Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Penguins and Ink

The Slice of Life story challenge runs every day in March.
Serve up your slice or stop by Two Writing Teachers for a second helping. 

My Dad told stories about grade school this evening. He grew up in Detroit and went to Gesu elementary school. I started writing down his story at the dinner table. It's a rough capture.

"We used to have this candy truck that would come during lunch time. My brother and I would walk home for lunch. We'd have some eggs and then come back and still have at least twenty minutes to play. Marbles was big then."

"How long did you have for lunch? We have twenty-five minutes now!" My son, Collin, said.

"I think it was about an hour. We could walk home for lunch. It was only about eight blocks or so."

We could never walk home, I thought. We live nearly thirty miles from school. That's a walk-a-thon.  
We discussed lunch time, who had how much when and then Dad got back to his story. 

"Well, in the fall and usually the spring we'd be outside at lunch time. We could get candy from the truck and if we crossed Livernois there was even a little candy store. If you had a penny you get some candy."

 I felt rich with fifty cents in my pocket as I stood up pedaling my bike for all I was worth up to the Seven-Eleven with neighborhood friends. Penny candy, well that was the 1940s.

Dad described how sometimes they got more than candy from the man who drove the truck. "We used to get chips of dry ice from the guy in the truck. We'd stick the chips in a napkin. Otherwise it would burn your hand. If you didn't make sure there was enough napkin and you put it in your pocket--it got pretty dicey."

"What we'd do is put it someone's inkwell. Every desk had an ink well made of glass and topped with a cork. We'd put that chip in someone's inkwell at the end of the first period after lunch. Not our ink wells mind you, but someone else's as we walked out of the door. Then we'd put the top, the cork, on and hustle out before the nuns noticed."

He described how he and his buddies would anticipate the explosion from the hall or the next room. 

"The nuns would go crazy when those wells blew! Ink everywhere. Lucky for us it was a time release reaction. We were always long gone before it got going. It was the perfect grade-school crime. Don't think I was the only perpetrator either."

"That dry ice had special properties, you know," he chuckled. "It's  different from regular ice. You could even make it sing."

"What? How'd you do that?" Collin asked.

"Well you wrap it in tin foil, but it'd have to be very quiet to hear the sound. I wonder where we could get some dry ice? Heh, heh." Dad the prankster, who knew? 

I'm glad there are no ink wells in my classroom!

10 comments:

  1. Sounds like such a different time. Longer lunches, ink wells, and hot chips from trucks in a large city. I enjoyed your lsice today.

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    1. Thanks, Mary, it does seem like a different school lanscape! Hard to imagine.

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  2. Even imperfect, I love that you captured this story. You don't know how many times I wished I had recorded or at least wrote down stories from my grandfather and dad. Now it's too late. Get as many as you can!

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    1. That's just what I told myself when I pulled out the tablet as he was talking. Dad is telling stories now that I've never heard--some from his father's time even. I'm going to try to hold onto them (and him) with words.

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  3. How wonderful to capture these memories, and I love that your son was there to hear all these stories, too.

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    1. Thanks, Tara. Our Wenesday after school ritual is time and dinner with my parents. I did not have grandparents to visit growing up, so being able to give my son time with his has been a gift for our family.

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  4. So wonderful to hear, Lee Ann. You may think it's imperfect, but it's so right, including the conversation around the table too. I'm not old enough for ink wells, but I did have ink bottles to use with fountain pens in high school. And there were always spills.

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    1. I found myself cringing at the clean up and imagining that I'd have been punished for sure if Dad caught me in the act of such a prank, but watching him relive and enjoy it, I had to just laugh. I didn't realize, until yesterday, that my parents are ink well age.

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  5. I love this story! The candy and dry ice . . . don't tell me you didn't want to run out right away and get some dry ice to wrap in aluminum foil. (Yeah, I also cringe thinking about that ink everywhere.) But singing ice . . .I'm in! Great story telling (from both of you)!

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  6. I love that you were taking notes as your dad talked. Precious memories.... I wish I would have taken the time to do that when my parents were still living...so many things forgotten....

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