A Legacy Project

“Well, that didn’t work.” You think you know what you’re doing. But maybe you don’t. Recall a time when things didn’t work. You tried something and came up short. You planned something and things went awry. Where and when? What happened?

Example:
One day I pulled in the driveway and saw, hanging from our apple tree, a rope and a pulley and the remains of a boy’s doll called “My Buddy,” which our son had named Jeremy. This was the doll made famous in a cheap horror flick featuring a demented, murderous doll called Chuckie. Jeremy’s face and neck were daubed with red paint to make him look bloody.  “Really,” I said to the boy, standing next to the tree. “What were you thinking?” I knew. He’d had one of the bad influence kids from school over that day. A guilty smile appeared on his face. He grabbed the rope and pulled on it. The pulley squeaked as Jeremy was lynched a little higher in the tree. He then eased on the rope, and Jeremy was lynched a little closer to the ground. “I finally made something that works,” he said.

Remembering this disturbing moment, I thought of things working and not working. When we were kids, lazing around on summer days, we went through a go-cart stage. I don’t mean Soapbox Derby. Nothing that sophisticated. We were do-it-yourself. Everyone seemed to have lumber lying around, and someone’s dad, Danny Leman’s or Dean Gaul’s, had a dead lawn mower. We sawed 2×4’s to make the frame of a go-cart, fixing a 2×4 axle on the back of a center piece, then bolting another axle on the front. It was your basic H frame design. To the front axle we attached a length of rope you held in your hands like the reins of a horse’s bridle. Pull the rope on the right side, make a right turn. Pull it on the left . . . you get the picture. “Let’s try it,” Danny Leman said. We tried it on the sidewalk out in front of the house. The axles were a little too wide, and it was really hard to push.  So we pulled it across our lawn, then across the Rice’s lawn, back to Cantwell’s hill. It was heavy. Pulling it was really hard work pulling it. The go-cart made two runs down the hill. Always the brave one, Danny drove. It was slow. The thing was impossible to steer. On the second run, half way down, one of the rear wheels came off and the thing came to a crooked halt. I guess we dragged it back up the hill and back to our house, where we left it in the backyard. We sat in the shade on our front porch. “Well that didn’t work,” Danny Leman said. “Do you think we can fix it?” We decided no, we probably couldn’t. About this time Ronnie Fritz came along. He was holding a paper bag. What’s in the bag? he ask. “A crow,” he said. He opened the bag and showed us. Sure enough, a crow. We took him around back to show him the go-cart. When we came back, our dog had gotten in the bag and killed the crow. It was a sad day, a day of disappointment.