WOODWORKING

BY DAVE WOOD

Brrr. It's a bright Sunday on a January morning and the temperature has dropped to 2 degrees F. And my plan to take a quiet walk around the block in River Falls has been scratched in favor of sitting on my fanny and remembering the days when dropping below zero meant nothing to us. Ah, it was grand. Take 1950, for instance, when Whitehall schools were closed for the first time in my memory because the buses wouldn't start when the temperature plummeted to -52 degrees. We heard it on WCCO Radio, which we hung on every morning, always hoping the next day would freeze up Abner Thompson's school bus fleet.

But that didn't mean we were going to stay inside and catch up with our homework. Nosireebob! After gulping our cinnamon toast and hot chocolate, my brother and I raced outside and went tobogganing, the three feet of snow frozen so hard, our four buckle overshoes never managed to penetrate its surface. Perfect for tobogganing.

What, on this bright Sunday I asked myself, could I have been thinking back then, when I'd already nearly killed myself because of my passion for the Great Outside.

Grandma probably wondered, too, after she shouted at me, a poor orphan, years earlier when I was living with her and Grandpa: “It's 20 below zero, Davey,” she said, as she choked my fat little cheeks purple, adjusting the scarf at my shoulders, down to my sleeves in left and right hand mittens. “So when you get cold, be sure to come and warm up.” She pointed an arthritic index finger at me, rived my attention with an icy blue-eyed stare and concluded her sermon: “And whatever you do, don't stick your tongue on the pump handle!”

Stick my tongue on the pump handle? That pump had stood in the back yard for as long as I or my father could remember. I pumped it furiously in summer and stuck my head under the water that gushed from its spout. Or I'd pretend it was a Flash Gordon rocket launcher. Or pried up a board and peered down into the masonry and hollered something, then waited for the well to holler back. But stick my tongue on its handle? No way!

So out I trudged into the back yard and stuck my tongue on the pump handle. My little pink protuberance stuck fast and in a panic I jerked back, leaving a patch of myself on the pump. Then I ran in to warm up and bleed all over the kitchen sink. For weeks my tongue looked like a WPA aerial photo of erosion in the Cumberland Gap.

Thanks for the warning, Grandma. This childhood episode demonstrates what the Holy Bible and Mark Twain have been warning us about for centuries: Man is about as perverse a creature as you'll find in the solar system. Tell him not to do something and however unappealing the deed, he'll be certain to do it. God told Adam and Eve that they could lie around, eat pomegranates in the Garden of Eden till seeds ran out their ears. Or any other fruit or that matter. Except from that one little tree. And what did they do? They went right over and took a bite. Since those two traveled east of Eden, it's been the same old story.

Grandma didn't stop at tongues when she pointed the arthritic finger at me and said “And whatever you do, don't stick beans in them,” which prompted me to head for the pantry. Other warnings: “When you’re at school don't eat library paste.”

“When you’re on summer vacation, don't smoke corn silk.”

“Now that you’re back from the hospital and your appendix scar is healing, don't pick up a shot put and try to throw it!”

“Don't go swimming in that scum-covered river this time of year, or you'll get impetigo.”

Perhaps the most shocking experience of my childhood came when Pa bought his first electric fencing unit and set up a single electrified wire around the barnyard to keep three or four crazy young heifers from wandering across five counties. Right off one of the heifers tried to do battle with the new contraption. She took a run and when her bovine head touched the wire, she backed tail over teakettle into a juicy manure pile by the barn door.

Pa looked at me with all of his wisdom and said “Davey, let that be a lesson to you,” then pointing his calloused index finger at me, delivered himself of the sermon's conclusion: “And whatever you do, don't pee on that wire!”

Thanks for the warning, Pa.