When The Magic Almost Died

Hair still drying off, with fresh underwear and pajamas on, we were soon tucked into freshly starched crisp cool sheets, given our good night kisses, and left alone with the door to the hallway partly open, letting a wedge of light into the room from down the hall.

"Dunky?"

"Yes Beth?"

"Mr. Beach came over today when you were across the street at Johnny's."

Mr. Robert Beach was a friend of my mom and dad's, and the father of Becky and my best friend Bobby. A veteran of the Korean Conflict he had married my mom's best friend a gorgeous bright red headed woman named Jerry, short for Geraldine. Not to say that mom was anything but beautiful, but she was just my mother after all.

"What did he come over for?" I asked, the hairs at the back of my neck suddenly getting stiff.

"I don't know, picked up some things he'd left here in our attic," Bethy explained, "he told me to tell you that Bobby said hi as he took some stuff down to the basement for mom. Good night Dunky, and Merry Christmas."

I looked at Beth as she rolled over on her side as if she were the very Devil's own messenger. Tears swelled up in my eyes as I felt the magic of Christmas die all around me, at last realizing what had taken place. My Parents had hid our gifts at Bobby's house, and his parents had hid their gifts in our attic. Bobby was getting my Colt 45's. The whole world seemed to melt around me through the tears of my frustration. This craftiness on my parents part had never entered my mind, and though a logical plan at that, I suddenly felt betrayed by them, and everyone around me.

Then, as if to confirm the truth of that moment, I heard a squeaking noise over by my sister's bed. Slightly curious I cleared away the tears to see what demon had come to taunt me now. At first I didn't see anything. Then, as another squeak came from the foot of Beth's bed I saw something move, or rather creep, along the edge of her bed next to the wall.

It was a rat. Perhaps not the biggest rat in the world, but as ominously ugly, and despised as any rat is anywhere. A filthy vermin, I knew that they carried diseases too horrible for nightmares.

To this day, I don't know why, but that rat took on the whole cosmic injustice of the coming dismal Christmas about to be played out for me, and I jumped out of my bed right on to Beth's and caught him as he suddenly froze in place, and threw him against the far wall. As luck would have it, Bethy suddenly woke up as I landed on her and screamed loud enough to wake up God himself, throwing my aim off a bit.

"MOMMY!

The rat never hit the wall, instead it was impaled on the corner edge of our dresser, dying instantly, his weight causing him to fall to the floor, looking as if he were a bloody toy broken in two. By the time my mom and dad arrived, which could only have been seconds later, switching on the overhead light as they entered, Bethy was huddled in my arms shivering, great big tears smearing her face and my pajamas.

"What in God's name?" My father nearly shouted, then suddenly stopped as he saw the rat.

My mother preferring to rush to her children's aid first, brushed right past him, and joined us on Beth's bed. Which I'm sure is what helped calm Bethy down.

"Damn!" Dad swore, something he rarely did, then he looked at me, "Did you do this son?"

"Do what?" Mom asked as I nodded in the affirmative.

"Your son just killed a rat, and bare handed at that."

"Did he bite or scratch you?" Mom nearly whispered doing a quick inspection of my flesh, then Beth's.

"No Mommy, Dunky was too fast for the rat! I was scared stiff, I couldn't move, or even scream for help when I saw that rat, but Dunky jumped over here and saved me! Grabbed that dirty old rat, and threw it away from me! Oh God Dunky, I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, I'll never poke you again!"

It then hit me, as my mother and father praised me as some kind of hero, patting me on the back, throwing me up into the air and such, that one of the things on my Christmas list had been that Bethy would stop poking at me forever. In fact, that had been at the top of my list to Santa, even before the Colt 45's. That's when I realized with a certainty, that Santa was real, just as I had thought all along. I also knew that I wouldn't get my six shooters this Christmas. But, that no longer mattered as much to me either, well at least not so all consumingly as it had. Some how this ordeal had put some of the magic back into Christmas. After all, there were many other great things on that list that I had sent him.

************

Christmas morning at our home roughly came sometime after midnight as mom and dad rushed into our room and woke us up with the cry;

"Hurry up sleepy heads! Get out of bed! Santa's been here!"

I don't know about Bethy, but I would be instantly wide awake, and after grabbing my robe, was charging down the stair way right behind our parents, with Bethy not too far behind. As I hurled down skipping the last three steps, I heard a sound that I never, in my wildest dreams ever, expected to hear in our house. Something so incredibly costly in any toy store that I had ever been in, that even I knew that I dared never ask for it, not even from Santa, at least not until I was nine or ten years old.

Like most kids I loved all of those model displays, the ones where the cars, boats, and planes are painted and glued together looking like miniatures of the real things, and of course as suggested by my birthday gift, I loved all the accessories that came along with the better built toys. However, there is nothing in the world that comes close to comparing owning your own pony, getting a puppy of your very own, flying a real plane, as seeing a real honest to goodness Lionel® electric train set howling around your Christmas tree. Its real Locomotive wheels whirling a steady methodical beat along the track, real smoke coming out of the smoke stack, and that long lonely 'WooHooooooooooo!' every second turn around the tree. I wanted to stand there and gaze on it for hours, while at the same time I also wanted to rush over for a much closer inspection, the kind I'd seen local engineers do to their own steam engines. So I just stood there, praying that I wasn't dreaming, and if I was dreaming, praying that I would never wake up. Because compared to a Lionel® electric train set, those six shooters didn't exist.

************

As I remember it, Christmas day of 1955 went pretty much like every Christmas had, with only a few exceptions. About two hours after being rushed down stairs to open our gifts, both Bethy and I fell asleep in the living room, and were carried off to bed to sleep almost till noon. Though now that I have my own children, I see the wisdom of the Christmas rush for what it really was, as mom and dad always slept in on Christmas day while we two got to play with our opened presents. Quietly of course.

Christmas dinner was always held in Grandma Betty's basement after we visited all of our cousins, and friends during our ritual afternoon of exchanging gifts. My tale of bravery, told at every stop, even impressed Wayne, and Bobby. Almost as much as hearing about my new train set. As predicted, both received the Mattel double holstered Colt 45's, but each in turn let me play with one of their guns in their bedroom as leverage for the honor of running my railroad when they visited our house later. So I at least had the chance to hold and play with my prior obsession, if only for a small time, on Christmas day. Another proof of Santa's existence that only I seemed to comprehend, something that kept me thinking until we arrived at grandma Betty's house around 4:30 in the afternoon.

A widower, my grandmother lived with her father, a great round-bellied Austrian in his late 60's who had brought his family to America at the turn of the century. We called him grandpa Lentz. He spoke little English if at all, preferring to speak his native Germanic tongue most of the time, even around us kids, and I was sure that he didn't have the slightest idea of what my name was, as he always called me Yoehanness. I found out after he died that to this kindly old man I looked just like my father's brother Johnny Lentz, who had died in the war while fighting, of all people, the Nasi's of Germany.

Grandpa Lentz may have been a little strange to most people, but living in his own neighborhood --where if one ate at a different house on the block each night, one would have sworn that they had visited all of the finest restaurants of east and west Europe afterwards-- this proud, yet humble, elderly gentleman fit in here like the Lone Ranger and Tonto fit in with the Wild West. Grandpa Lentz said more with his eyes than most congressmen said during a filibuster, and what he didn't relay with those gray eyes of his, he conveyed in other subtler body language long before he would have to break down and actually speak.

Settling down to the long table prepared in the basement for our ritual clan feast, I found myself sitting by the head of the table next to Grandpa Lentz for the first time in my life. That place had always been reserved for my dad, but this year my dad was sitting by my grandma Betty's end of the table where her brother, my great uncle Adam, sat at the honored foot of the table with mom and Bethy.

When at last all of the food was in place, and all of the women were seated, Grandpa Lentz put his hands together. His signal for grace. As head of our family Grandpa Lentz almost always did the honors, and it always sounded to me as if he were singing grace in his native tongue. However since none of us children understood one syllable of German, we had to wait breathlessly until he grabbed a plate of food before we knew for certain that the Amen's had been said. However, as each of us put our hands together, and prepared to bow our heads, Grandpa Lentz looked right at me with those gray eyes of his, gave a slight nod, and bowed his head in prayer waiting for me to say grace.

Now to any child, being forced to say grace is at best an annoyance, but it's mostly considered extreme and unnecessary torture. After all, the food is hot and ready to eat, why not give thanks after you've eaten it, why wait for words with hunger digging graves in your belly? Why not just say, "Yeah God! Pass me the potatoes, please?" That would have been my usual thought when asked to say grace, but this wasn't the everyday kind of grace to be flippant about. No. This was a distinct privilege that had to be respected at all costs, no matter what embarrassment I might suffer later from the other kids seated there.

Now here I was, all of six years old, with only a few years of Sunday school under my gun belt, and that mostly playing with cut out and paste, or coloring book scriptures, for my total religious experience in which to deal with this great honor. I knew that everyone was waiting patiently, and that they expected Grandpa Lent's beautiful song for Christmas grace, none having any idea yet that I was just made the chosen saint, albeit a temporary one. Sweat, like tiny demons peeked out to laugh at me, and my open mouth let all the moisture evaporate from my tongue as I struggled with every fiber of my being to find some way of singing grace in English.

I have no idea where it came from, but suddenly I was singing the Lords prayer as I had heard it sung early every Sunday morning on channel 5 before we went to church. I don't know where that voice came from, because I wasn't the choirboy type, but the smile that slowly stretched across my Grandpa Lent's face as I sang, was like God himself had stopped by to listen, and was blessing our table personally. The pat on the head after I was finished, was to me, like receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor must feel to a warrior. What was even better, no one ribbed me about it afterwards. Until we were on the way home that is.

"Hey Dunky," Bethy said, loud enough so that mom and dad could hear her, so I knew she was up to something, even if she wasn't going to poke me anymore, "Why didn't ya just say grace the way ya do at home? Why sing that prayer? I don't think that one's for grace."

There was just that slight tone in her voice, that welding whine of Bethy's that always pushed me to the very edge of fury. Where I was sure nothing, short of busting her lips bloody, would cool me down. However, before I could do anything at all, even think, my father answered her questions with a true revelation to both of us.

"Why Bethy, I'm ashamed of you. Haven't you heard Grandpa Lentz say grace every time we eat there?"

"Sure I have daddy, but he sings a real grace," and she looked as petulant as ever.

"So did Dunk, in fact he sang the same song Grandpa Lentz always sings in German, only he did it in English. I didn't know you knew how to sing it Dunk, but you sure made grandpa's day..."

"...and it sounded wonderful too sweetheart," my mother added, "everybody said so."

I don't know who was more astonished, Bethy or me, but I stuck out my tongue first when our parents weren't looking, as if I had known it all along, and refused to look at her the rest of the way home. It must have been sheer torture for her not to break her promise to poke me, and I wallowed in the moment the rest of the day.

Part 2:

Christmas of 1956 started a bit earlier than it had in 55, as my mother became pregnant sometime in April, and we once again moved to a new location on the west side of Lorain, Ohio that very summer shortly after school was let out. Normally moving wouldn't be considered any kind of present to me as it meant having to find new friends in a new neighborhood, and of course the added burden of a new school of strangers.

So you can imagine my surprise, and Bethy's when we moved right next door to Bobby and Becky Beach at 1617 Nickels Ave., which was nearly a brand new house, and not something that the founding fathers had built. Even better yet, behind Bobby's house were two undeveloped lots side by side that would make a great baseball diamond, as well as a wonderful battle field due to all of the wild shrubbery, the trench between the lots, and the uneven ground. There was even a sturdy old mulberry tree close by the sidewalk on the Madison Ave. side of the lot to build a tree fort in. But best of all, there were a great many families with kids throughout the six block area to get to know and play with, and Bobby and Becky knew them all. All that is except for two or three, and that was because those families were what our parents called; 'well to do.'

I suppose that it was inevitable, even for me, that I was to meet one of those in the, 'well to do' category the very first day we moved into the new house. Bobby and I had decided right off to have a mock combat out there in those two lots behind his house while our parents moved my family's possessions into our new home. As this was real mock combat, Bobby kept both of his six shooters figuring that would give him the edge. But I had devised a plan, thanks to my father's experience in the army, that was about to blow him away literally.

"This is a machine gun cannon," I informed Bobby, holding up my Louisville Slugger®, a wooden baseball bat.

"A what?"

"A machine gun cannon," I replied triumphantly, "used during the Korean War mostly in jet fighters," I watched as worry etched a path on his face, "ask your dad, he'll tell you, they're like a cross between a bazooka and a machine gun."

"But that's just a baseball bat," he argued.

"Normally yes, but when I turn it around, holding onto the meat of the bat, notice how the end, usually held by a batter, looks like a cannon. Besides Bobby, you know the rules, wooden weapons have to be called, and once called that's what they are forever."

I finally had him, and he knew it. There was no way that he could say that I missed when I shot this weapon at him. Something for which Bobby was famous for in any battle he fought in was the fact that he claimed no one could shoot straight, or how tough it is to hit a moving target, thus yelling out, "You missed me, you missed me!" even when you shot at him from three feet away. Just a note for all of those who don't know it, that's point blank for any weapon even a knife. Of course Bobby had a way out of that too with his famous, "It's only a flesh wound!" then he'd shoot you, and claim his kill. I said he was my best friend, not my best enemy. When more than one person was on a side, I always had Bobby on mine.

The truth about Bobby in regards to being killed in action were two fold. First off, he hated to lose at anything and so he cheated if he could figure a way of not getting caught outright, and second, he died very badly, while I could die even better than the stuntmen on TV, something I had become famous for in our old neighborhood. To me the secret was very simple, when a person died they became a rag, and as a rag nothing could hurt you any more, so you just stopped control of what you were doing and let nature take it's mindless course with your body, and I never got hurt doing it that way. More than once I'd fooled people into thinking that something strange had happened, and that I was really dead, scaring them into praying to God, right out in the open, that it wasn't their fault.

"Okay Dunk," Bobby agreed at last, "But just to even up the odds, we're gonna play Battle Tag, and your it!"

I should have known the stinker would come up with an edge, and wondered why I bothered coming up with new things to counter him with, when he would just come up with a new scam every time. Battle Tag, is pretty much a twist on the Hide-and-go-Seek theme. Where if your it, you turn your back, close your eyes, and count to a fixed number, like this time I had to count to one hundred, but in Battle Tag you don't just go seek, you hunt down your enemy, who, like a sniper, can see your every move from where he's hiding. It was really a great game, because you could pass your enemy and not know it, getting shot in the back, if he was well hidden enough. And unlike his horrible deaths, Bobby was the master at Hide-n-Seek.

I hit the field on the run, and just as I'd seen in many a good war movie, I tumbled into every depression I found along the way, using them like foxholes. I had no idea where my enemy/friend was, but I was duty bound to hunt him down like the killer dog he was. My plan was very basic, just criss-cross the entire field holding a graphic pattern that he couldn't slip through until I was right on top of him, then blow him away. The plan was a good one, the same used ironically by search and rescue from the air. There was only one problem with it that I hadn't taken into account. I had expected, and rightly so, that the battle was taking place in the confines of the two scruffy lots, and that everything outside of that area was off limits. The only problem with that kind of thinking was that it wasn't agreed upon at the very beginning by both of us.

I had covered nearly every part of both lots in rapid time, and was coming up to the last corner where only six feet separated me from certain victory. It was the only place that he could possibly be on those two lots that I hadn't been to yet. Excitement, that wild innocent thrill of the predator about to pounce on its prey, was a stimulant every warrior knew about, and what pumped through all my veins at that moment. With gallant recklessness, I jumped up running, my machine gun cannon blasting at the ground in front of me. That's when Bobby stood up from behind the bushes in the yard next door to the lot and fired his cap pistol. At six feet away there was no way he could have missed me seeing as his guns, those wonderful Colt 45's were pointing straight at my chest. He'd done it to me again, but I would have my victory too, shaming him by showing off my perfect death skills right in front of him as I instantly became a rag.