Secretary's Page
From Jim Piper, DREGS' Secretary
IT By Foster F. Howland
On a recent trip to Oklahoma City I had occasion to pass my old grade school. It brought back many happy memories of those long ago days. However, it brought back the memory of a day that was anything but happy. It was a day I learned several important lessons none of which involved "book learning".
Early one morning when I was in the third grade I was told by my teacher to report to the principle, Mrs. Jewell Chapman, in her office. It was with some trepidation I walked the short distance down the hall to her office. I had done nothing wrong but had never been summoned by her before. She was Big, old (over thirty five) and was reported to be meaner than a snake.
When I entered the inner office Mrs. Chapman was seated at her desk and a classmate was seated in front of her looking straight ahead. She motioned to me to sit in a chair at the left end of her desk facing her. She then told me that this poor child had accused me of ambushing him and beating him up the day before on his way home from school. She asked me if it was true. I answered something to the effect that I didn't know what she was talking about.
As she began to question him he would never glance at me. In fact, he never looked me in the eye again in this life. He may not have looked at me but I sure as ---- looked him over. There wasn't a mark on him.
As she continued to question him I slowly came to the realization that I was in eminent danger of getting "It." "It" was the rubber tube that she used to whip little children who misbehaved. No one I knew had ever gotten "It" or even seen "It" but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that it existed. "It" was even said to be kept in her lower left hand desk drawer, just inches away from my now quivering knees. Thoughts and emotions raced through my head trying to win my undivided attention. Stark Terror won by five lengths going away. Blind Range was second followed closely by Why and its stablemate Why Me.
She then turned to me and leaning forward and with a scowl on her face she looked into my eyes and asked me again If I had done it. Her look seemed to penetrate my eyeballs, my brain, and my soul if that's where it is, and then ricochet around the back of my scull. Thankfully what an old Englishman wrote long ago is true, "The contemplation of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully". When I finally found my voice I managed to croak out another denial along with a fact, uncontested, that made it highly improbable that I could have done such a dastardly deed.
Then she returned to questioning him. From her expert questions it seemed she must have tried a case similar to this in the past. After it must have become obvious to her there had been no ambush and that I had not been present at the non-event I was dismissed and told to return to class. He was told to remain. As I left the office I knew exactly the relief that an innocent condemned man would feel being led from the gallows with a last minute reprieve. If my testimony had lasted ten seconds longer I would have had another extremely embarrassing type of relief. (I was told much later that I would not have been the first).
Back in class I listened intently hoping to hear screams of pain coming from the office but there were none. Possibly she had closed the doors. I tried to figure out Why. We had never associated in any way. There had been no dealing in marbles, tops, yo-yos, knives or bubble gum cards, nothing. There was no reason. I had run into, rather I had been run into by my first psycho. In those pre-psychobabble days they were simply called nut cases, a term I still prefer. Why Me was easy. I was the smallest kid in the class, including the girls, and the least able to beat his head in. In that he was badly mistaken.
He was gone a considerable length of time. When he returned I looked closely at his legs hoping to see blood running down them but there was none. I looked for any evidence of crying but again nothing. I very carefully watched his face as he sat down looking for the slightest wince, nothing. Hmm, evidently blatant aggravated perjury was not a crime in Mrs. Chapman's book. I would remember that in case of future need. The rest of the morning was spent reveling in thinking about what I was going to do to him.
I would make his lie become the truth only removed by 24 hours. This time he would have plenty of physical evidence to back up his story. One of things I thought of was the exquisite pleasure I was going to have in getting him down on the ground and slowly unscrewing his head form his body. I looked at him fondly from across the room. When school let out he would belong to me. (A short time later he was sent a way to a "special school.")
By afternoon I knew I wasn't going to do anything and he was going to get off scot-free. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind then or now that I could have chastised him most severely. Amazingly I was no longer afraid of "It" or even my dad. When I got home and he had found out what I had done there would be no questions, trial, etc. just a mercifully quick summary execution. What sapped my nerve was knowing that if I did, another encounter with the Look would be inevitable and that I couldn't take. Once in a lifetime is enough.
Some of the things I learned that day were: 1. I had a perfect example of frustration before I learned the word. 2. Anyone may be accused of anything 3. Reputations may not be deserved. 4. "Nut cases" may be encountered anywhere and may be injurious to your welfare (amen).
I left school that day in a bad frame of mind but I had one great consolation. Having survived Mrs. Chapman I was supremely confident that I could overcome anything in life that might come my way.
A Patagonian Storm
By Jim Davis
It started as a distant sound, a rumble. My dream morphed from whatever it was to include the militia marching on the town of Malarque where I was trying to sleep. An Argentinean insurrection on the rise? The noise grew louder - persistent. Roused from my sleep I thought it must be thunder, but it kept coming, uninterrupted, louder and louder, then surging and stopping momentarily and picking up again. Like a rolling wagon full of rocks. The curtains in my room were lit with an almost steady pulsating flash that suddenly brightened and culminated in a thunderous crash. The continuous thunder reluctantly moved on, growing fainter as it moved along the foothills. The biggest darned potato wagon I'd ever heard!
I looked out the window. Rain was pouring down, slashes of refracted light from the lightning. My mind pictured the roads into the back country and into the uranium mines of Sierra Pintada - they would be a quagmire if this kept up.
The rains let up after breakfast and my CNEA geologist friends and I loaded up, and hoping that the gray skies would behave, we headed for the field. A geologic side trip into the canyon of the Rio Atuel to look at the thousand feet or so of Paleozoic rocks looked like a safe choice. We were to get more than we had bargained for. A gravel road plunged abruptly from the flat llano grass-lands on the rim into the canyon. Far below, the rushing Rio Atuel seemed tiny but I was told that some giant trout have come from that river. When we had almost reached the river the misty clouds lowered, swirling fog around the rugged crags high in the canyon. Without warning the rain came again with a vengeance. As we drove down the canyon we could see small water-falls begin to trickle from the perched canyons along the main canyon rim. We watched in awe as the trickles quickly turned to gushing falls literally shooting out from the high arroyos. The water quickly turned red, dyed by the Permian red-beds that formed the cliffs. The fog would close in for a few seconds, then open up to reveal even larger torrents. It was as though the canyon had sprung a thousand leaks in its walls. The red waters churned into reddish mist as the falling water fell hundreds of feet before reaching the base of the cliffs. It was an awesome sight but we wondered how fast the river might rise - the road wasn't too many feet higher. The countless new-born streams gushing from the top seemed enough to multiply the main river significantly.
The waves on the river grew and turned red as the side streams disgorged their loads. With trepidation we forded some of the arroyos, hoping that the water didn't hide rocks and washouts that would strand us in the rising waters. Abruptly, the road turned upward but our relief from distancing the growing river was offset by the lack of gravel on the road and the once smooth road became a quagmire of red mud. Our Land Rover fishtailed back and forth, almost reaching the precipitous edge before whipping back towards the cliff. Another vehicle, also barely in control, came down the road. Hoping we didn't stall in the deep mud we slowed to pass we had a brief bonding as our eyes met and we waved with the comradery of strangers sharing common dangers. It was an hour of almost being stuck in the mud, veering time and again towards the precipice and skidding into the water filled ditch on the cliff side of the road before we silently breathed a deep sigh as we reached top and better roads. After a few miles we descended again, without concern for the roads this time, crossing the dam of Lago Atuel.
Later that day we arrived at the open pit uranium mine of Sierra Pintada where we observed not uranium geology but the spectacular sight of gushing waters filling the mine. We wondered if there was any similarity between the flooding waters and the braided streams in the older rocks--A weak attempt at making lemonade out of lemons. Tomorrow would be better.
Mining and frontier storiesThis series was instituted in 2004