From Dad … and Me Too: More Stories by a Father and Son

By William Leon Penniman and William David Penniman

This is the final volume of a two-volume collection of stories by (and sometimes about) two generations of Penniman males. The stories in this volume cover many topics including “horse trading”, house selling, leather tanning, learning life lessons, running, flying, dating and much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663241672

William Leon Penniman

William Leon Penniman was born in 1901 and died in 1994. He worked as an industrial engineer for most of his life with a shoe company in St. Louis. From his early 20’s until his death he wrote of things in his world as a way of exploring his relationship with that world and the people in it. He wrote short stories – some of which appeared in an earlier collection titled “From Dad and Me” - as well as poems– all of which were published in a collection titled “Behind the Little House”. While none of his work was published in his lifetime, it was preserved for his family who have lovingly collected and published it in this and the two previously mentioned works. William David Penniman was born in 1937 and currently lives in Columbus Ohio after retiring from the State University of New York where he was a professor and administrator. Unlike his father, he worked for many employers and in many locations. He has a background in engineering and behavioral science and worked as an information scientist. He, like his father, wrote short stories (and even some poetry) and continues to do so. He has enjoyed compiling and editing his father’s works and adding his own to those in this latest collection of stories. Besides writing he restores/builds old cars.

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Copyright © 2022 William Leon Penniman and William David Penniman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4166-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4167-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:  07/05/2022

CONTENTS

Introduction

Grandma And The Mules

After Three Years of It

We Buy One House and Sell Two

The Spy and The Cold Woman

Connecting Rooms

Away with All Flesh

Hide in a Cave

Learning to Walk the Line and Other Lessons

The Test

Woman Running

A Project to Die For

Ode To Jim’s Solos

Hiking with Uncertainty

Flashback Times Seven

About the Authors

For my children

and his grand-children

INTRODUCTION

It has been twenty years since our first book of short stories was published titled from Dad and Me. In that collection I meshed stories I found in my father’s files with stories I had written. Both authors wrote about things that were happening in their own lives, so it is not surprising that many of them were similar. Therefore I was able to arrange them in some sort of compatible order. Not so this time! The stories by my father appear up front in this compilation. These include some longer pieces that he wrote while taking a correspondence fiction- writing course and the original manuscripts had comments from his instructor. I chose to leave those comments out as I think the stories deserve to be evaluated by you without bias.

As for my short stories included here, they are not the result of any course assignment, but rather a form of therapy I have practiced for most of my life. Writing stories, for me, is a form of release. It also helps me to think through events or emotions that have filled my life. My only regret is that my father and I did not undertake this compilation and publication together as a team. It was only after his death that the full collection of his stories surfaced. I did not want that to be the case when I am gone, so I am publishing my work as a living author. I hope my children will find the same joy in these as I found in my father’s stories.

And one final note about the settings for three of the stories. Two of my father’s stories and one of mine take place around shoe tanneries. For those who are squeamish the depiction of how cowhides become leather may be a bit off-putting, but I hope the stories, themselves, make any discomfort worthwhile.

William David Penniman

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GRANDMA AND THE MULES

by

WLP

Grandpa retired from the practice of medicine when he was 70. The first thing he did was to buy a small farm. The second thing he did was to buy a horse and a spring wagon. He drove that horse and wagon over the wooded hills of the farm the way a soldier would handle a Jeep, for he had been away from horses too long and was hungry to hold reins once more. The last thirty years of his work as a doctor had required him to drive a car but before that he had owned and driven many teams. Making country calls through rain and mud was a hard life and probably the teams were glad he had what grandma considered a weakness. He liked to trade.

His office was on the main street of a small country town and when there were no calls he sometimes carried a chair out on the grass beside the office and sat there. It gave him a chance to watch the horse drawn traffic and occasional automobile and to wave at the drivers. He was sitting there one day when Joe Duncan, a friend of his, drove by with a load of sand pulled by a Husky span of mules.

Joe stopped in front of the office. Hi, doc. How will you trade your team of blacks for these mules?

Grandpa knew he was kidding so he said, Even.

OK, Doc. Wait until I unload this sand.

On his way to unload the sand, Joe passed the word to the group at the blacksmith shop that he had Doc in a corner.

Grandpa looked around a little later to see Joe pull up at the barn lock where the black team was stabled. Joe started to unhitch slowly to give Grandpa plenty of time to come back and laugh off the deal as a good joke. A half hour later, Joe drove by the office again, this time with the black team hitched to his wagon.

He stopped in front of the office. Doc, I put halters on the mules and tied them in the stable.

All right, Joe. Thanks

Each man opened his mouth as though to say something or start the laugh that would end the joke, but some pride or streak of horse-trader stubbornness compelled each to wait for the other. Finally, Joe could do nothing except slap his new team with the reins and drive on.

The office phone rang and Grandpa received a call from a family five miles out in the hilly country along the Mackinaw River. He hitched up the mules and started out.

Three hours later, he returned to find Grandma waiting for him. Will! Have you lost your mind? What in the name of common sense are you thinking of to let that Joe Duncan play such a trick on you? You better forget your foolish pride and call him to say he has the best of you on the joke.

No, I can’t do that, and anyway, that’s a pretty good team of mules. But his arm still ached from trying to get them out of a walk, even on the downhill part of the trip.

What will your patients think of you driving around with that ungainly team of mules?

If they are sick enough, they won’t care.

Oh, Will, I can’t understand you. Then Grandma began to think. If she couldn’t talk him out of this stubbornness maybe she could maneuver him out of it with woman-type strategy. An auto salesman had been trying to interest Grampa in all the advantages of making his calls with this new, faster means of transportation. He was not interested. Grandma let him drive the mules for a few more days, then she made a call to the auto salesman.

He arrived promptly and found Grandpa in the office. The salesman offered to take the mules as part payment on a Flanders runabout. Since it was a new type of trading, Grandpa was interested and made a deal. He couldn’t let grandma be too self satisfied about her accomplishment, though. He told her he would rent a rig from the livery stable for the rest of the summer whenever roads were bad.

But, said Grandpa, when winter comes, I may buy another team of mules. They are good bad-weather animals.

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AFTER THREE YEARS OF IT

by

WLP

Three years ago with our backs to the wall my wife and I went back to the land. Three months ago we left that little place that with our labor and the owner’s savings has been transformed from a wilderness of weeds into a farm. The owner is richer especially so because the bank from which he drew the money has since been converted into a cabaret. We are richer; not in money, but in having an understanding that can substitute for that surplus of money or property we may never acquire.

If it should ever again be necessary, we know how to make a piece of ground and a few chickens contribute generously toward our living. We know the type of home and the homely comforts that displace amusement palaces; we know the satisfying pleasure of working outdoors in soil to help a plant fight its way to maturity and productiveness -- a pleasure that makes us willing to live miles from my work in order to have a clean-aired patch of ground.

Our farm experience has strengthened our ability to see beyond our own small sphere of activity. In addition, we probably understand fundamental human nature better; at least we have seen it without the concealing urban veneer. Farmers to us are no longer a class of semi civilized oddities who chew on straw butts and drawl, Wal, I swan. We know them as hardworking individuals who have skill and intellect ranging from that of a high-grade laborer to a top notch professional man.

If ever we go on a small place again, it will be without the illusions of the farm-hungry beginner. We know how callouses are earned; how much backache it takes to pick a crate of strawberries or a bushel of beans. It will not surprise us to hear that scientists have discovered a new chicken disease. Surely those industrious fowls pick up more ailments than a neurotic old lady. We would no longer believe that nothing but a rifle bullet or a butchers knife can kill a hog or that all the piggies in animal heaven got there because it was necessary for someone to have something to fry with the morning eggs. In our minds there would be no idea of taking an old mule and home made cultivator and making things fly -- unless those things were nothing more than good old fashioned cuss words. The fifty acres we were on had weeds that traced their ancestry in an unbroken line back to the original French settlers. Weedy Acres, we thought when we went on the place, would make an appropriate name. There was one patch of wild garlic made up of numberless generations of offspring all in perfect health. After two plowing’s and four cultivations, several generations gave up the fight and took their sweet fragrance to a happier land. The survivors, however, made a healthy looking group picture. There were wild sweet potatoes that grew three feet a week more or less, except when they were annoyed by cultivation. Under that sort of treatment they seemed to double their growth. There were nettles that grew like a beard on a camping trip -- and almost as briary. These are some of the things that we know now would make a plank driven full of spikes nothing more than a plank with some spikes driven through it. It might make a good bed for the sideshow fakir but it’s no substitute for a modern cultivator.

All of our memories, however, are not disagreeable ones. Probably the most enjoyable are those of experiences with farm animals. Like Old Captain, the boss duck, who never missed a chance to stub his toe on a corncob and skid serenely along on his chest. A dog may not be a farm animal, but what is a farm without one? The Boy, our priceless mongrel from the pound of a nearby city, had the time of his life leaping through the oats field after rabbits like a porpoise goes through water after whatever it is a porpoise goes after. When our two cows were dehorned, The Boy practiced for hours trying to hold the four horns in his mouth at one time. Finally, giving that up, he concentrated his efforts on one horn. Holding it, pointing skyward and clenched teeth, like the tusk of a rhinoceros, and with his rear end quivering violently, he would look at us gleefully. Guess what kind of animal I am? he asked as plainly as though he could talk.

There was Jake, our evil-eyed, Roman nosed, horse, who, like an old hag, habitually kept his head sticking through the window of his stall. Bonzo, the calf, tried to draw milk from the most hopeless places -- shovel handles, shirtsleeves, a piece of rope, anything, as long as it resembled in no way the source of that desirable fluid. Hogs, the bloated bondholders among farm animals, act for all the world like greedy and selfish human beings.

Our farming activity did wonders to build up the community morale. The old-timers could not watch us without forgetting their own troubles. My corn rows described every curve known to the geometrician. The first attempt at corn husking almost led me to invent a spring operated hammer that would knock five times on the bump-board while one ear was being husked. Neighbors and hogs within earshot turned pale and looked for shelter when my first hog calls rent the morning air. If the ridiculous sounding bellow had not modulated, it was my intention to obtain a phonograph record of the state hog calling contest and