Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs by Patrick F. McManus

Author:Patrick F. McManus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2012-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

The Last Flight of Homer Pidgin

Back during the Paleozoic era, when I was just getting started with camping, any kid who fled home from a camping trip about the time it started to get dark was known as a “homer,” a term possibly derived from “homing pigeon.” It so happened that the boy most endowed with this characteristic had the last name of Pidgin. Thus it was even more appropriate that he acquired the nickname of “Homer.”

I should mention here something about the use of nicknames in that distant time and place of my youth. The idea, as I understood it, was to give a kid a nickname appropriate to his appearance or eccentricity of behavior, the crueler the better. A kid with warts, for example, might be known as “Toad” or “Frog” or maybe simply “Warty.” In the course of time, the warts might vanish, but the nickname would remain, continuing its work of warping the kid’s personality and kicking holes in his psyche. Nicknames were fun.

Often the nickname would come to dominate the kid’s whole identity, and even teachers and parents would know him by it. Coaches in particular were quick to adopt the nicknames of their charges: “Okay, here’s the batting order—Toad, Pig, Goat, Larry, and Lizard.” In the case of Homer, his parents soon started calling him by the nickname his friends had conferred upon him, although it’s unlikely they knew that the name derived from cowardice in the face of darkness. Little did they realize that every time they said something as simple as “Homer, eat your peas,” they were calling attention to a major defect in his character.

The only thing worse than being known by a monstrous nickname—say, Slug, Snake, or Wormy—was to have no nickname at all. I myself had the good fortune to be honored with a nickname by my friends and associates. Alas, time and Freudian slippage have erased it from my memory. Too bad. Let’s just say that it was “Rocky.”

Oddly, although I can no longer recall my own nickname or how it came about, I have a vivid recollection of the event by which Ralph Pidgin became known as Homer Pidgin. Ralph loved to plan things, particularly camping trips. To him, an hour’s excursion into the wilds of the Fergussons’ woodlot required all the planning and preparation of an expedition to the South Pole. An overnight camp-out on one of the creeks in the nearby mountains posed complications comparable to those of a voyage into the outer realms of the universe.

Ralph was a maker of lists. For his first overnighter with us, he called a meeting of the expedition party. “All right, guys,” he told us. “First, I’ve made up this list of provisions we’ll need. Salt, pepper, butter, lard—the butter and lard should be in leakproof containers, ditto the jam and syrup. To continue: two loaves of bread, one pound pancake flour, three cans pork ‘n’ beans …” He had a list for each of us, with the shares of the provision evenly divided.

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