Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 3 My Friend Eddie Part 2. Bending the Rules

 Eddie and I continued to hang out together through junior high. We mostly played board games. (Kids, board games were the video games of our day.) Sometimes, he'd come over and help me work on my science projects. As I frequently worked with high voltages, having Eddie around was a rather risky endeavor, a risk for which I occasionally paid the price in jaw clenching electric shocks.

I was using an induction coil from an old model T Ford to generate voltage surges to explode wires of different types of metals to create ions to determine their effectiveness as a fuel for an ion engine. Eddie was flicking the switch on and off to watch the spark jump between terminals. I placed my hand on the induction coil, felt it was getting warm and asked Eddie, "Stop flicking the switch. It's starting to over hee-eee-eee-heat." You get the picture. My hand was between the terminals that briefly reach a potential of several thousand volts.

Things got even more exciting after we reached high school age.  

On most school days if I hurried and used back alley shortcuts, I would have enough time to walk home from the high school for lunch. Both of my parents worked so I would have the house to myself for a bit. It was not much time to fix and eat lunch, but it was worth it just to get away from school for a bit.

It was lunch time on a Friday. A day when it is hard enough to focus on anything school related. I had just wolfed down a baloney sandwich and was heading out the door on my way back to school. I was running a bit late but I couldn't help but notice the cloud of dust and the roar of an oversized diesel engine, coming down the gravel road in front of my house. It was a huge beat up cement truck. An unusual sight in my neighborhood as I was sure no one was having professional cement work done. At least not work that would require a truck of that size.

I was only slightly surprised to see Eddie behind the wheel. And was kind of glad when he offered me a ride back to school. It would save me the walk. Eddie had no doubt "borrowed" the truck from one of his dad's construction sites with or without his dad's permission. I really didn't want to know. Eddie didn't have to be back at the high school I attended because as I mentioned, he went to a private school which I guess was not in session or he was cutting class to give me a ride. With Eddie, I never asked because again, I really didn't want to know. (I had figured out plausible deniability at an early age.) Anyway, I told him I was running late and Eddie assured me he knew a short cut. Unfortunately, Eddie's short cut required going down this old dirt road that was in fact marked as a one-way street in the opposite direction we needed to go.

As we started down Eddie's shortcut, I pointed out the one-way sign. Eddie gave me one of his you're-gonna-love-this grins and said, "I can fix that." He swerved over caught the tip of the sign with the front of the truck. He skillfully pulled back onto the road using the truck to bend the arrow shaped sign twisting it around until it was pointed in the direction we were going. Fortunately, there was no other traffic on the road, but even if there had been, no one was going to argue with that truck. Besides, the sign now said we were going the right way. This was a typical day with Eddie where "bending the rules" was common place and sometimes was even a literal description and not just a phrase.