Noel's space

When I was in the fifth grade my family lived in a white two story colonial home in the middle of a golf course. Our mailing address was Blue Bell, Pa. My father managed the Meadowlands Country Club and our home was part of his salary. The bedroom I shared with my younger brother Barry had heavy black wire grates over the window and on Saturday mornings it was common to hear golf balls hitting either the ninth fairway side of our home or one of the window grills. I attended Whitpaine Elementary school and in my class was a girl named Sally. She lived a short bike ride away on an adjacent road, and her homeplace backed onto another part of the golf course.

One summer day in 1958, we were playing in her backyard. Chickens were scratching around in the garden. Her large, brown, skinny, sad-eyed hound dog was lying in the shade of their small barn behind the house. Her father, a tall, thin man with longish, straight, brown hair sat on the shaded back stoop, in well-worn overalls and a faded, tan baseball cap. He was working at something leather with saddle soap, rubbing hard into the grain then dabbing water on the cleaned areas. I didn't know why he was doing it but he appeared quite earnest in his efforts. I had never paid much attention to him as he always seemed either busy or bristling or both. I'd only seen him a few times; once when he drove Sally and I to an afternoon movie and when he drove their tractor from the barn out into one of the adjacent fields. Neither time did I think much about him as my interest was the easy and innocent beauty of his blond-haired daughter. Sally told me that we shouldn't disturb him.

As we played with her toys in the dirt, a couple of chickens began chasing each other through the vegetable garden and around its border. The unfettered hound dog reacted by first becoming alert and then taking off after the chickens. As I was watching the dog and the chickens my back was to the porch and Sally’s dad. I missed seeing her father throw down the leather harness and soap. I turned just as he began yelling for the dog to stop chasing the chickens, but either the dog was ignoring him or couldn't hear because he was barking and intent on catching one of the hens. The hens had set up quite a squawking too. As they dodged one another, scurried, scrambled, flapped and flew, the dog and half a dozen chickens all threw fine, dry, light brown dust in the hot bright, midday air. In his efforts the dog skittered past the quick turning chickens, jowls and teeth snapping closed on mouthfuls of gritty air.

I looked back toward the house just in time to see Sally’s' dad half running half skipping toward the garden and the raucous animals. He was still yelling but not getting the desired results. In mid step he did a curious thing. He swung his right arm around in a big circle toward the back of his right thigh. When his hand reached his pants, he just continued the circle with his right leg lifting up in the air; STRAIGHT UP in the air!. I couldn't imagine what he was doing but almost immediately I saw his right leg appear to lengthen beyond the pant cuff. The leg continued up into the air, calf, knee and thigh. No more than a second later, his right leg, from the thigh down to the shoe on its' foot, was in his right hand, held at the knee joint. His pant leg flailed about wildly as he hopped on his left foot. He changed his grasp and while still yelling at the dog, threw the whole leg, thigh, bent knee, calf, sock and shoe! toward the dog and chickens. I suppose my mouth just hung open at the sight.

Sally was laughing so hard she doubled over and lay in the dirt, hysterical. I didn't know if she was laughing at my gaping or at her fathers' actions. He hollered for Sally to go get his leg. The dog, still chasing chickens, ran around to the back of the barn, out of the garden. Sally’s dad hopped back to the porch, pants leg whipping around, grumbling something about the "damn dog", and sat back down on the top step. While Sally retrieved his leg, he rolled his pant leg up. I obviously had never seen an artificial leg before and was very curious as to what and how it stayed in place. And I didn’t dare move from my place in the dirt. I was plum astonished! I was even more fascinated that I had no idea that Sally’s' father had such a thing. I’ve wondered about all kinds of things since then.