Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

by Jean Shepherd

  “I bet that baby’d make great bacon,” my father finally said in a quiet voice. A look of reproach flickered over Horace’s mighty face as he glanced in our direction.

  We moved on with the crowd into the prize-goat tent. Photographers were popping flashbulbs around a luxuriant, silken-haired Angora with a set of wicked-looking horns. Beside him stood a short, fat 4-H girl wearing a green beret and holding up another blue ribbon. The goat tent was among the gamier exhibits, but exciting. Goats are unpredictable, and from time to time one would try to climb out and go after some kid’s taffy apple. Goats always have fancy names. This one was Prince Bernadotte Charlemagne d’Alexandre of Honey-vale Farms. The 4-H girl stared solemnly at the cameras while the bulbs popped on. The goat just chewed and looked bored.

  We wandered along with the dusty crowds, looking at turkeys, ducks, rabbits, sheep, guinea pigs and chickens. It was in the chicken tent that an enigmatic event took place. In one corner, a heavy-set lady wearing a green shawl sat on a camp chair next to a large, fancy cage containing a single white, efficient-looking chicken. Atop the cage was a sign: ESMERALDA KNOWS.

  “Would you folks care to have Esmeralda tell your fortune?”

  “Yeah! Yeah! I want my fortune told! Waaaaaa!” My kid brother went into high gear. The chicken hopped around in the cage and clucked knowingly.

  “How much is it?” asked my mother warily.

  “Only a dime. Just ten cents to learn the little boy’s fortune.”

  The chicken pecked at the cage, waiting to go to work. My mother reached into her carryall with the picture of Carmen Miranda on it, fished out a dime and handed it to my brother, who grabbed it eagerly.

  “Put the dime into the slot, little boy, and watch the chicken tell your fortune.”

  My brother walked up to the cage, his face inches away from the chicken’s beak. The two stared at each other for a long moment.

  A small crowd was beginning to gather. He dropped the dime into the slot on the side of the cage. At that, a ladder dropped from the roof inside the cage. The chicken scurried up rung by rung, clucking madly. At the top of the ladder was a box containing folded slips of paper. The chicken picked one out with its beak, hopped back down the ladder, eyes rolling wildly, and dropped the slip of paper into a chute, releasing a half-dozen grains of corn.

  Cluck-cluck-cluck waaaaaak! It gulped them down hungrily.

  “There. Esmeralda has told your fortune,” the lady said to my brother. I noticed that she had a mustache.

  The slip of paper had dropped into a small tray outside the cage. My brother grabbed it and read the message aloud:

  “‘You are unwise in your in-vest-ments. Care in the future will ensure your success.’”

  My mother laughed. “Esmeralda was right. You spent your entire allowance last week on Fudgsicles. See?”

  My brother glared angrily at Esmeralda. After that, I had no desire to hear any smart talk from Esmeralda about my life.

  “OK, you’ve had your fun. Now there’s something I gotta see,” said my father. “Wait’ll you see this. I read about it in the paper.”

  “What now?” asked my mother as we started after him. She knew better than to fight the inevitable.

  “Hairy Gertz saw it yesterday and he said you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Well,” said my mother, “if Hairy Gertz said that, it certainly must be something!”

  “What do you mean by that?” my father shot back. Hairy Gertz was one of the old man’s bowling buddies, famed throughout the county for his collection of incredibly gross jokes. My mother didn’t answer.

  “Anyway, I want to see it.” He went over to a dozing cop and asked him directions.

  My father came back, beaming. “OK, here we go. Follow me.” We did, and a couple of minutes later were waiting in line in front of another tent.

  “Wait’ll you see this. You won’t believe it!” My father rubbed his hands together in anticipation. The crowd snaked into the tent in a long line. Finally, we were inside.

  Big floodlights hung from the tent poles. In the middle of the sawdust floor, there was a roped-off square.

  “What is it?” my mother asked as soon as she got a look at what was on the platform.

  “What do you mean, ‘What is it?’ Can’t you read the sign, stupid?”

  A sign hung over the astounding object that had moved even Hairy Gertz to speechless wonder. The crowd stood in reverent silence. Occasionally, someone snapped a picture with a Brownie, hoping that there was enough light to enable him to preserve this magnificent exhibit forever in his book of memories. The sign, hand lettered in gilt on fake parchment, was draped with an American flag. It read:

  THIS GIANT 47-POUND, 10-OUNCE INDIANA PUMPKIN, BEARING A STRIKING LIKENESS TO OUR BELOVED PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, WAS GROWN BY HOMER L. SEASTRUNK OF R.F.D. 2, NEW JERUSALEM, INDIANA. MR. SEASTRUNK PLANS TO PRESENT THE PUMPKIN TO PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

  “How d’y like that?” my father said softly as the four of us stood before the great pumpkin.

  Someone behind me muttered angrily, “That nut is ruinin’ the country. I know what I’d do with that pumpkin!”

  “Shhhhh!” several indignant patriots hissed back.

  There was no doubt that it was one of the high points of the fair. Another sign said that Mr. Seastrunk himself would make a personal appearance at three P.M. to give a short talk on how he figured God had created that pumpkin in honor of the President. He would also give free autographs.

  “I told you this was worth seeing,” said my father as he wound one of the knobs on his trusty camera. “Now, how wouldja like to go next door and see the world’s biggest cheese?”

  The same cheese, I have no doubt, has been on exhibit at every fair I ever attended. It wasn’t much to look at; when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, even if it weighs two tons. A sign read: THE MILK FROM 2000 COWS FOR ONE FULL YEAR WAS REQUIRED TO MAKE THIS CHEESE. IT WOULD MAKE OVER 422,000 CHEESE SANDWICHES.

  This kind of stuff really got to the old man. He snapped more pictures and walked all the way around the cheese, examining it from every angle. All it did was make my kid brother hungry again.

  It was late in the afternoon now and the crowd was really warmed up, moving in straggly columns around huge, black-wheeled tractors, cultivators, threshing machines and other agricultural exotica. Salesmen, the collars of their shirts opened, ties hanging limply, shouted over bullhorns as we wandered dazedly amid the shuffling throng, kicking up bread crusts and paper cups as we eddied on.

  “I’m hungry,” my brother droned, his voice barely audible above the uproar.

  “You’ve just gone. You’ll have to wait” said my mother, pushing the damp hair back off her forehead.

  “I don’t have to go! I’m hungry!” Randy never gave up.

  “You heard what your mother said.” My father got into the act “I said I’m HUNGRY!”

  “You’re what? You’ve had three taffy apples, four hot dogs and two root beers. That’s enough for a while.”

  “I wanna PICKLE!”

  As it happened, we were passing a stand where a guy in a red vest and a white chef’s hat was selling giant dark-green pickles from barrels. People eat strange stuff at county fairs.

  “I want one, too!” I said.

  We all bought pickles in wax paper and rejoined the moiling mob. My pickle must have weighed two pounds. Every time I bit into it, it squirted down the front of my shirt.

  It was getting dark now and 50 times more exciting as the bright lights began to flash on. I washed down the tart, puckery taste of the pickle with some cold buttermilk from a paper cup with a picture on it of a red cow wearing a green hat. My knees had begun to ache from the endless trudging through sawdust and over piles of debris. On either side of us, a sparkling ribbon of spinning yellow wheels, blue-white neon lights and hot orange flames under cooking grills stretched to the horizon. Guys with leather jackets and great mops of carefully combed, greasy hai
r ranged through the crowds, looking for fights and girls.

  On a high platform, two blondes wearing silver helmets sat on the saddles of enormous bright-red Harley-Davidsons. They gunned the motors deafeningly sending thin blue exhaust smoke into the crowd that stood around the platform with glazed eyes and gaping mouths.

  “Dee-fying death every second, straight from the world championships in Paris, France, Melba and Bonnie stare into the very jaws of eternity!” yelled the barker.

  BBBBRRRROOOOOOOMMMMMMMIBAAAARRR-OOOOOOOMMMMI Another cloud of acrid smoke drifted out over the mob.

  The barker spieled on: “There is time for just one more big show tonight, just one more! Never in your life have you seen anything to equal THE DEVIL RIDE!”

  BAAARRROOOOOOM! BBBBBRRRRRRROOOOOO-OMMMMMI

  “Bee-ginning in just one minute. In just sixty seconds! Beautiful Melba and lovely Bonnie stare into the jaws of death!”

  The two blondes, thin-faced and pallid, peered out from under their spectacular helmets, chewing gum steadily as they gunned their Harleys.

  “I gotta see that!” This act was designed for my old man. Anything that had to do with roaring motors and crash helmets hit him in the vitals. Add the fact that these were skinny blonde women, another weakness, and you had bigtime showbiz, as far as he was concerned.

  With a couple of final, provocative roars, the two raced down the ramp and disappeared through a doorway outlined in yellow with a string of colored light bulbs festooning a blood-red Devil’s face with green eyes.

  We followed close behind my father as he elbowed his way through the sweaty throng of daredevil fans to the head of the line inside the tent. We found ourselves standing at the rim of a circular pit ten or fifteen feet deep. The noise was deafening; the wooden floor vibrated and creaked under our feet. The air was thick with burning gasoline. Down in the pit, the two motorcycles boomed round and round, chasing each other madly in faster and faster circles, rising up the curved walls until they were riding almost horizontally under the chicken wire that separated the Harleys from us.

  A white-faced, blue-veined minister, his high collar spotted with catsup, stood next to us in tense excitement. Kids ran wildly in and out of the crowd, throwing peanut shells at the riders as they screamed round and round in their tight spiral. The old man peered down into the maelstrom, pounding the rail in excitement as the motorcycles accelerated faster and faster.

  “M, DEFYING GRAVITY ON THEIR SPECIALLY BUILT HARLEY-DAVIDSONS, MELBA AND BONNIE WILL NOW PERFORM A DEATH-DEFYING FEAT NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN THE UNITED STATES!” shouted the voice on the P.A. system over the racket. Down in the gloom of the hell pit, the exhausts trailed smoke as the motorcycles rode abreast.

  “MELBA AND BONNIE WILL CHANGE MOTORCYCLES AT TOP SPEED!”

  The crowd hunched forward with expectancy. Even the kids were quiet. The thunder of the motorcycles had reached the point where no more sound could be endured. The whole structure—the floor, the guy wires, the back teeth, everything—vibrated to the scream of the Harleys. Down in the pit, there was a quick shuffling of bodies and it was done.

  “Fer Chrissake, how d’y like that! I wouldna’ believed it!” said the oldman to no one in particular. The minister, his black hat hanging at a rakish angle, applauded frantically.

  Once again we were out on the midway, 50 cents poorer but infinitely richer in worldly experience.

  My mother, who was eating a piece of watermelon, said plaintively, “I haven t seen the quilts yet

  “I wanna go on the Ferris wheel,” whined my brother for the 298th time.

  “I thought you were gonna see em when we went to the races,” said the old man, ignoring him for the 298th time.

  “We went to the cookie tasting instead.”

  “The what?”

  “The cookie tasting. Over by where they were having the artistic flower arranging.”

  The old man said nothing and headed for a three-story-high orange face that laughed madly under a sign that read FUN HOUSE. He hoped that by not answering, she would forget the quilts.

  “Mrs. Wimple has a quilt in this year,” she persisted. “Bernice Wimple, from the club.”

  My mother belonged to a dart-ball club that staged mysterious contests in the church basement every Thursday. Bernice Wimple played for the La Porte, Indiana, Bearcats, a legendary dart-ball team.

  It’s a Thomas Jefferson quilt,” she continued, wiping a watermelon seed off her chin with a paper napkin that said HAVE FUN in blue letters over an American flag.

  My father, realizing he’d have to say something, stalled for time: “What the hell kinda quilt is that?”

  “Well, it’s a patriotic quilt that has the face of Thomas Jefferson on it, done in cross-stitch.”

  “Oh, well! That I gotta see!” said my father sarcastically.

  After a ten-minute search, we finally found the tent with the quilt exhibit, under strings of yellow light bulbs. The quilts were tacked up all around, stretched tight, so that their designs could be admired respectfully from behind a rope by the motley throng of art lovers. Mrs. Wimple’s entry was among them. We stood before the portrait

  “He looks a little cross-eyed to me,” the old man observed accurately.

  “I think it’s very pretty. Mrs. Wimple worked seven years on it.”

  We peered at the third-place ribbon it sported and moved on to look at the others. The winning quilt had a stand to itself. It bore a spectacular portrait of Old Faithful on a yellow background framed by purple mountains and surrounded by a herd of animals: a moose, an elk, two bighorn sheep, a bunny with pink eyes and what appeared to be a hippopotamus. Above this scene in Old English-style red, white and blue letters was the following profundity:

  The Beauty of Our Glorious Land Is Surpassed Only by God’s Blessed Handiwork.

  -Roswell T. Blount, L.L.D.

  “Now, that’s what I call pretty,” said my father solemnly, reading the inscription. We all agreed that it was pretty.

  Most of the quilts ran heavily to such patriotic themes, except for one that had a ribbon for UNUSUAL SUBJECT-HONORABLE MENTION. It was a full-color portrait done on a background of grass green. The eyes of the subject, staring beadily out from under his familiar cap, stopped the old man dead in his tracks.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

  We stood in awe before this transcendent work of art

  “I never thought I’d see Luke Appling on a quilt!” Sure enough, it was a ruddy likeness of old Luke himself, the foul-ball king of the American League. My father, a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan, was visibly moved. Under the picture streamed the legend, woven in golden thread:

  BATTLING LUKE APPLING

  ALWAYS FIRST IN OUR HEARTS

  (I wonder what a genuine Luke Appling quilt would go for today in the chic, high-camp boutiques along Third Avenue in Manhattan.)

  “Let’s go, all you great lovers, all you he-men,” barked a man in a purple derby at the next concession. “Let’s see what kind of man you really are. Show that beautiful girl you’re with just what kind of man you really are. Here you are, here you are, here you are, here’s your chance to get up and really ring the bell. Everybody wins. It’s good healthful exercise and everybody wins. Ring the bell. I said everybody wins. All right, you lovers, show that little lady what kind of muscles you really got. Ring the bell.”

  We joined a circle of gawkers at the foot of a 30-foot pole that had a wire running up its length, with a big gong at the top. At the bottom was a round metal plate. The pole, candy-striped red and white, was marked with gradations. Beginning at the bottom, they read:

  CASPAR MILQUETOAST

  LADIES’ DIVISION

  BETTER EAT YOUR WHEATIES

  AVERAGE

  NOT BAD

  WATCH OUT FOR THIS GUY

  And way up at the top: wow! A REAL HE-MAN.

  A huge, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired tractor-driver type, wearing Sears, Roebuck pants and a checkered c
owboy shirt, stepped into the arena.

  “Let’s see how the young man swings. Look at those shoulders, folks, look at those arms! Swing the hammer nice and smooth; hit it right on the button. Let’s see you ring the bell.”

  The barker handed the behemoth a big mallet. His friends jeered and snorted noisily in derision.

  “Belt the hell out of it, Caleb!” one yelled.

  “Aw, come on. He cain’t make it past the LADIES’ mark. He ain’t got no lead in his pencil!”

  The crowd snickered contemptuously. Caleb grabbed the handle and swung wildly. K-THUNK! The iron weight rose feebly up the cable and fell back with a clank.

  “No wonder yew cain’t make out with Minnie!” hooted one of his friends.

  Caleb spat on his hands, swung again. The hammer whistled. KER-THUNK!

  The weight rose higher this time, almost reaching the AVERAGE mark halfway up the pole. Caleb looked thoughtful, as the distant sound of the merry-go-round calliope switched from Alexander’s Ragtime Band to The Valkyrie. It was, indeed, a Wagnerian moment, the twilight of the gods.

  He peered upward at the gong, which now seemed twice as high as it had before. He kicked the dirt like a batter digging in at the batters box, wiped his hands on his trousers and once again grabbed the mallet. His biceps rippled under the tight-fitting cowboy shirt. Dark circles of sweat stained the armpits. His back arched. This time, he swung the hammer from the ground, then up in a great, swinging arc. K-THUNK! The metal weight drifted up the wire, slowed and stopped at CASPAR MILQUETOAST.

  “Man, yew better quit before that thing don’t move at all!”

  Caleb dropped the hammer, his face bathed in sweat and red from humiliation, paid the barker and left the arena, a broken man. I had a suspicion of what was going to happen next. If there was ever a sucker for that kind of thing, it was my old man.

  “I think I’m gonna try whacking that thing,” he whispered.

  “Now, don’t make a fool of yourself.” My mother was always afraid of his making a fool of himself. She had good reason to be.