Stories

The UFO

I only remember Dad dealing with me a few times when I messed up.

Most of the discipline in the Neel home came from Mom's world-class ass-chewing. Mom would explain how we went wrong, how disappointed she was, and how we might have done things differently, leaving us feeling good and bad about ourselves and determined to do better the next time.

Then there were the times when the egregious activity was so bad that she made us wait in our room for Dad.

Nothing was worse than "Wait Until Your Dad Gets Home" time.

Once, my friends and I made the lasso out of fishing line, strung it between two telephone poles across our road, and attached it to tin cans. It was my idea and my design. Hiding in the bushes, we waited for the first car to come down the road. Moments later, the first car hit the fishing line, the lasso tightening around the car, and the cans caused a loud cacophony of metal on metal down the road.

Perfect!

The first car was, of course, my Dad's.

Another time, Bubby Lewis and I found a concrete planter beside the road close to our houses. It was garbage pickup day, so we thought it was trash. We rolled it around the corner and down the street to his house. I have no clue what we planned to do with it. The next thing I knew, a policeman was at the door asking to talk to me. "Yes, officer, Bubby and I have it." My earnestness in admitting to the crime did not convince Dad.

The third time, and perhaps the worst, happened on a day while I was shooting my bow in the backyard. I was getting pretty good. Just as I nocked an arrow, my next-door neighbor's dog came around the corner of the house chasing one of our cats. I yelled at the dog; he spun around and sped away. Unhappily, he ran directly away from me. I let loose an arrow, with, as I remember it, the intention of scaring him. My aim was not off enough or a little too good. Dad didn't have to punish me for that, but he did.

My favorite story is about the time my smarts got the better of me.

Dad subscribed to many fun magazines, Mechanics Illustrated, and the like. One was Fate Magazine, full of science fiction and odd stories about scientific anomalies. It was my favorite of his magazines.
One small story contained instructions for building an Unidentified Flying Object.

Using a large plastic laundry bag like the kind that covers shirts from the cleaners and building a strut of straws to hold open the bottom, the goal was to fill the bag with hot air, creating a hot air balloon. Hot air came from a rolled newspaper, set on fire, and held under the bag until the bag had enough hot air to fly. Candles at the bottom kept the air hot. The instructions said to use big candles and paper straws but didn't say why. Since I had neither, I improvised.

Using plastic straws and birthday candles, I made my superstructure and taped it to the bottom of the bag. I lightly taped up the hanger hole in the top, rolled up some newspaper, grabbed some matches, and headed outside at dusk.

It worked perfectly. After lighting the candles, I lit the paper and filled my science experiment with hot air. It took off into the darkening sky, slowly rising almost straight up but drifting slightly over my next-door neighbor's house toward the wooded area behind our houses.

It was beautiful. The candles gave the plastic an eerie glow and flickered in the night breeze, looking like blinking lights.

Then things began to go wrong.

The birthday candles burned down, one after the other, setting the plastic straws on fire. As the straws burned through, they fell, still attached to the bag, and began to drip burning molten plastic, which made a zipping noise as they fell below the balloon.

In no time, the roof of my neighbor's house, his backyard, and the woods were all on fire.
Dad got home about the same time the Fire Department had it all under control.

Amazingly, he was more interested in how I came up with the idea, how it worked, and what I thought went wrong. Dad had me tell him what I would do differently if I did it again, emphasizing that I would not even think about it.

Then, Dad grounded me for what seemed like forever to a kid in the middle of his summer.