Curtis Mathis Tried to Kill Me

I have an interesting story for you. When I was a young Wigster of 2 or 3, I had a tricycle. We lived in a three-story brick four-square house in Galesburg, Illinois. This was an old (say early 1900's) house with wood floors and a winding main stairway that went from the ground floor all the way to the top floor. My father traveled for a living, and my mother stayed at home (my parents would eventually have 4 kids).

My mom was absolutely rabid about having a clean house. The house got scrubbed from top to bottom dang near ever day! Since I was just past 'toddler' stage, and was now happily riding a tricycle all over ever-thing, she would take me from floor to floor and she cleaned. She had my father install those 'expando' style gates over the top of the stairway on each floor, to keep me from riding my trike down the steps.

But, dear readers, your Wigwam was a clever chap - too clever by half. He figured out quite easily how to flip open the little latch and the expando gate would snap open - very nice.

And the stairs looked so inviting. So very, very, inviting for a young man who would one day decide that there was nothing quite as fun as bouncing a 1946 Willys CJ-2A Jeep up and down the Colorado mountains.

Ah yes. The challenge. Could the stairs be navigated on a tricycle? It sure looked possible.

And so young Wiggy opened the gate on the third floor and cautiously edged his tricycle over the edge of the top step. He extended his pudgy little legs to slow his descent....

And began to plunge at a rather rapid rate down said wooden stairs.

After the first twenty step or so, a corner came up. And your hero could not quite make the turn. But the trike had picked up a great deal of momentum by this point, so over it flipped, and over and over and over. With young Wiggy holding on for dear life (probably not the smartest choice, but Wiggy was not exactly thinking clearly at this point).

I recall seeing ceiling and floor and wooden rails and then the whole scene over again as I flipped end-over-end down the stairs, picking up speed and negotiating corners with the alacrity of a ball bearing in a pinball machine. There was much sturm und drang happening, let me tell you!

At the bottom of the first floor stairs, dear readers, was a closet.

And in that closet was a broken console TV.

A Curtis Mathis B&W console.

It had merely stopped working, but probably just need a new tube or something.

But the rapid insertion of my punkin' haid into the picture tube at a rapid velocity ended any aspirations my dad had harbored that he might one day fix the beast.

Apparently (I don't recall this part), I shot into the closet (the door was open) and over the handlebars of my trike. I went face-first into the picture tube of the Curtis Mathis and came to rest in a less-than-conscious state.

That's where my mom found me, as she came hurtling down the stairs after me, shrieking like a banshee.

I was stretched out flat, face down. Head in the TV and body outside the console. Much blood. My mom told me (many times) in later years that she thought I had decapitated myself. It looked like a body with no head.

I got a bunch of stitches on my punkin' haid. Until years later, when I started going bald, I never really noticed the scar. I guess you can kind of see it now - I can feel it as a sort of flat spot under the skin on my forehead on the left. Heck, it kind of explains a lot about me.

But Curtis Mathis *did* try to kill me. I got proof.

Keep Yer Stick on the Ice,

Wigwam Jones