One boring day in 1958 my older brother, Ronnie and I were hanging out in the garage talking. Mama was taking a nap. We found a bottle of red shoe polish. America hadn't become a throw-away society yet. In the fifties, shoes were resoled and polished regularly. The applicator to the shoe polish had a wire stem with a fuzzy ball at the end that soaked up the polish. Ronnie pulled out the applicator and smeared a dab of the red liquid on the palm of his hand. All of a sudden, we read each others minds: Wouldn't it be funny to smear the polish all over his hand, and go running into the house screaming that he cut himself? We'd scare Mama good!
We had forgotten in our excitement that Mama didn't have a sense of humor.
A screen door lead from the garage into the house. Ronnie ripped open the screen, ran in and jumped in the air screaming as he headed down the hallway. The picture is still etched in my mind today. Mama came running out of the bedroom screaming, her hair standing up on her head and her eyes bulging out the size of tennis balls.. By the time she reached Ronnie, she realized she'd been hoaxed and began screaming epithets while slapping him mercilessly. Ronnie cried, and I felt terrible that he got into trouble.
"Are you alright Ronnie?"
"Leave me alone!" he snapped back.
My 88 year-old mother brings that incident up now and then, and each time we laugh till we cry.
On August 22nd of that year, 13 year-old Ronnie and my father were killed in an airplane accident. The plane crashed in the ocean near San Quentin Prison in California. It was one day after my brother, Kenneth's fourth birthday and the day before my ninth birthday.
