Chapter Nine – Clipski, Royalty, and Celebrity

Fiedelbaum decided the club needed a meeting, but he had difficulty getting the guys to abandon their game of clipski. “Let me have my turn to bat,” yelled Two-Ton. “I don’t get this chance too often.”

Poobah had never heard of this game before. It was one of those games that get invented and are generic to a specific place but never catch on elsewhere. Poobah watched Two-Ton try to bat.

Two-Ton picked up the scrap piece of wood he had salvaged from the lumber yard. It served as a ‘bat’. On the ground was the clipski, a cylinder-shaped piece of wood with both ends tapered to a point. Two-Ton, the expert in all things ‘wood’ had fashioned the clipski on his lathe. Two-Ton swung the ‘bat’ and hit the clipski on one of its pointed ends. The clipski popped up from the ground. Two-Ton struck at it again but missed. He repeated the process; the tapered cylinder popped into the air. Two-Ton’s mighty swing connected, and the clipski sailed high over the field. Fiedelbaum waited for it to come down. Everyone knew Fiedelbaum wouldn’t catch it. The spinning cylinder hit him in the hands, and dropped to the ground.

“I’m always going to hit the clipski to you,” Two-Ton teased as he walked to where the cylinder hit the ground. Wherever the clipski hit the ground, the hitter would make the next swing. Whoever advanced the clipski, the farthest, would be the winner. Two-Ton’s friends retreated to catch the next hit. The chunky batter swung hard and hit it high into the air. Poobah grabbed it, took the ‘bat’ from Two-Ton, and walked back to the starting line where Two-Ton made his first hit.

“Let’s go, guys, we need to have this meeting,” Fiedelbaum pleaded.

“Ahhh.. it is my turn to bat,” Poobah said.

“Look, I’ve got a moronic idea for the club,” Fiedelbaum went on. “We need to discuss it.”

“Are you going to preach again, Fiedelbaum?” Red Dawg asked. “Your sermons are getting too long.”

“No, I’m not going to preach, but we’ll meet at the church in my back yard,” Fiedelbaum said.

The guys knew most of Fiedelbaum’s ideas were fun, even when they had to listen to his music or his comedy routines. Fiedelbaum didn’t need much of an invitation to entertain. He always had friends who enjoyed his acts. “Let’s go, guys; we need to have this meeting,” coaxed Fiedelbaum.

The boys trooped to Fiedelbaum’s backyard and sat down on the benches amid the tall grass. Fiedelbaum stood behind the apple-crate pulpit. “I have this moronic idea,” he began. “According to the announcement in July, Princess Elizabeth and Phillip Mountbatten are getting married on November 20. I thought it could be fun to send them a gift from the Morons’ Club of Waldheim. What do you think?”

“They’re going to get thousands of gifts and anything they don’t get, they can buy,” Wrench objected. “The royalty has lots of money.”

“We should get a moronic gift,” Horse suggested. “It has to suit the kind of club we are.”

“How much money do we have?” asked Blondie, the most recent member to join the club.

“Well,” Fiedelbaum said, “the club still has your entry fee of thirteen cents.”

“What can we get a future queen for thirteen cents?” asked Red Dawg.

“We need to get her something which would make her laugh,” Bottle suggested.

“What if we got her some dollhouse furniture?” proposed Two-Ton.

“It isn’t a bad idea,” Honey said. “It isn’t an expensive gift. The postage will cost as much as the gift.”

“What I like is the gift isn’t good enough to be a real gift, yet it is a gift which will get Elizabeth thinking,” laughed Horse. “Is it a gift, or not? Was it meant to be a thoughtful gift or a joke? Is the gift good enough to write a thank you note for or bad enough to throw away? It’s a perfect Moron gift, an almost gift.”

The boys started to laugh. Two-Ton had seen a dollhouse table and chair set which didn’t sell the previous Christmas in the toy section of his father’s store. “I’ll see if it’s still there,” he said. “Let’s meet at my place tomorrow after school, and we can make further plans.”

The next day, the Moron Club sat on Two-Ton’s verandah. Two-Ton and Poobah had set out chairs for everyone. On a small table in the middle was a miniature pink table and chair set. His mother had baked a batch of soft gingersnap cookies for everyone. Two-Ton reported, that the table and chairs cost five cents. Everyone thought it was terrific. It was a gift; perhaps it wasn’t. “Let’s label the chairs,” Honey suggested.

With the help of some tape and paper, they carefully labeled one chair, “Phillip,” and another “Elizabeth.” “What should we do with the other two chairs?” asked Red Dawg.

“Those would be for their children,” Bottle said, “but we don’t know their names because they don’t have any.”

“We could write ‘children’ on them,” Honey offered.

“It’s not moronic enough,” Horse laughed. “We got to do better.”

“Child One and Child Two” was suggested but rejected. Poobah’s idea of ‘offspring’ captured the imagination of the Morons. The word was nearly classy, but not. It was suitably moronic.

 It was left to Fiedelbaum to draft a letter on behalf of the Morons and mail it to Princess Elizabeth and her husband.

The time soon came for the Princess’ wedding. Fiedelbaum invited the Morons to his house, and listen to the wedding on BBC radio on the Feyerabend porch. To Poobah, it seemed like a lame thing to do, but it was a chance to get together. The time in London for the wedding was 11 AM, which meant a Waldheim time of 4 AM.

It was a Thursday morning, a school day. The Morons started to arrive by 3:30. It was cold, and there was a dusting of snow on the ground. The temperature had been cold enough to freeze the horse manure on the streets. There was no shortage of pucks to provide for rousing games of street hockey.

Fiedelbaum had brought out some of his benches from the backyard and the family console radio for better reception. “Whose idea was this anyway?” queried Poobah. “For your information, the temperature underneath my blanket in bed is a toasty eighty degrees Fahrenheit. What is the temperature out here?”

Fiedelbaum looked at the thermometer outside the living room window. “Minus five degrees Fahrenheit,” he said.

Generally, the Morons dressed warmly and brought blankets to sit on. Cold benches made a wedding ceremony seem even longer. Most of them didn’t know why they were there. None of them were of British descent; none of them were royalty buffs. Perhaps they had a minimum stake in the wedding because they had sent a gift. Maybe it was a conversation opener for their next encounter with their favorite girl. It might make the girls look more favorably on them, make them look more romantic. Perhaps not. There was always the magic of the radio, of the radio’s ability to bring an event to your home from lands far away.

The electric light from the living room window struggled to lessen the darkness but lent enough light to make each Moron recognizable.

“So, we are gathered in this place to witness the marriage of two cousins,” Bottle said solemnly.

Everyone laughed. “Really?” asked Poobah.

“Yeah, they’re second cousins on one side of the family and third cousins on the other. All royalty in Europe is related,” Bottle said.

“Sounds like some Mennonite weddings I know,” giggled Wrench.

Everyone burst into a peal of loud laughter. Several Morons made comments on how gorgeous the Princess was, but no one had any newspaper photos to prove it. With all the joking, the boys soon realized why they had braved the cold and the early hour. They enjoyed each other’s company. It didn’t matter what they did if it had a moronic element to it; they needed to be there. For teenage boys to sit and listen to a wedding ceremony, thousands of miles away, shivering in the cold of the night, seemed suitably moronic.

During the wedding ceremony, the boys talked about everything: school, their plans, and girls.  They teased Two-Ton regarding Mary; Honey and Ilene were also fair game. “Are you guys going to get married in Westminster Abbey?” was the question. The Morons elaborated on what the ceremony would be like, two bumpkin boys from Waldheim, wedded in a historical and classic place such as the Abbey. “She’s not my girlfriend,” protests from the two only made the teasing more tortuous and convoluted. The porch echoed with giggles and belly laughs.

The boys left early enough to bring their blankets home and pick up their books for school. Some guys were able to elicit some interest from the girls when they described what they had done in the wee hours of the morning. And when their related antics didn’t achieve the desired result, they reverted to their standard line. “Well, Morons do what morons do.”

The winter of 1947-1948 began, and when the snow was deep enough, the Morons trekked to the local ski and toboggan hill over the Christmas holidays. A stream, running to the North Saskatchewan River, raging in spring but calmed by beavers for the rest of the year, had carved a valley, an inverted prairie mountain.

It was a surprise in January to receive a letter addressed to the Morons’ Club. The postmaster knew into which box to place the envelope. Fiedelbaum decided to show the message to the Morons in school instead of calling a special meeting.

“It’s a letter from Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh!” Fiedelbaum exclaimed. “The couple is thanking us for our gift.”

“I guess it can now be a real gift, not an almost gift, or a quasi gift,” Horse said, laughing. “If Royalty thinks it is worth a thank you letter, then we Morons must officially declare it a gift.”

The Morons formed a circle in the middle of the hall, their arms on each other’s shoulders. They forced the first girl who sought to pass them, into the middle of the ring. Stomping their feet, they chanted, “It’s a gift; it’s a gift.” The girl was released, but not before Fiedelbaum commented, “And so are you.” The girl, who was at first bewildered, left giving Fiedelbaum a huge smile. “Thank you,” he said.

Fiedelbaum read the letter to the group. It thanked the Morons’ Club for the “thoughtful gift” and stated the “royal couple greatly appreciated it.” The lady in waiting had signed for Princess Elizabeth.

“What do you think she meant by saying the ‘royal couple greatly appreciated it’?” asked Poobah.

“The chairs must have been comfortable,” laughed Bottle.

“She said the gift was thoughtful,” Two-Ton added. “It was from the 1946 Christmas surplus at Dad’s store, for Pete’s sake.”

“It would have meant more if the Princess had written it herself,” Red Dawg complained. “So, it probably still didn’t make it as a real gift.”

“But, it was thoughtful and greatly appreciated!” Poobah said.

“I’m going to make a frame,” Two-Ton said. “We can hang the letter up in the Post Office.”       

“Together, everyone,” called Fiedelbaum raising his hand in a fake toast. “It’s a gift.”

Everyone joined in raising their empty hands, “It’s a gift.”

Later, Fiedelbaum decided to call another meeting after school. “I’ve got another idea.”

“Well, at least you didn’t have us sit in your backyard church on cold benches in the middle of winter,” Poobah chimed in.

“Wouldn’t it be moronic,” Fiedelbaum declared, “if we invited Bob Hope to become a member of the Morons’ Club, and he accepted.”

Buoyed by the success of their Princess Elizabeth venture, the Morons agreed. All the boys were fans of the Bob Hope radio show and were regular listeners.

“Make sure he pays the thirteen cents membership fee,” Blondie insisted. “He can pay like everybody else. No honorary memberships for him.” The group agreed.

As usual, Fiedelbaum was the one to draft and mail the letter.

A month later, Honey lay in his bed and turned on the crystal radio set. It was time for the Bob Hope Show.  His ears perked when Bob Hope said, “I’ve been invited to become a member of a Morons’ Club from Canada. They have a membership fee of thirteen cents! Can you imagine? Thirteen cents to become a Moron. It has got to be highway robbery of some kind. Thirteen cents! Who do they think I am? A gold mine? I can’t afford it.” Bob Hope followed with jokes at Canada’s expense.

Honey connected his earphones to the Moron telephone line. “Did you hear?” he yelled. “We were on the Bob Hope radio show!”