint was that the centurions name is found in Hello Dolly.  “Hmm,” I thought to myself smiling "why that's Dorcus and Cornelius."

Boom baby, growing up with three older sisters finally paid off.

Headless Horseman

Dull yellow light from moth-covered fixtures poured across the barren playground at McSorely Elementary School.  Stars blinked in the night sky and a sliver moon peered eerily from behind wisps of moving clouds.  A dreary autumn breeze chilled metal slides and occasional gusts caused the giant swing set on the lower level to squeak with dry shrills; its foggy shadow casting a skeleton tail across the darkened grass.  Through the breeze a shout was heard, breaking the October evening.  “The Headless Horseman rides again!”

My cousin John was in full gallop, myself astride his back.  We raced past the others and the jungle gym on our way back to the cars.  After a chilly night of games we were heading home.  As had been the strategy all evening, whenever we needed to get somewhere quickly I, who am dreadfully slow, would hop on my much larger and fleet-footed cousin’s back and away we would go.  Being a kid, I equated this to riding a horse, and, it being October, we both equated riding a horse to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Thus, every time John would let me hitch a ride that evening, one or both of us would yell “the Headless Horseman rides again!”

With surging speed John sprinted ahead, the misty autumn air being displaced by our ghostly figure.  Through the dark night we ran in what I am sure would have been a terrifying sight even to Mr. Crane himself.

Caught up in the moment I spurred on my mount with a stiff kick of my heels, pulling myself up as I did so to raise a fist and shout once again “the legend has returned! The Headless Horseman rides . . .” but that was as far as I got.  My poorly timed kick to John’s thigh sent him into a slow descent, his natural lope being thwarted by my interference.