by Tim Conway
“Stay here, I forgot something,” he suddenly announced. He got out and went back into Sears. Within a few minutes of his departure, a policeman came over to the car and motioned for me to open the window.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Tom,” I replied. (Oops, forgot to mention that by this time Toma had been Americanized. How did I become Tim? I’ll tell you later; I’m in the middle of a story.)
“Tom what?”
“Tom Conway.”
“And where do you live?” he continued. I was getting worried.
“Oak Street,” I gulped.
“Step out of the car,” he ordered.
Now, I was just plain terrified. I opened the door and got out. He told me to raise my arms, which I did.
“Do you know what shoplifting is, Tom?” he asked as he reached into my pocket and withdrew the screw.
I remember thinking, “These cops are well trained; they can spot shoplifters in two seconds.”
He took his handcuffs off his belt and dangled them in front of me.
“Are you ever going to do anything like this again?”
“No, sir,” I fairly shrieked.
“Okay, I’m going to let you go this time, but if it happens again, I’m going to take you in and lock you up.”
With that, he turned and left me trembling on the pavement. I got back into the car and Dan returned.
“What did the cop want?” he asked as he got behind the wheel.
I sat there staring straight ahead, unable to speak. Dan backed out the car and looked over at me.
“Did you pee your pants?”
I didn’t have to answer. I was loaded with evidence. Believe me, I learned my lesson. I never stole anything again. How could I when I assumed that the next time meant I’d get the electric chair. You gotta hand it to them, Dan and Sophia were blithe spirits, for sure, but I learned a lot of life lessons from them. Lessons I tried to pass on to my own kids.
It’s hard to move away from Dan stories because I love telling them. You always could rely on him to say or to do something wacky. We were living in the larger two-story section of the two-family Orange Street house, which, as I’ve said, was our most elegant and permanent residence. Rex Hollis, our landlord, and his wife lived in the smaller section. Rex worked in the transportation department of the Chagrin Falls Township; he drove a snowplow in the winter, fixed potholes in the spring, and painted yellow lines on the roads in the summer and fall. No wonder Orange Street was one of the first to be plowed in winter and among the first to have the potholes filled in the spring. Our home, a real palace compared to the Oak Street garage, stood on a small knoll and had four huge white pillars in front. Like I said, the rent was a little pricey for Dan and Sophia but they paid it. As far as Sophia was concerned, the basement was the one drawback. The floor was dirt, which got very damp, and there was very little headroom. Sophia, however, got it into her head that the dirt had to be replaced with cement. At that time Dan was working for the Mitchell Coal and Cement Company and was able to fulfill Sophia’s wish. He did this by borrowing a little bit from each cement order he was assigned to fill. On his way to the designated purchaser, he’d stop at our house, back up the truck, empty a small portion of the load down our coal shoot, then hurry downstairs to smooth things out before setting off for the final destination on his delivery schedule. The process took many weeks to finish. Because he used bits and pieces from many different orders, the color and texture of the floor varied wildly. Some of it was blue, some green, some had large pieces of gravel while other portions were smooth with white stones mixed in, the kind you see around fancy swimming pools or bird baths. It was pretty psychedelic.
When the house was built back in the early 1800s, the basement was purely and simply for storage; a pot-bellied stove in the first-floor living room provided heat. Years before we moved in, a proper furnace had been installed. Periodically, Dan had to go to the cellar and stoke the thing. Dan soon learned to stoop over when he went to tend the boiler. He had to because the clearance from the dirt floor to the ceiling was about five feet four inches. Those were the dimensions before Dan laid down his three-inch, multitextured masterpiece. You can do the math. The change affected two out of three Conways. At a little over five feet, Sophia could clear the beams except when she wore her work shoes with their raised inner soles. Then, she could count on a rap or two. I was completely in the safety zone. Dan was another story. At five feet ten inches, he was in constant jeopardy. We always knew when he banged himself, since any blow was announced by a long, dragged out cry of “Jaanneey Maaac!” (“Janey Mac” is an Irish euphemism for the Lord’s name that dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. It’s used in order not to take His name in vain. Unaware of this at the time, I thought Janey Mac might be a relative.) Sophia would go to the top of the basement stairs and call down, “You all right?” A long pause would ensue, followed by another howl.
“Get me a Band-Aid, dammmmit!”
My father had a permanent piece of plaster on his forehead until he wised up. He learned to stoop over, way over, on his way down to the cellar and never stood upright until he returned to the first floor.
Were my father and mother truly as eccentric as I remember? I think so. Almost every memory I have of them is a study in lunacy. Thanks to Dan and Sophia, I lived in a benign twilight zone. Following are a few more uncensored examples of the craziness that enveloped my growing up years, especially as they relate to my father.
Did you ever hear the one about the Irishman and the Scotsman? Well, here’s the Conway version. Dan’s best friend was Bill Butler, a red-faced, bowlegged Scotsman with a thick brogue. When my father and he got together, between Dan’s Irish accent and Bill’s Scottish one, it was anybody’s guess as to what was being said. They met mucking out the stalls at the Polo Club and became instant friends. They were inseparable. Among other joint ventures, Bill assisted my father in brewing, bottling, and corking his homemade beer in our kitchen brewery. The Anheuser and Busch of Chagrin often added extra yeast which would cause the beer to cook a little too rapidly. That, in turn, caused the bottles to pop their caps long before the yeast had finished fermenting. Sometimes there’d be a big blow off in the middle of the night. I’d lie in bed and listen to the pop-pop-pop of the bottle caps hitting the ceiling. (No surprise, our kitchen ceiling was polka-dotted with beer spots.) At the first pop, Dan would rush down to the “brewery” and try to salvage at least a swig of the swill he and his pal optimistically called beer. Dan drank what little remained. Barely a drop was left for Bill.
Bill was lucky to miss out on a lot of the brewed product, but that’s where his luck ran out. The poor man barely survived being Dan Conway’s best friend. Seriously, my father inflicted a lot of physical damage on his buddy. One of the closest calls happened when they were ratting out the stables.
Rodents burrowed tunnels under the clay floors of the stalls, and every so often they had to be exterminated. Usually Dan would stick a garden hose down a rat hole and turn on the water. Bill waited at another hole with a raised baseball bat. When Mickey Mouse’s distant relatives came up for air, they’d get a bonk on the noggin that finished them off. This was the established procedure but, of course, Dan Conway had to build a better rattrap. Drawing on his Irish wisdom, he came up with an alternate plan. I happened to be with him on the day that he put the plan into play. The three of us drove over to the barn where the horses were kept. Dan backed up the truck as close to the barn as possible, connected the garden hose to the exhaust pipe, and ran the hose into a hole in the stall floor. Bat in hand Bill went into the barn. Dan thought he should be at the ready in case any dazed rat managed to make it to the surface. Do you see the flaw, here? If so, you qualify as far brighter than either Bill Butler or Dan Conway. I sat in the front of the truck with my father and watched as he pumped the gas pedal. After a short spell, Dan and I got out of the truck and went into the barn to see what was up.
“Ay
e, Bill!” cried my father.
No answer.
“Where are ye, Billy?”
Still no response. We followed the hose to the end to see how many rats Bill had stacked up. The only thing on the ground was Bill, still clutching the bat in his hands but barely conscious. No wonder. Along with the rats, he’d been inhaling the exhaust fumes. Dan got behind him, grabbed him under the arms, and pulled him out of the barn. He propped Bill up against the barn wall and began slapping his face. At first, Bill didn’t seem to notice, then he shook his head, looked blearily at my dad and cried, “Stop yerrr slappin’!”
Once Bill revived, I waited with him while Dan went to the truck where he turned off the ignition, and then removed the hose from the exhaust pipe. We helped Bill into the truck and took off for home. The Pied Pipers ended the evening guzzling their beer in our kitchen. If my father was looking for a better way to kill the rats, he should have considered pouring his brew into the rat holes. It would have wiped out Chagrin’s entire rodent population.
Another of Bill’s misadventures with Dan took place during the second chukker of a polo match on Mr. White’s field. A horse fell and broke his right front leg. Sad to say such accidents do happen in racing as well as in polo matches. The galloping horses kick up the turf creating gaps in the ground. If a clump of dirt is over a ground hog’s tunnel then a really large hole can result. And, if a horse steps into it he’ll likely snap his leg and crash to the ground. More often than not, there’s no hope of repairing the injury and the horse has to be euthanized. Today, a track vet will give the beast a lethal injection. In those days wounded animals didn’t get shots, they got shot. It was a horrible scene. A couple of guys would hold up a blanket to hide the poor beast while another pair of men went behind the blanket, one to keep the horse on the ground and the other to shoot him. Once the shot was fired, the blanket holders would let it drop over the dead horse. Then all four guys would drag the covered carcass onto a sled and take it off the field. It didn’t happen that often, but when it did, it was terrible.
That afternoon at Mr. White’s, the minute the polo pony dropped, Dan and Bill jumped into the pickup truck, drove over the field, and pulled up near the fallen animal. They got out and assessed the damage. Unfortunately, it was the worst-case scenario; the polo pony had to be destroyed. Two guys held up the blanket while Dan took a .22 rifle from the truck. Meanwhile, Bill took the horse’s head between his hands and held it down to keep the horse from trying to get up on his feet. Dan and Bill were behind the blanket, and all that the spectators in the bleachers could see was the raised blanket and the horse’s legs sticking out. Bill finally got the horse’s head secured and gave Dan the signal. Dan placed the rifle on the beast’s forehead and fired. There was a moment of silence and then came a howl in the distinct brogue of a certain Scotsman.
“Ya crazy bampot, you’ve shot me! (In case you’re wondering, bampot is a Scottish word for “idiot.”)
In the same instant that the animal was put out of his misery, Bill Butler was put into his. The bullet went right through the horse’s head and Bill’s foot. With one shot, Dan euthanized the horse and blew off his friend’s little toe. From that day on Bill walked favoring his right leg.
One December 31st, Dan and I, and Bill and his son, Billy—my best friend—were on our way down River Road to Gates Mills and the Chagrin Valley Hunt Club to feed and water the horses. Dan and Big Bill sat in the front of the old Ford, and Little Bill and I were in the back nestled against a dozen bottles of Dan’s home brew. The number of bottles in the back decreased as two were passed along into the front seat and emptied by Dan and Big Bill. We arrived at the stable, and the two of them, fortified by beers, continued their early celebration of New Year’s Eve. While they began mucking the stalls and pitching hay to the twenty or so horses, Billy and I went out to the polo field and tossed a ball back and forth. We returned to the barn and found Dan looking for Big Bill. We joined the search and soon found Little Bill’s dad passed out in one of the stalls. Dan, Little Bill, and I got him to the car and shoved him into the front seat. Billy and I jumped in the back as Dan slammed the passenger door and went around to the driver’s seat. We started the journey home and had traveled a few miles when Big Bill started moaning something that sounded like, “Brakeihhairin.”
He said it over and over, and each time he moaned, Dan would call out, “Shut up.”
We reached Bill’s house, and Dan got out and went around to help his friend out of the car. When he opened the door, he discovered that he’d closed it on Bill’s hand. From then on, four of Bill’s five fingers went in different directions. It didn’t seem to hinder his work, but he did have trouble pointing.
Several years passed before Bill received his next body-altering blow.
It happened in the Orange Street house. All the kitchen appliances were plugged into one extension cord, and if too many appliances were turned on the fuses blew. It happened a lot of times until Dan put a penny in the fuse box, which seemed to handle the overload. (Please, don’t ask me any technical questions about this. I saw him do it and I saw the result, and that’s all I know.) One fine day Sophia wanted an electrical extension in their upstairs bedroom. Dan consulted with Bill, and the Edison and Tesla of Chagrin set about granting Sophia’s wish. They bought twenty feet of electrical wire, a four-way plug, and electrical tape. The plan was to tap into the already overloaded kitchen outlet, run the wire through the polka-dotted ceiling, and connect it to the newly installed four-way plug in the upstairs hallway. Dan drilled a hole through the kitchen ceiling and then needed to figure out where it was going to emerge in the hallway. Big Bill said he’d go upstairs and find the exact spot, and off he went. Meanwhile, Dan got a broom to stick up through the hole so Bill could easily find it. I assume the pending calamity is making itself clear. Bill saw traces of sawdust and the edges of a circle. He cupped his hands over the soon-to-be hole, and lowered his head onto the top of his hands. His eye was right over the hole. At that moment, Dan pushed the broom handle through the ceiling and into Bill’s eye. Bill was an amateur boxer and capable of taking some pretty big blows, but the old broom in the eye floored him.
The last time I saw Bill Butler was a few months after my Dad’s funeral. Charlene and I were in Chagrin and ran into Bill at Dinks, a local restaurant. He spotted us with his good eye, limped over to our table, stuck out his hand with the fingers pointing in different directions, and as I took his crippled hand in mine, said with loving sincerity, “Ah, Tommy lad, how I miss yer Dad.”
Me, too, Big Bill. Me, too.
Few of Dan’s acquaintances escaped unscathed. Poor Rex Hollis was another victim. One January morning, my Dad got in the old Ford, gave the key a turn, and the engine sputtered to a slow, wintry start. He tried to back out the car, but it wouldn’t budge. Rex saw what was happening through a window and, being a neighborly type of fellow, came out and asked if he could help.
“If ye’d get in front and give the car some pushes whilst I press on the accelerator, I think I’d be able to back out,” answered Dan.
So, Rex got in front and with his hands gripping the bumper began to rock the car as Dan gently pressed the gas pedal while shifting from forward to reverse.
“Now, gun it in reverse,” Rex called out.
My dad floored the pedal and Rex, his hands firmly on the bumper, gave a huge push. The car moved back. Oh, I should mention that a tree stump under the car was sticking up high enough to catch the bumper as the car scraped over it. Well, the final push did it, and my Dad backed out, waved to Rex, and drove on to work. Had he glanced in the rearview mirror, he would have seen Rex waving good-bye with all three fingers of his right hand. That’s right, three. You see when the car scraped over the stump Rex’s hand went with it, and that little maneuver amputated the tips of two fingers on his hand. Miracle of miracles, they remained friends.
Perhaps because Dan and I were related by blood, I only suffered minor indignities, not physical
harm.
The next case in the Daniel Conway dossier.
Rex offered Dan a can of yellow paint left over from his spring roadwork chores. Why he assumed that my father would have any use for it is beyond me. But, as usual, Dan came up with something.
“C’mon down, Tommy,” he called up to my room. “We’ve got some work to do. We’re going to surprise Sophia.” I came down and found Dan standing with the paint can in one hand and two brushes in the other.
“Here, take this,” he said, handing me one of the brushes. “You know how your mother’s been after me about how bad the car looks? Well, we’re going to spruce it up with a coat of paint.”
So saying, he marched out the front door with me close behind. And that’s how it happened that my father and I set about painting our broken-down Ford a lurid yellow. The color would have been weird enough on its own, but there’s more. The car was parked in front of the house, and Dan and I got right to work. We moved fast. We had to because the paint had a quick-drying element that made it difficult to apply. Remember, it was meant for painting lines on asphalt not for sprucing up automobiles. We finished and went into the house for a spot of ice tea. That’s the good part of the story. The bad part—it was summer and Canadian soldiers had inundated our town.
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, let me explain. Canadian soldiers are mayflies, huge bugs that resemble the praying mantis. They have really large wings and travel in large swarms that come down from Canada by way of Lake Erie in late spring. They’re a force to be reckoned with, and that force had already arrived in Chagrin, which Dan and I discovered when we returned to the car. What a sight. Maybe it was the smell of the paint that attracted them, but whatever the reason, the result was hundreds, possibly thousands of those bugs stuck to the Ford. Their transparent wings were fluttering like crazy, but their bodies weren’t going anywhere. (I think if one more swarm had landed, those insects could have picked up the car and carried it off.) Dan rubbed the back of his head and said, “Your mother’s got to see this.”