Yesterday I found to my surprise, the perfect forked branch of beanie flipperdom. It wasn’t just perfect, it was the archetype, the one of the one. It brought to me some childhood memories and fantasies and so, my story.
When you’re eight years old, life is full of wonder and terror. You wonder if you’ll make it home from the schoolyard and avoid the terror of being chased nine blocks by the Smith twins, Tom and Terry. They were ten years old and their only mission in life was to bully all of us younger kids from the edge of the school grounds to our property line. Both of them were butt ugly, and the first time I saw an artist’s rendition of Neanderthals, I knew their ancestry. The twins couldn’t sneak up on you because you could hear their knuckles scraping along the ground. But either one would make you pee your pants if they ever caught up with you. I learned to run - and run fast. They were monsters.
Somewhere in the daily challenge of getting home from school alive an idea born of desperation came to me. I didn’t just want to stop the bullies, I wanted revenge. I think it must have been about the time Bobby Johnson got a Whamo! wrist rocket. You know, the one on the back of the Captain Marvel comic book from the place that sold everything including those mysterious sea monkeys and the x-ray vision glasses. Bobby’s dad was dumb enough to give Bobby the money to buy the thing, which was good, because no other kid in our neighborhood couldn’t afford $1.50 plus postage. Bobby’s old man was rich. It took forever for the powerful weapon to show up in the mail. In the meantime, the twins harassed us unmercifully, but at least I could check with Bobby every day to see if it had arrived. It finally showed up! It was a beauty. The nickel plated wire frame gleamed, the powerful surgical tubing and leather pouch promised mayhem and destruction. It delivered . Within 2 hours of receiving this killer weapon, Bobby took out a neighbors kitchen window, and rather than heeding the ominous warning, he shot out the windshield on his dad’s brand new Desoto sedan. It was rather obvious that aiming the projectile wasn’t going to be one of Bobby’s strong suites. The wrist rocket disappeared the same day it arrived. Bobby got grounded for a couple of weeks but it was too late. I had seen the light. The seed had been planted. I knew I had to have a beanie flipper. I had seen the power, and I wanted it. The twins were going to pay and pay dearly. Revenge was in the making.
Making… making was a problem. The cost of a genuine Whamo! wrist rocket was out of sight for a poor kid, and I had no idea how to produce such a vengeful destroyer. Fortunately, there was Gloria Zimmerman. Gloria lived across the street. She was a year older than me, and we played together after school. Now Gloria wasn’t just your average everyday girl. She was a tomboy. Did I say tomboy? She played every sport better than any boy in the neighborhood. The Neanderthals stayed away from Gloria. She could beat both of them to a pulp at the same time. She really missed her calling -she should have been a guy. I told her I wanted to make a flipper but didn’t know how. After a bit of thought, she produced a book called Tom Sawyer, complete with illustrations, from her “classic children’s stories” collection. In this book (which I would read a few years later) were illustrations of Tom or Huck bravely using a genuine home-made beanie flipper to defeat…. something. I don‘t remember. Whoever did the illustration forgot that rubber wasn’t much available in Twain’s time, but I was a little young to notice such details anyway. I just saw the route to becoming an invincible avenger of wrong. What the illustrations made clear was that I only needed three things: a forked tree branch, some rubber strips, and a piece of leather. Now, I didn’t have any of the three but it seemed simple enough.
Gloria could sense the adventure so she said she offered to help, and she did. Some people on our school route had cut down a tree and had a pile of limbs piled up in front of the house. On our way home from school, Gloria rode shotgun to keep the Neanderthals at bay, while I combed through the pile of brush looking for that perfect forked branch. None matched the perfect one like in the illustrations, but we got as close as we could before the guy who owned the house ran us off. We had kinda scattered the brush pile a little bit. It is hard to run dragging a ten foot long tree branch, but we managed to get away with the goods.
Back at the house, tree branch in the back yard, I ran into a small problem. I had no way to saw out that fork from the rest of the branch. I had watched my grandfather working with a saw, so I sneaked into his shop and borrowed a saw I didn’t think he’d miss. It was a keyhole saw with a thin narrow blade. Not having a lot of practice with a saw, I immediately bent the saw blade. Gloria took over the saw work (she had more experience) and managed to get the fork cut away from the whole tree branch. We dragged the leftovers down the alley behind a neighbors garage to conceal our covert operation. I straightened the saw blade as best I could and returned the saw to granddad’s shop. I knew that he would know and I’d have to explain what I was doing, but maybe I’d get away with it. Building a weapon of destruction meant taking risks.
The fork Gloria had sawn out needed a bit of smoothing down, and since I had no access to sandpaper, I took some blank glass microscope slides I found in the trash down the alley, and scraped away for about three days after school all the while imagining the terrible hand of justice I was creating and how the Neanderthals were going to pay. It was satisfying work. In the midst of all this I was trying to figure out where to get the rubber strips that would launch the deadly missiles of retribution. Gloria and I started walking down the alleys all the way home from school scavenging through peoples trash looking for something that might work. Nothing. It finally dawned on me (give me a break, I’m only eight) that an inner tube from a car tire would be a perfect source of the rubber strips I needed.
About three blocks from our place was a gas station called “Andy’s” I don’t know why it wasn’t called Shell, or Richfield, or Texaco, it was just called Andy’s. Maybe because the guy that owned it was named Andy. Anyway, one Saturday morning, I walked down to his place and just sort of hung around casing the place in hopes of seeing an old inner tube that I could ask for. After about 30 minutes and in between customers, Andy asked me what I was looking for. Gee, was I that obvious? I summoned up what little courage I had and blurted out that I need an old inner tube and did he have any I could use? Now Andy was an old man, must have been at least forty, and he knew I was up to something. He asked what I need an inner tube for and I stammered a little and told him, “You know, just stuff.” With a knowing smile he led me to the back of the shop and dug through a pile of used tires, and odd and ends, and came up with an inner tube that had patches on the patches. He offered it to me. I thanked him and inner tube in hand, hot-footed it back to the house. Success! All I had to do was figure out a way to cut out the powerful stretchy strips for my machine of destruction… That took a little doing…
Making rubber strips out of an old inner tube sounds easy, doesn’t it? You just grab a knife and start hacking away - not. The only knife I had was an old Case with a blade that wobbled when you opened it. The fact that the tip had been broken off didn’t help. That it was as dull as a butter knife compounded the problem. I was afraid to sneak a knife out of the kitchen because if mom caught me, that would be the end of the project… But I thought about it, and decided that her sewing scissors would be just the ticket. She never used them much, and she wouldn’t miss them for a few hours. So, out of the sewing basket they came, concealed under my shirt, and I slipped quietly out the back door. What I thought would only take a few minutes took about three hours. The rubber was hard to cut, and trying to miss the patches made it a real chore. I finally got them cut out but had major blisters on my hand . I sneaked the scissor back into the sewing basket, proud of my stealthy ways. A few months later, mom asked who had been using her scissors, they wouldn’t cut anything. I blamed it on my brother.
Almost there… revenge was just around the corner. I could almost taste it. All that was left was a piece of leather to hold the smooth round rocks I had been collecting since the beginning of the plan. There was one black beauty I really liked. That one was for Tom. Right between the eyes - wham! I could hardly wait.
The leather pocket turned out to be the easiest part of the whole project. Scrounging around in the neighbor’s trash I found an old boot whose tongue was just the right size. This time, I didn’t go for mom’s scissors, I just used my knife and sort of gummed it to death. I hollered at Gloria that I finally had it all and now I just had to put it together. Wait a minute! How am I supposed to put it together? Fortunately, Gloria came to my rescue with a spool of her mom’s carpet thread. She showed me how to wrap the thread around the rubber strips real tight and tied the knots for me. Finally, it was a beanie flipper! The Avenger was born! It was almost dark by the time we got it finished, so testing had to wait till after school the next day. I stuffed the weapon in my secret stash in my bedroom and went to sleep knowing that victory was just a couple of days away. Sweet sweet dreams.
I fairly danced to school the next day. At recess, Gloria came running with news. The twins were no longer at school, they had moved to some place I had never heard of. Elation yet disappointment at the same time. The Neanderthals would never bother us again, but also my thirst for revenge would never be quenched. Elation and revenge, elation won out.
Still, I had a weapon and it needed to be tested. I fidgeted till the last bell and Gloria and I raced home to try it out. There was a pear tree in the back yard and that became the target. I gathered up the flipper, grabbed a handful of deadly rocks, and we paced off about twenty feet for the first test. I carefully seated the black beauty in the pouch, and drew back on the rubber strips with all my might. I aimed - sort of - and let fly. The rock landed about ten feet in front of us. Gloria said I didn’t stretch the rubber strips far enough. She was stronger, so I let her try. She pulled as hard as she could and the smaller limb on the fork broke. Heart sick! That was the end of it. My avenger was broken and there wasn’t any way to fix it. Shucks. I knew that the only reason it didn’t work was because I didn’t have the perfect fork. Like all kids, it was quickly forgotten as we went on to the next great adventure, which I can’t remember, but I’m sure it was glorious.
Today I have that perfect fork. Will I build a beanie flipper? Probably not. But I could if I wanted to, and it would be the tool of vengeance I imagined when I was eight. I’m sure of it.
Why am I not surprised? Your poor mother… 
