One of Those Rare Saturdays

Still sleepy, I set my chocolate milk on the coffee table and perched in Daddy’s chair, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Remembering it was Saturday, I stumbled toward the TV, a big wooden console that took up half the living-room wall.

On top of the TV, Mama had a bowl and pitcher set that she’d made in ceramics class. The pitcher was filled with light pink silk roses. On each side were her favorite Home Interiors figurines: an old man and an old woman. The TV screen was a large, greenish glass bubble. I pulled open the control box and lifted the knob to turn on the set. Within seconds, I could hear the crackling of the tubes warming up as the sound began to come from the front of the console. I turned the large middle knob to channel 44. The dark screen began to glow, brightening little by little until the picture came into view.

“Tra-la-la, la, la, la, la… One banana, two banana, three banana, four,” came from the speakers as I watched a group of larger-than-life animals drive across a field in their buggies.

About that time, Daddy walked through the back door. “Good morning, Sport.”

“Daddy, why don’t you make our dune buggy look like that?” I asked, pointing to the TV screen.

“That’s neat looking, Son,” he answered. Then he asked, “Do you want pancakes for breakfast?”

“Pretty please. I want mine like yours.”

“We’re on our own this morning. Your Mama has gone to take Mrs. Murphy grocery shopping.”

When the Oscar Mayer bologna jingle came on—“My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R”—I used the commercial break to run into my bedroom and grab my bean bag. Distracted, I rummaged through my toy box and pulled Stretch Armstrong from its depths. I tugged him and the bean bag behind me, tossing them both into the middle of the family-room floor. I plopped down on the bean bag. It popped loudly beneath me, then hissed as I slowly sank into it, cradled by millions of tiny Styrofoam balls. I grabbed Stretch.

“Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?”

“Good question. Let’s see—one, two, three—crack. Three. It takes three.”

“Daddy, do we have any Tootsie Roll Pops? I want one with a brown wrapper. They’re my favorite,” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Son, it doesn’t matter if we have any or not. We’re fixin’ to have breakfast,” he said.

I tugged Stretch’s arms apart, my eyes fixed on the screen. Daddy was making a lot of noise in the kitchen, opening drawers, banging pans together, and talking to himself.

“Sport, do you know where Mama keeps the mixer?” he asked.

“Sure, Daddy. It’s in the bottom drawer next to the stove,” I answered.

As I turned back to the TV, I heard, “Yabba-dabba-doo!”

“Sport, how many pancakes do you want?” Daddy asked.

“Just one, Daddy,” I answered.

Dino was on top of Fred, licking his face. “Dino! Cut it out! Heel, Dino, heel!” Fred yelled.

As the theme song began to play, signaling the end of another episode, I saw the Flintmobile tip over beneath a set of enormous ribs. Laughing in disbelief, I said, “Daddy, Daddy, look! Are there really ribs that big? The car just tipped over.”

“I don’t know, Son. Back during dinosaur times, I bet there were,” Daddy answered from the kitchen as he flipped our pancakes.

“We just had a commercial,” I said under my breath as a big, brown talking bear appeared on the TV screen and announced, “Remember—only YOU can prevent forest fires.”

“Look, Daddy, it’s Smokey Bear. Uncle Harry has a collection of Smokey Bear posters. Is that because he’s a fireman?” I asked.

“I reckon so, Sport,” Daddy answered.

“Breakfast is ready. Come get your plate,” Daddy said, holding it out to me.

“Can I eat at the coffee table while I watch cartoons, pretty please?”

“You can, but don’t tell your Mama. She’ll be mad at both of us.”

Looking at my plate, I said, “Remember, I want my pancakes just like yours, please.”

Daddy set my plate down, pulled the Jif peanut butter from the pantry shelf, and spread a generous amount over our pancakes. Then he drowned them in Alaga syrup. When I took the first bite, the peanut butter had slightly melted and swirled with the sweet Alaga syrup. The syrup had a slight burnt twang to it. The combination was perfect. Once I finished my pancake, I looked around to make sure Daddy wasn’t looking, picked up my plate, and licked it clean.

“Sport, I’m heading out to finish cutting the back forty. You gonna be all right?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t plan on watching TV all day. You know how your Mama feels about that.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered. “I’m coming out to ride my bike after Scooby-Doo is over.”

Every weekend, I struggled to decide between riding my bicycle and watching cartoons. The next commercial made up my mind. “Big Wheels are a’rollin’, listen to them turn!”

“I’ll save you, Scoob!” Shaggy shouted as he launched a huge snowball from the fork of a sapling tree. The snowball hit the snow ghost, and the two fell to the ground, rolling downhill and out of control. Fred, Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy emerged, running in front of the giant snowball, trying to escape. The icy mass engulfed them all. When the powder settled, the mask fell off the snow ghost.

“Mr. Greenway!” they all exclaimed, solving the mystery of “one of the biggest rings of jewel thieves in the country.”

“Good work, Scooby-Doo!” I shouted.

In the excitement of the scene, I’d been pulling on Stretch Armstrong’s leg when I felt something cold hit my own. I looked down and saw a red blob of jelly on my leg and another on the bean bag. Stretch was mortally wounded and bleeding out fast. Jelly doughnut filling flowed everywhere. Thank goodness it hadn’t made it onto Mama’s carpet. As I sang, “You can stretch legs and arms—it won’t do harm,” I thought, What a crock! I cleaned up the mess with a roll of the quicker picker-uppers and tossed him in the trash.

As I put my plate and tumbler in the kitchen sink, I heard, “Give a hoot, don’t pollute,” as Woodsy Owl reminded a group of children not to be dirty birds. I headed out onto the back porch and pulled my bicycle from the corner, dragging it down the back steps.

From the street, our driveway was long, stretching all the way to the back of the house, making a sharp turn just past Daddy’s workshop. The turn was the low point, filled with shellrock. I sat on the pavement, staring down the long stretch of dirt and shell. The slight elevation change would allow me to gain speed.

“Go,” I said to myself, imagining the pop of my cap gun as the front bike tire bumped from the street onto our driveway. As I entered the curve, I backpedaled hard, applying the brake. I could feel the shell give way across the back tire as I began to slide, making what felt like one of the biggest doughnuts of my life.

It wasn’t long before I saw Mama’s car coming toward me. She honked the horn, smiling and pointing for me to move out of the way. As she stepped out of the car, she looked around and said, “I see the house is still standing. Tell your Daddy lunch will be ready in about thirty minutes.”

After lunch, Mama and I sat down in the living room to watch Creature Feature. Daddy went back outside to his workshop to finish welding a new hitch onto the utility trailer.

As I flipped through the channels, I heard the familiar voice of a man laughing in a gruff yet jovial way. He entered the set, opening and closing a creaky wooden door. He was tall and dressed in a black suit. Straight, jet-black hair hung like curtains, perfectly parted in the middle, exposing his pale face. As he took a seat, he began to speak.

“Good afternoon, whatever you are, and welcome to the Tenement Castle of Dr. Paul Bearer.”

He continued with a clever joke. “I was running a little late today, so I stopped by one of those quickie food joints. Thought I’d try some Chicken McMaggots today,” he said, laughing ghoulishly.

“Our horrible movie this afternoon is Piranha,” he announced.

“I saw this movie at the theater,” Mama said, sitting on the couch and reading a coconut cream pie recipe aloud to herself from a Southern Living magazine.

I turned and asked Mama, “What are piranhas?”

“Piranhas are flesh-eating fish,” she responded.

My eyes must have opened as wide as saucers. I was unable to speak.

“You still want to watch the movie, Denny?” she asked with a little laugh.

When I turned back to the TV, I saw a large group of people swimming and floating on rafts and inner tubes. The fun quickly turned to chaos as the crowd began to splash violently. People were pulled under the water in a state of panic. Red air bubbles rose to the surface, turning the water the color of blood.

I asked Mama for a throw pillow and placed it over my eyes. Relief came when I heard, “How do you get your shirts so clean, Mr. Lee?”

“Ancient Chinese secret.”

I removed the pillow from in front of my face.

“Why are you hiding your face, Denny?” Mama asked.

“It’s scary. You can’t see the fish coming. The water isn’t clear like Lithia Springs, where you can see the bottom,” I said.

I remembered the red jelly on my leg earlier that morning. “Mama, I think piranhas attacked Stretch Armstrong while I was watching Scooby-Doo.”

She shot me a strange sideways glance, not understanding what I meant.

“Fright fans, I hope you’re enjoying our horrible movie. Quite frankly, I think I’d enjoy it more if I had a bit of libation—something to wet the old whistle with,” Dr. Paul Bearer joked as he poured himself two fingers of Early Tombs.

I spent the next hour with my eyes partially covered, removing the pillow during commercial breaks. Then I heard, “Until next week, fright fans…I’ll be lurking for you! Hahahaha!”

Later that afternoon, the phone rang. Mama walked over to the wall between the kitchen and back door, lifted the receiver, and said, “Hello.” She listened. “We’re fine. How are y’all doing?” After a moment, she said, “Sure, we’ll be home. Come on over.”

“That was Elizabeth. The Foxes are coming over,” Mama advised.

“Dennis, go get your bath before they get here.”

“Do I have to?” I protested.

“YES,” Mama answered, clearly not in the mood to negotiate. “I’ll wash these dishes. You go take your bath.”

I was excited for the visit since Lance was my best friend. When they arrived, Daddy was getting cleaned up. Elizabeth and Ronnie sat in the family room with Mama, catching up on what had happened over the past month since we’d last seen them. I took Lance outside to the garbage can to show him what had happened to Stretch Armstrong that morning.

“Ewww, I didn’t think you could break him,” Lance said.

“Neither did I,” I responded as I slammed the lid down on the can. It struck the rim with a loud, hollow clang—galvanized metal hitting galvanized metal.

“Do you want to walk down to the creek?” I asked.

“It’s getting kind of late, and I don’t think my Mom will let me,” he said. “We could play Star Wars, though.” He mimicked Darth Vader’s deep voice. “Luke, I am your father.”

As we headed back inside to my bedroom, our parents were discussing supper plans. Mama and Elizabeth were on strike—no cooking or cleaning. Someone said something about going to Po-Folks. Lance and I said in unison, “How about pizza?” Pizza was something reserved for special occasions. They looked at one another and, to our surprise, said, “Pizza sounds good to us.”

“I’ll order two large pepperoni and cheese pizzas from Dino’s, and you boys can go with your fathers to pick them up,” Mama instructed.

“James, run in to Thriftway and buy a six-pack of Cokes—in the bottle, please. I don’t like sweet tea with my pizza,” she said to Daddy.

As we entered Dino’s to pick up our pizzas, I said to Lance, “Look in back. The pizza man will be tossing the dough in the air.” As Daddy paid the bill, Lance and I stood mesmerized in front of the glass window, watching him catch each toss on his balled-up fists. When the dough was safely back on the worktop, the dining room erupted in applause.

After supper, Daddy, Ronnie, Lance, and I made our way to the family room for Saturday night’s main event: WWWF wrestling. The long-awaited tag-team match was between Dusty Rhodes, aka the American Dream, and Andre the Giant, who were up against Pretty Boy Ric Flair and Blackjack Mulligan.

Lance and I sat on the floor, Indian-style, glued to the TV screen, picking our sides. We were almost always on the side of the good guys, though the good guys could change from time to time. That night, we were cheering for Dusty and Andre.

“In this corner,” Gordon Solie began before the microphone was ripped from his hand.

“I’m the World Heavyweight Champion. Woo! The greatest wrestler alive today. Woo! I’m the Pretty Boy. I’m Ric Flair!”

Lance and I started booing and jeering at the TV screen. Mama and Elizabeth had stayed behind, talking at the dining-room table. I could hear Mama saying, “Elizabeth, I can’t believe they watch that crap. Could it get any more fake?”

“It’s real, Mama. They even bleed sometimes,” I piped up, not taking my eyes off the TV screen.

As the bell rang, Blackjack and Dusty began dancing around the ring. Blackjack backed into the ropes, bounced off them, and charged Dusty, bent forward as he tried to muscle him into a body slam. Dusty, quick on his feet, reacted by grabbing Blackjack’s head between his legs, placing his hands around Blackjack’s waist, lifting him, and then dropping onto the ring floor in a powerful piledriver.

Blackjack was laid out cold. The Pretty Boy shouted from the corner, “Get up!” and extended his arm into the ring for Blackjack to tag him. Dusty tried to pin Blackjack, but Blackjack lifted one shoulder off the mat and slapped Ric Flair’s outstretched hand, tagging him into the match. Flair entered the ring and grabbed Dusty’s head between his forearm and biceps in a sleeper hold. They both fell to the mat.

“Come on, Dusty! Tag the Giant!” I shouted.

Finally, Dusty, looking exhausted, tagged Andre, who lumbered into the ring.

“Not so loud, Dennis,” Mama said from the dining room. “They can hear you all the way down at East Bay Raceway.”

Engulfed in the excitement of the match, Lance and I began playing around in the middle of the family-room floor, trying to mimic the moves that we saw on TV.

“Settle down, boys, or move out of the way. Your mama’s not a glass maker,” Daddy said.

We ended up in our version of a figure four. I’d always dreamed of climbing onto the back of the couch and trying to do a body slam, but whenever the idea came to me, our parents were around.

The Pretty Boy kept running his mouth until Andre slapped him to the mat. Then he tagged Blackjack. Blackjack climbed the ropes in the corner of the ring, taunting Andre the Giant. As Andre approached, Blackjack hurled himself toward the Giant, attempting a flying body press. Andre caught him in midair, turning the attack into a body slam that ended with a loud thump on the mat. Andre lumbered to his feet, towering over Blackjack, and delivered an elbow drop to his throat. Blackjack’s body convulsed for a second, then went limp. Andre raised one of Blackjack’s legs and pinned Blackjack’s shoulders to the mat as the referee counted to three!

“Yee-haw! I knew we’d win!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Mama and Elizabeth, finally giving up on having a peaceful conversation, joined us in the family room, but they didn’t sit down.

“Boys, Elizabeth and I are dying for something sweet to eat. How about we take a ride and pick up some doughnuts?” Mama suggested.

We all loaded up into the Foxes’ white 1980 Ford Fairmont station wagon. Lance and I sat in the very back, the part without seats. Lance always got carsick, so he liked riding backward, focusing on the cars behind us. Going from our house in Riverview to Tampa was a forty-five-minute trek. On the ride to town, Lance and I went over the wrestling match play by play as the four adults talked about an upcoming fishing trip to Lake Walking Water.

When we arrived around 10 p.m., a young woman was pulling the cord on the “Hot Now” sign.

“Fresh doughnuts,” Lance said.

“Krispy Kreme doughnuts are my favorite,” I added.

Earlier, when Mama said the word “doughnuts,” I already knew what I wanted: a jelly-filled one.

I knew Mama would have a cream-filled and a glazed doughnut. She’d also buy extra for breakfast because they reminded her of her school days, when Grandma Murphy would buy her and Uncle Glenn fresh doughnuts wrapped in wax paper along with a carton of chocolate milk.

Everyone stood looking into the glass counter, deciding what kind of doughnuts to order. Our parents each bought a mixed box.

Lance and I walked into the dining area and began pushing two tables together when I heard Mama say, “Boys, it’s getting late. We’re going to eat these in the car on the way home. We have a long drive, after all.”

As we turned south out of the parking lot onto Florida Avenue, I took my jelly doughnut from Mama’s hand, held it in front of Lance’s face, and gave it a firm squeeze. As the jelly began to rise to the top and rush down one side, I said to Lance, “This is what Stretch Armstrong looked like this morning.”

“Gross,” he said, gagging and dry-heaving as I began to laugh hysterically.

Full and satisfied after a long day of excitement, I was rocked to sleep by the motion of the car.

As I drifted off into my sugar-induced coma, I could hear Mama telling Elizabeth, “He’ll be asleep in a minute. When he was a baby and I couldn’t get him to sleep, I put him in the car and we’d ride around the block. He’d go to sleep in a matter of minutes.”

“Denny, wake up. We’re home,” Mama said, gently shaking my shoulder.

I rubbed my eyes as I got out of the car, said goodbye to everyone, and stumbled my way up the back steps of our house. I crawled into bed with my shoes on and drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was in my pajamas. My shoes were next to the bed. The smell of sausage frying lured me into the kitchen where Mama was cooking breakfast.

“Mama, I had the strangest dream. We were with Daddy on Lake Wimauma, fishing. We heard a cow mooing, and the next thing you know, it was gone. The water bubbled and turned red.”

“Denny, what did you expect after watching a movie like Piranha? Sweet dreams?” Mama asked with a smile.