Chapter 43

Monday didn’t start out well, a cold front had moved in overnight and it was raining. I performed my exercises but didn’t even think about running. How is it possible to feel great and terrible at the same time?

I was tired; it felt like I had been on the go for weeks. At the same time, I felt great; we had won the sectional and would be going to the District this week. I had an offer to be in a movie. I was making progress on my hairdryer. Everything was good if I wasn’t so tired and ached so much.

I went down for breakfast. One smell of eggs frying in the kitchen and I was running back to my bathroom to throw up. Mum heard the noise and came to check on me.

She felt my forehead and said, “Off to bed with you boyo, you have the flu.”

I went back to bed and slept most of the day, other than bouts of running to the bathroom. It was both ends. My temperature showed no sign of going down. Mum kept bringing cool rags when I was awake. Tuesday was more of the same so she called Dr. Costin.

He stopped by in the afternoon as a house call and confirmed that I had the flu but that my temperature was down from what Mum had measured. Drink plenty of liquids, and starve the fever was his prescription.

Tuesday night the fever broke. By late Wednesday morning, I was feeling good enough to get out of bed for lunch. By this time Denny and Eddie had come down with it. Mary was still okay and Mum was keeping her away from us.

The only good thing was I got all the Nehi grape soda I could drink. For some reason when I had the flu it was the only thing I could keep down. This happened at least once every school year.

When I had the mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, German and three-day measles, or a common cold I could eat and drink anything. The flu was Nehi only.

Coach Stone called on Wednesday and Mum told him she thought I would be back in school Thursday and able to go to the District golf tournament. I felt a little weak on Wednesday afternoon but was up and about.

Mum had an appointment with Sharon Baily to have her hair done, so I was charged with watching the other kids. The boys were asleep and Mary was playing with her dolls, so I went out to the garage to work with the hairdryer.

The goal was to make a handheld unit. So far I had a cigar box lying on a workbench. It needed a handle. I tried another toilet paper roll (I had emptied several rolls myself in the last two days) as a handle. I slipped the electric power wires through it and taped it to the cigar box. When I tried to pick it up, the paper roll broke.

I threaded the wires through an unbroken roll and then put some short Lincoln Logs inside the roll. I then taped it all together and I had a sturdy handle. Picking the prototype hairdryer up the cigar box lid fell open so I taped it shut.

I updated a drawing in my notebook. I now had a barrel with a heating element (toilet paper roll), housing (cigar box with erector set parts), and a handle (toilet paper roll reinforced with Lincoln Logs.

I was keeping all of my notes in a lab workbook Gilbert Chemistry set style, now I only had to find a use for tinker toys and I would have an all American hairdryer.

I could now pick the dryer up and wave it around. The weight felt good at about one pound, not too heavy but some heft to it. I went in and checked on the boys, they were still asleep. Mary was bored so I ended up reading Dr. Seuss to her. I love green ham. Actually, she told me the story as she had “read” it so many times. She also was able to sight-read some of the words.

Mum got home with a present from Mrs. Baily; she had sent me a bag of hair to test my dryer. She had saved hanks of long hair she had cut. I trapped one end of the hank of hair between two long tinker toy sticks and duct-taped the sticks together.

I then used the tinker toys to build a framework to suspend the hair. I entered a drawing of my test fixture and its components in my notebook.

Mum had to sign for a certified letter. It was the contract from Warner Brother’s studio for, “The Cowboys.” Dad was switching cars BN yards today, just at the north end of Bellefontaine, it was where the stockyards were so Dad would be all stinky when he got home.

Mum opened the letter and let me read it, from what I could tell it was exactly as Mr. Wayne had described. Dad would still take it to our lawyer.

I wetted the hair in the fixture; then dried it. It dried ok but had a burnt smell to it. There was also a singed smell to the dryer. When I checked it, the toilet paper roll which comprised the barrel was brown, about ready to catch on fire.