Grandpa Jim had a different idea of what constituted entertainment for ten-year-old boys.
It was a spring weekend at Grandma Ethel and Grandpa Jim Schmidt’s house. My friend David Chase and I were spending the afternoon there, and Grandma had apparently decided that the best way to keep two boys occupied was to let them beat the hell out of each other.
She’d bought us a pair of Socker Boppers, those inflatable boxing gloves that were supposed to make punching someone perfectly safe. We’d spent a good part of the afternoon sparring with those before moving on to practicing karate on a Kung Fu Bop Bag.
Apparently bopping things was big in the 1970s.
Looking back, I suspect Grandma was trying to wear us out so she could get some housework done.
It almost worked.
By midafternoon, David and I had worked up a pretty good sweat and decided to head outside. At ten years old, going outside usually meant finding something to do that had at least a reasonable chance of ending in an injury.
Grandma mentioned that Grandpa had something for us out in the shed.
That sounded promising.
Grandpa was in his woodshop behind the house, running boards through his planer. He’d spent much of his life in construction and had the equipment to clear trees, haul them home, and turn maple and oak logs into lumber. He used that lumber to build houses and furniture.
That afternoon, he was working on a clock.
He could tell we were bored, so he shut down the planer and took a break.
Then he walked over to some shelves near the entrance and pulled down a cardboard box.
We knew immediately that Grandpa’s idea of entertainment might be considerably better than Grandma’s.
Our first clue was the label on the box.
CAUTION: EXPLOSIVES
Thank God we were old enough to read.
Inside were M-80s.
Grandpa wouldn’t let us touch them. Even he knew that M-80s and ten-year-old boys probably weren’t a good combination.
But he was perfectly willing to demonstrate.
He’d light one, hold it until the fuse got short, and then toss it high into the air.
He warned us it was going to be loud.
We covered our ears and waited.
BOOM!
Twenty feet above our heads, the thing exploded, scattering little shreds of red paper everywhere.
It was magnificent.
Grandpa repeated the performance until the box was empty. Unfortunately, there were only about half a dozen left.
And just like that, the fireworks show was over.
Then Grandpa suggested we go play with the wagon.
David and I looked at each other.
The wagon?
Seriously?
We were ten. We rode motorcycles on the farm. We climbed trees. We did things that occasionally required explaining to our parents.
Pulling each other around in a little red wagon sounded like something we’d outgrown about seven years earlier.
But Grandpa seemed to have something in mind.
He led us around the left side of the house, where his Radio Flyer Town & Country wagon was waiting.
It was one of those big wooden wagons with four substantial wheels and red wooden rails running around the sides.
Grandpa told us to climb in.
So we did.
I sat in front. David sat behind me.
We figured Grandpa was going to pull us around the yard.
Wonderful.
Maybe afterward we could go inside and color.
Instead, Grandpa handed me the wagon’s pull handle, folding it back over the front panel, which had a little cutout along the top.
“Use this to steer,” he said. “I’ll push you.”
That was a little more interesting.
He explained that the steering worked backward from what I expected. If I wanted to go right, I needed to move the handle left. To go left, move it right.
Straight was straight.
That part I understood.
Grandpa started pushing us around the backyard, using David’s shoulders so he wouldn’t have to bend over so far.
At first, we moved slowly.
Then a little faster.
I started getting the hang of steering, and David was getting pretty good at leaning with the turns.
Grandpa was doing most of the work.
He was running around the yard pushing two ten-year-old boys in a wooden wagon, and after a while, he was understandably getting winded.
We still weren’t going anywhere near as fast as the motorcycles we were used to riding.
Then Grandpa stopped.
“I think you’re ready.”
David and I looked at each other again.
“Ready? Ready for what?”
Grandpa didn’t explain.
He just pushed us around to the west side of the house.
Now, Grandma and Grandpa’s house sat on a hill overlooking Highway 32. A long gravel lane climbed the east side of the property to the garage, curved around in front of the house, and headed back downhill along the west side toward the highway.
I’d guess each side of that lane was about 150 yards long.
The west side started with a gentle slope.
Then it got steeper.
A lot steeper.
Grandpa pushed us a little farther down the lane until we were pointed downhill.
And that’s when we understood what he’d been preparing us for.
We weren’t going for a wagon ride.
We were going racing.
He gave us a push.
At first, it was easy. The wagon rolled along the gravel, and I made small corrections with the handle.
Then gravity took over.
We started picking up speed.
Fast.
Two boys wearing blue jeans, whatever decal-printed T-shirts we’d picked out at Pamida, and blue Dodgers baseball caps were suddenly hurtling down a gravel driveway in a wooden wagon at approximately Mach 1.
Dust and rocks were flying behind us.
The wheels rattled.
The wagon bounced.
And I was doing everything I could to keep us from flipping over or doing an endo.
David was hanging on behind me.
We were screaming.
Not because we were scared.
Because this was the greatest thing we’d done all afternoon.
We made it to the bottom without crashing.
Then we hauled the wagon back up the hill and did it again.
And again.
With each run, we got a little better.
I learned to make smaller steering corrections instead of jerking the handle back and forth. David learned how to shift his weight to help keep us balanced.
We were becoming a pretty respectable two-man bobsled team.
Summer practice edition.
The only problem was that our bobsled was made of wood, had no brakes, and was headed directly toward a state highway.
That last detail eventually became important.
On our final run, we’d gotten off to a particularly good start.
The wagon was tracking straight.
We were flying.
I had the steering figured out, David was keeping us balanced, and we were coming down that hill faster than ever.
Then David saw something.
A semitrailer.
Coming from the east on Highway 32.
And we were rapidly approaching the bottom of the driveway.
There wasn’t enough room to stop.
Not that we had any way to stop.
For the first time all afternoon, I realized that Grandpa’s little wagon-racing adventure might actually kill us.
I had one option.
The ditch.
I cranked the steering handle as far to the right as I could.
The wagon veered off the gravel lane and headed straight into the ditch.
Somehow, we stayed upright.
Somehow, neither of us broke anything.
And somehow, we managed to avoid becoming two small hood ornaments on a semitrailer.
We sat there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.
Then we climbed out.
Neither of us said much on the long walk back up the hill toward Grandpa’s woodshop.
But once we got there, we made damn sure Grandpa knew about the semitrailer.
He’d been back inside working on his clock and hadn’t seen a thing.
I can’t speak for David.
But I’m pretty sure I peed my pants a little on that last run.
We left the wagon in the ditch.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
