Wolcott Memories – Being a bad boy

The most recent posting on the wolcotthistory.org website, written by my friend Florence Goodman, was part of a continuing series about Wolcott residents who served in WWI. One of the featured soldiers this month was Albert James Homewood. Two things about this article caught my eye – one that his mother’s maiden name was Frances Ella Alcott, thus meaning that he was a descendant of James Alcox/Alcott who was one of the earliest settlers to the area and thus was a relative of mine as I am also descended from the same individual. The other is that information from the article was obtained from Elaine [Homewood] Martinelli whom I knew growing up as she was only a few years younger than I was. I contacted Elaine via Facebook and we shared a few things. But that got me thinking about an incident of my childhood that I want to relate in detail here.

I was a “good kid” growing up and seldom got into trouble. I was always a top student academically and generally lived up to the expectations of the adults in my life. But there were two occasions where this was not true and one of them that I will relate here.

As I have posted earlier (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-growth-of-wolcott-neighborhood-1935.html and http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-growth-of-my-wolcott-neighborhood.html), I attended Alcott School (named after one of my relatives as well as one of Elaine’s relatives as above). There were about 20 in first grade – the only students of that grade in the entire northern half of the town. As mentioned in the second article, one of my classmates was Don Therkildsen who lived on Center Street. Like me, he was a somewhat gangly blond boy and we got along well together. He and I are the focus of this story.

For a reason that I don’t recall, and for one of the few times in my childhood years that I did not sleep in my own bed (except when camping), I stayed overnight with Don at his house. I believe it was a Friday night until Saturday afternoon. The Therkildsen’s had a large family like ours, and Don and his younger brother shared a bedroom at the top of the stairs. There was no bed frame, just a double bed mattress on the floor, but they made room for me and we shared it for Friday night. In the morning, his mother made a good breakfast for the family. The Therkildsen family were from Denmark – I believe that Don’s grandparents were immigrants, and Don’s father had a job working for the Homewood family on their chicken farm which was right behind the Therkildsen house. The Homewoods lived across the street down just a short ways and on a rise so that their basement/garage level was accessible from the street.

After going out back to the chicken house – a large structure where the chickens ran free in the center part of the building and the nests were along the side – we then went across the street to the Homewood’s basement which is where they processed the eggs. For those unfamiliar with egg processing, the eggs are cleaned, then inspected, graded for size, and put into cartons. Part of the inspection process is what is called “candling” where the eggs are placed in front of a strong light which can reveal the contents as the shells are translucent. Any cracks or blood spots inside the shell are easily seen and that egg is then rejected as unsuitable for sale. Don and I helped in the processing of that morning’s eggs for a while, then, on his instruction, we each took a few of the rejects and left.

The northern side of Center Street toward the town center and west of the Homewood house was a steep embankment with no other dwellings. Up past the Therkildsen house there were also no dwellings on the south side of the street. At the top of the embankment was a rocky outcrop where you could look down to the street perhaps 20-30 feet below. It was then that Don revealed to me why he had us bring some of the reject eggs with us. I thought that we were going to throw them at trees or rocks in the woods, but he had an idea of lobbing them down toward any passing vehicles. As I said earlier, I’m generally a “good kid”, and this is not something that would have occurred to me. But for once my “bad boy” streak kicked in and I decided to go along with the idea.

Getting the timing right to lob an egg over the intervening trees below us on the embankment and having them hit the street in time to intersect an oncoming vehicle is not the easiest thing, so the first few never hit the street until the vehicle had safely passed. But we quickly got better and scored a few hits. It was all fun until one of the cars stopped, the driver got out, and started up the steep hill towards us. We immediately took off running, going back into the woods beyond the embankment and eventually circling around to re-emerge farther down the street near the Therkildsen and Homewood houses and back to Don’s house.

We did not get caught, but I immediately vowed to myself to never get involved in that kind of activity again – and I never did. For Don’s part, he eventually became a policeman for the Town of Wolcott, rising to be their highest ranking official – and no doubt with an awareness of his own background, learning how to deal with “bad boys” like we were on that particular day.

It’s now been 60 years or so since that incident. But the lessons that I learned from being the “bad boy” for once in my life have stuck with me that entire time. And they have also made me much more understanding of how to deal with both my own children and now my grandchildren as they go through different phases of their life.

Thanks to Flo for her stories about Wolcott History and to my newly discovered cousin Elaine for triggering my memory about that long-ago day in my growing up years.

PS – for those who are intrigued about my second “bad boy” incident, I’ll just briefly mention that once my cousin Dave and I were playing with matches in a vacant field at the corner of Seery and Long Swamp Roads and I accidentally set the field on fire and it got too big to stamp out. The fire department had to be called and I was named as the culprit (for which I was appropriately disciplined). Part of my personal learning was that as soon as I was old enough I joined the local State Forest Fire crew that was run by my uncle and thus spent several years trekking into the woods with an Indian Pump and equipment to put out small forest fires that were too far into the woods for the fire department to reach with their hoses. Everything can be a learning experience!