Chapter 4

Daily Mixture of Work and Fun

After his first year of school, Eddie had to spend a lot of time during the summer vacation looking after the goats, because Bill had a job for the summer. Every day he had to find a good place for them to pasture. He usually walked ahead with Nanny, and the other goats followed. She was one of the oldest goats in the herd, and the others depended on her as a leader. Their herd was growing; Nanny and a few other goats had baby goats, or kids.

One morning when Eddie was taking the goats to pasture, one of the Horsehead boys came to join him “Where are you going?” he asked

Eddie pointed to a thicket along a nearby stream. “Over there, where they can nibble on the twigs and leaves and drink water from the stream,” he replied.

“What are you going to do next?” asked the Horsehead boy. “Can you come play later this morning?”

“No,” replied Eddie. “When I get back from taking the goats to pasture, I’ll have to deliver goat’s milk to our neighbors. I take the money for the milk home to my mother. She needs every cent she can get to buy groceries for us.”

That morning Bill had helped to milk the goats before he left for work. He and Eddie had taken some of the milk to the house for Mama to use and had put the rest in two-gallon cans. When Eddie set off to deliver milk, he pushed the cans along in a little cart. He knocked at a kitchen door and called “Good morning. Here’s your goat’s milk. How much do you want this morning?”

The neighbor woman stepped out the door with a pitcher in her hands. “I’ll take a quart this morning,” she said.

Eddie poured a quart of milk into her pitcher and she handed him a nickel. “I’ll take another quart tomorrow,” she said.

When Eddie reached the next house, he found the woman already at the door, waiting for him. “Give me two quarts,” she said. “Your goat’s milk will be good for my sick baby. Bring me another quart tomorrow.”

Eddie kept on going along the street until he sold his milk. Then he rushed back to the thicket to check on the goats. When he arrived, he found some of his Horsehead friends waiting for him. They were trying to keep a strange tan and white dog from chasing some of the goats. One boy grabbed a stone to throw at the dog. “Don’t chase her away,” called Eddie.

He whistled softly to the dog, and she came close to him and sniffed his hand. He patted her and she started to jump on him as if to make friends. “She’s dirty and hungry,” he said to the other boys. “I think I’ll take her home and feed her and give her a bath. Then maybe my parents will let me keep her.”

When he reached home with the dog, he took her to the barn to keep her out of sight. “I’ll give her some goat’s milk to drink and wash her with soap and water before I let my parents see her,” he said. “Then if they let me keep her, I’ll call her Trixie.”

Eddie’s parents reminded him that somebody might come to claim the dog but promised him that if nobody came, he could keep her. After several days of waiting, he decided that she really belonged to him.

During the summer Eddie did have time to play marbles with the other Horsehead boys. He nearly always won and they began to call him “Champ.” This made him very happy because he felt jealous of his brother Bill, who was the champion player at school.

One Saturday afternoon when Bill came home from work, Eddie said, “Let’s play a game of marbles. I’m champion of the Horseheads, and I think I can beat you.”

Bill laughed. He hadn’t played marbles since school had let out several weeks ago, but he felt certain that he could win. “Sure, I’ll play,” he said.

They went out into the back yard and marked off a large circle with the toes of their shoes. In the center of the circle they made a smaller circle with a straight line across it. Then each shot a marble toward the line to see who would start the game. Eddie’s marble stopped right on the straight line in the center, so he won the right to play first in the game.

They counted out an equal number of marbles and placed them in the form of a cross in the center circle. Some of their marbles were made of stone, some of glass, and others of metal. Each boy would get to keep all the marbles he could shoot out of the outer circle with a marble called a shooter. “Go ahead,” Bill called confidently.

“All right,” said Eddie, kneeling at the edge of the outer circle. He held his shooter on the ground and carefully shot it toward the cross of marbles in the center. It hit the marbles just right and made one of them roll out of the circle. “Good!” cried Eddie. “Now I get another shot.”

He aimed again, holding his breath in suspense. Bing! His shooter knocked another marble out of the circle. He kept on shooting until he had knocked eight marbles out of the circle. This was more than Bill could stand. “Come on and miss,” he cried. “Give me a chance to play.”

Eddie kept right on winning until he knocked all the marbles from the ring. Happily he reached down to pick up the last marble. “Do you want to play any more?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Bill, going for more marbles. “You’re not as good as you think you are.”

In a few minutes, Eddie won again. “Now do you agree that I’m champ?” he asked.

By now Bill was too angry to answer. He jumped on Eddie and the two boys started to wrestle on the ground. Bill had the advantage because he was much larger and stronger. Suddenly Trixie came running. She jumped into the fray and bit Bill on the leg. “She bit me!” he shouted fiercely.

Angrily he jumped to his feet and started to kick at Trixie. She dodged his kicks and kept barking and jumping at him. Papa heard the noise and came running into the yard, shouting “Ach! Stop this racket!” (Image 4.1)

Image 4.1: Suddenly Trixie came running. She jumped into the fray and bit Bill on the leg.

Trixie now left Bill and started to jump on Papa, barking and snarling. She grabbed him by the legs of his trousers, and he kicked to shake her loose. Soon she stopped attacking him and ran back to Eddie. “By golly,” exclaimed Papa, “you sure are safe with a fighter like her around to protect you.”

Near the Rickenbacker house there was a gravel pit, which regularly closed each Saturday noon for the weekend. One Saturday afternoon, when they could look around as much as they wanted, the Horseheads decided to visit the pit. At the bottom of the pit there was a small steel car, which the workmen used to haul gravel up to the top to be loaded into wagons. The car ran on rails and was pulled by a cable up a steep bank.

The boys thought it would be fun to roll the car up the rails to the top. The older boys pushed the car inch by inch, and Eddie followed along behind, putting chunks of wood behind the wheels to keep it from rolling backwards. They could barely move the car, but they thought they were having fun.

When they had almost reached the top, the older boys climbed into the car to rest. Eddie decided that it would be fun to kick the chunks of wood out from under the wheels and let the car roll backward. “Here goes nothing!” he shouted as he kicked the chunks out of the way and jumped into the car.

The car started downward like a flash, jumped the rails and flipped over. It threw all the boys out, but Eddie was the only one hurt. A wheel ran over one of his legs and cut the flesh to the bone.

All the older boys rushed to help him. They dragged him up out of the pit and half carried him home. When his mother first saw his bleeding leg, she cried, “Oh, no, Eddie, won’t you ever learn?”

One evening after Eddie’s leg had healed, he and his father sat on the back porch. Earlier they had put all the goats in a pen in back of the barn for the night. Suddenly they heard old Nanny let out a loud bleat. Eddie ran fast to see what was the trouble and found a big dog attacking her. Quick as a flash he grabbed the big dog and tried to pull him away. The dog turned on him and almost knocked him down.

Moments later Papa reached the pen. He picked up a stick of wood and whacked the dog a few times to drive it away. “Are you all right, son?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m all right, but is Nanny?” said Eddie.

“Yes,” said his father, taking Eddie’s hand and leading him back to the house. “You took a big risk in grabbing that dog. Never do anything like that again.” “What should I have done?” asked Eddie in a puzzled tone of voice. “I couldn’t stand by and let that big dog kill old Nanny.”

“No, but it would have been better for him to kill Nanny than to kill you,” said Papa. “From now on, try to think before you act.”