The Pitcher's Kid by Jack Olsen

Author:Jack Olsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: humor, memoir, baseball, kid, new jersey, comingofage, con artists, philadelphia, depression era, pitchers, olsen, true crime authors, salesman father
Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio

12.

P.S. 24 issued report cards three times a year, and after two months of dealing with new books, new subjects, new teachers, and new classmates, I was apprehensive about my marks. The arithmetic teacher, who might have been cartoonist Chester Gould’s model for Gravel Gertie, still seemed disturbed by my difficulties with the multiplication table and could not accept the fact that I was stuck on 8 x 8.34

One of the kids told me that our English teacher had started teaching during the French and Indian Wars and had taught Pocahontas to ask permission to go to the terlet. This teacher asked where I’d studied grammar, and when I told her, she said, Hmphhh, as though to express her contempt for Philadelphia snobs.

A few days later she gave our class a lecture about dangling participles and split infinitives and ended by asking if there were any questions.

Yes, I said. I have a question.

Guh ‘head.

I don’t understand split infinitives and dangling participles.

She yelled, That’s not a question! And she made me stay an hour after school.

My grades for the semester ending January 31, 1936, averaged 75 and ranged from excellent in spelling to very poor in arithmetic. A printed note on the back of the card stressed that a grade of VP “should be a matter of immediate inquiry.”

It was. Everybody in the family started drilling me. My little cousin Barbara was chanting Twee times twee nine! in her thin high voice when there was a knock on the front door.

It was Daddy. He’d arrived in a 1931 Ford Model-B Roadster. Four horses, he told Uncle Bill Johnson proudly. Look at them cowl headlamps.

Sis and I were ordered to pack. Before we left, Daddy borrowed two dollars from Uncle Bill for gas.

I didn’t know what excited me more – that we were finally going home, or that we would be traveling in a Model-B with canary-yellow wheels, a maroon finish, and chrome bumpers. But Mother threw a fit. In a loud voice, she asked, How much?

Four-seventy-five, Daddy answered.

Payable when?

Nothing for three months. Flo, we stole this car! Look at the canvas cover on the spare! Check them side windows! How about them spoke wheels?

Mother yelled, How about that rumble seat?

Daddy looked flustered. Uncle Bill looked amused. Aunt Ronnie frowned. Nothing in her knowledge of biology had prepared my intelligent aunt for a specimen of mankind who would consider stuffing two children into a rumble seat and driving three hours in the dead of winter at night.

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