Jack, Be Nimble
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2018 by aubie56

Naturally, I don’t remember much of the details of my early years. All I can remember for sure was that my father and mother, Jason and Mary Harbinger, were as loving and caring a set of parents as any child could hope for. I progressed through infancy and early childhood at a little better than the normal rate, except there was something wrong with my sense of balance.

Dad was working for the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), a federal agency, as a chemical engineer. I was born in 1934 in the hospital at Nitrate Plant, Alabama, probably the best such facility in the state. Back in those days, the medical profession was classed on a par with God, so my later troubles were never associated with them. Actually, my problem with my sense of balance was traced to genetics, so the medical profession was home free in this case.

I was very slow to learn to walk, though my other skills developed very quickly. My mom was a former teacher, and she did everything she could to push me along. I could read letters and numbers up to 10 by the time I entered kindergarten at the age of 5.

By that time, I could walk, but only if I had something to help me maintain my balance. Dad was something of an inventor, and he came up with a walker with wheels that I could use to steady me as I walked. Thus, as long as I had that device, I was able to get around.

In kindergarten was where I ran into my first school bully. He used to steal my walker from me and not return it until forced to do so by the teacher. In those days, a sharp swat to the buttocks was the usual punishment for such a disruption of the class, and the bully received many of those. This always resulted in laughter from the rest of the class, and an increase in the bully’s hatred for me. Of course, I was just happy to get my walker back and thought no more about it, except for a short peak in my dislike for the bully. I was never one to carry a grudge, so I promptly forgot the incidents.

The only time this taking of my walker ever caused any greater trouble was one afternoon as we were going home from school when the bully grabbed my walker from me and ran away with it about 50 feet. He stopped to laugh at me, and that was his undoing. Naturally, I fell to the ground on some rocks and badly skinned my left forearm. Blood poured like water from my arm, and this frightened everyone who saw it, except for the bully who only laughed harder.

Fortunately, all of this happened quickly, and it was seen by my kindergarten teacher. She immediately called for the school nurse and had a male teacher, 5th Grade, I think, grab the bully and march him to the office of the principal. I was treated by the nurse to stop the bleeding and sent to the hospital. Emergency rooms did not exist at that time.

My parents were called, and Mom met me at the hospital, but Dad was called to the school, as were the parents of the bully. A heated discussion was held among the parents and the principal, and the result was that the bully was sent home for a week’s detainment. Each day, a policeman would check to be sure that the bully was indeed at home and not out playing somewhere. The result of this was that his mother got truly sick of the sight of the bully by the time his week was up.

His parents were told that any more issues like this from him would result in his expulsion from the school and a repeat of kindergarten next year. That would delay his entry into 1st Grade, and bring great shame to the family. Well, that stopped the bully from picking on me while I was in kindergarten, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. It left me more time to play in the sandbox.

My father was called into the Army in 1939 along with the rest of the National Guard, so my mother decided that we should move to Arlington in south Alabama to live with her parents for the year that my father was called up to serve. Of course, that time was extended, and he was still in the Army in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Sometime in 1940, Dad had been transferred from the Combat Engineers to the Construction Engineers and sent to northern Canada to work on the AlCan highway. Therefore, I saw nothing of him for some time.

Meanwhile, my mother, my younger brother, and I were living with her parents in Arlington. I was going to the consolidated school in Arlington, and there I entered the 1st Grade and encountered some more bullies, three of them. Again, I was tormented by losing my special walker, and the teacher was not interested in putting a stop to it. Her attitude was “let Jack work out his problems for himself.”

One day I was met by all three bullies, and they snatched away my walker. I had expected that, so I did not fall this time. I managed to grab the edge of a desk and held myself up that way. Of course, that was not good enough for the bullies, so they pushed me to the floor. In the process, I banged my right forearm hard enough on the steel leg of a desk to make it bleed.

Guess what, I was now in trouble because I had gotten blood all over the floor. The school nurse was called, and the bleeding was stopped. I was sent home because I had disrupted the class. I did manage to recover my walker so that I was able to walk home dripping only a minimum amount of blood.

My mother was used to these bullying problems and did not react, but my grandmother was made of much sterner stuff! After all, she had once been in a gunfight with some Apache raiders when homesteading in New Mexico Territory. [For that story, see “The Indian Raid.”] Anyway, she put on her fighting bureaucracy clothes and marched to the Elementary School Principal’s office. Everybody in town knew “Miss Alice” and was afraid of her sharp tongue.

After her meeting, I have no idea what was said in it, the three bullies spent the rest of the day facing the wall in the principal’s office. I did not see the three bullies for two weeks following that incident, and my 1st Grade teacher was much nicer to me for the rest of the school year.

My grandfather was especially incensed about this, and it was probably well that he had been out working at the farm when it happened. In any case, he looked at my wound and pronounced that I needed protection for my forearms. He made a wooden form somewhat like my forearm and shaped sheet steel bracers for me to wear on each arm. The underside of the bracers was padded with the cushioning material from a Model T car-seat he acquired somewhere, and the bracers were held on by two leather straps.

I was still in the 1st Grade, but I was smart enough to take instruction well from my grandfather. “Look here, Jack. You are headed for trouble as you go through school. I know because I have been there. You must learn to defend yourself, and these two bracers should help a lot. These are not just defensive shields. They can be used as weapons with a little training, and I plan to give that to you.

“You probably know that I was once a professional boxer, so there are some tricks with the forearms that I know. The sheet metal with the padding will protect your arms and still deliver a right smart jolt of pain when used correctly. We’ll start tomorrow with your training as soon as I get back from the cotton planting. I have to make sure that I meet my allotment or it will be cut next year.”

“Okay, Grandfather, I can hardly wait to start training. I am tired of being a punching bag for any kid bigger than me.”

“Fine, Jack. I like that attitude, but you need to make one small change: forget about whether or not the other guy is smaller than you. If he is a threat, attack right away. Don’t mess with trying to talk your way out of a confrontation.”

“Yes, Grandfather. I’ll be ready whenever you are. Don’t say anything to Mom, though. She is always after me to stay out of fights.”

I guess that you can say that was when my real education in life began. The next day, Grandfather showed me how to block punches with my bracers, and we practiced every day for about 90 minutes for eight days. On the ninth day, Grandfather showed up with padding on his arms. “Dammit, Jack, you sure learn fast. My arms are getting too sore to work the way you are pounding me. I wish you were steady enough on your feet to take up real boxing. You could be a champ.”

That was heady praise from my grandfather. As far as I knew, he never told me anything but the truth. I never doubted him even when he told me Mrs. Foster had swallowed a watermelon seed, judging from the way her belly was swelling. That was enough to make me take special precautions never to swallow a watermelon seed.

A few days later, Grandfather showed up at practice wearing a heavy jacket. “Jack, I am going to teach you now how to swat a man in the belly with your forearm so that nobody will notice that you did it. I’m wearing this heavy jacket because you can break ribs with this swat, and I don’t want that to happen to me.”

This was a lot harder to learn, but he pronounced me as an accomplished belly swatter at the end of a month. “Okay, Jack, the last thing I want to teach you are some killing blows. I hope you never have to use them, but there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to choose. Just be sure you are right when you do.”

These were strikes with the fist to the throat with the object of crushing the windpipe and various blows to the side and back of the head with a bracer to cause a concussion. A concussive blow could cause death, even if the skull was not broken. These strikes scared me, but I felt that I had to learn them if my grandfather thought that I should.

One day, about six weeks later, Grandfather said, “Jack, you have learned very well everything I wanted to teach you. Dammit, I would hate to have you attack me. You need never fear another man who does not have a gun. A knife is no better than an experienced hand, so you should be able to defend yourself and yours from now on.

“I do have one other thing to teach you, but you need to be taller to use it, so we can let it ride for about a year or so. Meanwhile, as they used to say in Greece, ‘Come back carrying your shield or lying upon it.’”

Grandfather had to explain what that meant, but it didn’t take me long to understand what he was saying and to swear to do my very best to come back carrying my shield.

By this time, harvest season was upon us, and both of my grandparents worked in the fields alongside the sharecroppers getting in the summer’s bounty. School would start the second week in September, and I could hardly wait. I would be in the second grade.

Oh, Boy! My dad was back from Canada and Alaska and sent to a Camp in Mississippi. At last, we could join him, and I would start school in a new school. This school was about half filled with local kids and half with Army brats. I never understood why, but this engendered considerable animosity between the two groups, and even extended to the teachers. I guess the teachers were jealous because their men were overseas where they were not available, while our fathers were home almost every night.

Mostly, the harassment at first was generally scattered throughout the school, but it settled down to bullies picking on the weaker kids. One thing that surprised me was that the bullies tended to congregate into small gangs of three or four boys, and it made little difference whether or not the members of a gang were all locals or all Army brats. Those of us who were the victims really didn’t care.

As it happened, the first time I was approached by a gang of bullies, I was crossing the main playground. This was a mixture of clay and sand that was nearly as hard as concrete overlayed by a very thin layer of sand. The sand did slow me down a little bit as my walker wheels tended to bog down about every third step. Naturally, the three boys began to deride me for my difficulties.

Finally, the one I identified as having a Damyankee accent reached out to grab my walker. I was so well trained by my grandfather that I did not even think as I banged down on his forearm with my left bracer. To the surprise of all of us, we could actually hear a bone crack. I knew that there were two bones in the forearm, but I had no idea which one of them had broken.

The bully screamed in pain and jerked his arm back. One of the other boys, one with a strong local accent, half shouted, “You can’t get away with that!” He tried to hit me with his fist, but I blocked that with my bracer, and he, too, screamed in pain. He had four broken fingers on his right hand.

That was enough for the third boy, and he took off running as fast as he could go. The two injured boys sat crying on the ground nursing their broken bones, and a playground monitor, an older woman, rushed to see what was going on. She dismissed me with a glance and a muttered “that damned crip” as she turned to the two boys on the ground.

They both claimed that I had attacked them with my metal bracers, and they were completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Well, the older woman believed them and would not let me explain my side of the story. She sent a kid for the school nurse, and when she arrived, the woman marched me to the Principal’s office.

Of course, the Principal heard only the woman’s report and believed it. The Principal was a local and had no use for the Army brats who were inflicted upon her. My father had brought me to school on his way to the Camp, and he had the family’s only car. The Principal wanted to send me home right away, but no transportation was available. Therefore, she called the Camp and demanded that my father leave there immediately to pick me up to take me home. Furthermore, she was expelling me from the school, and I was not to return for the rest of the school year.

It took nearly 20 minutes to get my father to a telephone, but he hardly needed it to tell the Principal what he thought of her and the way she was treating me. She did say that, even if she were overruled by the school board, I could not wear my bracers to school because I was using them to attack her other students who were defenseless. I heard him say, “I’ll be there within an hour.” That was when he slammed down the telephone.

Well, about 45 minutes later, Dad stormed into the Principal’s office without ceremony and found me STANDING IN THE CORNER facing the wall and using my hands to hold me upright because the Principal had refused to let me use my walker. He practically exploded! He threw a piece of paper down on the desk. The Principal picked it up and turned absolutely pale under her tan as she read. The gist of the paper was a statement from the Camp Commander that he would pull all Army students from her school and cut off federal funding if she expelled me.

The Principal was still blubbering incoherently when Dad slammed another paper down on her desk. This one said that my bracers were a medical necessity, and she had no right to take them away from me. This paper was signed by the Camp’s Chief Medical Officer and countersigned by the Camp Commander.

The Principal now realized that she had backed herself into a hole that she could not escape from unless she let me off with a clean slate. Dad spat into her wastebasket and turned his back on her. He said to me as he handed me my walker, “Come on, Son. I’m sure that you have had enough of this school as I have for today. Let’s go home.” He turned back to the principal long enough to say, “You know what will happen if this goes any further.”

Dad was still boiling mad by the time we got home. He told Mom what had happened, and she was quite upset—not because of what I had been through, but what this might do to her reputation among her friends. After all, this was not something that refined ladies got involved in. At this point, Dad hit the ceiling. “Mary, take care of your son, and stop acting like a princess. Start acting like a proper mother or I will send you back to Alabama!”

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