Rumors.

As I think back on this day, the day Billy and I started a rumor, we had no real idea what a rumor was and how, sometimes, they can be very hurtful.

It was one of those close hot days in August, the kind of day where it was almost too hot to move so we sat around under the big cherry tree speculating about how the Cleveland Indians were doing, or about school starting again. Just small talk, what had the other kids been up to over the summer, maybe if we were lucky there might even be a new kid in our grade at school, even wondering if anyone had flunked and needed to repeat a grade. Well you get the idea, so hot it made you sweat to even think!   

We took our bikes and headed toward the creek that ran under our road a couple miles from our houses. Even if we didn’t swim today, just wading among the rocks looking for crayfish, or whatever we might find, sounded cooler than sitting here wondering about school. It didn’t sound like much of an adventure but if we hung around the yard, soon someone would hand me a hoe and point to the garden.

The creek ran its crooked course at the bottom of a big hill so we thought that a good thing too, the wind we would generate going fast down hill. Somewhere near the bottom of the big hill, Billy had a flat tire, no one got hurt but now we had to walk the bikes. This happened just before Grandma Steese’s long dirt driveway. We stood there in the hot tar of the road popping tar bubbles with our toes, pulling your foot quickly back before the hot tar could get too far between your toes, and trying to decide what to do next. We thought Grandma Steese might have a tire pump and that was worth the long trek up her narrow drive.   

It took some egging on but finally Billy banged on her door. She had a reputation for being “different”. She didn’t seem to pay any attention to how anyone else did things, she was her own boss. Her house had started out as a small brick cottage but extra parts had been added on here and there. Those extra here and there parts were sagging, some had already fallen in and the whole place looked ancient and in serious need of everything. Billy banged on the broken screen door again….no answer!

Grandma Steese was, as far as we knew, no one’s grandma. She was alone and very old. I guess it was easier to call her Grandma than Mrs. Steese as who knew if she had ever been married and my own Gram would sure scold me if we called her Old Lady Steese! My Gram and Mrs. Kaminski who lived across the road kitty corner from us, wore starched and ironed cotton dresses, but Grandma Steese wore patched bib overalls, usually rolled up to her knees, and some shade of faded flannel shirt and no one had ever seen her hair as she wore a large straw hat with a red bandanna tied over it. She was so different from any of the old ladies we had ever seen that it was real easy to believe the stories that involved her usually told at Halloween around the bonfire!

So here we stood not sure what to do next! We decided to go around back to the shed to see if she was in her garden or on her back porch. No luck here either but from here we could see a well worn path or trail going down hill to the creek. Leaning our bikes against her back porch we started down the trail. As we reached the bottom, we could see her out on a rickety dock made of a few boards nailed together sitting in an old lawn chair with most of the webbing missing. She had a line in the water with a large red and white bobber afloat near the reeds. She had her feet up on an old crate and just as we were about to call out to her, she bent over, lifted the top of a foam cooler and took out a huge handful of fishing worms and held them above her mouth and fed them in like it was spaghetti!

Holy crap, we looked at each other in disbelief and Billy pulled me back into the shade and shadows. “Come on, let’s get out of here,  Now!” “She is a crazy old coot, wait till the other kids hear this!” Back up the path we went, grabbed our bikes and headed home as fast as we could push them.

That’s when the rumor got started….and we started it…Billy and me!

Just as we reached the road again we could hear a pickup truck rattling over the bridge below us. We flagged it down, threw our bikes in the back and got a ride home. An older brother of one of our friends was driving so he got to hear the story first….about crazy old Grandma Steese eating a great big handful of fishing worms…earth worms for heaven sake!

Then we told all of the other kids and no one could believe it but Billy and I said loudly, “We saw it with our own eyes!!” And so it became the subject of discussion at everyone’s supper table that night.   

At my family table, my own Gram stopped in mid stroke of slicing the ham and she shook her head. And then the scolding began…she doubted we saw what we saw….and if we saw what we thought we saw, it is not our business to tell the whole neighborhood! Muttering to herself she finished serving the meal, it was obvious to me she was very upset but I could not figure out what I had really done that was wrong. If I had seen a pretty butterfly or a dog get hit by a car, I’d tell that. What was different about this? As we finished our supper that night we felt the stern looks of our Gram, something didn’t make sense. And finally she confirmed her anger by telling us she would not be helping with clearing away supper or doing the dishes….but things best be spotless! With that she went into the yard to sit with my Father under the cherry tree.   

Knowing well that my Gram was as sweet and kind as it was possible to be, if she was mad at us, at me really, we better get the job done, quickly and do it well and so we didn’t see my Gram drive off with my Father. Later that evening I kept glancing at her to see if she was still angry, she was awfully quiet, maybe she was just thinking.

The next morning when Billy yelled for me through our screen door, my Gram was waiting. She asked after his bike tire and what we were doing this day. I was breathing a sigh of relief as I hate anyone to be mad at me. And never my Gram! Then she told us she wanted us to go on back down the road to Grandma Steese’s and pay her another visit. Now we KNEW something was up, we weren’t off the hook, we weren’t home free.

And so it was that Billy and I rode much more slowly this time down to the ramshackle house at the end of the long dirt drive. We were confused and scared….what was this about? Why would her kind Gram make her do this creepy thing?

Since it was my Gram that was sending us I stepped up and banged on the old screen door. A voice from inside called, “Come on around back, that door isn’t so good any more!” And so around back we went and there she was waiting for us. “Which one of you two sorry looking scallywags belongs to Tillie?” She asked. I knew she meant my Gram so I stepped up to her and said my name and added this is my friend Billy. Then she surprised us by saying she wanted to take us fishing, to catch some fresh fish for Tillie’s family supper but darn if she didn’t EAT ALL THE BAIT! She said this last part rather loudly. Billy and I must have looked surprised, scared or both as then she said, “No problem, we can just make some more bait!”   

Then she opened the door and invited us inside. Sit anywhere she said, this won’t take long! With that she went to an old ice box in the corner and took out a package wrapped in white butcher paper. Unwrapping it, she stacked up three round pink slices of boloney and began to slice it in very narrow strips. When she was done she messed around in the pile with her fingers and oh my gosh! It looked just like a pile of fishing worms. Pale pink and long and skinny. Then she grabbed up a handful, held it above her mouth and gobbled it up just like yesterday. “Want some?” She said.   

Billy just sat there with his eyes like saucers, I got it right away how wrong we had been and the whole neighborhood thought she ate worms! We had told them…she ate fishing worms! I began to feel a little sick. I knew in my heart what my Gram would expect me to do next. Oh my gosh, what to say to her? How to say we were sorry? How to make this better? I remember cracking my knuckles which I did often when I was nervous and looking at my shoes. I couldn’t fathom a way to tell her.

Grandma Steese dropped the pile of “worms” into the foam cooler and said, “Come on you two, we have some pretty dumb fish in this here creek, we can fool them into thinking this bait is real earth worms”. “I can’t dig for worms like I used to and one day I offered a fish a piece of my baloney sandwich and by golly he took it right quick, a pretty neat trick, wouldn’t you say?”

She ruffled Billy’s hair and said bring the extra poles and off we went. We did catch fish that day and by the end of the afternoon it felt right to give Grandma Steese a hug. I tried to say more but she simply said….”No need to say a word, enjoy the fish, and tell Tillie hello!”  

I guess it was an adventure of sorts, it sure was a different day! Rumors….I guess even if you saw it with your own eyes, you shouldn’t repeat unnecessary things !