Indian Summer

Growing up I had an uncle named Benjamin Hill. He passed away years ago. Our family called him Uncle Benny. He was a truck driver for a bottling plant in Evansville, Indiana. He always dressed rather simply, so I doubt the job paid much of a wage. Black shoes, plain cotton or polyester pants, and a short sleeved buttoned shirt in a modest print. Uncle Benny wasn’t a member of the jeans generation, and I doubt he ever owned a pair. He was pale, rail thin and always wore his favorite truckers cap, embellished with such logos as John Deer, Jack Daniel’s or 7 Eleven. As a young child I just assumed he just traveled a lot and those were names of various high-end luxury items or exotic destinations. For some, perhaps they are.

Large plastic sunglasses were a staple of his as well - the kind you see in drug stores designed to keep sunlight out of your eyes, or any range of the energy spectrum it seems. Very big, very black. In the entirety of my adolescence I think I saw the whites of that man’s eyes twice. I fantasized now and again that he would bend over and his sunglasses would slip, revealing a single, gigantic square eye peering into my very soul. But it never happened, much to my disappointment.

Uncle Benny was a professional smoker. I say professional because if you could get a license or hold a degree in smoking, he should have had his doctorate. I believed if he ever tried to quit he’d fall over dead, instantly. Hell, oxygen was second hand to that man. I remember his visits with my grandmother, smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee. He’d tell a few jokes and light up another one. Cigarette, coffee, joke, cigarette, coffee, joke.. wash, rinse, repeat. I was probably in junior high before I connected my uncle with Benny Hill, the dirty old man reeking havoc weekly on a BBC variety show. As a child, I just assumed that Uncle Benny had the same last name that I did so when I finally realized his last name was Hill I about died. I could never look at him the same, and I imagined him running around Evansville in triple time, chasing some young busty barmaid around.

Uncle Benny and Aunt Ruth, his wife of 71 years, lived in a modest house on the west side of Evansville. I remember visiting from time to time. Their home always smelled stale to me. Maybe it was the clear plastic mats running the length of the hallway, or the smell of all of those old books that filled the rooms. Maybe it was odor of that side of town in general? I don’t know, but I will never forget that smell, the smell of old people.

Uncle Benny and Aunt Ruth would come to visit us three or four times a year, spending the day visiting with my grandmother who was at our house it seemed daily. Every visit nearly identical. Uncle Ben would pull their Buick into our driveway, turn off the car, and immediately get out and open the trunk to remove a large cardboard box. Watching this scenario unfold through the windows of our home, I could see the two-color silk-screened Indian Summer logo printed on the side of the box. My heart would race as I thought of the contents of those boxes. I savored Uncle Benny’s deliveries like a fat kid craves cake.

Each cardboard box held four, 1-gallon glass jugs of Indiana Summer Apple Cider. That’s what I said, glass jugs. This was pre-plastic, recyclable, eco-friendly bullshit they force-feed us these days. These jugs were heavy even when they were empty, and I’m sure that had something to do with the magic of said elixir. They had weight, and they were damned pretty to look at when sunlight would refract through their contents on a hot summer day. As a kid, the experience of taking a jug out of those cardboard boxes was the equivalent of the golden Arc of the Covenant rising out of it’s cold, dark sarcophagus. The entire room would light up as beams of light emitted in all directions as a myriad of winged angels sang in unison “Ahhhhh-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

My my stored, well, (she stored, I hoarded) the magic cider in our basement pantry. I often imagined the pantry as my own personal Fort Knox as only I knew the fortune that lay await inside the dark cement room. My mother had learned the art of “canning” from my grandmother over the years, and we had what seemed like an endless stash of Mason jars filled with the bounty of my mother’s garden. Green beans, tomatoes, lima beans, peaches, etc. It felt like I had my own personal private bunker of food, stacks of Hit Parader and Circus magazines, and an ample stash of Indian Summer Apple Cider. The Russians, Iran, World War III? Bring it. The fuck. On.

One particularly hot summer day, my cousins Tim and Bryon came over to spend the day while our mothers spent the afternoon gossiping and the like. After what seemed like hours playing outside, we came in for something to drink and to cool off. Faced with either water or the never ending supply of Dr. Pepper my mom always kept around, I remembered my secret stash downstairs, and being a twelve year old at the time, I was always looking to play the “cool kid” in front of my cousins. I raced down the basement steps, grabbed the nearest cider jug I could see and ran upstairs. Placing it on the kitchen counter I could sense that all eyes were on me and my prize. Kick ass, mission accomplished. I felt like a hero revealing a golden chalice stolen from the local natives.

I poured myself a cool tall one and put the jug down. My cousins could pour their own as I sure as hell wasn’t waiting for them, this glass was all mine. As I tipped my glass and started to chug my cider I realized something was absolutely, irrevocably wrong. My gag reflex, flexed, my throat burned and I’m pretty damned sure my eyes crossed. I violently spat an entire throat-full of cider all over the counter as I grabbed its edge, holding myself up while gasping for breath. “What the hell?” I thought, “what is this shit?” It tasted like I had just given Moby Dick a lengthy blowjob.

As my eyesight slowly returned, I could make out Tim in mid-pour as Bryon held out his glass. They were in total shock. Tim put he jug back on the counter and they both slowly backed away from it. Just then, my mother entered the room to see what all the commotion was about. Her eyes went from me, to the mess on the counter, to the jug and back to me, all the while her face changing from wonder, to shock, disgust and now fighting back tears as she burst into laughter. All I could do was stand there, trying to get my breath back while wondering what the hell was so damned funny? Between sobs of tears and laughter, I’m fairly certain she muttered, “Oh god, Arnie, you know I always save the water out of the fish tank to put on my flower beds”.

Moby’s dick indeed.

© 2009 Arnold Benton