Screaming Like Giants

By Richard W. Curney

SCREAMING LIKE GIANTS is just another memoir about a young man who: surfed on speeding cars; dove through windows; had a good look at death; started and built a successful food business; loved to dance; faced oncoming trains; sang lead in a 60s rock band.
He grew up with buddies: Cloud, Mozsh, Heavy Things, Flash, Chatsworth, Speed, Baines, Burf, Pants, Wimble, Stot, Johnse, Wildman... and became a priest

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465342423

Richard W. Curney

Richard W. Curney has been a priest at St. Francis Liberal Catholic Church, in Minneapolis, Mn for 22 years. He has Published numerous poems. Richard lives in the north woods outside of Zimmerman, Minnesota with his wife Paula and Youngest son Casey.

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Copyright © 2011 by Richard W. Curney.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011913391

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-4241-6

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-4240-9

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-4242-3

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This book was printed in the United States of America.

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101228

Contents

1952

1958

1962-1964 (The Goo)

Agnes

Chester

Lynne

1963 (February)

1963-1966

1963 (September)

Bob (Heavy Things)

1963-64 Early Morning Ice House Slalom

1963-64 Teachers

Jer

1964 (October-December)

1965

Alleys

Surfin’ Bird ’65

1965 May

1965 (September)

1966

1967 (March)

1967 (June)

Johnse

1967 (June and July)

1967 (June and July Part II)

1967 (August)

1967 (Summer)

Highway Patrol Car

1967 (September)

1967 (September-October) 9 Malcolm Street

1968 (May)

1968 (June)

1969 (Summer)

1969-1970 (Johnny Deubner)

1969 (December)

1970 (May)

1970 (Early October)

1970 (Late October)

1970 (Later October)

November 15, 1970

1971-1980 (Gentle Sky)

Uncle Roy

1975 (October)

The Dive

Glasses

1981 Category 4 Tornado

The Navel

1985 (August)

Trauma

Wild Kickapoo Joy Juice Moonshine

1990 September

What he didn’t tell you Part 1 by Leah Curney

What he didn’t tell you Part 2 by Matt Curney

Epilogue 1991-Present

Acknowledgements

The Flandrau Flash (Ron Wallberg)

and Speed (John Possert)

101228-CURN-layout-low.pdf

1952

I asked Susie Goff to marry me. She was an older woman, already going into second grade.

She said yes and wisely noted we would need a house. I grew up in a house my dad built. He therefore seemed to be the logical choice for general contractor of a house for Susie and myself. We found him in the basement working on the water pump, and there we apprised him of our situation. He thought a moment and responded, Sure, I’ll be happy to do it—all you have to do is pay for it.

I had not as yet, at five years old, received recompense for any talent or training. I therefore approached my mother for advice.

Roses were one of the many flowers Agnes grew in the front yard. She showed me how to crush the rose petals in water, strain out the residue, and pour the rosewater in little bottles with corks on top.

My red wagon and I pilgrimaged to and past our known perimeter of Gladstone, Minnesota, selling the rosewater perfume for 25¢ a bottle. I also sold pink roses fashioned from six folds of two pink Kleenex, cut on the opposite side from the anchoring paper clip, and folded down into petals and sprinkled with rosewater. They were 10¢ each.

I forget now who broke off the engagement. I think it was mutual. Susie and I were bus stop buddies for many years.

First grade has a way of bringing you back to reality.

1958

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There were stones - an endless supply of stones

I loved to bat stones into Johnny Blake’s sandpit. Johnny Blake’s forty-plus acres was an amazing wonderland of discarded cars, tires, building materials, appliances, and on one occasion for a couple of years, an old city bus. There were large pits of sand to jump into and slide down. There were stones—an endless supply of stones. Stones to bat. Stones to throw. Stones to collect, stare at, and horde away from Bobby Johnson and Billy Knutson.

A good stick might last weeks.

I imagined all-star baseball lineups. A stone had to be tossed high in the air when Babe Ruth was batting because he had to unfurl his long lefty swing before launching the stone deep into the cavernous pit in right field. Ty Cobb, choking up on the stick, could slash stones just inside the cliff wall down the left field line.

We lived on Atlantic Street. Atlantic Street is a dead end with the house my father built during the Depression and two other middle-class clapboards. I could hear my mom when she called me in for supper or bedtime from anywhere in the sandpit on the other side of the street.

It was on Atlantic Street four years before I was old enough for my first job that I graduated to using the street’s more confining foul lines to demarcate my ballpark. Frost Avenue was the perpendicular fence. Until Mr. Johnson or my father came home around 5 p.m., the ballpark belonged to my imagination.

Bobby Johnson,* however, rode his bike onto the playing field one afternoon. Mickey Mantle stepped out of the batter’s box and rubbed some dirt on his hands. The game was suspended due to a crazed interloper doing wheelies on home plate.

*Bobby Johnson was an uninvited asterisk in my life. Bobby was two years older than his skinny next-door neighbor who spent so much time in the sandpit. We wrestled all the time. After the first few dozen sometimes-bloody grapplings, I finally pinned him. We didn’t wrestle after that.

1962-1964 (The Goo)

We were dancing at the east side YMCA to the Swim, the Pony, the Locomotion, the Mashed Potato. They were dancing to the Peppermint Twist in Philadelphia. Martha and the Vandellas were Dancin’ in the Street. Everybody was dancing. Something was missing.

We needed our own dance.

Will Wimble gave us the Goo.

Will Wimble was a big kid, a somewhat rotund kid. He could often be seen dancing alone. At the Lion’s Den Dance Club on Saturday night, Wimble was moving to the music, and two or three of us just started moving with him. Soon there were others intertwining arms, heads, legs, hands, or feet in fluid randomness.

The Goo was born.

Spontaneity was the hallmark of the Goo. A dance floor became secondary. At any given moment in the hallway at school, if two or more Gooers were present, a call would go out, Goo on Chatsworth! Russ (Chatsworth) Woodruff became the focal point of the newest Goo.

We needed an ending for a musical skit at a school gathering. No problem. We called Will Wimble on stage for a two-minute Goo, incorporating all musicians.

My father didn’t dance. He did like stories and nonsense rhymes. Fellow Gooers and I mined considerable Goo-worth from this one: He said to me can you swim I said who he said you I said me he said yes I said what he said swim I said swim he said yes I said yes.

The basic sequence of Do you ______, who, you, me, yes, what _______, _______, yes, yes, was adaptable to any topic. Adapted to the dance floor, the end product on one occasion was Do you dance?! screamed out over the music, with the answer bouncing back Who?! from elsewhere on the floor. You! another voice Me? another voice Yes! another voice What? others in harmony Dance! others Dance? others Yes! loud chorus of Yes! The final Yes could be followed with Do you? and the sequence was open-ended.

At the movies one night, Flash, Vikki, Theresa, and I were trying to decide who was going to go for more popcorn. Flash asked, Do you go for popcorn? I said, Who? He said, You, etc. We kept going around and round until Vikki went for more popcorn.

A further derivation of the Goo evolved during Sunday night midwinter toboggan parties on the Keller Golf Course hills. The toboggan-to-kid ratio was always skewed in favor of the toboggan. The best toboggan seated only four kids. Those brave enough to start a downhill run did so knowing that another three to ten bodies would be lurking behind trees somewhere on the slope waiting to run and jump on to create a multitiered Goo.

_________ _________ _________

At home in the autumn, our low elevation of untilled acreage was filled with a varied assemblage of high grasses, bushes, and reeds. Curney Hollow was a natural for hide-and-seek. Newcomers would be introduced to one or more of the mythical denizens who lived there. The Monster of Curney Hollow was never actually seen. His (or her or its) eerie vocalizations, however, might be right behind you in the five foot-high grasses.

The Oooh Oooh birds flew only at night. They received this appellation from the fact that even though their wingspan was massive (they were heard many times whooshing through the grass but, to the best of my knowledge, like the monster, were never photographed), they couldn’t fly above the grasses because of their inordinately huge bottoms. Their inordinately huge bottom would, of course, scrape on the underbrush when they attempted to fly, causing them to scream, Oooh Oooh! Oooh Oooh! A flock of Oooh Ooohs would occasionally gather very late at night and attempt a coordinated liftoff, resulting in an Oooh Oooh chorus for passing traffic on Frost Avenue.

Agnes

In 1969, my mom was my alarm clock in my first apartment away from home. At 5:30 a.m. on workdays she would phone, let it ring once, and hang up.

At 9:42 p.m., forty years later, my dear wife Paula and I were in bed reading. The phone rang one truncated ring and stopped. I turned to Paula and told her the story of my maternal alarm clock forty years prior.