Mother Goose Land day from Hell #100
a whale of a story-Once upon a time
Our Sundays at home when we were younger consisted of grandpa and grandma coming to pick us kids up for church. As soon as we were at church we would hurry away to Sunday school as at least there was something to do in church besides watch Grandpa snore and Grandma jabbing him in his side to wake him up. Sometimes when standing singing hymns I would swear he was going to fall over in the pews as his voice would travel off, and then when he felt himself going into sleep a little too far under, he would jump awake and sing with gusto. Must have been all the good living was wearing him out because all this would happen as soon as he was in church and sitting in the pews, it was then you could see his eyes go foggy.
After church and as soon as we finished saying our goodbye’s we would hop in the 69 green Ford Fairlane station wagon , Grandpa would light up his Sunday cigar and we were off to Burger Chef at the time or Mc Donald’s , where we would all sit around under the golden arches or in the sleek stainless steel signs of the future and eat quarter hamburgers and French fries till we would explode as this was a rare treat for us back then and only an ample reward for not having embarrassed Grandpa and Grandma during church service. I remember one time Grandma buying something like 20 cheeseburgers, 6 chocolate shakes for all and 10 French fries for our family and fed six of us for 8 dollars back then . I can barely get out of Micky D’s for that now myself. That was a stuff your face all you could eat till miserable dinner also and yet grandma thought that was terrible but still offered to get more if we needed it. I think they loved their Sundays with us kids, or at least they were good pretenders.
Then we would head out for a drive or sometimes we had our special place, and that was Mother Goose land , where Grandpa would again light his cigar and stroll hand in hand with my sister and Grandma as they went around the storybook place . Grandpa only smoked cigar on Sundays in his good suit and in the good car , as the rest of the week he choose to chew tobacco and often could be seen with a wad in his mouth and the thin dark spittle would puddle at the corner of his mouth as he relentlessly gnawed away at the dark foul tasting chaw in his mouth until he had to spit, and sometimes he would lean out the door of the car or the truck and release the wad of spit in his mouth at a traffic light. Or sometimes it would be out the door of the moving truck leaving a brown permanent stain arching from the door to the bumper. One would swear you could see the pavement melting as we drove along in the distance looking back at where the dark brown spittle would etch the pavements surface.
Sunday was a no Mail Pouch tobacco day for Grandpa as Grandma would not let him touch the stuff in his Sunday finest, and so he relegated himself to smoking cigars and keeping clean, something he had to work at as he showed my sister Sherry and Grandma around. Jim and I though was different story . We would look at all the different things there at Mother Goose land but we would just head for the old jet plane without an engine and relentlessly time after time we would work to pry open the cockpit of the old fighter so we could hop in and see what it felt like to be a fighter pilot in the Korean war and pilot one of those bad boys. It was an old relic of a not so long ago war at the time and still looked pretty sleek. You could slide in and out where the engine used to sit, but the cockpit was out of reach as it seemed they had rigged it on purpose to keep kids like my brother and myself out of it.
I was probably 13 and Jim was a couple of years older then, young enough to be able to enjoy the parks features yet to old to hang around in the petting zoo. We would take turns watching for people coming up and down the paths so no one would see us jimmying the cockpit to try and open it so we could crawl in, until one visit we managed to get it open a crack and then it threw open as it slid back and revealed its musty hot warm interior as the sun baked the top of the plane heating up specially inside the cockpit till you could barely sit inside. It didn’t stop us as first Jim jumped inside and soon I was taking my turn pretending I was a fighter pilot killing bad boys and banking the plane into the ground as I would grab the joystick between my legs and turn it hard and right as I pretended to make machine gun noises and blast my brother off the wing.
Things were going great till my brother decided I needed more realism and decided to shut the cockpit. I was hesitant to have it closed and told him so. He insisted as he wanted to know what it felt like. I should have gave up the seat and let him experience it for himself , because as soon as the cockpit cover closed I swear I heard it lock and at first it was pretty cool to be inside like a pilot would be, but real soon it was heating up and within a couple of minutes I was sweating and wanting out. We both tried to open the cockpit but it was a no go , and then I was forced to really look around inside and see if there was a lock mechanism that was keeping it from opening and I couldn’t find any. Jim was blaming me for pushing the wrong button and desperately tried making suggestions of things to try.
We thought there must have been something we did to unlock it as we had tried numerous times on previous trips to the park to unlock the plane but could never quite figure out how to do it. We were getting scared and especially I was as it kept getting hotter and hotter and we knew soon that Grandma and Grandpa would come looking for us and we would be in trouble . So we were hustling to get out of there. Soon other people came down the path as we struggled with him outside and me inside to get the cockpit door open as these visitors to the park would stop and look inside from their perch on a platform at the poor sweating boy as my brother would laugh off any suggestion I might really be in trouble.
A small crowd had gathered by this time and from my view I could see I had half of downtown canton viewing me as I slow cooked my way to fame inside the cockpit. . Surely something could be done to save myself. Then my brother came up with the idea of using the ejection seat to trip the canopy lock insisting that it was perfectly safe. Others round him that had gathered warned him that although the seat itself was gone, that maybe the ejection seat still worked and images flooded through my sweat soaked mind that maybe if I ever get out of that situation I would never listen to my brother again as it was at this time I could imagine the seat exploding off its base and the canopy still locked catching my body as it slammed skyward in a bloody crescendo , not quite the way I wanted to go out, and neither was sweating to death inside a tin can so it prompted me to seek other means of escaping my peril at the time . I swore , and I made the conscious decision to forget the ejection seat and seek another way. I turned in the seat and with both hands pushing on the canopy and with several people outside pushing back on the canopy from outside it finally lifted up in its track and slid back with ease allowing me to exit as I was now drenched in sweat.
The small crowd minus Grandpa and Grandma and Sherry now roared with delight as pictures were snapped and congratulations were offered , as well as helpful advice like I hope you never do that again, were repeated time after time. I would have never locked the cockpit door in the first place , as it was Jim that felt I needed more realism in my fantasy plane ride. We hurried away from there. Word had spread before my release from my cockpit of doom that maybe the police and fire department should be called as surely I could easily suffocate from the heat. Steam had built up inside the cockpit and obscured their vision of me inside and from me seeing the crowd outside. I just wanted to get out of that area before we ended up in more trouble. Jim and I ran down the path to the petting zoo and soon found Sherry and Grandma and Grandpa sitting in the shade watching the small animals . We acted like nothing was wrong although my shirt was wet with sweat as well as my pants and when Grandpa and Grandma asked me why I was so wet ,I told them I was running a lot to get back their with them. They seemed to buy the story and I was finally so relieved to be back in the fresh air.
On our way out we passed the old fighter jet and Grandpa made a remark as to whether we were going to check it out as we usually did and both Jim and I told them we already did, and so we passed the old jet , all the time my heart was in my throat that no one that had seen us before would recognize me again with them and tell them the story. They never knew.
For many years I would exit off he Tuscarawas street exit and if the tree foliage would allow it I would look down off the side of the exit and I would see the gleaming silver fighter jet and instantly my thoughts would return to that day. Finally the park fell into disrepair and the fighter jet removed forever. Maybe it’s a good thing but it did teach me a few lessons. One don’t listen to my brother, and two if I do listen , shoot myself in the head before he does he me in , the pain is not quite so bad as the crap he put me through. republished july 4th , 2018.
