Don't Tell Mom! Shenanigans of a Small-Town Kid

By Greg Schweiner

Have you ever watched little boys at play and wondered what the heck is going through their minds?

"Don't Tell Mom: Shenanigans of a Small-Town Kid", is a collection of light-hearted true stories of childhood. We get to see the world through the eyes of a curious little boy, feeling his pain and joy, sharing in his experiences

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Schweiner
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869008480

Greg Schweiner

Greg Schweiner is a retired businessman, occasional entrepreneur, rock drummer, unemployed actor, hobby journalist, novice writer, avid world traveler, loyal Packers fan, husband, father and grandfather from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

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Don’t Tell Mom!

Shenanigans of a Small-Town Kid

Greg

Schweiner

Copyright 2023 Greg Schweiner

All rights reserved

The events described in this story are real as I remember them. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover Design by:  Greg Schweiner

Ebook ISBN: 979-8-8690-0848-0

To Mom & Dad.

Acknowledgements

This book would not be possible without the support, encouragement, guidance, patience, extensive conversations, critical editing, and love from my wife, Bernice. If you enjoyed this book, thank her.

To my daughter, Erika, and her family, you helped inspire me to want to tell my story. I hope someday it makes the grandkids laugh.

I would also like to thank my brother Tom for a lifetime of friendship, wisdom, instruction, and inspiration. You were and are the best big brother.

A heartfelt appreciation to my entire family for putting up with me all of these years.

Thank you to Laurie Chittenden for her invaluable professional input and confidence.

In Memoriam of Tessa Gen Schweiner 1986-2017

We miss you dearly!

Table of Contents

1. The Blue Olds

2. The Penciled Autograph

3. Back in High School Without a Urinal

4. One Hotdog Became Two

5. I Didn’t Need Any of Jane’s

6. What Does God Taste Like?

7. The Holy Closet

8. He’s Such a Greeble

9. It Bounces!

10. The Losing Impala

11. Gilded Plates on a Stick

12. Crabs Flying in the Air

13. The Hans Incident

14. Vengeful Farm Animals

15. Is He Dead?

16. Ornaments We Grew Up With

17. Golden Liquid

18. The Hobo Patio

19. A Big Bang

20. The Fonzi of St. Mary’s

21. A Steep Price

Epilogue

1

The Blue Olds

I have a very old memory. It is the oldest memory I have, and by careful estimation, it happened some time in my second year. Though incidents of memories going back that far are rare, there have been documented cases. They are usually, like mine, limited to a single event. Mine involves a new addition to the family and a bit of an unsolved mystery.

My memory begins in the familiar and comfortable place on Mom’s lap, in what I later came to realize was the front seat of a car. I had no concept of it being a mode of transportation; I simply felt secure in Mom’s arms.

The car was a cream-colored 1949 Mercury, Model 8, but I only saw it as a grey blob we sometimes sat in. It was familiar to me, like I had been there before. Dad was sitting next to us, like he always did.

I remember turning to look behind me and seeing my three brothers, three to five years older, sitting in the backseat. My thought was, Oh no, they’re here. Why do they always have to be here? I was too young to really know who my siblings were, and I didn’t fully understand them to be separate entities, only Them. I hated Them and wished they would go away. Interestingly, my brother Joe, one year younger, had no role in this memory.

We must have been driving when a loud, continuous pinging suddenly filled the air. I had never heard this sound before, and it scared me. Like all kids do, I looked to my parents, and was reassured by their lack of concern and Mom’s consoling. But the noise was still perturbing, and it bothered me that I didn’t know what it was.

I remember the frustration over my inability to ask a simple question such as, What’s that noise? Though I distinctly remember understanding far more language than I could speak.

Years later, when I could form sentences, I learned that the sound was loose gravel hitting the undercarriage. Gravel roads were quite common for the rural areas surrounding Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The noise ended as suddenly as it started when Dad opened the door and quickly jumped out. Just like that, he was gone.

I watched through the windshield as he walked away and heard my mom say with exasperation, Now where is he going? I could understand that.

We waited there for a while—I have no idea how long—until a big blue sedan drove up and stopped in front of us. The door opened, and Dad seemed to magically appear, backlit by the sun like he was standing in an aura. The car looked big, bright, and shiny. And so did Dad. That’s the end of the memory.

Except that, since that day, I have consciously tried to retain as many of these details as I could. It’s like a little voice inside of me kept saying, Make sure you remember this. Don’t forget.

Throughout my childhood, I ritualistically replayed these scenes in my head with the specific purpose of not forgetting what happened. Still, much of the memory has been lost and this part is all that remains.

Looking back, this seems like odd behavior for a toddler. Other than having a life-long penchant for observation and analysis, I would later major in journalism, why I did this is part of the mystery.

True to form, I researched memory and neuroscience and learned that it’s not the events we remember as much as the emotions from those events. We remember how something made us feel. Often, the stronger the emotion, the deeper the memory.

As infants, it’s the emotions of our parents that have the biggest impact on us. From infancy, we like it when they are happy, are scared when they show fear, and disturbed when they are angry. These are what makes it into our memories.

What was the emotion tied to this incident that made me want to remember it? The blue 1958 Oldsmobile 88 that Dad drove up in became our new family car. But why would a new car generate that level of emotion to a young toddler? And why did I go to such great lengths to remember it?

By comparison, I have no memory of my sister, Betty , arriving a year and a half later. Certainly, that would have generated more emotion from my parents and me than the purchase of an automobile.

Some 30 years later, Dad and I were talking on a late Saturday evening during one of my visits. I had never told anyone about my memory before, but the opportunity seemed right to finally ask Dad about it.

I told him I wanted to see if what I remembered about the Blue Olds was accurate. He scoffed with skepticism.

You would have been too young to remember any of that.

When I related this story, his look turned to absolute astonishment.

How could you possibly remember that? He asked incredulously. I could see him thinking back to that day in his own mind.

I don’t know, but is it accurate? Did it actually happen like that?

There was a pause. Exactly like that, he said, still lost in thought. He seemed to be processing and replaying it all.

The gravel road?

Yes, yes, where I got the car was on a gravel road... I just don’t know what to say.

I confirmed other details but he seemed confused as to the exact year. Yet, he was certain, to the point of dismissiveness, that I would have been too young to remember. You couldn’t possibly remember that, he repeated.

Like the patron fooled by a magician, he kept looking for the trick, asking several times if Mom had put me up to it.

When I convinced him that mom knew nothing about it, he became very guarded and reserved. Suddenly, he cut the conversation short and wouldn’t discuss it further. Dad was clearly uncomfortable in a way that I had never seen before. It was as if he had seen a ghost, and the ghost was me.

This verified that my memory was accurate, but opened up more questions. Why was Dad acting this way? Was his reaction tied to the lost parts of my memory?

In watching Dad’s expressions, he clearly was reliving some internal turmoil. It was like the more he thought about that day, the more painful it became.

I can only speculate on what caused this turmoil. At the time, my parents were a young couple, married for eight years, with five boys, a mortgage, and one salary. Mom ran the budget, did the taxes and generally ran the household.

Dad was a man of self-discipline and order. One can imagine that the chaos from raising five boys in a small house went against all of his sensibilities. It was a lot of pressure, both financially and emotionally.

Dad was under 35 and working at the local Sears store as a sales clerk. The Mercury was 13 years old, and with the family growing, an automotive upgrade was due.

New, the ’58 Oldsmobile sold for $3100. This used model was likely around $800. The Mercury was probably worth $100. Four years earlier, they purchased their first house for $4,500 and had to borrow part of the $900 down payment.

They had the old Mercury since they got married in 1954. Buying a car would have been one of the biggest financial decisions my parents had to make. Somewhere, lost in all of these details, was the reason why this memory survived.

We tend to remember painful memories more than the happy ones. The mistakes stand out more than the successes. It’s part of our primal, survival toolkit. Happy memories are not likely to hurt us if we repeat them.

My remembrance of this incident at an impossibly young age suggests it was a negative experience. Dad’s reaction, too, was that of someone recalling an unpleasant event.

There is more to the Blue Olds memory and the story behind it, but it’s destined to remain one of my life’s unsolved mysteries.

Regardless, the Blue Olds would go on to help create childhood memories for five young brothers, and later a sister. The chariot for our family trips, weekly errands, and visits to relatives for the next five years.

On that dusty gravel road somewhere in rural Wisconsin, I collected my first memory, and we added a new member to the family.

The big blue Oldsmobile was our first in the tennis-court-size models of the General Motors line. It marked a dramatic style change from the roundish look of earlier decades to the sleeker, flatter design of the mid- to late-1950s and onward. As was the fashion of the day, the 88 model was an overstatement of chrome accents.

This was a modern car, built when safety meant surrounding yourself with as much steel as possible. The Olds was 4100 pounds of highway safety when seatbelts were still an option and gas was 31 cents a gallon.

My memory of that car is associated with seeing a happy Dad. From the moment he first emerged from it in that mystical cloud of light to how he cared for it later, it was Dad’s pride and joy. I never saw him cherish another car as much.

On warm, sunny days in the summer, he would wash it by hand with a bucket of soapy water and a garden hose, which he held his thumb over to wondrously turn a trickle into a powerful spray. He used it to rinse the soap from the car and shoo away any of his children who stood nearby.

We’d be dressed in our swim trunks, dancing around while jokingly taunting and daring Dad to squirt us. He happily obliged. We’d run away, squealing with feigned terror and real delight, only to come right back for more until both car and children were clean.

For Joe and me, that was the car we grew up with. It was the only car we had ever really known, so there was a sense of familiarity that comes from having something your entire life. The big blue box took us everywhere without effort. It really felt like a family member. I felt bad when it needed to go into the shop, like I would a sick pet.

Cars have a way of capturing the fascination of little boys. From Matchbox Cars and Tonka Toys to the Batmobile and the Black Beauty, marketers and storytellers have found a way to target that fascination.

Plus, driving a car was one of those intriguing adult activities I couldn’t wait to try. Watching Mom and Dad drive filled me with awe. Dad was constantly turning the wheel slightly back and forth as if trying to keep it on a straight line, and maybe he needed to because of bad alignment or tires.

The buttons, dials, and levers were all objects of my curiosity. Dad might move that big lever, push a button here, or turn a dial there. I observed it with utter fascination. How did he know what these things did? It seemed like a superpower.

We played with our Tonkas and our Matchboxes, making sounds as cars do. They sounded different then. When we made car noises, it went, Rrrrrrrr...Rrrrrrrr... Rrrrrrrr... I chuckled when watching my daughters play with cars 30 years later, and they went, Rrrrrrrrrrrr. A sign of the ubiquity of the automatic transmission. Our cars had to shift gears.

Joe and I loved cars, and in 1965, television came up with the ultimate car for little boys: the Batmobile. Before the TV show aired, the commercials for the premiere of Batman were eye-catching to a five-year-old. Initially, it looked too scary for me, from the fast-paced fight scenes to the ominous black car racing about. Those fears proved to be unfounded.

By the time the last episode aired for the first season in May of 1966, Joe and I were completely hooked. We used to tie towels around our necks and prance around in our tighty-whities, pretending to be the Dynamic Duo.

Being a year older, I was obviously Batman, and Joe was unquestionably Robin. We jumped, punched, and kicked imaginary foes while yelling, BAM! POW! WHAM! and excitedly ran around upstairs until Mom had to tell us to stop. Even after that last show aired, Joe and I were still obsessed with the Cape Crusaders.

As summer came, we took our Batman adventures outdoors, but Mom scolded us to never ever play on the front lawn in our underwear ever again. So, we learned to make do with just the towel part of our costumes, with shorts, white tube socks, and t-shirts completing the ensemble.

We raced around the yard, chasing a make-believe Joker and his gang.

WHAM! BAM! POW! Joe yelled, punching at imaginary henchmen.

WHAM! BAM! POW! I called while engaged in my own pretend battle.

One summer afternoon, we were thus engaged, running down the driveway, vigorously throwing punches and kicks, and constantly having to re-tie the knot around our necks so the capes would stay on. Our unchoreographed fight scene had us circling around Dad’s prized Oldsmobile, pursuing the Joker, who was getting away in our dramatically improvised scene.

Caught up in the moment and standing next to the shiny car, I called out to Joe, Quick Robin, to the Batmobile. And with that, I opened the driver’s side door and jumped in, letting the heavy door close behind me. Robin, who was merely following orders, hopped into the passenger seat, but his door stayed open.

I was five years old, and the steering wheel was half my size. It was awesome. Joe looked at me as if to ask, Now what? I grabbed on to the enormous wheel, my hands only getting to the 4-and-8 position, and felt a sense of power. Scanning over the distinctively curved dashboard was spellbinding. All the buttons and dials. I felt that I could really drive this car. I felt like I was Batman.

There was a brief sense that maybe we shouldn’t be playing in Dad’s car. I was pretty certain Dad had a rule about it. Maybe when he said, Never play in the car. But sitting behind the wheel of the Batmobile outweighed any concerns. This was the best game of Batman ever. This was the best game ever!

I had no idea how to drive a car, and the only thing I could see past the dashboard was the sky. With my hands on the steering wheel, I turned it left and then right, exaggerating the motions I had seen Dad do. There was no steering wheel lock on a ’58 Olds, so you could turn the wheel while it was in park and without a key.

Then I suddenly realized that our engines weren’t running.

Rrrrrrrr… Rrrrrrr…Rrrrrrrr… I started out

Rrrrrrrr… Rrrrrrr…Rrrrrrrr… Joe followed. Apparently, this Batmobile had two engines.

Joe started pushing buttons on the dashboard and turning dials at a frantic pace, uttering gibberish like turbas, nitions, jenjens.

There’s the Joker, I yelled, though I couldn’t even see out the windshield.

Our pretend chase continued on pretend roads until my brother, ‘Robin’, started complaining that he wanted a chance to drive too.

"Robin never drives, I protested. Not when Batman is around’.

Uh-uh

Uh-huh

Uh-uh

Uh-huh

There’s the Joker, I called out again, trying to distract him.

Let’s get ’em, Batman. Joe went back to the buttons.

I didn’t know what the big lever behind the steering wheel on the right side did, but I had seen Dad move it, so I pulled it down and went back to steering. The ‘58 Olds had no lock for the gear shift on an automatic transmission either.

Joe was now holding on to the dashboard and bouncing up and down on the edge of his seat, partly to mimic the motion of the car and also from the exhilaration. I pushed the lever back up.

We’re getting closer, Robin, I called out, rocking the steering wheel back and forth.

Right, Batman, answered Joe, continuing to bounce on his seat.

I pulled the lever down again and kept steering. Joe’s seat-bouncing started to slow down and then came to a complete stop. He looked around the car in a rather bored manner.

I want to drive now.

Not now; we’re chasing the Joker. I continued steering.

I don’t care. I wanna drive.

I told you, only Batman drives, I said, leaning into the steering wheel.

Then I wanna be Batman, declared Joe.

You can’t be Batman; you’re Robin, I answered definitively as I pushed the lever up again.

Suddenly, we heard a distinct clunk. A slight shudder went through the entire vehicle and through us. We both froze. Whatever that was, it didn’t sound good. Joe stared at me in horror.

What’d ya do?

Nothin, I yelled back.

The car is moving! Joe freaked.

He looked down from his open door to confirm that, indeed, the automobile was no longer in a parked position. We were backing down the driveway, which had a noticeable incline.

I am getting out of here, he screamed.

That’s too dangerous, I tried to sound big brotherly. Safety talks and film strips warning of kids dying while playing in cars suddenly returned to my memory, just as the reality of where we were settled in.

I don’t care. I don’t want to be in here. Joe sounded certain.

Wait! I called, examining the dashboard for some clue for what to do. It was now a confusing blur. All the confidence I felt in my ability to drive evaporated in a flash. Out of ideas, I turned to look back at Joe, but he was gone; there was only the open door. Joe!

The car was moving of its own accord, with no one in control. I had no idea what I had done or how to stop it, and I was scared to death that it might explode or something. With the panicked energy of someone stuck underwater, I pushed on the heavy door with all of my might, fear boosting my strength, determined to escape this runaway deathtrap.

The driveway seemed to be moving by so fast, yet time was going by so slowly. The pavement sped past me at two or three miles per hour. I could hear the crunch of the tires on gravel picking up in tempo. The car never sounded as heavy. It was more than enough to crush a 5-year-old boy. I tried not to imagine the results.

My body was shaking. Then, hoping not to be the cautionary tale for other young boys, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and made the jump, dramatically tumbling into the grass, rolling several times for effect. I came to a stop, taking a quick physical assessment for injuries and feeling lucky to find none.

My attention turned to the car sinking backward, further and further down the driveway. Both front doors were open, making it look somewhat like a giant, helpless bird with wounded wings. The front grill made a pleading face of hopelessness as it drifted silently away.

I turned back at Joe, who was lying on the lawn on the other side of the driveway. He was mesmerized by the scene but seemed otherwise unharmed.

You OK?

Yeah, but look at Dad’s car.

The Olds was now traversing at a good clip down the steepest part of the driveway. As the back bumper approached the road, the first thoughts of cross-traffic entered my mind, and I swallowed my heart. I frantically scanned both directions of Roosevelt Street, as I was taught to do before crossing a street. It was a residential area, yet still had regular traffic. No other cars thus far.

I lay on the grass, helpless to do anything other than watch the car roll onto the road. Dad had so many rules regarding roads. For example, we always had to cross a street at an intersection, and never in the middle of the road. He wouldn’t let us play near the road, much less on the road.

What’s the penalty for playing with his car on the road? We all had a healthy fear of dad’s temper, and his punishments were mostly corporal. I had a sick feeling in my stomach while seriously considering the run-away-from-home option.

Everything happened as if in the dream I hoped it was. The car slowed a bit as the back tires approached the centerline. For a minute, I thought that it might roll back into position, but it continued over the center hump of the road.

It began to pick up speed again, the rear end heading towards the curb opposite our driveway. Now I was really worried. I didn’t know how far it would go. Might it tear through Mr. Schilling's house? The whole neighborhood? My understanding of propulsion and internal combustion engines came from Road Runner cartoons.

I held my breath as the car continued on its path. What next? With a thud and an awkward sort of bounce, the rear tires hopped the curb and onto Mr. Schilling's lawn. I gasped. Please stop, I thought. The rear wheels kept moving across the grass.

Please stop, I pleaded with myself. The next obstacle would be Mr. Schilling’s house. Please stop.

Then the front tires hit the curb, but without sufficient force to continue. The car rocked back and forth a bit before coming to a rest.

The big blue Olds was now partly on the road and mostly in Mr. Schilling's front yard. It looked vandalized sitting there, the front doors still open, the trunk pointing up, and the hood pointing down. And this was a no-parking zone, too.

I sat on the grass, staring at the car, contemplating my fate. This was the worst trouble I had ever been in my whole life. This is the most trouble anyone I knew has ever been in. Dad’s cherished car was sitting on the neighbor’s lawn like an abandoned wreck, and I was dead.

I turned back to Joe, hoping for some empathy or support. Then I thought about how I could pin some of the blame on him. He looked over at me, clearly in deep consideration of his options as well.

After a pause, he leapt up. Dad! He screamed at the top of his lungs, running towards the house. Greg drove the car into Mr. Shilling’s yard!

Just then a car came by on the northbound lane, slowing down to gaze upon the scene, which included me, before giving a little toot of its horn to alert someone of the situation. I can imagine his conversation when he got home.

Martha, funny thing I saw today. There was this car sitting on the grass on one side of the road and a little boy sitting on the grass on the other. I’ll bet that little fellow’s gettin’ a whoopin’ right about now.

The driver circled around the Olds and kept going. The horn toot brought the attention of Mr. Schilling, who stepped out onto his stoop to consider the spectacle on his front lawn. I tried to shrink into the grass as much as possible, but he was staring right at me. There was no place to hide.

I heard the front door open rather loudly. Our front door was almost never used and pretty much only served an ornamental function. Dad didn’t want foot traffic on the carpeting inside. So, the fact that it was being used now only confirmed the amount of trouble I was in. I watched Dad storm out of the house onto our large wooden porch, with Joe right behind.

Dad paused at the top of the stairs, staring at his prized possession lying helplessly across the street. He turned to me, and our eyes met. His face had a look of shock, concern, and disbelief. I turned away in shame. In his commanding military voice, he called to me, Are you alright? I tried responding, but no sound came out. I could only nod.

Both of you, sit on the steps and do not move, Dad barked, pointing to the porch stairs. He waved to Mr. Schilling, who was still waiting patiently for someone to remove the illegally parked car from his front lawn.

Sorry Archie. Let me just get my keys. Dad darted in and out of the house, apologizing all the way.

Sorry Archie. Sorry Archie. If there is any damage, let me know. You know kids these days.

He ran across the street, and after giving the car a quick once-over, he apologized