I was not your typical twelve year old. Typically, twelve year old boys are extremely daring. They venture onto high dives, and climb trees that interfere with aeronautical navigation. Not me. At twelve years old, I contented myself with the pursuit of living to the ripe old age of thirteen. None of that macho twelve year old stuff for me. I was a "chicken" and I knew it. I had a lot of trouble convincing other people of this fact though, particularly my uncle Rocky."Rocky" ( really his name, my family is weird enough without nicknames), is one of those people who just seems to stand out in my early childhood memories. The furthest back my mind can recall, brings to memory a wild looking, tattooed and bearded 24 year old, all gritty, shirtless, and macho, swaggering up to my five year old self. "Go ahead"!! he bellowed, mostly for the benefit of a couple of female on-lookers. " Punch me in the stomach as hard as you can!!" I guess his not being afraid of a death blow from a five year old made him feel ( and appear) very Macho. Always willing to oblige my favorite uncle, I reared back and gave him the most terrific punch my five year old will could summon.
I'm still unsure who was more surprised by ferocity of that single punch; me, him, or those on-lookers. Suffice it to say, every mouth hung open, with Rocky's making small gulping sounds as he sank to his knees. The gulping turned into coughing and gasping, with what I am now convinced were several curses thrown in for good measure. I wasn't sure they were curse words at the time, but the way they heated my ears upon impact seemed to indicate that possibility. I filed most of them away for later use. It wasn't those words that concerned me the most. Interspersed with the curses were words like " kid", and "kill", and "murder". I filed this info away as well, although I was sure he didn't mean it, and was simply astonished by the strength of my blow, something he vehemently denied. He later produced witnesses that testified to my aim being slightly low, and in fact missing his stomach altogether. Well, that's the kind of risk you take when you involve short 5 year-old in your scheme to make yourself look tough.
It was sometime later that my uncle, either possessed by a thirst for revenge, or crazed by the blow to his lower anatomy; offered to sell my father a motorcycle for me. Despite some nagging doubt as to his motives, I was estatic!!Me, the cautious twelve year old, The kid that no one on the block ever challenged to anything more dangerous than a game of checkers- I was getting a Dirt-Bike!!
A beat up piece of refuse granted, and knowing the nature of my uncle, probably stolen too.... But I was getting a Dirt-Bike !! According to him, it ran, and no other kid I knew had a motorcycle.
I envisioned myself pulling up at a party, a exclusive party mind you, with the best looking girl in the whole sixth grade on the back of my brand spanking new Dirt-Bike, ( dreams are wonderful for making run down contraptions brand spanking new) engaging in small talk with people who a scant week before had snubbed me as "The Chicken". I would be daring, cavalier. A virtual twelve year old "Evil Kenevil".
I waited outside with high hopes the day my uncle was to bring over the motorcycle, my mind flashing with vivid imagery of me and the dirt-bike jumping ramps, kicking up geysers of dust, and generally having a good time.
I still recall the sound of that old beat up truck making it's way up our dirt road. Only a lame and blinded snail could have moved any slower, But suddenly, there she was. My Uncle's truck was an older model of the one the Clampett's drove on the "Beverly Hill-Billies". And in the back of that truck was my...
"Hey Rocky!!" I hollered, " Where's the bike?!"
" All I see is this small heap of scrap metal you brought Dad with two moped tires sticking out of it!!"
My Uncle laughed, one of those high pitched, scary laughs he had begun slipping into since the incident where i punched him in the "stomach". He clamped his hand on the back of my neck, and squeezed until tears welled up in my eyes.I know this was just his tender way of "toughening me up", but in my desire to locate the missing bike, I immediately caved, flopping on the ground and doing my best impersonation of a little boy in pain. After a few hours, my uncle released his grip, and whispered really close to my face; "That is your bike, boy." The smile on his face worried me, so I just asked him straight- " Say, are you constipated?"
After he shook his head no, I took the opportunity to draw his attention to the condition of the bike.
"Gee Uncle Rocky, if that's really the bike, couldn't someone get seriously hurt riding it?"
He unleashed another of those weird, high pitched laughs, and replied.
"Nah, it's perfectly safe! I drove it a whole quarter mile yesterday, and only wrecked three times!" He paused to swell out his chest and strike a rather macho pose. " Look at me, do you see anything wrong with me?!" I admitted that at least physically, there didn't appear to be anything wrong with him. " Of course not!" He shot back, laughing as he did. " No time to waste then! Hop on and give her a try!!"
His laughter had broken down into a series of hysterical sounding sniffs and giggles.The sound threw me a little, and it was probably this that forced me to the extreme. I looked at my uncle, and then back at the Dirt-bike. Uncle, Dirt-Bike, Uncle, Dirt-Bike. Something didn't feel right, and I knew exactly what I would have to do. For the first time in my twelve year old world, the fact that I was "chicken" tumbled from my own lips, and NOT someone else's.
My Uncle's mouth opened and closed wordlessly for minute, and then his little eyes hardened. " Nothin' to be scared of, Stupid!" Watch me take her for a spin first!"
He managed to find where the seat and handle bars were in that malignant pile of junk, and climbed aboard. He deftly unfolded the cranking lever with the toe of his boot, and kicked it for all it was worth.
I'm no scientist, but I've been told that planes travel faster than the speed of sound. So did Uncle Rocky, or at least that's what I judged by the way he left his hat and a high pitched expletive hanging uselessly in the air.My Dad had been meaning to clean off some of the backyard, and no doubt he would have been beaming from ear-to-ear to see the way uncle Rocky was doing all the work for him.I watched bug-eyed as fours shrubs, a muscadine vine, the lawn, and a section of chicken wire fencing all lost successive battles with the "Dirt-Bike". I remember thinking if it didn't turn out to be a ll that fun as a "dirt-Bike", we could always use it for a lawnmower.
As for my Uncle, I don't know whether it was fear, or the wind rushing past his face that forced it into that horrible contortion. As he raced past me for what seemed like the eighth or ninth time, I heard him swearing at the "bleeping-bleep-bleep throttle, and cursing the Dirt-Bike's ancestors as far back as the wheel.
Then, in what most have been a burst of desperate and creative thinking, my uncle found a way to stop the raging motorcycle. He jumped it off the edge of what we kids laughingly called " The Baby Grand Canyon". It was really nothing more than a very deep washout that we kids played in from time to time when our mothers weren't looking. Because of it's steepness and depth, our mothers; like sane mothers everywhere, forbade us from playing there.I don't know how uncle Rocky seized on it as a solution to his problem, or even how he found it. God had carefully arranged the tress on the other side of it's fifty foot span to give it an appearance of being "Edge-less". The ground appeared to continue seamlessly from side to side.
The washout was only fifteen to twenty feet deep, but it must have seemed like a lot more, particularly after he hit that little mound of dirt at the lip, catapulting him into the air.About half way through the jump, uncle Rocky quit fiddling with the "bleeping-bleep- throttle", and loosed another of those freakish laughs that were really starting to bother me.
It was then the miracle happened. In a feat that the greatest of Daredevils couldn't have replicated, My uncle, in a blaze of what can only be described as creative inspiration, brought the motorcycle that thought it was an airplane to a perfect landing. It was beautiful.His victory was short-lived however. In his struggle to bring the bike under control, my uncle had landed in the bottom of the washout. The throttle was still stuck, and he crashed head-long into the clay wall on the other side.
The bike still looked the same, a pile of scrap metal with two beat up tires sticking out of it. My uncle was released from the hospital a week or so later, but his nurse advised me stay away from him for at least a year. Says he mumbled in his sleep. Things like " Kill", and "Kid", and "Murder."
Oh well, at least we have a really neat lawnmower, even if it is a little beat-up and rusty. When I can talk one of the other kids into riding it, that is.
