Overcoming Adversity for Kids

When my brother, Mike, and I were about ten and eight, we had lived in a bunch of small towns in the Upper Midwest. There seemed to be a never ending variety and location of them so that, now at age 67, I tend to forget exactly which town held which adventures. I guess it really isn't the town but the adventure that were important, so I am just getting these down on paper ( OOOPPPSSS!!! this is not paper, is it??)---I am getting these adventures down on ones and zeros in this wonderful electronic age in my fantastic computer. Don't ask me how this works, exactly, but it seems to and that is good enough for me. I never really understood the workings of the radio--All I know is you turned it on and it magically sucked words out of the air and you could hear all these great shows. I just now thought--How come they were called "shows" when we weren't actually SHOWN anything? We heard stuff and had to make up the visuals in our own minds.
One thing about the radio is that a kid could be transported to far off places and not have to sit watching a screen like with TV. Kids now a days are trapped into sitting and gaining weight, whereas those of us of a certain age could do other things while listening. A lot of us DID sit and stare at the radio, but it wasn't really necessary. The best thing of all was the PORTABLE radio (BATTERIES!!) which we could take with us and still be in contact with the world while doing our own thing as THEY say.
I did gain a lot of weight as a kid, but that was from the necessary sitting while reading books which were my drug of choice; much more fun for me than listening to the radio, though I did more than my fair share of radio listening, and in the early '50s when TV came to our house, I also did more than my fair share of TV watching, too. No wonder I got fat!!!
But, I digress....Mike and I both had "new" bikes (new to us but really just refurbished into some sort of working condition). BIKES rhymes with Mikes. Some silly people tried to tell me that a nickname for Byron is BIKE, but I never accepted this goofiness. Later on as an adult, I met a man whose real name was Myron. He told me that he had been called Mike as a nickname when he was young. This was very odd to me, as my brother Michael was Mike or Mickey (like Walt's mouse). Try to bend you mind around this: Michael==Mike. Byron==Bike. Myron==Mike. Wrong!!!
I digress again. So Mike and I had a rite of passage. There were no lions to hunt, outback to walkabout in, and other such growing up things to do, but we had the sinister and foul smelling local "RENDERING PLANT". Never heard the term?? OK. A rendering plant is a place where dead farm animals that were too ill or too diseased to turn into edible products, were sent after death (or we suspected they were actually killed there) to be RENDERED into less desirable products. This ment glue from hoofs and bone, cat and dog food, hide for shoes, blood for vampires, and so on.
To make all these "products" my Dad told us that rendering meant changing from one form to another and the terrible smell issuing forth from this place was due to the slaughtering and removing the guts with their contents then boiling (rendering down) the hoofs, bones and cartilage to make the other stuff. Man!!! Was it TERRIBLE!!! This is why the place
was three miles out of town on the downwind side. Of course the wind changed directions now and then, and the town remembered the place very easily, but generally it was forgotten--except by the young boys in town. This was OUR rite of passage. We had to ride our bikes as close to the place as possible before being overcome by the horrid stench.
At that time, I never thought that there had to be actual human beings who worked INSIDE that pit of damnation, but there had to be. Dead cows and horses just don't skin and boil themselves.
Anyhoo, it was easy to get to the two mile marker outside of town, but there the smell became really noticible with just one mile to go. We could see straight down the gravel road to the two story grey brick building with its hazy smoke pooting out a tall chimney. I think they thought it would smell less if the smoke came out way up in the air and the wind that usually scoured the flat prairie would take it away. It didn't work.
This particular Summer day, Mike and I decided it was TIME!! We easily got to the last mile. Another interesting thought-- the last mile is the distance a convict walks to the CHAIR. We each knew the rules of engagement, rendering plant-wise, as we had often heard this discussed by older boys. The closer one got to the plant, the worse the smell and the "Winner" was the most manly man in any group. No-one ever would do this alone. There is no winner if there is no looser. We sat there on our bikes silently staring into the eyes of the beast as if the place were a dragon to be conquered or a castle to storm to save a damsel in distress. We liked saying
damsel, because it was as close to swearing as we could get without getting into trouble.
"GO!!!"Mike shouted and we took off like a bat-outa-Hell (MORE fun swearing) and sped up side by side. The air swirled dust around and the sun burned down. I had decided that to win I would hold my breath. Mike was huffing and puffing as he was younger than me and his bike had smaller tires so he had to work harder. It may not have really been fair, but that's the way life is sometimes. On and on we raced and even without truly inhaling, I could tell the smell was getting nearly thick enough to cut with a knife. Rotten, horrible, crappy, smell. Worse than anything I had ever encountered. God!!! I looked over at Mike and he was still going, but seemed to have slowed a bit. All I had to do was keep holding my breath and get ahead of him when he had to stop. I wanted to win SO badly it ached.
He gagged and I nearly fell off my bike. It sounded bad. I realized then that the ache I was feeling was really my body beginning to scream for air. Biking in the hot sun, as fast as a guy can is not conducive to good breath- holding. The smell was becoming overpowering seeping into every pore in my body. I thought that I may have made a bad mistake and that Mike was getting his lungs used to the smell breath by breath and I had set myself up for disaster. What would it be like when I HAD to breath??? Would it be my downfall?? It could see a literal downfall coming in which I woull slid off my bike in agony. I had fooled myself. Mike gagged and really slowed down as we had reached the halfway point. He began to swerve. I had to go onto the grass to avoid him.
"HEY!!!" I shouted at him letting out the last bit of saved air in my lungs, but then to replace it meant inhaling. I needed air!! Oh, damsel!!!
I opened my mouth thinking it would be less toxic if I avoided using my nose which is where the smell cells are located. I gasped a huge gasp and found out that my plan was no good. The smell hit me like a blivet ("Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag") as I once heard an old man say. My eyes burned, my skin burned and my lungs burned like a gas attack on a World War One battlefield. I fully expected the blue paint on my bike to start blistering and peeling. Mike fell over and lay gagging beside the road as I continued on. I was the BIG WINNER!!!! It was only about three blocks to the plant. None of the kids we had listened to had ever been able to actually reach the place and touch the bricks. I didn't just want to get close, I wanted to be the Olympic champion of rendering planting.
"Ronnie!! Mike yelled. "Stop. You'll die!!!" He turned to his side and ejected his peanut butter and jelly sandwich mixed with orange juice we had had for breakfast. I raced on, but it was absolutely horrible. The air was green and thick and getting worse. There was no grass left. The toxic odors had killed it all. I slowed more and more leaving Mike behind and then had to stop. I couldn't pedal any more. I could hardly see to steer my bike. I dropped it and walked. Only a block to go. I closed my watery eyes put my hands out in front of me and pushed on. I would touch that building if it killed me and then I had the unbelievable thought. If I did get there, I would have to turn around andgo back before all my skin melted off leaving me just a pile of bleached bones on the sand. My God, what had I done?? I started to whimper as my nose began to run and a pulsating hum ran in my head. Then I felt a roughness!!! I opened one eye a bit and saw my right hand touching the grey brick of the RENDERING PLANT. God!!! I had made it!!! I was still alive!! I gagged and made a deposit of my pb and j just as mike had, but mine splashed onto the brick like champagne baptizing a new ship. I turned and staggered back toward my fallen bike and brother. He was green and lay on his back facing backwards eyes closed and barely breathing. He moaned slightly like a nauseated puppy.
"I did it. I DID it!!! I touched the brick. I beat you...I'm the winner!" I forgot for a moment the terrible odor in my frenzied joy. He opened one eye, looked up at me and said, "I don't believe you. I didn't see you do it.
Do it again while I watch." Now, there was no way in God's green earth that I could have gone back there. I wanted to kick him. Loosers are supposed to KNOW they are loosers. Later in my life, a hole in one seemed much less important than touching the brick of that rendering plant, but like that accomplishment, no one saw it so it didn't count. Poop!! Blivet!!! and Damsel!!!