What the Hell Was Grampa Thinkin'?

By Bill Metzger

Have you ever just finished doin' some damn fool thing, right before you realized it was about the dumbest thing you coulda done at that particular junction? Well, I have, more times than I like to admit. However, now that I'm a grandpa, several times over, I've taken the time to put my shenanigans into story form. I threw in a dash of humor here and there that probably wasn't anywhere around when I perpetrated my head-shakin’ stunts!

If you're like me, you may have had times when you woke up in the middle of the night with a bladder that's a quart over full and a brain that's right on a quart low! Only to find yourself in a second story bedroom, of an old ranch house, that had never been introduced to indoor plumbing. In this predicament it seemed to me, in my youth, quite logical to give the potted plant on the window sill, it's 3:00 AM squirt of water. That momentary feeling of relief, when done several times, soon leads to gettin' your hide nailed to the barn door, after stiff sniffy snuffy big people, finally figure out why the Gardenia plant smells like a Peeony!

That's when someone feels compelled to ask, What the hell was Grampa Thinkin? That’s, possibly, a question without any good answer and what makes this book worth reading. It hangs onta over 150 short to stupid stories, about where and how, I squandered large portions of my life. It also allows you to see which mis-episodes you, yourself, probably engaged in and hoped would some day go away or just slowly fade into the sunset! My plan is to make you laugh hard enough at my mis-doin's to bring tears to yer eyes. Just be careful not to get the pages soggy or short-out your electronic readin' gizzmo! And for cry-men-ee sakes don't let your kids get their mitts on this cobbled together piece of un-literary work. It may give them a whole lot more ideas on ways to screw things up than you want to be in line for to handle. Cause, rest assured, if it bordered on insanity and didn't work, I tried it - probably more than once! So why not take a shot at owning the only book like this, in captivity? If for no other reason, than, to see if you can laugh yourself silly!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Metzger
• Release date: May 19, 2012

Bill Metzger

Bill is a retire self-made millionaire who enjoys writing for pleasure, not profit. He has a few books published and is working on others. He claims he is an old cowboy and uses old time cowboy lingo in his books. He has always been a rogue and likes to do things differently. He likes to write humor and adds quite a bit of it to every thing he does. He has written over 300 poems and songs, a book with all of them is due out soon. He harbors a totally different slant on life, and enjoys irony, and talks and writes about his different take on things, which usually has humorous overtones.

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill is a retired over-the- hill grandpa with a great zest for life! He avoids temptation unless he just can’t avoid it (his words)! His other writing include: Introductory Mathematics and Analysis for Programmers (college textbook—Dickenson Publishing); It’s All in Your Mind (1st Books); Family Roots Kit (Genealogy Workbook); America the Beautiful (based on song with pictures); The Complete Inter-Workings of a Mind with No Shut-off Valve (300 songs, poems and short stories all written by the author with interspersed real life stories); STRETCHERCISE (finger exercises, to ease pain and crippling effects of arthritis); Is it Christmas Again?; Puzzles for the Mind; Tangled Twisters for Twisted Minds; A Little Birdie Told Me and Development of Boolean Algebra. He’s written and teaches seminars—Writing Effective Ads, North Star Goal Setting, The Art of Negotiating, Salesmanship, Silver Bullet Marketing, Names Slogans & Logos. His personally created board games – Cops & Robbers; Muggins; Strategy Blocks; Fox and Geese; Wired; Puzzler and T-Blocks. He continues to write short mind-boggling pages that point out the weirdness of our language (doing word calisthenics, so to speak) and has books in various stages of completion. Next one: Go Do Something (humor). He claims he’ll never live long enough to write down everything that fills up the weird part of his think pot!

Bill likes to do things differently! This book has only 5 chapters, but no Chapter 5. It has Chapter I, II, III, IV and VI skipping Chapter V. His reason: all Chapters have an I (for me) in them, so V didn’t fit. His No Shut-Off Valve book has 7 chapters with no Chapter 7. It starts with his birth at which time he was 0 years old, so decided his first chapter should be Chapter 0. Both these books are autobiographical for various parts of his life. Famous people are introduced as: The One and Only, Donald Trump. Of course The Donald is a One and Only. Everyone is—not just famous people. Do you know anyone exactly like yourself? No! Then, You’re a One and Only). Since Bill’s a One and Only", you can bet, he’s sure as hell, gonna be Original!

FORWARD

I call this first page a FORWARD, because that’s the only direction you can go from here, assuming you intend to read this Literary Work of Bill. (It’s not a Work of Art, because I don’t know anyone named ART!)

This stack of sticky pages, clutched in your grimy little mitts, encompasses a vast variety of stories, tales or other perpetrated parts of my life, from shortly after I appeared on his ball of mud and dirt, to just short of being encased in it! They’re arranged somewhat in chronological order, with a smidgen of some resemblance of subject order, to not even close to any type of random order. This comprehensive volume shows a complete lack of any thought at all, to poorly thought-out stunts up to just sappy headed really dumb things. Sometimes, even to me, it’s hard to believe that they’re all true and can be contributed to only one person, in the short span of one life time, but rest assured, they may be! You may be able to somewhat identify with a few of these wranglings. If not, you’re guaranteed to encounter more short stories, molded into perplexities, than will appear in any other collection, currently in circulation!

I’ve had a couple flashes of fame, in my life—about 15 seconds each! I suppose most people have done things, they hesitate to fess up to—their 15 minutes of negative fame! I’m just as sure, that everyone has thrown away some time on an event or two, had a lapse of memory or just bad judgement and jumped into something, they’re not all to proud of, before thinkin’ it thru!

I hereby confess to engaging in these way-out, crazy things, of which, not too many were criminal! Some may have been close to a smidgen over the line, fortunately, I rarely got caught red-handed. Many of these confessions are things that weren’t all that bright and until now, have remained deeply tucked away in the flabby crevices of my warped frontal lobe and maybe should have forever remained, so tucked. Usually, the other people involved, were the only ones who knew or were even remotely aware of my mishaps and down right stupid stunts, herein described!

I don’t rightly know why I chose to disclose them now, probably because most involvee victims of my questionable, head shakin’, stunts have already attended a funeral – and got to ride in the casket! For me, this makes the possibility of backlash or serious prison time, quite remote. Also, I love to write and, as I look back on these episodes, they seem to me, to be more humerous than tragic. It’s high time I exposed the world to, What the Hell was Grandpa (ME) Thinkin’? (No one really knows)! If I didn’t outright do these Jumbled Bits of Life, then I was somehow involved with the otherwise sane, temporally misguided, people who did occasionally engage in unexplainable crazy behavior, with me, without me or because of Me! So, welcome to William’s Wacky World or Bill’s Big Boo Boo Book. I won’t bore you with all the other titles, I thunk up!

Truth is stranger than fiction, is so true it hurts. I know, because there’s no way in hell, anyone could of thought up most of this stuff, as your red bulging, unbelieving eyes, will soon see! Just sit right down, take a big deep breath, put yourself between the covers of this crazy thing and start reading the words before they start slipping off the pages and get lost in the dictionary. They say that laughing is good for the soul and circulation. If yer not laughin’ out loud by page 6, then I’ve failed miserably, you don’t understand it, yer heart’s stopped thumpin’ entirely, one of us has a drastically flawed sense of humor or you just ain’t payin’ attention!

It’s high time you stopped dilly dallyin’ around and got on with it! So, put on your reading jacket, slip into your warmest slippers, get comfortable and start your blood circulatin’—right now! I mean it! I’m not kiddin’, mister! I know you’ve heard your mother say those words a thousand times. So stop readin’ this stupid Forward and get yourself deeply immersed in the meat of this book! (Which is a lot more like bad sausage)!

CHAPTER I (Me)

Chicken Feathers

I grew up the hard way—dirt poor! Way back when dirt wasn’t worth as much as a half a pinch of sunshine in hell! I didn’t know how much of a whole bunch of nothin’, I actually had. I soon came to reckon with the fact that ‘nothin’ ain’t worth a plug nickel, regardless of how much of it you accumulate. I was in a precarious position. In my baby state, from where I laid, my back huggin’ the mattress, I was lookin’ in the only direction I could go. Up, wasn’t a direction familiar to me, but there had to be a better way than just lying around crib side. I embarked on my, one and only, journey thru life! The decisions I made, didn’t come to me all at once, but got cobbled together in bunches and gobs, as my life preceded to unfold, like a dirty diaper!

My crooked journey thru life was more anxious, to double back on me, than most! As I climbed my slippery ladder of life, I managed to experience landin’ flat on my backside quite a few uncomfortable times. My less-than-perfect existence will be brought screamin’ back, to the forefront of your consciousness, as words slide off these pages and stick in your cranium!

Since I have to start somewhere, right here is as good a place an any! We had us one of those movie picture show places, down town. It costs 15 cents to see a Saturday afternoon double feature, with a cartoon squeezed in between the two cowboy flicks. A bag of pop corn would set you back a nickel, as would a paper cup full of half coke and half ice. So, for a quarter, a kid could have himself a rip snortin’ good time. I can remember throwin’ some of my best screamin’ tantrums and cryin’ fits, in order to convince mom or dad to front me the coinage to go see me one of them there pitcher shows. It was quite a passel of years later when I came to recon with the fact that they didn’t really keep me home to punish and torment me. They were 15 cents short of havin’ the dime and buffalo to spare, let alone a lousy two-bit piece!

We did have an at-home source of professional entertainment—Radio! It was scrunched into a couple hours a week, listening to adventures, like The Lone Ranger’, Amos ‘n Andy, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, with Digger O’dell the friendly undertaker (Digger used a shovel and, well you know, dug in that poor dirt, to bury some poor soul). The episodes called for you to sit around twiddlin’ your big toes while holdin’ one ear to the squawk box. Reception, at best, was real close to real bad. If TV was out there, it didn’t make itself known to me. The first TV I ever ogled, was on our senior class trip to Denver, about a month after my 18th birthday. As a wee sapling, I loved the big screen. My early years were fixated on gettin’ my mitts on half of half a dollar, so I could see Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hop-a-long Cassidy, Tom Mix and all my other cowboy heros in that wonderful down town movie house. I wore out the bottom end of many a stick horse, pretendin’ I was one of ‘em!

My financial situation dictated that I could only occasionally enjoy them flicks, even though they appeared every Saturday afternoon! I became determined to accumulate a small fortune, so I could enjoy an episode of that wonderful stuff with my friends! It propelled me to seek that elusive wampum! Otherwise, I’d have a, darn-I’m-alone-again Saturday afternoon. Which leads me, you and thus us, together or separately, to my first in a long line of little boy idiotic, tribulations and trials, with plenty more comin’ at cha later on down thru the pages!

The Two Cent Story

I was approaching my mid preemies! That’s about 10 years younger than bein’ in your mid teens. I had a good 6 years of livin’ already laid out behind me, when on my way to the grade school playgrounds, I found a coke bottle. A bit of new to me. What little coke drinkin’ I had, was paper cup stuff down at the cinema. Once a month attendance was my new, seldom- reached, goal. On this day, I busied myself in the school sand pile, fillin’ my new bauble. When out of somewhere came a life changing happenstance, in the form of a teenage boy, a big fella!

Hey said he, Is that your coke bottle?

Yea, says me, I just found it over there in the gutter.

Did you know, he blabbed on, You can get 2 cents for it at the grocery store?

You gotta be kiddin’ me! Two cents was a tidy sum to this young squirt. I jumped up, with feet churnin’ in full run motion before they hit the ground. Skiddin’ full tilt into the food emporium, I presented my find to the man clerk. Sure enough, he gave me cash on the barrel head and I walked out on cloud two with a couple of coppers in my pocket!

What next? Heck fire, there were many more streets in our little berg and a bunch of them had gutters! I headed off to the copper mines. I had no idea of how many money bottles I’d need, but I could almost taste, next Saturday’s roundup. Fortune, indeed, smiled on me. Hell, it laughed out loud! There it was, another coke bottle, man I was on a coke high! Back down the street to that wonderful money clearing house. My education was about to commence!

The money guy, looked it over, then rejected my chipped-top bottle! He took me into his confidence and laid the facts on me. They couldn’t pay money for chipped bottles. I also needed to clean the dirt and grim out of them before they’d be cashable. I told him I was just walkin’ the streets, lookin’ for bottles. Then, my just now, new financial advisor gave me a hot tip. He bent my ear, that I should go down alleys, even paw through trash barrels, because that’s where people of position disposed of their pop containers, when drained and devoid of their fizzy brown liquid!

The guy was a genius! Three blocks of alley later, I was packin’ five—beauties. I hurried home to the faucet at the end of old wooden walkway, cleaned them up, checked, found them to be chipless and headed to the bank. Retiring for the day, I headed home, with 2 shinny pennies and double nickels rubbin’ together in my pant’s pouch. I figured another day like this and I’d be all the way down in the front row, come next Saturday!

Havin’ started my business, with nothin’ ahead of me but a lot of summer, I trekked all over town! Not all days were fruitful. I didn’t make every week’s flick, but my butt was plopped in the front row, more than ever before. I kept my fortune in an old bean can, hid under my bed. When the spoils reached movie goin’ value, I’d proudly show my folks I had enough scratch to swap for a ticket and got their permission to head to the matinee. Matinee is a now word. It wasn’t in my vocal expressions, back then. I cared less what it was called. I was just rarin’ to go!

Was the man upstairs ever gonna stop smilin’ down on me? One day I was trapesin’ thru an alley, near my house, when a neighbor lady was dumpin’ her trash. I saw two coke bottles in the mix, as the gunk flowed into the barrel. I asked, if I could dig thru and get those glass babies. After she got over the yuck factor, she agreed to let me go in, elbow deep, for those two pieces of gold. Then my future employer said, If you’d come carry out my trash every Sunday, I’ll keep the bottles separate, for you, plus pay you 2 cents a week. I was makin’ 6 to 8 cents a week, from just one house of trash. Holy cowboy, my business was goin’, full gallop!

Then, one of the gears in my pre-pubic brain, slipped a cog and backed up! The wheels were spinnin’ in four directions. I went door to door, to add trash removal service to my empire. My sales skills were drastically flawed or poorly honed. I only landed one more pay pal. I was still pleased as a swig of orange punch, gettin’ about half of my mad money each week from my trash business. I still had to do the alley gig, to make my end meet, a down front theater seat!

Come August, wantin’ to climb out of the gutter, I decided to try the grocery business! With some lumber from dad’s old wood pile, a few rusty nails and a hammer, I assembled a vegetable stand. It looked a lot like a cobbled-together table with the bottom rung of a picture frame nailed tight to the top side of a make-sift table, givin’ me a sales window. I got my supplies from dad’s garden and opened up shop, sportin’ carrots, beets, radishes and lettuce. The first day, one of my aunts and hubby came to visit my folks. Auntie looked over my wares and asked, How much for a head of lettuce? Two cents had been good to me, so I quickly blurted, 2 cents a pound! I had one a them spring loaded fish weighin’ scales, hangin’ off the top of my picture- frame money window. I sunk the hook into that mellow cabbage. It weighed just a mite over a pound. I de-hooked and handed it to my aunt and said, Two cents. My new favorite aunt reached into her purse and pulled out a quarter, winked at me and said, Keep the change!

I promptly peed my pants! Here comes Saturday, cowboy, spurs, chaps, horses and all, with only one produce sale. I must have been the best little boy vegetable salesman in all a my block! But alas and a lot a lack, I soon grew tired of watchin’ my wares shrink in the hot summer sun, for the worst part of the next two days. No one even stopped to gossip. My vegetable empire wilted away, to nothin’. Fall soon came trottin’ down the road, as school started interfering with my education, thus crushin’ my financial empire. My two-cent summers faded into the dark chambers of what little past, I had managed to put behind me!

The next summer found my knobby knees churnin’ behind a strange machine! When pushed over the grass, it clipped little end pieces off those green oxygen factories, causin’ them to come flyin’ back at my scrawny self. This was known, way back in those days, as doing it by hand. It was all little-boy powered. None of them fancy electric or gas mowers was even on the drawin’ table. I was just barely big enough to push that miserable piece of machinery over the lawn, once a week, all summer. A basket hooked on the back, that caught those clippin’s, had to be removed and dumped more times than I care to count. I donated my labor to my parents. However, over that and the next summer, I found 2 aunts and a teacher, who were willing to pay for my services. I was movin’ up the money side of the food chain. I worked harder but earned more of that movie goin’ money, which grew into candy money, gum money, ice cream money and coke money (in bottles) that when empty, could still fetch 2 cents! RICH.

Little Boy Determination

Somewhere in the DNA that filled up my baby form, was an imbedded never-give-up gene, hidden deep in my foot bottom (sole to you slow readers)! I often wondered why the top of your foot never had a fancy name, like foot top or upper sole? I grew up knowing that can’t was a word, but being dictionary illiterate, I never knew what it’s meaning was all about and, to this day, I’ve never bothered to find out!

One evening, for some unknown reason, while I was still usin’ diapers for a bathroom, I left my play place on the floor and climbed on a chair that was lookin’ toward the over-stuffed couch! I stood up and made a leap couch-ward, which was just about, almost somewhere around 2 feet from the chair, give or take a few inches or so. I didn’t reach my thought about soft landin’ spot. I managed to crash into the bottom of the couch front, making parts of my face hurt! My parental units put down their readin’ material to observe. Mom said she was about to grab me and soothe my person with hugs and kisses, but hesitated. I got up, without dustin’ myself off, bawlin’ like an adult and climbed back atop the chair. I stood a few second surveying the chasm that lay before me, then again made that leap of leaps. Whomp! Head first on the floor. In full tear mode, I made another assault on the chair. Mom said she thought I was sobbing because of my owies, but dad said, to him, it sounded more like I was just plain ol’ mad. Angry type, not crazy type!

I gritted my gums! I was real short on teeth at the time so gum grittin’ was all I could muster. I took a jump, a baby paratrooper would have been proud of, and came down to earth on the soft couch cushion. Tears stopped. Smiles appeared. Mom and dad went back to reading. I scampered back down to the floor. Playin’ resumed! YES!!

The Little Stinker Trail

No, that’s not a misspelling of Tale, my tail really did stink, butt not in the way you are, by now, thinkin’! Until I was 10 years old, we lived on the outskirt of town in a 3-roomer: Bed, Kitchen and Living. The only plumbin’ was a cold water line into the Kitchen Sink and to the faucet, outside, at the end of the ol’ wooden walk-way. The room, in which today, people enter to sing in the shower or lounge around in a big tub of hot bubbling water, was sadly missin’ from my early abode. How we took baths will be covered by a future, equally smelly, tale. This experience has to do with the little house out back, that we affectionately called The Out House. It sat a fer piece from the living-in house, for obvious reasons. However, under certain circumstances, it became quite a long ways to trudge, while attempting to squeeze your butt cheeks together!

This famous hut was built over a hand-dug plop pit! The over-the-pit hut itself was about 5 foot square. It had no windows, a front door and a special bench covered the entire back wall. Two sittin’ holes were cut in the top, so a person in need, could occupy one or the other to do their business. I never really understood the need for two holes, since I never remember any two people needin’ to, or wantin’ to, use it at the same time. But each family is different!

As a small kid with an even smaller bucket, I was not allowed to go into this aromatic establishment, alone! I was usually accompanied by mommie. On the day in question, I was in a real bad way or thought I was old enough to do the job by myself. Sister watched me enter the king’s chambers. After several minutes, she heard baby cries and came to investigate. She peeked thru the privy door. No little boy. She ran the 200 or so feet back to the house screamin’ like a mashed cat. Mom flew thru the door, sprintin’ full out. I’m not sure that’s very fast in human terms, but she was throwin’ a lotta ground out behind herself, and reachin’ for more!

The door flew open! I was, in the basement of that plop parlor, flat on my back in several inches of cess (stuff found in cesspools)! Mom couldn’t reach me thru a hole and, so the story goes she, bare handed, ripped the two holes, board and all, right off that sucker. I have to rely on accounts by my sister and mother, cause I’m drawin’ a blank. I was gingerly escorted to the house and given a couple of baths, a full mouth scourin’ with soap (I wasn’t even cussin’) and hung out to dry. I’m told that no one would kiss or hug me, for months on end (on either end)!

Years later, when I told this story to my cousin, he asked, Is that really a true story? I said Of course you dip stick, do you think I just go around makin’ up shit like that! The smart people figured, I must have crawled onto one of those squat holes and since my squatter was a tad bit small, I slipped thru to the cellar. Which is exactly why, I was never before allowed to visit that Monkey Ward catalog short-order house, by myself. It didn’t have one of them fancy handles to push, but evidently, I sure as hell hit the flush button and forgot to hang on! I’m tellin’ ya, right now, that’s not a story you wanna tell your girl friend on yer first date! Phewee!

Spoon and Thimble Incident

Some siblings are close, some never should be! My only sister had 4 years on me. We shared very little in common or in anything else. We both accumulated the chore of doin’ dishes. Warshin’, entailed heatin’ water on the stove. Bein’ the runt of the litter, I wasn’t qualified. So sister warshed, I got the other job. On this day, not in question, I finished dryin’ and was sittin’ on the kitchen floor, in front of the ice box, playin’ with one of my two toys. Sis drained the dish water. In the bottom, found a spoon, she’d missed. She rinsed it and told me to come do my dryin’ job. I got my hackles up and informed her, that I’d finished dryin’ and since she missed it, she should dry it. After a few rounds of It’s your job, No, it’s your job, she got mad and threw the poison spoon at me. It hit me in the foot and promptly crawled under the food cooler!

A whole new game broke out! She claimed, I had to get the spoon, wash and dry it. Another round of You have to do it, No, you have to do it at the top of our lungs, got mom involved from the livin’ room, with Billy, stop teasing your sister. In my young innocence, thinkin’ I didn’t start this inconsistency, I had to be in the right and no action was necessary!

Was I ever naive! My sib ran to mom and laid out her side of the fricass. Back then women hadn’t demanded equal rights yet, so I thought I was golden. Oh no! Little Billy had to retriever the spoon (even my fake foot wound, didn’t work) re-warsh it (remember, I wasn’t big enough to warsh) and dry the damn thing. It didn’t take me very long, equal rights or not, to learn who in the hell was the boss of that place! Not this here kid.

A few months later the evil witch and I engaged in a game of hide the thimble! I entered the game full of innocents and didn’t realize she was still tryin’ to kill me! It’s a simple enough game. One person covers their eyes and the other hides the metal thimble somewhere in the room. Once hid, the findee thimbler searched all the crevices and out of the way places, room wide. While the hidee thimbler offered clues, limited to, colder, hotter and very hot!

Time out, while I set the stage! Light fixtures in old shacks, such as which in, we lived, were just receptacles that held on to freshly screwed bulbs! No shades or covers lived over the bulb. Bein’ short of light bulbs, from the problem of bein’ short of money, resulted in the same light bulb goin’ around to different locations, depending on where in the domicile, big people wanted somethin’ lit up. In our kitchen, where this thimble contest was in full swing, a work table knelt beside the stove. A light fixture- a no bulber—was hangin’ tight to the wall, over this table!

My conniving siblet had placed the thimble just inside that currently unused light socket! I soon spotted that hidden treasure, but couldn’t reach it, as my evil playee had. I drug a kitchen chair to the site, climbed to table top, but couldn’t get a handle on the thimble. Smart as I am or was at that particular time, I wet my digit finger and stuck it into the thimble. I pushed it into the back of the light socket to secure it tightly on my once complete falangee. Which is where my smartness ended and the fireworks started. Sis should have given me the clue of very hot!

Did I mention that the table had a metal top? So now with a metal thimble on the nimble part of my nimrod body, inside a nimwit ungrounded outlet, with bare knees on a metal table, I was fricasseed! The executioner had done carried out her final vengeance on little brother! I didn’t put it all together back then, but now I know why it’s called a socket. Because, as I have so unwillingly proven, it will damn sure, socket to ya!

Reacting to multiple body spasms, I fell back on the table! Finger and thimble came shootin’ back at me, which turned off the flow of lightning. Lyin’ there, I felt like I had just had a gigantic orgasm, which was totally unknown to me