Mark Myers's Blog, page 41

A Trick Gone Awry

In light of Virgil’s love for tricking, here’s a little story from the rivalry between he and the old pig farmer, Burton Perry, his part-time boss and full-time nemesis. Come sit with me on the porch swing and enjoy, A Trick gone Awry.

Cramped…

Hot…

Hungry…

A little bit hungry – but more for revenge than food.  Virgil felt every tendon in his legs tighten the longer he lay on his belly in this awkward position.  He couldn’t see a thing in the dark and had plenty of time to let his mind wander over all his failed attempts to trick Burton Perry and why this time would be different.  On the surface, the old pig farmer didn’t seem all too smart, but he was a master at avoiding schemes.  The pepper in his coffee gag hadn’t worked at all.  Perry drank every drop, smacked his lips, and even licked the tin cup clean.  Evidently he was very fond of pepper.  Soap on the porch should have tripped him up, but he clomped his muddy boots right through – sure-footed as could be.  By far the worst idea put the boy on top of the outhouse in July heat with a pitcher of water.  It didn’t take long for Virgil to admit that was just poor planning.

Ever the optimist, he knew this time would be different.  He was going to scare a few years off the old man as soon as he came to put his piglets into this little nook.  The plan had come to Virgil when he’d been working two days prior.  Every night after they were nursed, the piglets were placed in their own small pen so their mama, Gladys, could have some time to root around by herself.  Virgil thought she loved her piglets like any mama pig did, but she seemed to like to have a break too.  When the last piglet was taken away, Gladys looked a little relieved, kinda like he’d seen his own mother collapse into her wingback chair in the parlor when he left for school.

Comparing Mama to a pig made him chuckle but he held it in because he heard footsteps in the distance.  An evil little grin spread across Virgil’s face while he lay in the dark.  He got ready to scream, poke his arms out, and wiggle his fingers at Perry to scare him good.  And so he waited for the door to open – the momentary discomfort worth the coming prize.  Soon, approaching chortles and grunts of the piglets told him Perry was coming.  The sounds got closer, but for some reason, the pen door never opened.  He waited some more all squeezed up in the tight space, ready to pounce, but nothing happened.  Not a thing!  Something was wrong out there, he knew it.  Panic made him flinch and he tried to crack the door so he could see outside.  Before he could get a look he heard a pin drop into the latch on the other side.  He pushed against it, but in his crowded state, he could get no leverage.

Sweat formed giant beads on his forehead.  The stuck boy flopped a few times hoping to retreat out the back of the pen until the darkness was broken by a shaft of light behind him.  The rear door stood wide open and one by one, little piglets were dropped onto his backside.

“They’z hungry too, boy,” crowed the farmer outside the pen.  “Gladys wasn’t much in the mood fer ‘um.”

Mistaking the boy for their mother, the hungry little sucklings latched on to any pinch of flesh they could find, leaving welts on Virgil’s body that would last for over a week.  He pitched, yelped, and moaned until Burton Perry figured he’d had enough and helped him out.

“If’n you’ve had enough, why don’t you take ‘um yonder to their mama to feed?” the farmer said with the smuggest of smiles.

Outwitted again, the downcast lad saw to his duty without a word.

“Never again!” thought Virgil as he delivered the last of the piglets.

…..Until a better plan came to mind.

The Old School Ghost

Halloween is upon us with its goblins, zombies, candy, and lines of trick-or-treaters.  It is easily one of the best days of the year to be a boy!  When else can you tease girls with fake spiders, jump out of small spaces to startle your teacher, or hold stuff oozing fake blood without getting in trouble?  Without a doubt it would be Virgil Creech’s favorite holiday.

All week, I’ve been pondering the question; what costume would Virgil choose?  This led me to a bit of research and I found out that children in the United States didn’t go door to door begging for candy until the 1940’s.  Bummer for Virge.  But being fictional, we can lift our friend out of the 20’s and bring him along with us for fun.

Halloween isn’t the same now as it was for me.  At our house these days, we get a sporadic knock on the door and open it to a group of children with protective moms and dads holding flashlights close behind them.  The kids mostly have store-bought, plastic costumes that can’t be near an open flame and more often than not, I have to coax them into saying “trick or treat.”  Typically, they just stand their holding their plastic pumpkins like I am some great candy genie.  I know, I know, the times are not the same and safety concerns are vastly different today.  Nonetheless, it is rather disappointing.

In the 70’s, we made costumes out of our parents old clothes, took the neighborhood by storm with our pillow cases, and were fully prepared to play a trick on the guy who gave out coupons.  There were so many kids roaming the streets that we had to wait our turn in front of doors where the families were giving out full candy bars.  We held those houses in high regard year-round and sneered for months whenever we passed a house whose lights had been turned off on October 31st.  That poor family might have been out of town or sick in the hospital, but the lack of candy was quite an insult to the snubbed neighborhood kids.

Here’s a picture of me as a youngster.

I was a very sad ghost that year because for some reason, I refused to put anything over my face. Not so scary with my chubby cheeks.  My parents improvised and used my grandfather’s Navy hat for me to have something white on my head.

That leads me to the conclusion that Virgil would be an old-school sheet ghost.  He would stay out long enough to get plenty of candy, but his main concern would be scaring the kids all over town.  He’d have his tricks all lined up in advance and any props he needed pre-set.  The terror he caused would be eclipsed only by his laughter after the trick was played.  It would be a grand night in Portsong for the youngest Creech.

Yes, my friend Virgil would love Halloween!

We here in Portsong wish you a happy and safe evening…Mwahaha!

Virgil’s Grooming Tips for Boys

As a boy, the last thing you need in the morning is a mirror.  That’s wasted wall space, I say!  I don’t know about you, but I’ve got about three minutes from the time I finally wake up until the first school bells ring.  So checking my hair just ain’t gonna happen.  Teachers don’t really care what you look like, as long as you’re in your seat when class starts.  Once in a while my teacher will get a little angry if my hair is standing so high that little Myra Holsted behind me can’t see, or if it’s so ratty that a kid like Myra can’t quit looking at it.  Ms. Singer calls it a distraction, but I think she’s just jealous that I’m getting attention.

It all starts when mom gets you out of bed.  After she makes whatever threat finally gets you to sit up, you should run your hands over your head to see what’s going on up there.  Most of the time, you’ll find one of three things:

1.  The Rooster Tail   Those are my favorite.  They won’t sit down for nothing.  It doesn’t matter if you pour a whole cup of water on your head, it’ll pop right back up like a spring.  A rooster tail tells the world, “I’m messy and proud of it!”

2.  The Crazy Cowlick   It’s like a tornado on your head.  The more you mess with it, the more it swirls out of control.  Good luck trying to figure out a way to cover it up – whatever style your ma makes you try, it’ll storm right back out madder than before.  Might as well shave it.  But a warning, moms get mad when you cut your own hair.  I’m not sure why, but once I cut my cowlick and it looked ugly like a big old capital Q on my head AND I got paddled – Not a banner day.

3.  The Pork Chop   This is a big lump in your hair that can show up anywhere, but mostly comes in the back where your head rested on the pillow.  Even if you do look in the mirror, you likely can’t see the pork chop anyway.  I’ve had them big enough to hide a book or my lunch pail inside.  Water can tame this one, but I like them because people have to stand further away from you than normal.  When you have a pork chop, it’s like having a little bubble between you and the other kids in your class.

The whole key to this is getting out the door without mom grabbing you for an inspection.  If you get caught, she is bound to try and fix what you worked all night to make.  Worse yet, she’ll likely use her finger as a spit comb, which even I think is gross.  History would show that if I spit on someone’s hair, I get in big trouble!  But she can hold me down and rub her spit all over my head to make me look better?   Where’s the right in that?  Anyway, she’s usually in the kitchen when I get going and I’m so fast that most days I can zoom out the front door before she ever sees me.  If I hear her milling around by the stairs, I throw a flat cap on and make a dash for open air.  I don’t like wearing caps much because most boys have them nowadays and I like to be different.

You got any hair tips for me?

 

The County Fair

Anyone who ever lived in a small town knows the joy that the annual county fair brings.  People look forward to its coming for months, if only to break up the mundane.  Bright lights, whirring rides, colorful people, smells (both good and bad), objects of little value but great desire – all of these things and more invade a common town and for just a little while, make it extraordinary.  So it has always been in Portsong when the Buxley County Fair is held on a hallowed patch of ground called Hargit’s Field.  No one quite knows how the fair was wrestled away from the larger cities nearby.  But with the exception of the war years, it has always been held in our little town.

Much of the history of the fair has been chronicled for posterity.  Stories of the wild rides, blue ribbon contests, and the human oddities that have been witnessed in Hargit’s Field have become legendary.  But to capture the folksy flavor of the true county fair, I take you back to the fair of 1922 as archived in the September 8th edition of the Portsong Guardian.  I hope you enjoy the ride.

Controversy Reigns as Miss Corrine’s Cobbler Does Not

In what many have referred to as the biggest surprise since the hailstorm of 1897, Miss Corrine Deaton failed to win her eleventh straight blue ribbon in the Pie Contest.  She took home the red as runner up with her famous Peach Dream Cobbler.  Coming in first was newcomer Hazel Gruber with her delicious Blackberry Delight.  Congratulations to Mrs. Gruber, who just moved to our fair city all the way from Warblers Ridge.

The white ribbon was awarded to Mrs. Myrna Culpepper, who ended the day nearly as bitter as a slice of her rhubarb pie.  After finishing second to Miss Corrine for a decade, she was quoted as saying, “serves her right – everyone knows a cobbler isn’t a pie anyway!”

On to the livestock events where in less dramatic fashion, Sherman Peas won the Hog Calling Contest by a unanimous decision.  After hearing his grunts and chortles, every judge was inclined to go his way.

For the little ones, the goat-roping competition was head-butting good time until Wilmur Clegg’s billie got loose on the midway shutting down the rides for twenty minutes.  Unfortunately, Smitty Robbins girl, little Esther, was at the apex of the Ferris wheel when it stopped and her weak stomach became a serious problem for those below.

All in all, this year’s fair was a wonderful event and we here at The Guardian hope the next three hundred and fifty-nine days fly by.

Colonel Birdwhistle’s Constant Hat

The children here in Portsong constantly ask why my head is rarely found without a cover and you might be wondering the same thing.  So please, sit beside me here on the yellow bench and I’ll tell you my story.  It may surprise you to know that although my face is full of whiskers, the dome above my beard has nary a hair upon it.  This all started when I was but a young Captain in His Majesty’s service in Africa.  In those days, I rarely had the chance to look into a mirror.  But somewhere along the line, I believe when I was in my thirties, I noticed my forehead had started to grow taller.  Being young, I didn’t think a thing of it until my forehead had grown so high it stretched over the top of my head.  Within a year, I had lost all of the ruddy hair I had brought into the world.

Hearing this, you might assume I now wear hats because I am vain.  Rubbish!  That is not the case.  I don’t at all mind being bald.  Since I am told he knows every hair – or lack thereof, I assume I have exactly as many as God intends me to have.  Looking down, he sees my head’s reflection much more than I do.  If my head is fine by him, then it is fine by me.

My zeal for hats came about quite by accident.  It so happened, the unit in my command drew a patrol assignment that had us pitching camp in the savannah for a fortnight.  We had done this many times.  We knew the dangers and how to avoid them.  After one particularly draining day, I bedded down under the dark African sky.  How I loved sleeping in the open air – the vast grass expanse on all sides covered only by a blanket of deep blue heaven dotted with millions of tiny stars.  Wild sounds and strange smells that kept a new recruit awake had become a soothing lullaby to me.  On this night, I had no trouble finding sleep and rested comfortably until I was roused by a feather tickling my nose.  I opened my eyes to see my alarmed men staring at me, obviously unsure of what to do.

The feather in my nose was surrounded by others and connected to a two-hundred pound bird perched just above my head, ready to sit.  Whilst I slept, she had scratched the grass and straw around me into a crude nest and now decided it was time to try it out.  The men had their rifles at the ready, but wouldn’t shoot with my head so near the target.  Fortunately, just before she plopped on top of me, a sharp young private fired a warning shot into the air making her squawk so loud she took part of my hearing with her as she fled into the night.  But that wasn’t the last we saw of her and her maternal instincts.  Convinced my head was her egg, the relentless ostrich followed us for two weeks trying to sit on me any time I came to rest.  Although they wouldn’t laugh around their superior officer, my men found it hilarious. (In the course of time, I had to agree…it was quite funny.)

When we finally returned to our post, the forlorn bird disappeared and I took up the habit of wearing hats.  Not all are for protection, some are simply for style.  After an incident with a certain young lad here in town, I have often returned to wearing my pith helmet for safety.  But that is a story for a different day.

And now you know why Colonel Clarence J. Birdwhistle is rarely found without a hat.

Math for Boys – Virgil’s Theory of Relative Trouble

There’s lotsa things about school I don’t get.  I know I’ll never catch on to grammar.  There are way too many excepts in the “i before e” rule to keep up.  Whoever thought up English oughta be dragged out to a field somewhere and beat with a mackerel.  Ms. Singer will never give me plus marks for my handwriting.  She puts “be neater” in big red letters at the top of everything I hand in.  That makes me mad.  Teachers shouldn’t grade angry.  One time, she must have been grading real angry because she tore the page and her red ink looked like it said, “be nexter”.  So I walked it back up to her desk and asked her what “nexter” was.  She just let out a big sigh, threw up her hands, and stomped out of the classroom.  I don’t know where she went, but she was a lot calmer when she came back.   She stomps out a lot when I ask her stuff.

I might not understand grammar, but I get math.  I don’t know why, numbers just make sense to me.  Math can be useful to a boy, especially one like me who finds himself in trouble all the time.  I’ve come up with what I call my Theory of Relative Trouble and it all has to do with estimation.  Here’s how it goes: A boy’s reaction to trouble is directly proportionate to its estimated potential.  My brother Webster helped me come up with the big words, but the theory is all mine!

Example: You knock down a stack of apples at Gentry’s store, do you:

A)  Apologize and help him clean it up?

B)  Run out of the store and down the street?

C)  Knock over a display of walnuts to cause a diversion?

I can promise that A is not the answer.  Only my pal Henry would help him out and he’s got more manners than any boy I know.  He is what you call an exception, so A is out for the rest of us.  If you chose C, I like your style, but it’s really an overreaction when you go back to my theory of estimation.  You have to consider the trouble.  The correct answer is B, run, and I’ll tell ya why.  First of all, nobody really likes old Gentry, so they won’t go in to help him catch you when you run.  Second, he’s big in the belly and I’ve seen him breath heavy just from sweeping his stoop.  So he can’t chase you and if he does, it won’t be for long.  Third, if by some stroke of back luck, someone like Sheriff Whitaker happened to be outside and grabbed you by the collar, the sum of trouble wouldn’t be great.  You’d just have to clean up the apples (and walnuts if you tried that angle, heh-heh.)

So, the equation goes something like this: R ά pT, or reaction is proportionate to the potential trouble.  In order to use this equation properly, you have to plan your trouble well in advance and we all know that boys don’t plan much of anything – things just happen.  So we always have to have a back-up plan in our pocket.  I like to call my plan tearing out (AKA:  running like your backsides on fire.)  I’ll cover that the next time they let me type on this thing…if they can catch me.

Who is Virgil Creech?

As the writer of the book, Virgil Creech Takes a Swipe at Redemption, I’m often asked if Virgil is my alter-ego.  A little menace that I either was or wanted to be.  Although I’ve been called immature, irrational, and incorrigible like Virgil, I have to say I was not the inspiration for Virgil.  But I do like to think there is a little Virgil in all of us.

Being the youngest of nine boys, Virgil started off at a disadvantage in relation to manners and gentility.  Whatever he got came with a struggle.  While some toddlers his age were learning to speak, Virgil learned the art of the sucker punch.  He’s never been averse to rolling up his sleeves and balling a fist to get his way.  Even at his tender age, his body is marked with several scars left by run-ins with his brothers.  Because his hard-knock life inside the house carries over to his relationships outside, he has become a bit of a lonely youngster often described as bitter, selfish, and altogether unwanted.

His surname does nothing to aid his social prospects.  Around Portsong, the name Creech brings accusations, suspicions, and low expectations.  They live in the last house on Woodlawn Avenue – a ragged place with cardboard and scraps of tin covering broken windows.  The Creech home has never been nominated by the garden club’s landscaping award, for the front yard consists of a downed tree and its hatchet-marked stump.  Ironically, the home sits directly across the street from the Goose Greek Country Church, which all of the boys painstakingly avoid.

Poor Virgil has a lot of things working against him, but he has some prospects too. While he is stubborn, the flipside of that is that he is a tenacious lad. When he gets an idea in his head, he drives full-bore until he acquires his fancy or quite literally hits a wall. He’s hit his share of walls and has the black eyes to prove it. He rather likes having black eyes, in fact and considers them a badge of honor. He also has proven to be a good friend, although it doesn’t come naturally to him. But as Henry Lee can faithfully attest, Virgil has proven to be a friend who sticks close – sometimes when he’s not wanted.

I heard Colonel Birdwhistle once say; “Like so many of us, Virgil is mostly lost, but yearning to be found.  So long as we want to be found and there is at least one soul searching, we’ll get along fairly well.”

If you can follow his logic, I guess that sums it up.

If you have any other questions you’d like to ask, feel free to leave me a message. You can find much more about Virgil in the new book, Virgil Creech Takes a Swipe at Redemption, and see for yourself who Virgil is.  It’s available on Amazon.com