Confessions of a Playground Director

I was the Playground Director at Barnard’s Playground in Goffstown, NH for two years. 

I hesitate to embark on this tell-all because I know there is no statute of limitations for the crime of murder.  I know of no murders, but, hypothetically, if someone lost a small and troublesome boy in the summer of 61 or 62, I might be able to shed some light on said disappearance.   Again, hypothetically speaking.

If there is no statute of limitations on murder, then, I expect, there is no statute of limitations on attempted murder, right?  But, arguing that I was the victim, the one the hordes of little shits tried to kill, would hold no weight in the namby-pamby liberal courts on today.   Can I get an amen for this?

First, I was sixteen years old and did not want this job or any job for that matter.  My father, sensing this I suspect, had other ideas.  Hell, I don’t suspect it, I know for sure he wanted me to get a job.  I have no recollection of what the job paid, but any amount of money is too much when you truly don’t want a job.  I think I got paid every two weeks by check and was chagrined when neither the Foodliner nor the Red & White were willing to sell me beer even though they had no qualms about cashing my check.  To my sixteen-year-old mind, if I was old enough to get a check, I should be able to buy a six pack of stubby Buds (for $1) of maybe a Giant Imperial Quart of Narragansett, but nope.  “If you are not 21, don’t go away mad,” as the sign said, “just go away.”  Actually, this still bothers me.  I bet if I had a credit card they would have welcomed me as a customer.  Young people today have no idea of how good they have it.

About all I had to do was show up with a lanyard, like the ones made by inmates at a loony bin, unlock the club house, and give out bases, bats, horse shoe, etc.  The club house was just a small room under the all wooden grandstand.  There was a whole in the roof, so security wasn’t a big issue.  About the only thing of value was a dozen new, boxed-up Spalding baseballs.  We were used to baseballs so waterlogged they were more like iron shot puts or had a loose flap sticking out like a funky happy face, so new baseballs were a treasure.  The first day some of the Junior High school thugs and I sat around signing the balls:  Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle . . . anyone we could think of . . . and then carefully putting them back in their boxes.  If anyone has ever shelled out money for a Harvey Kuenn autographed baseball, you might want to check the spelling.

We usually had enough for two teams in the morning and I got to pitch for both sides.  This was because after 27 consecutive walks, the fielders tended to lose interest.  With me on the mound, that number of free passes was cut in half.

If we didn’t have enough for two teams, we played scrub, and if we didn’t have enough for scrub, we played rollie up.  With rollie up I ended being up most of the time because tossing the ball up where you get a swing at it with a bat is an acquired skill.  Whinney little shits would demand to be given a chance, but they had no chance of making contact.

In the afternoons, we’d sit in the dilapidated grandstand and play board games.  “Loser pays a forfeit,” always worked against me in these games.  We’d agree on a forfeit like rolling a baseball across the outfield with your nose or the dreaded pink belly beforehand, but if one of the little darlings lost he’d just screw off home, but I, the keeper of the lanyard, had to stay.  I don’t know if the CIA has ever used pink bellies as a torture, but I can tell you it ain’t pleasant.

The highlight of my first season at “The Park” was coming close to burning down Knollcrest.  One of the hordes had brought a grocery bag full of Dixie Boys and M-80s he had found in his father’s garage.  Of course I relieved Ratty (his nickname)  of the illegal contraband and organized a game of who could stand at attention and not flinch when a Dixie Boy went off.  I’d place the firecracker closer and closer on the ground behind the contestants.  When we got down to three, I switched to M-80s.  Now an M-80 which can take a limb off and has blast that throws up a lot of dirt was not to be messed with.  I’d place it on the ground but get a horde to light it.  A cloud would engulf the participant and we’d wait till it cleared to see Cheesy or Baby Huey emerge from the dust still at attention with a shit-eating grin.  Before we could declare a last man standing winner, however, some one noticed hip-high flames in the woods leading up to the town’s first housing development.  The woods were dry and had a layer of last fall’s leaves to act as tinder.  A firecracker’s burning paper had jumped twenty-five feet or so and started the flames.

My first impulse was to leave, but Playground Director Burns Down Knollcrest headlines flashed in my mind.  That and some of the hordes were already in the woods beating the fire with their shirts, so I decided to help.  We finally stopped the flames with the hose used to water the infield, but it was touch and go for a while.  “See what you almost did Ratty,” I yelled.  He stood there with a singed “T” shirt.  “You’re banned from the Park for life!”  I felt I had to do something. 

My second year at The Park, was more eventful.

The town had made some big changes.  First, a truck body replaced the club house for secure storage.  They ran a power line to it for a Coke machine inside and a street light had also been installed near the grandstand.  This light had a new-fangled electric eye to turn it on and off.  But the big thing was a sturdy dog-wire fence ran around the ball field.  There was a gate at each side of the grandstand, but there was no other way to drive onto the ball field.  I was told by the Town Manager to not let any of the horde climb over the fence.

One afternoon while sitting on the away team bench, I saw one of the horde climbing over the fence in right field.  I yelled at him, but Baby Huey said I’ll get him, Lilly (Lilly White was my nickname – which I certainly wasn’t after a half hour of pink belly.)  He sails a flat rock well over two hundred feet and catches the kid right between the eyes.  Plop, the kid falls off the fence.  I thought he was dead.  I put my head down and ran as hard as I could (and I could run in those days), but when I got out to right field the kid was gone.  Never saw him again.

The truck body provided another drama.  It had a hasp that when swung from three o’clock to nine locked the door without any way of opening it from the inside.  One of the horde who lived in Knollcrest came down through the woods and hid behind the truck body.  Every day when I came back from lunch, I would unlock the door and step inside and wham he would slam the door shut and lock it.  The truck body became a sweat box almost immediately.  I’d yell and pound the side of the sweat box, but it was often an hour or more before anyone would let me out.  After a while a group would open the door and say, “Hey, Lilly, what you doing in there?  We were looking all over for you.”

 

I got back at this little shit, though.  One slow day I saw him go into the truck body alone.  I snuck around the back and slammed the door on him.  I never heard such screaming in my life, so after five minutes or so I opened the door and like a roadrunner he zipped up through the woods back to Knollcrest.  Never saw him again, either.

After that I was careful not to get trapped in the truck body, but the horde developed a new tactic.  I’d come back at one and there would be no one around.  I would walk out back by the horseshoe pits and get a sense someone was behind me.  When I turned around, I saw the horde up on the roof of the grandstand.  One yelled, “Fire!” and they all started throwing rocks at me.  This happened every day until I adopted the nuclear option and started winging rocks back at them – and I was a much better shot.  I wasn’t going to climb up in the roof.  Not only do I suffer from acrophobia but the climb to the roof required stepping on the live wire that powered the street light and Coke machine. Going on offense was my only option, but I knew I had to create a new competition to keep the horde happy.

  

I hit upon a bicycle road race complete with a Le Man’s start near the pits.  It would be ten laps around the grandstand which meant going out one fence gate and in through the other.  The winner would get a slightly used Sammy White autographed baseball.  They were psyched.  Unfortunately, the race didn’t start well.  In fact it barely got started at all.  There was a tremendous pile up negotiating the first gate.  There were so many bikes piled up, that no one could get through.  I sorted the bent and broken bikes out, but whatever enthusiasm for the race had gone.  There was no restart.

By this time I was riding the stripped-down bike of my friend Doug Barnard.  I say stripped-down because it had no brakes, lights or fenders.  When you wanted to stop you put your foot on the tire behind the front fork.  My own bike had been stolen and my father said if I wanted another one I could buy it myself.  As I was old enough to get my driver’s license, this wasn’t going to happen.

The horde hit upon a new aggravation.  Every day they would run my bike up the flagpole in center field.  The first day I must have looked for an hour before I saw it, but after that I knew where it was. 

Now, there was an aged, volunteer cop living one house down from the arch in center who saw the bike on the flagpole.  He got dressed and got his on-in-law to drive him to the playground.  I was out back playing horse shoes and thought the old boy was trying to find out what happened to the street light.  The light still worked, but the glass globe protecting the bulb had been broken.  You could reach it from the grandstand, so I had to feign surprise when I reported it broken to the town manager.  The horde was sitting in the grandstand and the first thing I heard was: You’re all under arrest!  A new headline flashed in front of me worse than Playground Director Burns Down Knollcrest.  The cop had asked who ran my bike up the flagpole.  At first the horde expressed surprise, “Hey look, there’ a bike on the flagpole” and then went back to their card games and smoking Old Golds.  Then he asked who was in charge and got a collective shrug.  Following this came the mass arrest announcement.

 By the time I got out front the old man was in throes of anger we’d now recognize as dementia.  He had one of the smaller horde by the ear and was pulling him toward the car.  The volunteer cop’s son-in-law was trying to restrain him from hurting the little shit.  The horde was screaming bloody murder. “Let the kid go, gramps,” the son-in-law said “You can’t arrest them all.”  But words weren’t going to work, so the two of us manhandled the volunteer cop back into the car alone.  In doing so we knocked off his police hat and dislodged his glasses.  When I turned around a horde was wearing the hat and glasses.  I pointed at the car, an all black ’52, Chevy, with such authority the little shit actually did give back the hat and glasses.  I then organized a team to go and strike my bike from the flagpole.  It was late afternoon, and to my surprise they did take my bike down from the flagpole, saluting as they did of course.   Then, they rode off with my bike and I had to walk home, but . . .

As I say, I hope this brings closure to some, although a class-action suit is more likely.  Still, living half a world away I feel somewhat protected from litigation.  I’m sure kids in Finland could find Promnimit and track me down, but with the poor state of US education I doubt any GHS graduate could even find Asia, let alone Thailand.  Sorry state of affairs.  And as I am heading for the final round up – I’ve seen captured Nazi war criminals in better shape than I am in – I want to clear the slate. 

It’s my understanding that after my tenure at the Park the town brought in a husband and wife team of professionals as directors.  Boring.  Lots of New Age events like having moms go skinny dipping with their precious horde.  They also tore down the grandstand.  Is there no God?  I say scrub and rollie up, that’s the ticket.  But in this namby-pamby world no one cares.

FG       4/1/2017

Eddie Haskell lives in Thailand.  He is not well and battling the future.