By Merlin Lessler
Published in the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin on November 8, 2008
Even old coots get embarrassed! We put up a crusty front. We act cantankerous and indifferent. But, it's an act. My ears burn and my face turns red just thinking about my stint in the Cub Scouts and the “scout promise” that I left in tatters. It took place over fifty years ago, yet it still makes me squirm. I joined a cub den when I was eight. Irma Ahearn was our den mother. The weekly meetings were held in the basement of her Overbrook Road home on the south side of Binghamton. I can still remember the excitement I felt when I tried on a Cub Scout shirt in the scouting section of Fowlers Department store. It was the "coolest" outfit I’d ever seen, even better than the Hop-a-long Cassidy cowboy suit I got for my seventh birthday. I proudly wore my new scout shirt to my first den meeting, but as soon as I looked around the room and saw Bucky Ahearn’s shirt my euphoria evaporated. His was ablaze with decorations: diamond shape wolf and bear patches, two gold arrowheads and a sea of silver ones. He wore official Cub Scout pants too; I had on a pair of rumpled dungarees. My mother had refused to spring for scout pants. “All you need is a shirt. I’m not wasting your father’s hard earned money on a pair of pants that you’ll have covered with grass stains in ten minutes.” But it wasn't the pants that got me going; it was the wolf, bear and arrowhead patches that took my breath away.
Me, in full uniform (earned and unearned badges)
I learned soon enough, that I too, could get the badges and arrowheads that Bucky sported (and I coveted). I simply had to “earn” them. The first step was to learn the scout promise, a vow I’d break before the end of the year. Then, after completing a few more simple tasks, like learning the Cub Scout salute and the official handshake, I received a “bobcat” pin. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to pin it on my scout shirt. It could only be worn on “civilian” clothes, to show the world that I was a Cub Scout. I wasn’t any closer to having a shirt like Bucky’s. But, I sucked it up and started the process that would earn me a wolf badge. Looking back on it now, it wasn't motivation I felt; it was compulsion. Every night after school and on big chunks of my Saturdays and Sundays, I slaved away, trying to complete the 12 “achievements” that would earn me the badge. I was “following the wolf tail,” as they called it, in the Cub Scout Manual.
I spent hours in the basement at my father’s workbench working on projects that would make me a wolf. One was a ring toss game. I nailed six, empty spools (mom never missed the thread) to a board, painted a number under each to designate a point value, and attached a cup hook at the bottom to store the canning jar rings that were used in the game. You played by tossing the rings onto the spools until someone scored 100 points. It took me two weeks to build it. I figured it would take me forever catch up with Bucky at this rate, but I plowed ahead, wondering if he had really completed all requirements to earn the badges and arrowheads he wore so proudly. I wondered if it helped to have your mother, be the den mother? (It didn't, as I later found out. Bucky earned every single one of his badges and arrowheads.)
I finished an “achievement” every few weeks; my mother or father signed and dated the page and Mrs. Ahearn logged it in. Badges and arrowheads were awarded at the pack meetings that were held every month in the basement of Ross Memorial Church on Mitchell Ave. All the dens in the pack came together for these monthly meeting. Sometimes it was combined with a potluck supper where one or two of the dens put on a show. Six months into my scouting career and my shirt still looked naked compared to Bucky’s. I eventually earned a wolf Badge and completed ten “electives” that netted me an arrowhead (officially called an arrow “point,” according to the manual). But, I was a long way from my goal.
Early one Saturday morning while I was rummaging around in my father’s desk, I stumbled on a rubber stamp. It looked like his signature. I found an inkpad and tested the stamp on a piece of paper. "Wow,” I whispered to myself. “It’s exactly how he signs his name!” Then I tried in on a page in my scout manual. I was so too excited to hear the Cub Scout promise break when the signature stamp touched the page. I only knew that I was on my way to a sea of arrowheads.
I brought the manual to the next den meeting and handed it to Mrs. Ahearn. She didn't blink an eye; she noted the accomplishment in her logbook and said I had enough to get an arrowhead. I was off and running. “I’ll have a shirt full of badges and stars like Bucky’s,” I excitedly told myself. The next week I came to the meeting with four more projects signed by my father (unbeknownst to him). In simple terms, I was a pig! The following week, Mrs. Ahearn sat us down and lectured us at length on the meaning of honor. She told stories of famous people who had dishonored themselves and repented, and gone on to a life of valor. I didn't get it! The lecture went right over my head. But, I stopped using the signature stamp anyhow. It simply wasn’t there when I went looking for it. My rise to scout stardom was at a standstill. Oh sure, I eventually added a bear and lion badge and a few silver and gold arrowheads, but I never came close to catching up with Bucky. I did finally get the point of Mrs. Ahearn’s lecture, but it was twenty years later. It came to me when an eight-year-old kid pulled a similar stunt in a youth program I was running for the Elmira Jaycees. When I discovered his forgery the light in my head came on. “She knew!” Mrs. Ahearn hadn’t been fooled for a second! She had been talking about me, that day so long ago. I still get embarrassed and my ears turn red whenever I think about it. What happened to my father’s signature stamp? I didn’t know it at the time, but Mrs. Ahearn talked to my parents and they hid it. It came back into my life a few years later. I used it to sign an eighth grade report card. I did it to “protect” my father, so he wouldn’t have to find out that his son got a ‘D’ in History, his favorite subject. Oh yes, I did get caught, by the school principal, but that’s a story for another day.
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My Den, putting on a skit. From the left: Kent Titus, Woody Walls, Me,
Marshal reutlinger, Dick Tuttle, Donald (Bucky) Ahearn
Unsafe at Any Speed!
By the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler
Published in the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin on August 2, 2008
“You’re an accident waiting to happen!” That’s what my mother would say when she saw me push my homemade racer out of the driveway and head to the top of our hill. But, I never had to wait, not very long anyhow. I cracked up just about every time I raced down Chadwick Road with my friend Woody (Walls). If Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe At Any Speed, thought the Corvair was unsafe, he would have been horrified by the vehicles that we raced down the hills on the south side of Binghamton. Vehicles that started the trek on four wheels but more often than not, finished on three.
These downhill death traps were called soapbox racers in some circles. We called them hot rods. None of ours were made from wooden soapboxes, nor were they built to the design specifications of the Soap Box Derby Association. Our venture into the four-wheel racing world was pretty primitive. We used scrap lumber that carpenters left behind at new houses going up in our neighborhood. One year I hit the jackpot. I found a “nearly” straight piece of 2 X 6 that was perfect for the main body. I attached it to a 2 X 4 with a long spike. I bent the spike over so the connection between the two boards was loose enough to allow the shorter, steering board to turn when I pushed it with my feet. Wheels from a discarded baby carriage were fastened to the “unholy” cross. A short scrap of wood was nailed to the side as a brake. Theoretically, it would rub against the road and slow me down when I pulled on it. Like the Corvair that Nader indicted; it wasn’t safe. (I eventually owned a Corvair, too.)
The hot rod worked great the first few times I came flying down Chadwick Road. But, design flaws began to show. First, the brake came off, causing me to crash into the hedge of an elderly, neighborhood couple that took meticulous care of their property. It was one of several houses on the block that were off limits to Woody and me. I reattached the brake and took another run. That ride lasted less than thirty seconds. The right front wheel wobbled free and beat me to the bottom of the hill.
Me. in the driver's seat, Woody Holding the whie flag (his T-shirt)
My father observed these technical failures and decided to take responsibility for the mechanical aspects of my racing career, forming a pit crew of one. He was an excellent mechanic. He made his living as a designer for Ansco and always jumped at the chance to build something on a larger scale than a camera. He was interested in my hot rod because he’d been forbidden to start any new construction projects around the house. His last one got a little out of hand. He built a travel trailer in our garage. My mother wasn't thrilled about having it parked in the side yard, especially when a neighbor complained, using words such as “eyesore” and “blight.” At any rate, my father was forced to get it off the property. He took it to a friend’s house in the country, where zoning laws were less restrictive and neighbors were more tolerant.
The stage was set. He elbowed his way into the reconstruction of my hot rod with a claim that he wasn’t starting a new project, “I’m just helping the kid!” He used new lumber, screws instead of nails, and ball bearing wheels from a wagon instead of a baby carriage. His design was radical. He installed two spring loaded push brakes on the front wheels and crafted a steering system using a yoke from a Piper Cub airplane. It was connected to a swivel mechanism at the rear of the vehicle by an elaborate cable and pulley system. It was the only hot rod in town that was steered with the rear wheels. The jitney, as he called it, was museum quality. It glistened in a fresh coat of paint. Seven, my favorite number, was stenciled on the front. He reluctantly handed it over to me for a test drive.
I was happy with the hot rod that I’d made myself, but learned long ago to "appreciate” one of his creations. I pushed it to the top of the hill for its maiden voyage. Woody was next to me in his rickety looking racer. One! Two! Three! Go! Down the hill we went! Woody beat me by a mile. The wire cable slipped out of the pulleys in the steering system. I traveled a serpentine route to the bottom, twice the distance of Woody's. My father confiscated the vehicle, moved it into the "pit" area, shut the garage door and started a major overhaul. Woody and I were free to race on our own. He, in his homemade crate and I, on an Irish Mail, a four-wheel vehicle that was propelled by pumping a handle, like the handcars you used to see on the railroad tracks.
Finally, my father opened the garage door and rolled out Version II. The race was on! Woody beat me to the finish line by fifty yards. Everything worked fine on my hot rod; it was just slow. It took all my father’s will power to let it be. I was certain he’d have another go at it but he didn’t. "It needs to be broken in; it'll get faster with time," he said, and then slunk back into the garage. A week later I had a wreck. A hunk of the front section broke off when I hit the curb. This gave my father another chance to make it faster than Woody’s.
When it rolled out of the garage this time it sported larger wheels and an aerodynamic front end. He replaced the flawed cable and pulley system and a chain. My father didn't stick around to see the race. He knew there wasn't anything more he could do. He couldn’t bear to witness another defeat. I did beat Woody to the bottom of the hill, but he led most of the way. Then, the nail holding his left rear wheel came out, sending him off course and into the same elderly couple’s hedge that I’d run into earlier that summer. His pruning job was more extensive than mine. I played around with my father’s creation from time to time over the next several years, but it never was as exciting as flying down hill on one I’d built myself, one that was unsafe at any speed.
An Old Coot Mourns a Jacket.
By Merlin Lessler
Published in the Binghamton Press, March 21, 2010
I sat in a muddy field near “Brady’s” at Quaker Lake. It was a chilly May morning in 1957. I was dead tired. I’d spent the night trudging down pitch-black, desolate roads, winding my way to this “oasis.” I’d been dropped off at the entrance of a neglected, turn of the century cemetery on a rutted dirt road five hours earlier. Strong arms shoved me out the door of a chopped and channeled, 1951 Mercury. Tires screamed and the air filled with the acrid smell of rubber as the car pealed out and sped away. When the echo of the teenage passengers and the roar of the Merc’s Hollywood mufflers faded away, I removed my blindfold and peered into the darkness. The only sign of life was the sound of munching cows in a nearby meadow. I shook myself off and started the trek back to civilization. Wondering how on earth I’d get there.
But I did. And, now sat in a mud-clotted field, my head and shoulders awash in the devil’s own concoction, a mixture of Limburger cheese, raw eggs, flour and shaving cream. My backside screamed in pain from the 16 paddles it had absorbed, delivered by running, screaming heavyweights, swinging rolled up “Life” magazines. Yet, I was smiling. Downright giddy. My six weeks of pledging hell was over. I was an official member of Alpha Zeta. Some kids did it for the parties. Some for the prestige. I did it for the jacket.
Buzzy (George) Spencer can still fit in his AZ jacket,
fifty years later
My ordeal started in April when I received an invitation to become a member of AZ and attend a pledge meeting at the home of Tony Nelson at 43 Lathrop Avenue, 7pm sharp. It was hand written and signed by president Mike Manahan. I was a fourteen, a ninth grader at West Junior. A bunch of us were invited to pledge for the Central High School fraternity, even though we were still in junior high. I guess it was AZ’s move to beat out archrival, Lambda. The supply of kids, stupid enough to undergo six weeks of hazing had to be limited, so AZ dipped into an untouched pool of idiots at junior high. I was one of them.
The meeting started off cordial enough. We were treated like royalty, not knowing we were innocent lambs brought to the slaughter. Then the pledge master took over. A list of pledge rules was distributed. This was serious business! And, to prove it, we were escorted to the driveway, one at a time. Two burly frat brothers held us in a bent over position while other members lined up with tightly rolled magazines clenched in their fists. It didn’t take long to get our introduction to pledging. The enforcers came in threes, running down the driveway and swinging at the target (our derrieres) as hard as they could. Whap! Whap! Whap! The holders were there to make sure we didn’t escape, or drop to our knees and take one in the spine. My ordeal had begun.
The rules were quite specific: pledges were to have gum, cigarettes, a note book and pencil (for recording black marks) on their person at all times - memorize the Greek alphabet by the next meeting - address members as “Mister” - light members cigarettes - wear a sport jacket (or suit), a white shirt and a blue and white tie to meetings – obey orders of members faithfully. The latter had us mowing lawns, cleaning windows and doing other household chores all weekend long at member’s homes. There was a “personal affairs” section in the pledge rules. We were supposed to have a least one date a week with a respectable girl. (What respectable girl would go out with a nerd with pockets bulging with cigarettes and gum, and yelping in pain with each step, the result of a Friday night paddling.) The rules also instructed us to have a sharp haircut, trimmed nails, shinned shoes and a generally neat appearance. They forbade us to use profane language, especially when with a member of the opposite sex. And lastly, (some fatherly advice), “Take these rules seriously, work hard and stick with it.”
It wasn’t as bad for pledges that went to West Junior as it was or those kids who went to Central. We escaped the daily hazing that they were subjected to. But, we paid for it on the weekend. And, no matter how hard I tried, I never failed to be slapped with a slue of black marks. The lawn I mowed wasn’t cut perfectly, or I left streaks on the windows I washed, or I failed to say “Sir,” before and after each sentence when addressing one of the members. Three whacks in the driveway at the weekly meeting erased a black mark. I tried to keep my total low, so I could avoid getting creamed on initiation day. I didn’t think I could endure twenty or thirty whacks at one sitting. So, in addition to the mandatory three weekly whacks, I opted for several more, to cut down my ever-growing collection of black marks.
I made it. We all did. Nobody dropped out or was maimed by the countless beatings we absorbed during the six weeks of hell. It was with a swagger that I walked into Central on my first day of high school that September. It was in the 80’s, and quite muggy but I didn’t care, I wore my new blue, corduroy AZ jacket with pride. It cost $18 (a small fortune for a teenager in those days) and over 50 whacks to my backside. But, I’d pay ten times that to get one today (ten times the money, not ten time the whacks). The money, not the whacks. But alas, AZ is no more. The local chapter and the national organization folded up years ago. There is an unauthorized, old coot branch that still functions. It meets every other year for food and drink and unabashed discussions of the good old high school fraternity days. This year’s gathering will be held in July. If you want to join in the fun, send us a note at
azbinghamton@yahoo.com for more information. Even Lambda guys are welcome.
The whole Frat in 1958
I Grew Up in a World Without Book bags!
By The Old Coot (Merlin Lessler)
Published in the Binghamton Press, September 5, 2007
School is back in session. Yippee! When my kids were little, we lived in a small town north of New York City. On the first day of school a small clutch of adults would gather in front of our house, the designated bus pick-up point for the subdivision we lived in. It was mostly mothers, but a few fathers went to work late so they could join in the celebration. I was one of them. We came equipped for the event, with pots, pans and metal soupspoons, anything that would make a racket. The kids clustered together in a state of denial. “How embarrassing, to have your parents acting like crazy fools!” We banged the pots with our spoons as the bus pulled up. Whistles and party noisemakers rounded out the symphony. One by one the kids stepped up into the bus and slunk to their seat. It was the best “first day of school” celebration I ever experienced. It was back in prehistoric times, when it was still politically correct to delight in the fact that the “little darlings” were out of your hair for a few hours a day. Freedom was at hand!
I’m sure my mother and father would have joined the parade if there were one when I went off to P.S. # 13 (Longfellow School) on Pennsylvania Ave on the Southside of Binghamton. But they didn’t need a celebration in those days. Parents ruled the roost, not the kids. But, in spite of being at the bottom of the pecking order, we had a better deal than the kids do today. We didn’t have homework! Not in P.S. #13, not in any of the “grade” schools around the city. When the dismissal bell rang, we were free. Not today. Kids have to lug schoolwork home in a book bag right from the start. Even toddlers in nursery school. We were spared the misery. We did our schoolwork in the classroom
Book bags didn’t exist in my day. They hadn’t been invented. We had something similar, knapsacks. Brought home from the war, the big one, WWII, by our fathers, uncles and cousins, or purchased at one of the numerous army and navy surplus stores that dotted the countryside. We used them for hikes in the woods, to carry food, matches and shovels for digging up dinosaur bones. We weren’t smart enough to use them for hauling books back and forth to school. In junior and senior high school, when homework was the order of the day, we still didn’t give the knapsacks a thought. We just stacked our books in a pile and carried them under our arms, resting the bottom of the pile on our hips. Girls used a different technique. They used two hands to carry their books, and clutched them to their chests, as though holding a newborn baby. Every other day or so, somebody would come along and shove the stack of books out of your grasp and then laugh and say, “Drop a few subjects, did you?” A few brave souls totted a brief case around Central High School when I went there. (three to be exact). It was the equivalent to coming to school in pajamas. It was weird. The term, “nerd,” hadn’t been invented yet. We didn’t know what to call these guys; they were just the weird guys with briefcases.
We “cool” guys wouldn’t’ think of using a briefcase. We’d rather suffer with an eighteen-inch stack of books, awkwardly balanced on our hips. It messed up our alignment. It’s why old coots like me can’t walk in a straight line. We sidle down the sidewalk like a drunken sailor. And, it explains why so many of us need new hips. It’s what happens when you grow up in a world without book-bags!
Me, showing how we carried books in our day!
my sister, Madeline, and me taking a break
