Growing up in a small farm town in the 1950s, every time I did something stupid — a recurring theme of my boyhood — my dad, who stood six-foot-three and spoke in a commanding baritone, would say to me, “Son, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.” No matter how many life lessons I stumbled upon, each one was wasted, probably because they almost always had something to do with The River City Curse.
You may be too young to know about the curse, but it was popularized in the 1957 Broadway musical, “The Music Man,” set in small-town America, 1912, the year my dad was born. A highlight of the musical, later made into a movie, was Robert Preston’s performance of a kind of pre-rap musical monologue of “Ya Got Trouble,” in which he warned the prim populace of River City about the evils of pool halls, billiards and smoking:
Mothers of River City! …
Watch for the tell-tale signs of corruption!
The moment your son leaves the house
Does he re-buckle his knickerbockers below the knee?
Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger?
A dime novel hidden in the corn crib? …
Are certain words creeping into his conversation?
Oh we got Trouble!
Right here in River City!
With a capital "T"
And that rhymes with "P"
And that stands for pool!
My dad must have realized that he was at least partially responsible for the trouble in our own little slice of Americana — a town surrounded by cultivated desert than a city on a river — after he witnessed what became of the basement he dug as a 1950s bomb shelter. An unwitting party to pubescent debauchery, while waiting for the bombs to fall, he bought a vintage 1920s Brunswick 3-piece slate pocket billiards table and set it in a deep hole on a cement floor, not far from the Devil’s Lair.
And just as the The Music Man had predicted, all hell broke loose. My dad’s golfing buddies were the first to get sucked in by the sinful slate, if only on weekends. They drank and shot pool into the wee hours of Friday and Saturday nights, smoking, drinking, cussing and laughing their raucous laughter. And there I was, a 10-year-old boy peeking from the top of the stairs, soaking it up.
What my dad never considered was that my school-age friends and I, with three-month summer vacations to waste, were ripe to take over the family pool hall at all hours of the day during the work week while our parents were farming and teaching and selling and doing whatever busy small-town parents do.
We were boys of less than manly stature, of course, so my dad’s set of pool cues were much taller than we were. One day, TD, a wiry, pint-sized natural athlete with a quick smile and a knack for squirming out of tight squeezes, got excited after sinking an accidental bank shot. It was the 8-ball, that shiny black symbol of degradation and occult powers.
“Yes!” yelled TD, thrusting his cue skyward. But the sky was just foot-square ceiling panels made of cheap wallboard-like material. The tip of his cue poked a perfect dime-sized hole right in the center of a panel.
TD’s face turned a ghostly hue, then we all broke into laughter.
What is it about boys that irresistibly compels them to take stupidity to impressive levels once a useful example has been set? That was the first of many “accidental” holes poked that day. It was up to me to come up with a defensible explanation when Dad discovered the holes on the weekend.
“Holes? What holes?”
My dad was a fairly tolerant man, not often given to violence, but lying and feigning innocence were strictly forbidden. I feared what was coming.
“What in the world were you thinking! How stupid can you be, and how stupid do you think I am!?” That will cost you the price of a half-dozen new ceiling panels — and no more pool for the rest of the summer!”
I hung my head.
“You’ve got a helluva lot of growing up to do, son.”
*
By sixth grade a gang of 12-year-olds under my leadership had taken over the basement. With the pool table as the center of decadence, all pretense of respecting the space as a bomb shelter had vanished. The game of choice was still 8-ball, but a new, more dangerous game was gaining popularity — we called it slam-ball.
Slam-ball actually started as a pool hall version of horse racing. Each ball had its own number and color. All we needed was a way to set the balls in motion. The obvious tool was a pool cue laid width-wise across the rails of the table. Four balls would be spaced in front of the cue, and one of us would act as the starting gate, catapulting the balls toward the cushion at the far end of the table. The balls rebounded off the cushion and headed for the home stretch. Of course it took no time to realize that betting on a numbered ball was more exciting than simply watching the balls roll back and forth.
Talk about corruption in River City. The whole process was fraught with deceit and sleight of hand, like dealing from the bottom of the deck or horse doping.
When the first ball jumped the rail and went flying, slam-ball was officially born and our excitement ratcheted up. We ditched the starting gate, and the cue ball was chosen as the slam-ball. Our tools were our hands. Actual throwing was not allowed. The ball had to be in contact with the felt when leaving the contestant’s hand at maximum velocity. If you’ve ever had your finger slammed in a doorway, that’s what it feels like when a streaking cue ball pins your finger against the cushion just before it takes flight, careens off the wall and bounces across the cement floor.
It took no more than two hours of slam-ball to change the shiny white complexion of the cue ball to a paint-pocked, scarred surface. Oh yes, and the one window which gave us a disappointing ground level view of its graveled window well was the first casualty, followed by bruised body parts and more than a few close calls that could have ended in unconsciousness.
Chalk it up to surging testosterone. We were captive to our own emerging gonads. And you know where that leads.
Trouble.
Right here in River City.
Like the Friday that I got a call while playing slam-ball with Paz. We now had a phone in the basement, a prerequisite to any conspiracy in the days before texting. Paz was solid, reliable, always ready for adventure, and TD was calling with the news that Hot Linda, Punkey Mo and Carol Sue planned on going to the skating rink that night. They were each a year older and beginning to fill out their bras. Hot Linda was the Junior High Band’s lead majorette whose precocious womanly curves fit perfectly into a costume that resembled a tight-fitting sequined bathing suit.
“I’m in,” said Paz without hesitation.
At the skating rink we were disappointed when the girls went home early. Our ogling and jostling as we chased them round and round the rink was cut short. But word had leaked out via TD that the trio had agreed to meet us outside Hot Linda’s house that night at 2 a.m.
The hottest 7th grade girls in town had gone home to await their chosen suitors, a handful of puny 6th graders? Implausible as it was, we chose to believe it.
Paz spent the night at my house and slept in my older brother’s bed in the room we normally shared. When my parents were comfortably asleep not long after midnight, we got up and not-so-cleverly made our beds with pillows stuffed under the covers to look like we were still sleeping, then crawled out the bedroom window. Paz went first. I carefully left the window open a few inches at the bottom so we could sneak back in when we returned from our imaginary virginal love-fest.
One fine night, they leave the pool hall
Headin' for the dance at the Arm'ry!
Libertine men and Scarlet women!
Trouble!
Outside Hot Linda’s house, TD waited for us in the bushes. Two o’clock came and went and … no girls.
“You said they were going to be here,” said Paz.
“They will, they will,” said TD.
“Why aren’t they here?” I asked.
We had a clear view of the yard and one side of Hot Linda’s house — a porch, kitchen and two bedroom windows.
“Which one is her bedroom?”
“The farthest from the porch,” said TD.
“Go on up there and tap on the window,” urged Paz.
“Her dad and mom might hear,” I warned.
“I’ll scratch on the screen,” said TD. “Maybe she fell asleep. She’ll know it’s me when she hears it, and she’ll come outside to meet us.”
Paz and I followed TD for a few feet, then peeked from behind a mature oak as he tiptoed up to the window. It couldn’t have been more than half a minute when the porch light came on and TD came hauling ass straight toward us. The porch door opened and out stepped Hot Linda’s dad in his underwear, shotgun at the ready.
We scattered like a flock of flighty doves. Paz and I broke all speed records for crosstown sprinting, hopping fences and waking up every dog in town. When we got to within a few hundred feet of my house, we stopped dead in our tracks, panting. Every light in the house was on, the back yard lit up like a high school football field on Friday night.
“Oh, shit.”
“We’re screwed. Now what? We can’t sneak back in the bedroom. What’s our story?”
“We can sneak in the basement window and act like we’ve been there all the time.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s our only chance.”
We made it to the back yard by the carport and froze. The carport was empty. Just then Dad pulled into the carport in the ’55 DeSoto with its unmistakable cheap gas-pinging sound. Our basement escape route was blocked.
Dad slammed the driver’s door and marched toward me without saying a word. Paz started backing away. I had to say something but couldn’t utter a word. When he got within a couple of paces I managed to say his name.
“Dad … we …”
The next thing I knew he had belted me upside my head with an open hand, sending me stumbling toward the juniper hedge.
He came at me again, eyes hard as nails.
“Dad, wait!”
Another blow and I lay in the hedge, burrowing for cover.
“Get the hell out of there now!” he commanded. “On your feet! Your mother’s waiting inside for you. What were you thinking? She called the cops thinking you were kidnapped! I’ve been driving all over town looking for you. Get in the damn house!”
Paz stood there, a shrinking gnome, nearly transparent by now.
“You!” barked my dad at my ghostly friend. “Go to the bedroom and shut the door. Now!”
Mom was waiting all right — a mother scorned. She may have been quick to laugh at jokes, but this was no joke. Her youngest child had turned against her without a hint of respect, never considering all those sleepless nights she had spent nursing and coddling him. And this is how he repays her? Slipping out of the bedroom window like a common thief, pockets filled with pilfered dreams?
Her face was florid. My pants came down and I lay across a kitchen table chair. Her yardstick slapped down on the backs of my thighs with the force of a hundred stinging hornets. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! She stood just five feet tall but wielded a mighty stick. I howled and howled.
The next morning Paz and I decided not to leave the safety of our beds. We lay there, feigning sleep until sometime that afternoon, afraid to face the day.
Psychologists back then were more forgiving of parents than today’s familial experts. It wasn’t difficult to find proponents of corporal punishment. Spare the rod? Nonsense. Now we are told not to touch our children. Just talk to them. Reason with them. Encourage them to “use their words” to explain themselves. Right. As if children with immature prefrontal lobes are actually sophisticated self-analysts who only speak the truth.
I have never held it against my parents that they reacted out of anger. They were decent people who worked hard and dedicated themselves to providing for their two sons, giving them every opportunity they could afford. But they scared the living hell out of me.
At some point Mom must have tired of waiting us out. She opened the door and walked to the side of my bed.
“Get up. We’re obviously still home and your father wants to speak to you in the basement.”
I rubbed my eyes innocently and did my best to fake a yawn.
“Get dressed and get down there right away. You know he doesn’t like to wait. Paz, your mom is waiting to speak to you at home. Better be on your way.”
When I neared the bottom of the stairs, he was facing the pool table, looking away from me, his hands on his hips. The ceiling holes were still there, panels never replaced, a testament to my failed boyhood. The felt on the old Brunswick had large rips in two places and three of the original pool cues had been busted. Only two of the remaining cues still had tips. The bridge had been sawed off and shortened for some as yet undetermined reason. The new window was the only evidence of damage repaired. He turned when I stepped foot onto the concrete floor and glared at me.
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground!
Trouble! Right here in River City!
He moved perilously close to my face and looked deep into my eyes. I braced myself. This could be the end of me. I could see him turning over the gruesome options in his mind. Suddenly he reached out with both of his big hands, grasped my shoulders and squeezed. Gently.
“You’re getting to be a man, son.”
He took his time releasing his grip while letting the gravity of my sins sink in, then stepped back and looked at me with what almost seemed like approval.
It had always been unlike my dad to show tenderness in the face of my stupidity, but somehow I suspected it was always there, even at 12, hiding, like my own manhood, just waiting for an opportunity to express itself.
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