How Bill & I Became Famous

Grandaddy Blackley was 75 years old in 1951 when cousin Bill and I were just little squirts. Grandaddy had retired from the Seaboard Railroad some years earlier and would spend the late summer afternoons in the relative coolness of the front porch, periodically checking his pocket watch against the sound of train whistles blowing through the long-needle pines from far on the other side of Hamlet. Two minutes late, he’d say, and put his watch back in his pocket. On that very same porch Grandaddy, with his thick locomotives hands, had initiated Bill and me into the fundamentals of milking-a-mouse and getting some corn-on-the-cob. You’ll have to ask Bill to demonstrate that.

Grandaddy being up in years, and it being mighty hot and all, would take an early afternoon nap in the big bedroom and let the breeze blow on across through the tall screened windows that looked out over the side flower garden. Now right cat-corner from the bedroom stood Nannie’s garage filled with its dank aromas--ambrosia to our tiny noses--and in addition to that were all manner of marvelous army paraphernalia belonging to uncle Buddy Bill Blackley--the sobriquet used to differentiate him from cousin Little Bill.

Thus it was that Little Bill and I would adorn ourselves with various items of army stuff and climb up into the large chinaberry trees that grew in the front yard on McDonald Avenue. That at least was the usual protocol, but on this day, whether it was due to an especially fragrant breeze, or the soft crush of pine straw under our bare feet, or simply a fortuitous foreshadowing of our true genius (which we are sure will show up any day now), Bill and I saw the most wonderful opportunity. So wonderful that to not have seized it at that very instant would have been unthinkable.

For on the one hand, a few feet yonder stood the garage with all its tempting delights. Yet on the other hand, directly in front of us was the bedroom with its tall screened windows and the peacefully sleeping Grandaddy. And just opposite those very windows, in the side flower garden was the spigot. And the hose.

Michael