The Army Helmet

Dear Tony,

I was down around where we used to live the other day. Things have really growed up. But I did find the school house. We had a lot of good times there, didn't we? It brought back a lot of old memories. Do you remember Little Rupert's helmet? I think you were out with the measles when it happened. I'll tell you about it as well as I remember.

It was one of those beautiful spring days at school. We was in the fifth grade. There were only three rooms at the schoolhouse and one of those was the lunch room. In those days the boys either played baseball or army at recess. Most of our dads had been in WWII and the Korean War had just ended. Yep, soldiers were our heroes. As boys we would build forts in the wooded area near our school. Sometimes they could be real fancy. We had whittled our guns our of some old wooden boards which would have normally been use for firewood. Knives were illegal at school. So we had to smuggle them onto the school grounds.  We would use whatever our imaginations allowed to defeat the Nazis and Japs.  One day Rupert Collins found a headlight housing from an old junk car. It was shaped like a cone and Buster Johnson told him that it would make a great helmet. Buster was sort of a bully and always told everyone what to do. Rupert wasn't a very big boy and was not very popular. I guess that’s why he was always trying to please everyone. Well, he put that headlight housing on his head and looked like what we would later call a conehead. We thought it was pretty cool. The bell rang signaling the end of recess but Rupert could not get his helmet off. He wouldn't go back into the schoolhouse!

When Mrs. Tillman asked where he was Buster just snickered.  I told the teacher what had happened and led her to where Rupert was hanging out near the well pump. (We didn’t have runnin’ water in the school.) She took one disgusting look at Rupert and said to me, “How are we going to get it off?”

“I don't know, Ma'am,” I answered.

“Maybe Mr. Smith can help.  He has a shop,” she said and added, ‘Go with him.  I’m sure everything will be alright .” She looked at Rupert as she said the last.

Mr. Smith’s shop was about two hundred yards from the school house. My family always called him “Uncle Botchie”.  I don't know why, his name was Frank. He was my great aunt Mary’s husband.

“Good morning. Uncle Frank,” I said.

He was sitting at his workbench drinking a cup of coffee and reading the latest issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.  Now Uncle Botchie’s shop was really something to behold.  It was so very clean.  Daddy said you could probably eat off the floor. And his tools were all hanging on the wall in their particular places. They all looked brand new.  I knew they weren't of course.  Uncle Botchie had told me how many of them had been passed down from his daddy and his daddy’s daddy. He looked up and turned to face us as I spoke. He was now into his seventy-fifth year but still had the twinkle of a curious youth in his eye as he peered over his bifocal glasses at us.

“Who’s that you got with you?” he asked.

“This is Rupert Collins,” I announced.

“What’s that on his head? Looks like something off a ‘34 Chevrolet.”

Uncle Botchie was very observant and had spent his life as a mechanic. His own automobile, a 1940 Chevrolet coupe, was pretty as picture and looked like it had just rolled off the assembly line in Detroit, Michigan.

“We were playing army and Rupert got this thing stuck on his head,”

“I reckon you want me to get it off,” he said as he moved his considerable 230 plus pounds down from his shop stool.  He was dressed as usual in a dark gray workman’s uniform with “Frank” embroidered over the left shirt pocket. Sunday was the only day he did not wear the uniform. He always looked fresh scrubbed too with his thinning hair combed straight back. There was a slight smell of Lucky Tiger hair tonic and Old Spice after shave about him. Mama said she didn’t think he ever did any work because he was always so clean. He slowly walked around Rupert as if sizing up the job.

“H-m-m…,” he said. Then he said “Come over here to the bench.”

We followed him to the bench and he grabbed a hacksaw from it’s place on the wall behind the bench. “You hold his head while I saw,” he said to me.

I did as he ordered and he began to saw on  Rupert’s “helmet”. Rupert became upset. I don’t know why.  Unless it was because the vibration of that saw cutting through the metal made his head hurt.  He started to wiggle and tried to get out of my grip as I tried to steady him.

“You’ve got to hold him still!” Uncle Botchie said.

“I’m trying, but the little fella is kinda stout!” I said in desperation.

Rupert yelled, “I can’t stand that racket.  It makes my head hurt!” as he jerked from my grip.

In resignation, Uncle Botchie said, “That’s all I can do.” And then he added, “Maybe of Big Tom can help you.”

So off we went to Big Tom’s blacksmith’s shop. We left Uncle Botchie cleaning the hacksaw with a shop rag. Just the other side of the railroad tracks that divided the small town was Big Tom Starling’s blacksmith shop. I did not know him very well but knew that by reputation he was the strongest man around. Daddy said that he had seen him lift the rear end of a Model A Ford once. We could hear him hammering on his anvil as we went in. We felt the heat from his forge too. There were still some blacksmith work to be done in the area. He shod horses, did some iron work and repaired wagons too. Some of the prettiest cemetery fences around were made by him. He was drenched with sweat and his long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was the only man around with a ponytail. Grandma  said that was where his strength came from.  The long hair.  Just like Samson in the Bible. Nobody teased Big Tom about the ponytail though. You didn’t tease a man with the size and strength of Big Tom Starling.  That is if you had good sense.  I knew he heard us come in because he laid his hammer down and stretched up to his full six foot five inch height. “What  can I do for you boys?” He asked looking down at us. He was dressed in bib-overalls, no shirt and old combat boots. His hairy arms were shiny with sweat and there was a tattoo saying “Mom” on his shoulder. The bluebird tattooed on his arm seemed to flap its wings as he flexed the muscle.

“You see Rupert here got this thing stuck on his head while we were playing army and we can’t get it off.”

“Let me take a look at it,” he said moving closer. He wrapped his big hands around the “helmet” as he looked at it with squinted eyes. “Well, metal stretches when it gets hot. But I don’t think young Rupert here would like sticking his head in the forge. Nope, there’s gotta be better way. Let me think.” He cradled his chin in his big right hand and his bright blue eyes under jet black eyebrows seemed deep in thought.

“Come on to the back of the shop and let’s try somethin'.”

We followed him to the rear of the shop where there were wagon wheels and other wagon parts. He walked into the corner and after looking around for a bit came back holding a big can of something.

“Let’s try this. It won’t hurt at all.” 

Rupert had shied away a bit. Then I saw what he had.  It was axle grease. He stuck his hand in the can and pulled out a handful of that black grease. Rupert stood still while Big Tom, the blacksmith, smeared that axle grease on Rupert’s head where it touched the “helmet”.

“We should be able to slide it right off now,” Tom said. He wiped the excess grease on his dirty overalls and grabbed the “helmet” with both hands. He turned the “helmet” but  Rupert turned with it.  He tried again

and again but the “helmet” just would not come off. He sent us on our way.

In parting he said to Rupert, "Hope yo' mama don't beat me up on me for that grease on yo' head!"

“What we gonna do now?” Rupert asked as we left the blacksmith's shop.

“I don’t know. We need a magician!” I said.

“Old Mary is a fortune teller. You reckon she could he'p?” Rupert was desperate too.

“Can’t hurt,”

We walked down the crooked road toward old Mary’s house.  Actually, It wasn’t much of a house.  What Daddy called a shack. Her house was unpainted except for the corners which were a brilliant blue. Mama said that was supposed to keep the haints away. I asked Daddy why our house didn’t have blue corners but he just laughed and said that we didn’t believe in no haints. She was sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair with a black cat at her feet. There were bones and things hanging from the edge of the porch roof which kind of rattled in the warm breeze. “What y’all boys want? You’s a long way from the schoolhouse.” she asked in a gravelly voice that Mama said was caused by smoking too many cigarettes.  Her teeth were yellow from the stains of smoke through the years and the whites of her eyes were yellow too but not quite as yellow as her teeth. Her face was wrinkled like those prunes Gandma ate for breakfast.   

“Rupert’s got this thing stuck on his head and we can’t get it off.  Can you help us?” I said with a hint of desperation in my voice. Her head was bound in a big red and white bandanna with tufts of hair like steel wool peaking our. Big hoop earrings hung from her ears.  Her skin was the color of coffee with cream  and her eyes, though black as coal, were somehow mischievous looking.

“Y’all hafta come in de house,” she said getting up.  She was not very tall and very thin and a bit stoop shouldered. We followed her inside the small house. She motioned for us to sit at the table in the middle of the room. It was cool in that room and there was no light in the room until she lit the candle.

"Put yo' han's palm down on the table," she said to Rupert. Sitting opposite him she deftly shuffled a deck of cards. “Let’s see what da cards got to say,” she said as she dealt slowly and placed them face up on the table. “H-m-m…,”she said and stopped dealing after five cards. I had never seen any playing cards like the ones she had. We didn’t have any cards in our house.  Baptists don’t play cards but I had seen some before when Larry Steifle had brought a deck to school. They had little diamonds and shovels and hearts and clovers on them but these  had funny pictures on them. After studying the cards a while and mumbling under her breath she looked straight into Rupert’s eyes and said, “The solution to your pro'lem is right under yo' nose.  Dat hat gonna come off soon.  Now who’s gonna pay me?”

It was not a surprise.  I had heard that old Mary always charged for her services. I dug down into my blue jeans pocket and found two pennies, a Mary Jane and some lint. My Hopalong Cassidy pocketknife was in my other pocket. I gave her the pennies and kept the lint and Mary Jane.

“I don’t know what to do next,” I mused.

“I’m hungry!” Rupert said.

“Me too. Let’s go back to the schoolhouse and get something to eat.,” I said. And so we walked back to the schoolhouse.

Mrs. Tillman met us at the door.  “You didn't get it off,” she said and added, “Rupert,  what is that substance on your head?

“It’s just axle grease Big Tom put on his head to try to get the helmet off.  It didn't come off though but we'll try again after we get something to eat.”

“I know you missed lunch. But maybe Mrs. Scott has something for you. Go see her,” she said.

We went to the lunch room and sure enough Mrs. Scott gave us big bowls of navy beans and huge slices of cornbread.  We sat down to eat. Rupert asked for the pepper.  Rupert always liked a lot of pepper. Somebody, probably Buster, had loosened the cap on the pepper shaker so it poured out on to Ruperts beans.  All that pepper caused him to sneeze so hard that his “helmet” came right off and hit the floor with a bang.  

Old Mary had been right!  The solution had been right under his nose.

That's all for now,
Your ole buddy,
Bubba