On Getting Spiked...

                This weekend my family will be celebrating my mother’s 96^th birthday, and commemorating the sixth anniversary my father’s death. Mom and Dad met at a Tall Peoples’ Club in Northern Indiana in the late 1950’s. After a short courtship, they married in the Spring of 1960. My sister was born two years later, and then I came along another two years after that.

               Dad had the greatest laugh of anyone I ever knew. It was infectious unlike no other. His sense of humor was extraordinary, and everyone knew it. While he wasn’t always big into practical jokes, every once in a while he’d manage to pull something off – nothing huge – that would be legendary.

               When I was in my junior high and high school years, his parents sold their little farm and moved in with us for health and safety reasons. Dad and Granddad used to enjoy going around to farm and estate sales, mostly for memory’s sake. Granddad loved to look at the old farm machinery that was for sale; Dad loved to look at the odds and ends that were up for auction. His favorite things to bid on were those small “lot” sales – usually a small box of nails, screws, the odd pencil or screwdriver – anything that “might” hold a hidden treasure. His bids never went above a couple of dollars for each lot. At the end of the day, he’d gather up his purchases, hand over the few dollars owed, and return home to sort through the boxes looking for newfound treasures. “Everything has a story,” he would say.

               On one particular outing, a small cigar box became his latest treasure. I went with him that trip, and I watched him rummage through it’s contents. It held a brand new pencil, a handful of woodscrews, a few nails, an old brass door knob (only one half of the set), and a rusty old railroad spike. He sorted through the screws and put them into their respective baby food jars, sharpened the pencil and placed it in the cup full of other such pencils that he seldom used, and put the doorknob into the bin with other such odds and ends.

Then he turned to the railroad spike. He grabbed his Dremel tool and began to grind off the rust as best he could. After the dust settled, he reached for a can of black primer spray paint, and gave it several good coats. (See figure 1.)

Figure 1.

It sat on a doily (another thing that my mother collected throughout the years that rested on every single piece of furniture we owned, and prevented unnecessary wear-and tear on the finish of the fine furniture) on top of the Console Television Set in the family room for several years. No one paid much attention to it after Dad finished refinishing it. Until...

One day it disappeared from atop the TV. No one noticed. No one asked about where it went, who took it, or whether we even still had it. It just…disappeared.

Until one day, at a grocery store, Mom was reaching into her purse for a coupon or her wallet to get the cash to pay for the foodstuffs that were being bagged. And she let out a loud yell: “BUD!!!!” and out came the railroad spike! The cashier wasn’t sure what to make of this new discovery, nor did the person bagging the groceries. In fact, most people just turned and stared at this seemingly irate shopper yelling with great embarrassment at her husband about the discovery of this item of great weight that had been evidently burdening her purse for quite some time.

Meanwhile, Dad just grinned, shook his head, and said something to the effect of, “See? I told you that you had too much stuff in that purse of yours!” Mom would throw it away often, only to find it reappearing sometime later in her purse again, usually at an inopportune moment.

I share this story, only because my mother found it yet again – now six years after Dad’s death. And it made her remember her frustration at him for making her unknowingly carry it for so long  in the depths of her purse. And afterwards, she smiled.

And I’m sure that Dad smiled again as well.