VeraCity : Early Lessons : Lafayette & London, Ohio

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VeraCity: the unauthorized story of Vera Scarves as told by a studio insider

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Early Lessons

Vera Studio

MacMurray College

Updated October 24, 2013 | By Bob Fugett

Early Lessons

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The gun was not actually pressed against her temple.

It merely hovered near as if following the slow spinning housefly careening around the room on the other side of her head.

A cool crisp bright spring-morning air flowed through the screen door and under the half open window spreading into the darker interior.

I was a diminutive three-year-old with toy in hand, standing off to the right of my dad, away from the main scene, looking up disinterestedly as my fifteen year old sister Hazel gasped.

The slight mustiness of our aging house did little to impact the fragile freshness drifting in from outside.

We were home and just two doors down from our family's truck stop restaurant (open 24/7) where eighteen wheelers always stood beaconed around the large neon clock and parked down both sides of U.S. Route 40 in tiny Lafayette, Ohio, attracted by some of the best food, talk, and coffee found the length of this main commercial conduit which spanned America coast to coast.

In 1953 and 20 miles west of Columbus the world moved slowly enough for truckers to turn off their engines when stopped, so it was quiet outside.

Plus it was a special time of year: Easter morning.

My father gripped his immaculately cleaned World War II .38 Special far too tightly, and his voice quavered as he struggled to force a silencer onto the intent of his hateful words.

Late the night before and a few feet from my head, just outside my open bedroom window, an east bound trucker fired-up his rig waking me to the typical churning activity of yet another cool deep starry night lightly peppered with the vintage warm-hued street, automobile, and restaurant lights, plus a distant mercury vapor lamp in one direction and the inviting glow of the Red Brick Tavern the other.

I curled my tiny back against my mother's side as I reached to touch the cracked and valleyed grimy paint layered on the window's sill while I took an extra long breath of one of my favorite smells—the rarified scent of stale burnt diesel exhaust.

Sounds like a joke, but I believe there is no word for that smell.

I am not talking about the very common heavy odor of liquid diesel fuel, a foul stench that permeates and stays on everything it touches, nor the choking blast of ugly undercooked fumes hastily purged through an exhaust pipe.

This fragrance is aged, and it is much different: ethereal, temporal, and hidden beneath.

From time to time I still catch a whiff of it, usually coming from a tour bus accelerating away from a longer than usual stoplight.

I have never come closer to being able to describe it than exactly the way I did at three, "Smells like...makes me want to eat dirt."

In any case, I enjoyed the sights, sounds, and closeness of the busy highway until finally falling back to sleep—nightmares and all, it was a state I often wished permanent—and by morning everything was dead quiet.

Since my dad's gun was in his right hand, his left was free to firmly vice my sister's throat as he mashed her up on her toes and flat backed against the barren, poorly plastered and dirty white wall.

His muffled shout was a growl, "If you don't watch your mouth, you'll find out what happens."

I was transfixed by the contorted look on Hazel's face which held an extravagant combination of retreating fear and forward defiance.

As for myself, any fear I might have had was shunted through the insulation of youth, plus the assured thought that she was probably getting exactly what she deserved for blurting some unknown slight, while I, on the other hand, had solidly learned to keep my mouth shut around people, and only observe them... very carefully.

It was clear to me that I was smarter than my sister, but I could still not understand why she would just not learn.

"Maybe this will be the moment."

That thought remained in my head a little while later, as I squatted outdoors in the sun under my too mature brimmed hat, uncomfortably bound in my new gray Sunday suit.

My mother's excited voice prodded again from back in the house, "Go on Bobby, see what's there."

My eyes widened as I squatted more deeply.

For right there, out from the severely warped back door, beyond the end of the short dark dug-by-hand stairwell that led back and down into the horrid black of the tiniest and most often flooded of all possible half-height fully spidered overly shelved canning-jarred dirt floor basements, yes, further out than that, and even further than the outhouse (and well past the garden), a little ways more than where the tiny hill bottomed, precisely at the base of a specifically gnarled fence post, the one leaning most against the few rusted barbwire strands straining to separate our backyard from the slightly rolling (acceptably stoned) adequately grazed cow pasture that was open all the way out to the thin tree line almost as far away as the eye could see, precariously distant from all human contact, and quietly nestled in an inconsequential little tuft of grass... right there at my feet, the early morning sun glinted sparks off a small vibrant cluster of one blue, one purple, a kelly, and a yellow—dazzling pastel eggs.

I stood upright.

Thinking to myself, but in my own little-kid way without words, "I knew I should've never let them trick me into coming all the way out here. Look at that! Jeweled eggs from nowhere. If stuff like this can happen, what on earth can not happen?! How will I ever get past the cellar and back inside? That's it, I've had it. I'm running... and I'm running... and I'm ru..."

"Oh Bobby! You're s'posed t' bring 'em back... "

What a magical world I was born to.

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	Director's Commentary Director's Commentary
	So, in order to illustrate this outrageous made up story, you went on the Internet and found generic images of a kid, a clock, and a gun? How lame is that? First off, it all happened... exactly as described. As for the photos? The clock is the actual clock that hung on the front of my parent's truck stop in Lafayette, Ohio (the one in Madison County) in the early 1950's. It is now perched behind me on the china cabinet as I stand at my laptop computer in Sugar Loaf, New York. The label on front says Electric Neon Clock Co, Cleveland, OH with the serial number 59187. My father kept it when we moved to London, Ohio; and it was still sitting on the floor opposite his desk at home near the time of his death. It is a very familiar sight to me. He gave it to my wife Mary Endico, because she kept raving about it despite its glass face having been accidentally kicked and broken. I told her it would be impossible to find a replacement glass, but she found a supplier online who made perfect plastic replicas and proved me wrong. She got the last one made before they went out of business. I believe the clock itself (with its original neon) dates back to the 1930's, but it still runs great today and looks as beautiful as ever more than a half century later. People used to make things to last. The kid with the Easter egg wagon is an actual photo of me, but it was taken a couple years after the gun incident. A careful observer will notice how, by then, my attention was not focused on the Easter eggs so much as on my very, very white shoes. I remember looking at them while the photo was being taken and wondering what they were all about. As for the gun, you are right. It is just a photo from the Internet, but that type of gun is a classic, and that particular one really could be my father's for all I know. Gun cleaning was a sacred ritual and was tied to survival. I will replace that photo with one of my own as soon as I can get my hands on a gun and shoot it. The throttling incident was just another unremarkable event in my memory, until I started gathering thoughts for this book and saw its significance. In any case, my sister was mashed up against the wall in Lafayette, while the Easter find happened on South Street in London. Also, the gray suit photo was taken near the front step while what is described in the story happened out the back door beyond the basement steps. The sun angle indicates the picture would have been taken after church, because Easter always meant Sunrise Service. I really like how the gun is pointing just slightly over my head, and how the photos are mostly colorless except for the passing of time. I also like how the images at the end Chapter 2 play counterpoint to those above with the grayscale Easter eggs replaced by colorful silk scarves. What was the name of your parents' truck stop? Simply—The Truck Stop. I always thought it was the original use of the term, and I guess that is possible, because I just looked it up online and found Dictionary.com gives the origin as 1960-65, but my family's restaurant was called that 10 years before. The restaurant and house were located on U.S. Route 40 in Lafayette, OH (the one in Madison County) on the opposite side of the road and about a tenth mile down from the historic Red Brick Tavern where Presidents had slept. Route 40 was the first macadam national highway and is now titled: The Historic National Road and shown on Google Maps as National Pike. At completion its western and eastern termini were in San Francisco, California and Atlantic City, New Jersey. One authority states that by the mid-1950's it was "...carrying more automobile traffic than any other transcontinental highway. Back then, if you needed to go from coast to coast, there simply wasn't a better choice." [ref] It was the early years of long haul interstate trucking, and my parents knew every driver by name from New York to California. They were direct witnesses to America's transition from horse and buggy to the gas engine. The Truck Stop was first of four restaurants they owned. [10/24/13: Apparently the name on the sign at the time was "The White Star" and prior to that it had been "The Green Apple"; but that was before I could read signs, so I only knew we always called it The Truck Stop. ] But the part about the truck waking you up—what an exaggeration! It could never have been so close to your window, not to mention your head. In fact it was. The restaurant and neighboring buildings are gone, but below is the street level view from Google Maps showing the house as it stands today. Imagine the cab and engine of an eighteen wheeler next to the far right window. A pickup truck is parked just a little ahead of where the semi would have been and gives a good perspective. The bed I was sleeping in was pushed to within a few inches of that window, and I was always on that side in case my mother had to get up to go work in the restaurant while leaving me undisturbed as she traded off my care to one of my sisters. I remember laying awake at night often and watching out the window, because I liked the sound, commotion, and smell of the trucks. My head would be almost resting on the sill of the window, and I never realized until I wrote this why I was awake so much. Looks like a dangerous place to be parked. Near the time described, across the road and maybe a hundred yards further down to the right, somebody rear-ended a parked truck and everybody in the car got killed. Lots of stories like that in and near that place during that time. I took my wife to visit the area and showed her all the railroad crossings where people had been hit and killed by trains. She said, "I guess an air horn blaring down two miles of clear site distance through flat open corn fields lit up by a locomotive headlamp isn't nearly enough warning to see a freight train approaching an amply marked railroad crossing that hasn't changed position in over a hundred years. You need flashing lights and an automatic gate." Ok, that's a bit of an expansion, because she looked down the track and only said, "I guess two miles isn't enough warning." New Yorkers are curt. << Previous Page - Next Page >>

	Deleted Scenes Deleted Scenes
	Theesterbnee As I moved uneasily away from the house, pressured into going out to see what all the fuss was about, I felt a broad foreboding presence hovering above and behind my right shoulder. I was certain it must be the creature that they were all saying left something wonderful down by the swing set. I wondered, "Why would it leave something so special way out there, and wouldn't it want it back?!" When I darted a look around to see what was behind me, I found nothing. Then I'd look ahead again, and the presence was back as strong as ever: watching, waiting, insinuating into my thoughts, helping those people back in the house goad me on. I could firmly feel it next to my me'ness, almost as if it were part of my inner eye, busying itself trying to appear to be just a larger more diffuse part of my own self. It felt like a trap. "If only I knew what's a theesterbnee!" Then I saw the brilliantly colored eggs, and I knew immediately the creature would be back for them... and for me. << Previous Page - Next Page >>

	Footnotes Footnotes
	Really? You thought this was an academic paper? << Previous Page - Next Page >>

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