Ping Pong and Pool

The basement was either the scariest place (for me) in the world or where the action was. I can't imagine what it was like for Ron and Dick to have their bedroom tucked at the head of the garage. Was there a dirt floor in the garage, or cement? It had to have been a cold place in the winter because even as the garage later became the recreation room, the tile floors were always numbingly cold. But regardless the temperature, there was an allure to the basement, especially after  Dad managed to wedge in a pool table down there. I remember the night the pool table was delivered - such excitement! Before the pool table, I'd roller skate down there around the poles and over the smooth cement floor, but only in the light of day. Nighttime transformed it into a dark, shadowy hell (for me).

The pool table was a cool acquisition, and not one readily made in our family - Dad must've been dreaming of Minnesota Fats and The Hustler when he came up with that one. It was a hit for quite  a while. Games after dinner occurred nightly where "rack em up" floated up the basement stairs and the usual muffled argument rose above the volume of the Wonderful World of Disney or Flintstones on television in the living room. Dad took himself and the game pretty seriously - asking one year for a jet black pool cue for Christmas. Even as a kid I sense pending disaster when he unwrapped the long pole-shaped gift under the tree only to find a broomstick. I never thought I'd see him cry, but he nearly did in that moment - somewhere under the rage of being punk'd. Thankfully, the pranksters had a nice fancy pool cue waiting in the wings. The lesson that Dad didn't take jokes aimed at him well never seemed to sink in...but, I think he loosened up years later on that score (I have, too).

At some point, the pool table was transformed into a ping pong table by a slab of plywood, and I don't think we never played pool again. A radio was set up on a sideboard and hours were spent before and after dinner playing game after game after game of ping pong. Dick was the reigning king of the game - practicing fancy paddle moves and continually finding those imperfections on the plywood that would send the ball careening off the table at crazy angles as his opponent's paddle swished the air where the ball should've been. I was at least one of his 'training' partners and ended up being a fairly decent player in time. Music always played in the background.  Petula Clark singing "Downtown" or Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" always remind me of those nights.

I'm not sure what happened to Dad's pool table, but I believe that Eddie Willett might have gotten it. It was a stroke of genius to purchase it - even for our small house - because years of good times surround it.

The Basement and the Window Dicky Torched

Along with the pool/ping pong table (that made it a little less scary down there), the basement had the pantry items (including the periodic bursting can of botulism), washer dryer, Ruthy's ironing paraphernalia and the old spartan shower that Don Jones finally installed when Ron was nearly out the door to college... (how did we manage 6 people and one bathroom for so long without a shower??) There was also an old wash basin, and a sump pump where the hamster drowned. I was pretty young, but I swear there was a hamster named something like "Sniffles" who often got loose and ran around the house. He liked to hide in the kitchen cabinet with the pots and pans, chewing little holes in boxes that contained kitchen gadgets like the hand-mixer. When his wanderlust led him somehow into the basement sump pump, Sniffles wasn't found until it was too late. He was buried with dignity beside the basketball post in the backyard.

The basement was a treasure trove of stuff. Under the stairs, over by Dad's work bench, in the toy and sports box - and there were things in the rafters, too, just above the pool table. Gramp Foote's old Blue Bird guitar was up there for years. A pair of ancient skis, too. At some point, Dick's toboggan served time in the rafters....I think. When I was in high school, I took a night class in learning to play the guitar, and used the old blue bird as my instrument. Save for a few warped edges and strings that looked rusted, it seemed serviceable enough and I wanted to learn how to play. The sight and sound of the guitar rendered the instructor speechless. After gamely trying to 'blend' with the mellow tones of the more contemporary, well-maintained guitars, I finally stopped taking the class out of embarrassment. 

One of the better Dicky stories involved the basement window over the washing machine. My account may be riddled with misremembered details, but this is what I recall. Once Ruthy was working part time, she was often gone when we were all home on school break. (There had to have been times when she realized being off-site during these breaks was a bad idea). Dicky and Ron were tasked with burning the trash as their chore. This meant taking the garbage pail out to the trash bin in the yard and lighting it in a safe and mature manner. How this was never seen as the makings of a disaster is beyond me - don't most boys have a fascination with matches? This particular day Ruthy was at work or out somewhere and it was winter and cold as heck, so Dicky - King of the Masterminded Plot - decided instead of running out there to the far corner of the yard and freeze while trying to light the trash, he'd save time and light it in the pail at the back door and then run the pail out to the trash as the fire started to light, dumping it in the bin just as the flames took hold. No time a-wasted and barely even having to stop. I didn't see this happen personally - although I would've given all my allowance money to have been there - but I gather when the match hit the trash at the back door, the entire pail went up like a gas-soaked bonfire. He got as far as the first step out the door before having to fling the fireball into the nearest window well. The fire finally doused, tragedy averted - except now the window in the well was scorched and cracked, and the siding just over the well bubbled. Thus the byzantine cover-up began.

It was a good thing O'Donnell's Hardware was a short walk down the road because Dicky forged back and forth to reglaze the window, several attempts were thwarted over some missed detail. (According to Ruthy, on a visit to the hardware store a few months later she had an interesting conversation about the day her boy spent time with them reglazing a basement window.) 

To complete his cover-up that would fool both parents, putting a brand-spanking new window over the laundry work area would draw the eye of precisely those two people who didn't miss much. So he switched the new window with the one near the work bench where Dad stored all his paints and tools, and where a shelf partially obscured the window from view near the laundry area. An entire day of work to cover the mess he made finally ended in success - he'd managed to remove two windows, reglaze one and replace it in the area where it would be least noticeable before either parent returned that evening. 

Within two or three days of the torched trash incident, Ruthy had him cold. Seems the window he moved into the laundry area had a spray-painted circle where someone accidentally overshot a can of spray paint above Dad's work area years before. That spot now was on the window above Ruthy's work area. All his efforts that day to hide the results of his pail-turned-molotov-cocktail fell apart on that one little detail he neglected to consider: that the moving paint splotch would be at least as noticeable as the brand new window. What I remember most about those days is that Dicky was a guy who sought solutions, plotting them out in the most interesting and intricate detail....and usually to cover his tracks. There was never a dull moment with Dicky in the house!

The Change Pot

Dad's idea of a fun day

(click on the link above)

Hey, does anyone know where Dad's coin collection ended up??

Those days when Daddy brought home the coin collection from his work's coffee fund were always dreaded, for me certainly - and I'm assuming for Jeanne, too. It was usually on a Saturday, and the dining room table was set up for either Jeanne or I to sort through the dimes, nickels and pennies to add to Dad's coin collection - taking all day, it seemed. The windows to the world outside were right there, too, taunting us.....

It was his collection, his hobby, in theory anyway. He did bring home the coins, and he did provide the collection books. He had a ready excuse that his eyesight wasn't good enough to see the tiny dates, so he needed sharp youthful eyes to pick out the details. Now that I'm roughly the same age he was when he did this I can attest to that eyesight issue...but it never occurred to me back then to buy him a magnifying glass.

I believe he would hijack the coffee fund at work to sort through for a rare find... the coffee must have been cheap because there were A LOT of pennies to sort through. Not that I should complain - the sorting did add to the list of chores I had to come up with each week in order to earn my 10 cent allowance, which I proceeded to spend on penny candy at Whitakers, or a 10 cent comic book. A penny for every chore. By about 7 or 8 pennies, I had to think long and hard about what I did to earn 10 cents. Changing the television channel for Dad (the time before remotes!), telling Dick and Ron that dinner was ready, and answering the phone were stretching it to 10.

A coin collection wasn't just about separating them into piles by denomination or finding the right dates to insert into the collection slot. We had to see where the coin was minted (small letter under the date, usually) and the material used - and I think we had to count them, too. There were other anomalies that needed attention, too, but I'd have to think long and hard to remember them. The monotony of sorting through the coins was interrupted by the occasional find, but once the books were mostly to fully filled the finds got harder and harder. And a "find" could be dashed by getting that little minted letter wrong. There really was no way to cheat through this process. We were given a certain amount of coins and our time spent sorting through them was monitored - so no cheating. Swishing through the coins and calling it a day wasn't allowed. Daddy was clever when it came to knowing the tricks a kid would use to get through the task quicker. He may have been a pro at dodging the occasional chore and new the tricks of the trade.

The smell of pennies en masse and the feel of my fingers after handling them for hours - what a treat for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon! Hey, what did you do this weekend? Counted pennies! Good old Daddy.

Someone somewhere may just be benefitting from our youthful labors. Maybe Dad cashed them in years ago. I kind of hope so.