Chapter 15: Simple Solutions

Pa and I were coming home from a football game late one afternoon after school. I don't remember the school we were playing against, so it must not have been a very memorable game. Whenever I was in a game Pa always took time away from his chores to watch me play. Because of my size and strength the coach placed me in the line. I played right or left guard, both offensive and defensive, sometimes in the same game.

Woodman High was not a large school so we had a first string and a few hopefuls. There weren't enough players for much else. Ma attended only one game and stopped coming after that. Unfortunately the game she witnessed was an unusually rough one. I broke through their line and nailed the other side's receiver before he could even take a step. He fumbled and dropped the ball and I covered it. When one of the other side's players tried the same thing he ended up with a broken arm.

Five players were taken out of the game because I accidentally hurt them. Again, let me say again, I did not mean to injure anyone. It was just a game where things went bad for some nice guys on the other team and I was always in the middle of whatever happened that day. Even their coach admitted I hadn't done anything wrong.

As soon as the game was over I ran Tired and sweaty into the locker room to change and join my folks so we could ride home together. Pa and I loved to rehash every play made in the game. He had played first string for Woodman High when he attended there. We were both football fanatics.

"You know, Davy, I felt sorry for the other team. I have been thinking that maybe you ought to at least tie one hand behind your back. You know, just to make things a little more fair. You didn't even need the rest of the team to win today.

Suddenly Ma spoke up, "David, I don't know whether you should be permitted to play such an awful game any more," she said without any warning.

"W-H-A-A-A-T?" Pa and I both exclaimed at the same time. This was the first and only time Ma came to watch me play.

"Well, you really do play too rough, David," she told me. "I hated it when you hurt those poor boys. I don't think you should engage in football until you learn to be less rough. You might seriously injure someone. It's just too dangerous."

"For the other team," Pa said. He looked sideways out of the corner of his eye and returned his concentration on his driving.

Ma's parents were teachers at a private school for rich kids in St Louis. Their sports program consisted of "friendly" games of touch football and softball. They played what we boys called "girls sports" and "sissy games" in those days. They actually played softball instead of baseball because a teacher got beaned once by a wild pitch and was knocked out. If he'd had his mind on the game instead of something else, he would have ducked.

A sprained wrist was as bad as it got for them. So Ma didn't have any concept of old fashioned Oklahoma and Texas style full body contact football. We always played serious as a heart attack hold nothing back football. Besides, we didn't have all the padding and guards like they do today. So, of course, more people did get hurt in those days. And the rules were somewhat different of course.

After she watched me play football one time, Ma went shopping during the game and Pa and I picked her up later when the game was over, or she stayed home like she did this time. The only real disagreements my parents ever had was over me playing football and wrestling. Pa was proud that his only son, a freshman, competed with the seniors and held his own. Since I inherited Pa's build, combined with Ma's great cooking and hard work all my life I was bigger and stronger than all my classmates.

Wrestling was the same thing. Ma came once when my opponent, a slightly heavier boy, and I started in the Sugar Side Stance and when I slipped around and caught him in a Half Nelson he tried to roll out of it and twisted his knee and dislocated it. He screamed and the match was stopped. I won by default.

Our other heavyweight wrestler ate too many hot dogs before the match and got sick. I volunteered to take his place and slammed the other guy to the mat too hard and he ended up with a pulled back muscle. Ma was horrified. Pa and I both explained how sometimes bad things happened. Ma refused to watch me wrestle after that. Then after the fatal football game she stayed away from all of my school activities.

Hopelessly she said, "David, if you entered the debating contest you would probably raise your voice to make a point and cause the other boy to end up with a broken eardrum." Pa snorted and she stayed away from all my games.

Anyway, after the latest football game we were going home in the two year old Ford he had recently bought at auction. Sam and Ma were waiting for us. Sam had no interest in any kind of sports. All she knew about sports was how to tally the odds, thanks to her deceased father.

We rehashed the game, play-by-play when we were stopped by a line of cars extended from the underpass known as "Franklin's Folly" all the way past the curve leading into town. It got that name because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our thirty-second president instituted a system of public works projects to give unemployed people jobs.

Unfortunately, the political appointees who ran these projects were not the best talent around. The "Folly" was one such example of what happens when an incompetent bureaucrat designs something and an even less talented builder then builds it. "The blind leading the blind" comes to mind as an apt description of how "The Folly" was built.

The road out of town east at one time had a curving state road and a simple railroad crossing complete with a warning sign. People saw the Railroad Crossing sign and slowed down and looked both ways. Then, if the way was clear, they proceeded on their ways. That was too simple for a bureaucrat. Since it worked and was simple, the bureaucrat had to fix it.

Along came the expert who designed the underpass he decided was needed to replace the simple crossing we had used and had worked fine for years. The dirt was gouged out from under the tracks and trestles installed. Whoever designed it got his measurements wrong and the underpass was built too shallow and too narrow. Two cars could pass each other safely, even a car and a truck if care was taken. But two wide trucks couldn't make it.

Bratty Betty May Henderson's father made a fortune off those mishaps. He put up warning signs tjat proclaimed, "After You Hit The Oncoming Truck At The Underpass, Remember Henderson's Garage," All the locals thought it was the funniest sign in the county. Here he warned them and got their business when they ignored the warning.

This time there was a truck and trailer stuck in the underpass. The limit sign at the underpass stated "CLEARANCE 12 Ft. — 2 In." And it was originally. Things were still too simple. After the underpass was completed the same government bureaucrat came back and ordered the roadway paved with Macadam asphalt topping.

The contractor who did the job neglected to scrape out enough dirt when he made the new roadbed. As a result the sign should have been changed to read eleven feet three inches. Truckers with high loads who drove through our part of the country for the first time invariably got stuck under the overhang.

Pa stopped the car and we got out and walked past the twenty or so other cars stalled on the curve. There, with it's load jammed tight inside the underpass was an old Kelly flat bed with an International Harvester farm tractor sticking up above the cab. The tractor was saved from damage by the heavy crates piled up on the bed in front of it. They stood a few inches above the cab and were jammed solid under the overhead. People were yelling, some were cussing and a couple of the angriest wanted to whip the truck driver for getting stuck.

"Look here, fellers," the truck driver said, "My load measures eleven feet and ten inches high at the top most point. The dad gummed sign says 'CLEARANCE 12 feet 2 INCHES." Now you tell me what is wrong here."

One of the men who wanted to whip the driver said, "Yer a plumb dumb eedjut if ya believe everything you read."