At the tender young age of 12, in the early 1960s, my buddy Tommy and I were more intent on making money by shoveling snow than George Bush is intent on ending terrorism by invading Iraq and killing Saddam Hussein 40 years later.
Though our objectives are probably noble, the means of getting there may be a little suspect. Mine was to earn money by ignoring the rules, and Mr. Bush seems to be headed in the same misguided direction.
No matter how many times my dad warned me not to take his tools away from the house and to always put them back where they belonged when I was finished with them, I was determined to do otherwise, to defy common sense and have things my way, no matter what.
Big mistake!
The mere thought of taking a tool away from home was a corporal sin worthy of major acts of contrition, whether or not I actually committed the deed. Like Jimmy Carter's lust in the heart, my willingness to consider the crime was punishable by God, who delivered His wrath through my mother's hands at my father's direction. She was the executioner, he the judge.
In response to an almost imperceptible nod of his head, Mom could deliver a right hand wallop that carried a clear message: "Don't do that again, or next time I will kill you." You'd think I'd learn after a couple of those, but I suffered from the double-barreled affliction of chronic hardheadedness and occasional myopia, a terrible combination.
Back in the day, a good tool box contained a hammer, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. You could build or take apart anything with those basic tools. But not my dad. He had a massive collection of specialized mechanic's, electrician's, plumber's, farmer's tools. His collection was so big, he had to build a garage around them. The car, which was always put precisely in its place too, was just another tool to him. No matter how tight the fit, it was always put back in its place in the garage, amongst the rest of the tools, exactly where it belonged.
He even had a hand-push plow: A gigantic, single-wheeled iron machine with handlebars, a big steel wheel and a sharpened plow blade which he used to turn the soil in our backyard "victory garden," another name for his urban farm.
Shovels were a big deal to Dad. He took great pride in his collection. They were tools meant to toil in the earth, the very fundamental essence of wealth. Earth, the dirt we walked on, was the most precious of all the resources, I learned from my father. Everything we need to live comes from the ground, he taught us. The earth itself was to be respected, valued and prized. Likewise, the tools used to cultivate Mother Earth were also worthy of the highest praise and protection.
But when you're 12 years old, trying to get in where you don't fit in, anything's more important than dirt, and nothing could be more irrelevant than rules. So with images of candy bars and bubble gum dancing in our heads, I defied my father's rule against taking tools away from the house. I took a spade from the rack, and Tommy and I set out to capture the world, one sidewalk at a time, starting with Bucky's Bowling Alley, one of our best customers, right around the corner from our homes.
Sneaking deftly under the barely opened garage door, I crept quietly, my boots punching through the crunching snow in the otherwise strangely silent, falling manna from heaven. As I trudged farther away from the house, I quickened my pace until I was out of sight of the kitchen window. Once I made it to the next block, where I could sling the long handle over my shoulder, I broke into a proud march. Like a proud soldier, I had gone into enemy territory, stolen a weapon and gotten away.
Up ahead, I saw Tommy. He had already started. I could see the small mound he had piled up with his tiny aluminum shovel. The falling snow was casting a thick haze over my eyes. The sky, which seemed to be creeping lower, was turning black. Against the white-covered ground, the entire world looked completely surreal.
I noticed again that it was eerily quiet. The normal sounds of the bustling city had been muffled by the deep-piled snow. It was as if time were standing still. Even the banging of the factories had stopped. It was as if someone had turned off the sound.
When I got close enough to talk to him without shouting, I saw that Tommy's nose, as usual, was as red as Rudolph's and running like a faucet. We looked around at the snow and at each other, letting out a howl that was muted by the storm, but loud enough to bring Bucky to the door, where he motioned for us to get busy. With the wind beginning to blow through our winter wrappings, we dug in. But the more we shoveled, the more it snowed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 17 2002 |