Winter Is My Middle Name

Chapter 2

A few days after the pond incident, I ran into Joe. I saw him come out from behind a tree ahead of me. I stopped and turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. Then I heard him calling "Dandy! Hey Dandy, wait up!"

I stopped and turned around. His black eye was now fading to more of a lemon-yellow color. "What do you want? Every time I run into you, something bad happens."

"Nothing bad happened the last time I saw you."

"What do you mean nothing bad happened? When I left and ran home, you were dancing around with your jacket pulled up over your head and those goons from Cookietown were using you for a punching bag. I call that bad."

"They were just having fun, although I did get a black eye out of it, but that was an accident. In fact, that big guy, Gene, saved my life the other week."

"How on earth did he save your life? This I have to hear."

"When I told you there were holes in the ice, I am the one who made them, I wanted to be like one of those guys in the Polar Bear Club. So I made the holes in the ice and wanted to swim from one hole to the other. I took off all of my clothes and went in and...."

"Wait a minute! You took off all of your clothes? You must be crazy. What would people think if they saw you? And that water had to be cold!"

"There was nobody around the pond, I don't know how Gene saw me. And the water was warmer than the air, if you can believe that."

"No, I can't believe any of this. I think you are making it all up."

"Anyway, after I went in, I couldn't find the other hole and I couldn't find the one I just went in from. Gene must have seen me going in and he came over and saw me under the ice. There were about a six inch space between the ice and the water, so my head was above the water and I saw him pounding on the ice and motioning with his hand, so I followed his directions and went to the hole. So you see, those guys aren't so bad."

"Joe, you have one wild imagination! You don't expect me to believe all of that, do you?"

"Sure! It's the truth."

I never did find out if it was true or not, but with all the things that happened after that, I am inclined to believe him. That summer there were two carnivals in town at the same time. There must have been a mistake in scheduling, because no one would go to both; they appeared to have similar attractions. The volunteer fire companies in the area sponsored them as fundraisers. One was at the Guinea Field on "D" Street, and the other one was over at the Ten Acre on Tenth Avenue. It was late in the afternoon before the carnival opened up and I was walking around to see what kind of sideshows they had. I loved the smell of the carnivals, the cotton candy, the oil and grease, and the sawdust they had spread around the midway to cover the mud. This and not having to go to school were the only good things about summer.

I always thought that "they" should let us go to school in the summer and then have the winter off, whoever "they" were. We could be off from Thanksgiving at the end of November until the end of February. That way everyone could enjoy the whole winter. Boy, that would be GREAT! I doubted if they would do it before I finished school, at least Kindergarten had not been invented yet and I didn't have to attend that. Twelve years of school was enough!

There were the usual freak shows, red tents with white stripes and banners hanging above, and colorful signs stating: "The Wild Alligator Boy", "The Fat Lady", "The Tattooed Lady" her face and arms were covered by tattoos, and "The Beautiful Bearded Woman". They also had the usual "girly" shows, and then they had a weird show that stated a "Voodoo" guy would eat live chickens, feathers and all! Now this was one show I did not want to see.