Biology Lesson

After reading my sister’s birthday tribute to our dad, I thought I’d chip in my own version of the four-wheeler invasion story as included in a piece I wrote back in 2001:

The day Mom hung up the phone and told me, “Daddy’s bringing home a surprise for you today,” was one long day. I tried to read the Hardy Boys, I tried to work on the bow and arrow I was making, I tried to build an addition to the clubhouse in the back yard, but all I could think about was the surprise.

I was nine. Ever since we’d moved out of town I’d desperately wanted a three-wheeler, a red one, a Honda 250, to ride out our driveway to the mailbox, to make trails in the woods, to go mud bogging, to drive over to Lynn T’s house and ask if she wanted to go for a ride. I dreamed for one, countless times. Someone gave us a pedal tractor and I promptly took the extra parts off of it so it looked like a rugged off-road vehicle. I bent my little brother’s tricycle’s handlebars practicing stunt maneuvers I knew I would someday do for real, on a real three-wheeler. My bicycle was usually covered with mud and was cleaned only on the warm afternoons when I decided to try to pedal through the swimming hole over by Jimmy D’s house.

My friend Jason had a three-wheeler, one just like the kind I wanted to get. I’d gotten to ride it once, when his dad was home to watch us. I’d opened up the throttle the whole way, leaning into the back-road curves, shifting gears as though my luck was running out. It was, actually; it turned out, Jason’s dad made him ride with me.

“You went too fast,” Jason told me.

Dad didn’t like off-road vehicles, including three-wheelers. He was a high school science teacher, a Mennonite hippie, someone who later built a composting toilet in our back porch and whose garden flourished in spite of the starved West Virginia soil. For him, hunting was an excuse to spend days on end in the woods. He didn’t like that his school was too far away to ride bike to every day. When he was a boy, his hobbies were raising pigeons and bird watching.

One June day, during lunch, we heard a noise, the loud rasping of engines whining and sputtering. I dropped my fork and ran out of the house, my bare feet barely feeling the dirt path leading to the swimming hole. My brother was right behind me, and we didn’t stop until we’d reached the spot where I’d once snagged a 10-inch rainbow trout.

My heart sped. “Look at that!” I yelled to my brother. “Awesome!” Four-wheelers, three-wheelers, motor bikes—they all drove full force into the swimming hole. One four-wheeler had stalled; its driver was working on the battery connection. An older man sat on his yellow three-wheeler, watching. Another three-wheeler, its wheels churning, floated past where we were standing. The roar was deafening; my brother and I stared.

But Dad hadn’t been far behind my brother and me. With the force of all those spinning wheels he ran into the water, hitting it with all his might.

“Damn machines! Get the hell out of here! You’re ruining this place!” He picked up a two-liter Pepsi bottle from the oiled water and tossed it to the side of the creek. “Get out of here!” I’d never heard my dad swear before. The engines coughed unapologetically and kept on. Dad walked out of the water to where Jimmy D was watching.

“You want me to get out my shotgun?” Jimmy asked. Dad shook his head. The old man on the yellow three-wheeler turned to leave, and the thrilling and damned machines drove off in a cloud of racket.

My prospects of getting my own three-wheeler weren’t so good, I knew, but I hoped for one anyway.

After I had put down the Hardy Boys, and had given up on working on the bow and arrow and the clubhouse, I shuffled to where my brother sat, playing in the sandbox.

“Here, I’ll pull you in the wagon,” I said. We tore off through the woods, his little hands holding on for dear life as I flew over little ditches, skidded into puddles, and bumped over downed tree branches. My thoughts pounded, I might be getting a three-wheeler! I could just see Dad driving our old Ford Granada down our driveway with a trailer holding a brand new, red Honda.

When our cow Ellen started bawling I knew Dad must be turning off the road, and my brother and I raced back to the house. I looked for a trailer. There was none. I looked for a truck—maybe someone else would be bringing the three-wheeler; of course, we didn’t have a hitch on our car. Dad got out of the car, his backpack in one hand and a glass jar of formaldehyde with a pig fetus inside in the other.

That night we dissected the pig; it was one of my first biology lessons.