The
Night the Bed Fell
I suppose that the high-water
mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the
bed fell on my father. It makes better recitation
(unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six
times) than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw
furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog, to lend the proper
atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible
tale.
Still, it did take place.
It happened,
then, that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be
away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because,
she said, the old wooden bed up there was unsafe; it was wobbly and the
heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in case the bed fell,
and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past
ten he closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow, twisting
stairs. We later heard ominous creaking as he crawled into bed. Grandfather,
who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared
some days before. (On these occasions he was usually gone six or eight
days and returned growling and out of temper, with the news that the federal
Union was run by a passel of blockheads and that the Army of the Potomac
didn't have a chance.
~~~to
be continued