Rumbles From The Vent: PUFF THE MAGIC FATHER

HE SAID; SHE SAID # 2

Spaghetti and meatballs! Oh man, a family favorite. One childhood memory of a great meal mom made for us that would have blended into a million others and forgotten long ago except for the Event. The Event does not have an official name, but it should. No one who witnessed the Event ever speaks of it unless there is at least one other witness who was present at the Event to back up his or her story. To say “you had to be there” is an understatement.

I can’t put a year on it, maybe mid 60’s, seems like it was a Sunday afternoon, but I could be wrong. Dad had been in the garage all morning doing a side job working on a car, which meant my brother and me had been out there too. Me and Mike where dad’s assistant mechanics he started us early in the trade and we made pretty good money at it for kids. By the time we were say 11 or 12 years old we could do an overhaul job by ourselves and dad would give us a fair cut.

When I see kids nowadays mouthing off to their parents in Jerry Springer fashion, I cringe and say, man if I did that around my old man when I was a kid, it would be lights out! Dad had a reputation with us kids for having a lightning fast draw with his belt when a situation arose where corporal punishment was warranted. These offences could range from walking on the curb next to traffic on Rural Street, to pounding the shit out of your little sister. The point is, there was no Uniform Code of Military Justice, you never knew just when your ass was going to get lit up. My little sister Rita on the other hand, seemed to hold some hidden immunity idol, because it seemed like she got away with murder and seldom if ever received the full wrath of dad.

As bad as the ass whipping was, we would almost rather get that and have it over with as opposed to having to endure one of dad’s infamous “lectures”.

The term lecture was a misnomer in describing one of dads tongue lashings. It was more like a mock execution. Your standing there like dead man walking, with dad breathing fire down your neck, knowing at anytime dads hand could go for the belt like Wyatt Earp drawin down on the Clanton’s at the OK Corral. At times you just wish he would go ahead and get it over with, at least you could stop dreading it.

So anyway, back to the Event, there was no sign of trouble that day, it was a peaceful and pleasant afternoon with no strife that comes to mind.

Us kids were busy gobbling down our wonderful spaghetti and meatballs, dad finishes before the rest of us and like clockwork goes for his pack of Lucky Strikes. Dad was a chain smoker and this was an era like the show MADMEN and everybody smoked back then and everybody smoked around kids. Second hand smoke hadn’t been invented yet.

The next thing that happened was witnessed from different angles depending where you were seated that day. It was relived many times among the 6 witnesses and 6 different accounts were given as testimony to the Event.

From my vantage I saw this, my head down possibly rolling some spaghetti round my fork, then through my peripheral vision which is still keen; from my dads mouth a flame of yellow and blue about the diameter of an oil furnace gun began to roll out and extend most of the way across the kitchen table. At the same time, an audible WHOOSH was heard according to all the witnesses.

Now remember who were talking about here; this is the man whose claim to fame was his fire breathing lectures. We had all imagined from time to time that we had seen him dragon-like scorching us as he delivered his fire and brimstone sermons from the mount, but now, like Moses, we were in the presence of the burning bush.

Then as suddenly as it began, dad leapt from his chair and quickly covered his mouth with his hand and extinguished the flame. The aftermath is a blur and the reactions varied from my older sister Helen slapping her hands down on the table, one of her hands hitting dead center in my plate of spaghetti. My brother Mike put his head under the table and was reportably sobbing uncontrollably.
I think Rita must have looked just like this:

I was sitting there in shock and awe, trying to compute just what I had witnessed.

How could this have happened, what evil had befallen my family, was dad in fact a spawn of Satan? There seemed to be no other plausible explanation. Following the debriefing, come to find out there was a logical explanation that didn’t involve black magic, or alien abduction.

I forgot to mention that dad like to have a few beers while working weekends in his garage. He had told Mike to get him another beer, while Mike was on his beer run to the kitchen; dad looked over and saw a partial beer that he had forgotten about. Trying to be an efficient beer drinker, he picked up the half full bottle and proceeded to chug it down before Mike returned with the replacement. What he had forgotten was, earlier he had been priming the carburetor on an engine he was trying to get started. He had used an empty beer bottle to put the primer gas in, before he realized he was chugging Hi-test gasoline instead of a Fall City, he had swallowed several gulps.

I guess people back then didn’t call poison control center for help, so what did he do?

He just sat down and ate dinner and didn't say anything to anybody about it.

After he ate, he grabbed a Lucky and lit up, then he blew out the match!
And now you know the rest of the story.