by Jeff Tapia
That’s when we started to understand what he meant by fit. “Can you do that with any other players?”
“Darn near each and every one of ’em. And every season too. But only back to the year 1900, as I was just workin’ on when you sat down with your puddin’. Chocolate, I do believe it was.”
Now we knew why Mom said we should come and have a talk with him about our homework. “You think you can help us remember the presidents like that?”
“Ain’t a pupil that growed up in Wymore that I haven’t. Includin’ your Mom and Pops. She tell you that?”
“She did.”
“And they both got an A if I’m remembering right.”
That sounded good to us. “Well, what do we gotta do to get an A?”
“Ain’t much to it,” Grandpa Chester said. “Once you choose your palace.”
And we said, “Huh?” Living in Wymore, we ain’t never seen a single palace.
Grandpa Chester said it was as easy as falling off a log. He explained to us his trick in three little steps. “First you gotta pick a place you know good as your back pocket. That’s what’s called your palace. Then once you got that, alls you gotta do is picture all the different details about it. You followin’?”
We weren’t really. And so we asked, “What’s your palace?”
And Grandpa Chester said, “We’re sittin’ right across from it.”
We looked across the street, past Grandma Winnie wiping off a clunker and over Grandma Elsie, who was bent down pulling weeds, and there was the old drugstore. Its sign was missing lots of letters, too, and now it just spelled out RU ST.
“That’s your palace?”
“That it is. Stood in there behind the counter for darn near forty years, and there ain’t no nook, cranny, or apothecary jar in there that I ain’t on a first-name basis with.”
“Apotha-canary what?” we asked.
“That’s them dusty jars up on the shelves with them funny words on ’em. Alum, Junip., Sod. Bromide, Sulph. Forty-two of ’em in all, and I still know each and every one. Left to right and right to left. Which is what I’m sayin’. Find a place you know inside out and outside in. And that, kids, will be your palace.”
Now we were starting to get it. We put our heads together, and it didn’t take us long. “Can we pick Mabel’s?”
“I’d say there ain’t no better choice to be choosed,” Grandpa Chester answered.
“But what do we do with it?”
“Just think about some of the things that are in there.”
Well, that wasn’t hard. We named stuff like how the screen door’s always stuck, and how our booth’s by the window, and them greasy bottles of ketchup and mustard on the table. We mentioned that jar of relish we won’t touch, the tricycle stain and the boat stain up on the ceiling, and the TV up in the corner that’s always going on and on about the weather. Then there was the fan rotating back and forth all summer long on the lunch counter, the library booth with its pile of old books, and them swinging doors leading back to Grandma Mabel in the kitchen.
We could’ve kept going, but where did all the presidents come in at?
“That’s step three,” Grandpa Chester said. “Now what you do is, you tell yourself a story. Because stories is how you remember things. Just ask Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil. And in that story, you make each president have somethin’ to do with each of them things you’ve just been tellin’ me about: the screen door, the stains, the relish.”
“You mean like George Washington opened the screen door?”
“That’s the general idea. But the funnier you make it, the easier you’re gonna remember.”
We thought for a moment and asked, “George Washington pulled and tugged, but couldn’t open the screen door?”
Grandpa Chester smacked his hands together. “Much better!”
“And John Adams looked up at the tricycle stain?”
“Why not say that John Adams rode the tricycle stain?”
“And Thomas Jefferson sailed on the boat stain?”
“Bingo! People’s always saying he was the smart one of the bunch.”
That’s when we started having fun with it. We sat James Madison down in our booth and had him order a groundhog,1 and James Monroe served him one slathered with yucky relish. John Quincy Adams wasn’t hungry and went to the library to read Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, while Andrew Jackson just sat there throwing a hissy fit about the weather report. The weatherman on the TV was Martin Van Buren, and he was saying, “Looks like it’s gonna be another scorcher,” and that was why William Henry Harrison was up at the lunch counter hogging the fan. And before we knew it, we were already up to nine presidents!
“Who taught you this trick, Grandpa Chester?” we asked.
And he said, “Read about it in some book long time back. Some kinda encyclopedia or somethin’. Funny, but can’t seem to remember the title just now.”
We looked at each other and knew what we were thinking.2
“Well, I guess I’ll be gettin’ back to my ball game,” Grandpa Chester said with a wink, and stuck his transistor radio up against his ear. And we were certain we heard bat strike ball and the crowd roar.
WE GRABBED OUR CLIPBOARD and made another round through town. Several clunkers were reflecting the sunlight for the first time in years, and near half the tires were still holding air. Grandma Elsie had a garbage pail full of weeds, and even though Grandpa Bert was brown with dust, the sidewalks looked as clean as a dish. A poster in the appliance store window read SUMMER SALE! The barbershop pole was turning sometimes, to the tune of an awful squeak, and up on the hotel roof we saw our grandpas nailing up the sign. The letters looked good now. The only problem was a couple of them were in the wrong place. We yelled, but our grandpas must’ve had their hearing aids unplugged. And that’s how our hotel came to be called the Slantey.
Being beautificationists kept us busy till the shadows grew long. But in between things, we still had the chance to work on our presidents some. Millard Fillmore became the bubble dancer1 with a sink full of pots and pans to waltz with, and Franklin Pierce was at the prep table plucking a chicken.2 And by dot nine o’clock that night when Mom called, we were already down to Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield, two guys we never could’ve remembered otherwise. Now Rutherford was studying a book called How to Win at Checkers while Garfield kept showing off the new anchor tattoo he had on his left bicep.
We ran our story by Mom, and she said, “Sounds like you had a good talk with Grandpa Chester.”
And we asked her, “He ever tell you about the Flying Dutchman?”
She said, “Honus Wagner? Sure. He got hit by a pitch once in the 1917 season. But I couldn’t tell you where exactly.”
After we got off the phone with Mom, we still weren’t in the mood for sleeping, even though we were yawning like we were getting paid for it. So we went over to our window and breathed in deep against the screen and worked on our story a little more.3
“Hey, look at that, Jimmy James.”
“What?”
“Streetlight’s flickerin’.”4
“Sure is. We better get it fixed.”
“Otherwise them June bugs won’t have no place to congregate at.”
“Shoot, they can fly off to McFall. They got more than enough lights up there.”
“That’s true.”
“But I’ll tell you one thing, Stella.”
“What’s that, Jimmy James?”
“We ain’t goin’ with ’em.”
EARLY NEXT MORNING a deep and long horn blast rattled the windows. And although the sun hadn’t as yet been able to pry our eyelids open, that horn sure did. We knew right away that it was Pops’s horn, and that got us moving faster than a drumroll.
We threw back our sheets and ran to the window just in time to see his big rig pull into the square and make that big sigh noise it always did when it came to a full stop. Then Pops’s door opened, and we watched him c
limb down all stiff and sore at the back and then stand in the dusty square and stretch his arms out and scratch his beard and spit out a seed of some kind into the dirt. We’re pretty sure Pops is the only trucker who ever wore a beret.
The next big surprise was that the other door opened, and there was Mom. She looked kinda dizzy standing way up there, so Pops went around to help her out and lifted her down with one arm and placed her gently as a feather on the ground. Then he reached back up into the cab and pulled out a little box with a bunch of stickers stuck all over it, and we knew right then and there that it was our school box.
We didn’t bother none with our hair, and we didn’t care about our faces, and we didn’t give a hoot about what kinda crud might be stuck behind our ears. We just dashed clean out of our room still in our PJs and up the hall and down the stairs and through the lobby and out the door of the hotel1 and into the sun and across the square and right into Mom’s and Pops’s waiting arms. Everybody smothered everybody else in hugs so much until none of us could breathe anymore and we had to come up for air.
The first thing we said was, “Show us the dingsbums!”
Pops said, “Dingsbums? What in the heck’s a dingsbums?” He jiggled our school box up above his head just to make us squirm some.
But that was all right because we already knew what it looked like. Besides, we had lots to show them. And as we made our way over to Mabel’s, we kept pointing at all the changes that had taken place in town under our supervision, and Mom and Pops couldn’t stop marveling at how nice the square looked.
Mom said, “What a difference a day makes . . .” Actually she sung it, and her voice sparkled like honey.
And we said, “Hey, that’s one of them songs Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil sings!”
Then Pops picked up the tune and sung the next line. And we shouted, “Aww, Pops!” and covered our ears.
Pops cleared his throat and said, “Guess my singing days is over.”
And Mom said, “I hadn’t realized they ever started!”
Once we got to Mabel’s, Pops grabbed the screen door and jerked hard on it until it opened and said, “On tray voo!”2 It sure was great to be all together again.
It must’ve still been early because there wasn’t no one else in the diner, and Grandma Ida was still busy laying place mats. Mom and Pops went to thank her kindly for looking after us all week, and we saved their spots for them at our booth and couldn’t sit close enough to make up for all the lost time.
Grandma Ida followed right up with two cups of joe for Mom and Pops and a large glass of moo juice3 for each of us. “What kinda birdseed can I get y’all this morning?” she asked.
Mom ordered an Adam and Eve on a raft,4 and Pops went for a bowl of red, heavy on the breath5 because that’s just the type of thing he likes eating in the morning. We asked for checkerboards with extra axle grease.6
Then Pops said, “Ain’t you two turkeys gonna have a look?”
He was talking about our school box, which was sitting right in the middle of the table. We reached over and opened it up. There was our dingsbums—along with about ten other dingsbumses mixed in with it. We didn’t know what that was supposed to mean.
Pops said, “Spark plugs! Just like I thought. So I picked up a few more of ’em on my way into town. I reckon one of ’em’s gonna get that hippomobile up and runnin’.”
“You mean you can just buy a dingsbums nowadays?”
“If you got a couple bucks in your pocket you can,” Pops said.
“Does that mean that all this time the hippomobile could’ve been working, and that alls it needed was a dumb old spark plug?”7 we asked.
“I dunno,” Pops said. “But that’s what I’m doing here to find out.”
That was when Grandma Ida arrived with the food. “Clear the runway!” she called out before putting our plates down.
Pops rubbed his hands and said, “Bone appatee!” Which was more French for “Enjoy your meal.”
And we did, too, all of us working our elbows and filling our shirts like we were Family Grubstruck. Mom only interrupted our chewing once or twice to have Jimmy show her that hole in his mouth again. Otherwise no one spoke anything until Pops put his spoon down in his empty bowl and patted his stomach twice and said, “So, let’s go!”
But before we could even say “Yeah!” Mom said, “Smitty, wipe your mouth.”8
Pops said, “On the road it’s a sign of respect to leave a little somethin’ clingin’ to your beard when you eat.”
Mom just said, “Wipe it!” And he did. But she wasn’t finished, neither. Because to us she said, “Go get your helmets!”
And we said, “Aww, Mom!”
And Pops said, “Aww, Mom!”
But Mom just said, “Helmets! And while you’re there, put some clothes on!”
We knew there wasn’t gonna be no discussing the matter, so we ran back to the hotel and did as we were told. By the time we returned to Mabel’s, Pops was outside with a can of gas and having a closer look at that screen door.
“Where’s Mom?” we asked.
Pops just said, “She needs another cup of joe. Too much dancin’ last night. But don’t tell her I said that.” And he winked.
So it was just the three of us, and Pops couldn’t get over how good the square looked.
“And we were in charge, too,” we said.
Pops looked at the items on sale at the appliance store, and the lady in the beauty parlor window, and the sign on top of the hotel that read SLANTEY, and he said, “I can tell.”
That made us feel real good.
No one else was out and about yet, and as we made our way to Hill Street, we didn’t even come across Grandpa Milton walking his old mail route. We tried tugging on Pops to get him to go faster, but he either wouldn’t or couldn’t, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
When we finally got to the old factory building and saw the battered door, we slapped ourselves square on our foreheads. We forgot all about the key.
But Pops said, “Key? Who needs a key? C’mon!”
So we shrugged our shoulders and followed him around through the weeds and out to the back of the building, where there was a big barn-door kind of a door.
Pops tried prying open the latch. “This is how we snuck in here back when we was kids,” he said. “Thing’s all warped now, though. You’re gonna have to loan me some of your iron.”
So we all grabbed that latch and on the count of twa,9 we gave it all we had and then some. What happened next was the latch busted clean off. That made the barn door start to wobble. Then it swung wide open and came right off its hinges and teetered just long enough for us to jump out of the way. Then it fell toward the grass with one big whoosh! and hit the ground with one big whump!
We all stood there looking at it a second, and then Pops scratched his head and said, “Guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow.” By which he meant fixing it back together.
Then we walked into the building, and there stood the hippomobile. We could tell that the sight of it nearly blew Pops’s beret clean off. He said, “Dang!” and that was it. It was a long time later before he said, “I bet I ain’t been in here in over thirty years.” The whole time he was walking around real slow and running his hand over the hippomobile and enjoying the moment like it was a plate of meat and gravy. And then he said, “You believe that? We used to sit up on this thing for hours playing stagecoach.” But it wasn’t even like he was talking to us or even knew we were still there.
After a while we couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Pops. Hey, Pops!”
He snapped out of it like a rubber band. “What’s up?”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, my back’s just fine.”
“We didn’t mean your back.”
But Pops just said, “Gimme that school box of yours.”
We gave it to him, and he went over to the hippomobile and found his footing in one of the wheel spokes and started c
limbing right up. The hippomobile protested with more groans than school kids on test day, but it didn’t fall apart like we were fearing it was gonna.
Once Pops was up on top, he said, “Hot diggity! Feel like a kid again.”
“Can we climb up too?”
“I sure hope so.”
It didn’t take us much more than a hop, skip, and a jump to get up there, but even so, Pops was already prying open the lid to the wood box up by the steering wheel by the time we arrived. When he lifted it off, we bent over to look in and were surprised to see all kinds of gears and pulleys in there.
We looked at each other and whispered, “That must be the engine.”
Meanwhile Pops was busy rubbing his beard and looking hard at those gears and pulleys. “That Gottfried was smart as a sore thumb,” he said.
“He was?”
Pops didn’t bother with answering us. He was making that clicking sound with his tongue that meant he was thinking. Plus he was busy poking his finger around all the parts in the engine box. Every once in a while he said things like “Well, I’ll be!” and “No kiddin’!” And it wasn’t a minute too soon for us when he finally said, “Now where’d that school box take off to?”
“Here it is, Pops!” We handed it to him and even opened the lid for him. “Which one you think you’re gonna use?”
Pops just said, “I’ll find out as soon as I know.”
That meant not to bug him about it. So we sat there on the front bench quiet as a puddle and watched him try one dingsbums after another until we lost track of how many he done tried. Eventually he pulled a wrench out of one of his pockets and went to work with that some. Then he went back to trying to find the right dingsbums. The whole time our fingers were crossed so hard, they nearly snapped like twigs.
Then sudden as a thunderclap, Pops said, “You gotta be kiddin’!”