Oops...

By William C. Larmore

When I first saw that giant red, hard-rubber-tired truck, it was 1924, and I was seven years old. My 16-year-old Uncle Plural Davis, on my mother’s side, was driving it for Kent Grocery Store in Ottumwa, Iowa, and believe me, they matched each other. Both were big!

Plural was called that strange name because when Grandma Davis was carrying him as a baby, he got so big she was sure he was going to birth as twins. When he appeared one body short but still a whopper, she named him Plural (more than one). It was a good choice. At the age of 16 when I really got to know him, he was already well over six feet and broad to match.

According to my mother, he was dumb as a post in school, but smart already in what she called “the world,” whatever that was, and had all the teenage boys in Ottumwa scared stiff. But he liked me, and as far as I was concerned, he lit the sun. That way why he had called Friday night and asked if I could go with him in the wonderful truck on his job that next Saturday morning.

Mama didn’t want me to go. I guess that was because I was an only child, and Mama didn’t want to have to make another one. Anyway, she wept and wailed, “Plural will hurt William in that terrible truck! I know he will!”

Dad said, “Nope!” He’ll make a man of him.”

So Dad took me into Ottumwa to the family home on Iowa Avenue where I woke up grandma, grandpa, Plural (who threw a boot at my head), and all the rest of my aunts and uncles. I had Krumbles and milk for breakfast with Uncle Plural, and then dog-galloped around him out to the vacant lot where Kent Grocery let him leave the truck overnight.

As for the truck, one that I saw much later in life looked like the one in my memory of that day; it was a WWI Army surplus Pierce Arrow, a fiveton model with a 204-inch wheelbase and powered by an “immense” four-cylinder engine.

Plural leaped up into the open cab, reached down a long arm and snatched me up bodily onto the great black-leather seat. He fiddled with a big key next to the oil pressure gauge, set the spark lever a jot, explaining what he was doing all the while, and opened the throttle lever about an inch. Then the hero jumped out, went around to the front, grabbed a big crank dangling there under the nose of the great engine, gave it a yank and turned the engine. Even he, the size he was, had trouble pulling it through, but it didn’t take much. One cylinder started at a time, about as quietly as a mine explosion, but all four thundered into life.

We were soon jolting along, making at least ten miles per hour, singing cowboy songs, sort of, and following the morning down into Ottumwa. We crossed the river bridge into South Ottumwa and down to the grocery warehouse for our load of Kent groceries.

I thought we would never get unloaded, but it didn’t seem to bother Plural. He had something else on his mind. Just as we loaded on the last boxes of Morrel Red Heart dog food (which poor folks in South Ottumwa were rumored to eat), Plural let me in on what was bothering him.

He leaned on the truck fender for a moment, glared at me with his armor-piercing blue eyes as if he didn’t even know me and muttered, “I wonder if that diddly-dad-blamed taxi driver will be in my parking place again? If he is, he asked for it!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, chilled at the suddenly scary look of him.

I got no answer. We thundered off with him handling that groceryloaded metal monster like he was race-driver Barney Oldfield.

I soon saw what he had been grousing about. There was a little yellow taxi cab, new-looking and shining like John Lowenberg’s bald head, parked right in the middle of the Kent Grocery parking space. I was to find out later the taxi driver had done this several times while he enjoyed breakfast at a local beanery. Uncle Plural had done everything, except unscrew the guy’s head, and yet, here he was again. Somehow, from what I had just heard Plural say a few minutes ago, I had the feeling that this time was going to be different. At least, I hoped it was. And I soon found that my hero would not let his worshipper down.

He smiled. His smile grew into a grin that I still think would have done credit to an executioner as that character raised his ax over some poor cuss for the final blow.

Plural revved up the immense truck’s mighty engine to a great thunder, slammed his gears into first, let in his clutch, drove into his parking space with the old wormgear growling, and turned off his engine. He and I gave each other a Foreign- Legion-brother grin and shook hands.

We like to never got all the Chevy taxi fenders, doors, hood parts, seats, glass hunks and no telling what else out from under the truck. Our tripping over the junk slowed up our unloading at Kent’s quite a bit. Then, too, our audience just kept growing and got in our way.

The police came and kept promising Plural to arrest him, but never did. In fact, they seemed to agree with him and me after a while that he had sort of done right in spite of what the taxi driver kept screaming.

Mr. Kent, who had seen what happened, seemed to be pleased more than anything else, and he put his arm around Plural.

“Son,” he said, “don’t fret yourself. You still got a job with me any day of the week. But one thing I’d like to know. Sounded like you hollered something just before you drove in, and I’d sure like to know what it was.”

“Yessir,” answered Plural quietly. “I said, ‘Oops!’”

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William Larmore lives in Marietta.