Editor’s Note: The following article by Irene Ambler was published August 4, 1983. We hope that you, our readers, enjoy it as we do.
By Irene Ambler
This is a true story. It is about the time when my honest upbringing did not help me to ward off one of the greatest temptations I ever experienced. I stole something. The something I stole was not very big, not very valuable, and not very important. The wages of my sin, however, caused me to suffer one of the most traumatic punishments an eight-year-old short, fat little girl could ever undergo.
In order to make clear all of the background ramifications and conditions of this story, I will have to go back to the time I was a third-grade student at the old two-story grade school on Second Street, Hurricane, which would be approximately three or four blocks from where we lived on Putnam Avenue.
The action began — or perhaps I should say the action started to commence to begin — around suppertime one evening when I began to complain of stomach pains. My Mom, knowing me better than I knew myself, was certain that I needed a little something to cleanse and purge my system of perhaps a little too much to eat. She also knew that getting me to take medicine was like pulling eye teeth from an enraged boar hog or muzzling a lion.
I, with my eight-year-old brilliance, knew that a big dose of castor oil was inevitable; and I quickly stole off to bed. I had heard some whispered conversations between my Mom and my Dad and I heard him say that he would have to go to the drug store. When he came back he called to me to get up because he had some candy for me. Candy was a magic word — bellyache or not. I came bouncing downstairs just in time to see my Dad take a small blue and white tin box from his inside coat pocket. He took out a very small pink pill, saying, “Here, I got you some candy because you weren’t feeling well.” I quickly ate the minute delicacy, which tasted like peppermint, and was simply delicious. Then he gave me the second one, which I demolished with gusto. I asked for more but he said that more sweet stuff would probably just make me feel worse and that if I was good he would get me a Teddy Bear sucker the next day.
The name of the “candy” was something like “Phenolax” I think, but I am not sure. Somewhere in our house I still have that little blue and white tin box which held the delightful confection. One day I’ll probably run across it. I kept it as a souvenir and as a reminder that I must never, ever steal anything again, which I haven’t to my knowledge.
Fortunately, I was feeling fine the next morning and was not able to tell any difference in my sanitary habits such as making quick trips to the johnny out near the alley during the early dawn hours. I declare, I never had any indications at all that that candy wasn’t candy. I went downstairs, washed my face and hands, put on my navy blue skirt, my white middy blouse with the navy blue tie, over my bleached muslin petticoat and my black sateen bloomers with the legs which were long enough to pull down over stocking tops during cold weather. I never could understand why we had to wear black sateen bloomers. They were uncomfortable, big and baggy, they had an unpleasant odor about them I didn’t like when you’d sweat, and they were just about the ugliest rigging which was ever made for a little girl to war. I guess the richer kids had white bloomers maybe with lace crocheted on the legs; but I was destined — forever I thought — to be saddled with those everlasting black bloomers.
But even the bloomers couldn’t spoil that day, which was really a beautiful early fall day when the breeze was friendly, the leaves were crunchy, the skies were blue, and the sun was a kind, warm blanket over the whole world. I was happy. Boy, was I happy, because I had a plan. I got up earlier than my Dad and, being a sly, crafty kid well into the ways of juvenile delinquency, I slipped into their bedroom, stealthily put my pudgy little hand into his coat pocket and snitched the little white and blue box of “candy”.
Harriet Draper was my teacher; and I loved her dearly; but ever so often a kid has to put a little something or other over on a teacher. We had geography right after noon from a big blue book with orange letters. We always had a study period right after noon so, I suppose, our food would digest and we could prepare ourselves for a long afternoon of school, which didn’t let out until 4 pm. I had been biding my time all day, knowing full well that the geography book held up on my desk would be a perfect foil for what I had so deviously planned to do — and did!
The Phenolax box contained two dozen of the delightful little pink candies; and as I had eaten only two the previous night, I had twenty-two to go.
Glutton that I was, I ate twenty-two physic pills behind my blue and orange geography book. I was as pleased with myself as a Persian cat which has just consumed a three hundred dollar Mynah bird or a two hundred dollar Managua cichild fish.
I felt fine all evening and was as happy as a coon all afternoon. I waltzed up Second Street, crossed over to Main Street, visited a while with John Burdette and Frank Pierce in their grocery store, and nonchalantly wended my way homeward without a care in the world.
The pains started hitting me right about where Allen Funeral Home now is. If that establishment had been there at that time I would have been a most appropriate setting, because I could well tell that Irene was for sure a dead duck. The first one was rather gentle, just a suggestion that something was wrong in my innards. By the time I got to the overhead bridge, the full intensity of the spasms in my stomach and the entire region of my abdomen had hit full force. What happened on the overhead bridge was almost as catastrophic as what was to happen a few years later when the C&O engine blew up. For anyone to use the Appalachian expression that I didn’t know whether to run or to do something else would not be apropos in this earthshaking event. I COULDN’T run; and I had already accomplished the other alternative.
Making my way on to our house was one of the most painful of experiences. The only thing which kept the entire neighborhood from knowing about the super accident which I had and was till having was the tightness of the elastic in my black sateen bloomers. It would be impossible to describe my discomfort. I felt like I weighed a ton from the waist down, especially right above the elastic at my knees. I can recall with total clarity just how terrible and how embarrassed and how scared I was. I tried to figure out how to walk with the unspeakable burden; and I finally decided that the best way I could do it was to place my feet as far apart as possible and walk stiff-legged the rest of the distance home, which was about a block.
I may have thought I could get into he house in secret, destroy my tell-tale evidence, and clean myself up. But I knew I couldn’t do that because I had only one other pair of bloomers. I could just as well have forgotten any plans I had at concealment, because my Mom was sweeping the front walk when I reached home and she almost dropped her broom when she fairly shouted, “What in the world is wrong with you? Have you been hurt or are your legs chapped?” It didn’t take her long to understand the situation when she got close to me.
She hastened me to the garage, stripped me down stark, staring naked and said, “You stand there until I can get a tub of water pumped and clean you up.” The water was very cold just coming up out of our deep well. But she did get the initial damage off me and later warmed a tub of water and gave me a good scudging with soap.
I was afraid I was going to get a whipping; but I didní’t. Instead, I can remember some faint little chuckles coming from their bedroom that night; and I know what the subject of the amusement was. It was me!
In thinking that whole painful, punishing experience over, and knowing full well that I got my just desserts, it has just occurred to me, in considering the talk one hears about situation ethics nowadays, that I may have accepted too much of the blame in that awful experience.
Actually, was it my fault and my due to be punished for stealing; or was it my Dad’s fault for fibbing to me about the “candy”?
Who knows? It somehow helps me to reminisce about things concerning our family and to get a smile or two about some of the simple, funny things which happened to us when my Mom and my Dad were still with us.
