We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly - Roger Kuykendall

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We didn't do anything wrong, hardly, by Roger Cuykin doll.

I mean, it isn't like we swiped anything.

We maybe borrowed a couple of things like, but gee, we put everything back where we found it pretty near.

Even like the compressor we got from Stinky Brinker that his old man wasn't using

and I traded my outboard motor for, my old, my father made me trade back.

But it was like Skinny said, you know, skinny, skinny Thompson.

He's the one you guys keep calling the boy genus, but Shucks, he's not.

Well, yeah, it's like Skinny said, we didn't need an outboard motor and we did need a compressor.

You've got to have a compressor on a spaceship, everybody knows that.

And that old compression chamber, that old man, I mean Mr. Fields,

let us use, didn't have a compressor.

Sure, he said we could use it.

Anyway, he said we could play with it and Skinny said we were going to make a spaceship out of it and he said go ahead.

Well, no, he didn't say it exactly like that.

I mean, well, like he didn't take it serious sort of.

Anyway, it made a swell spaceship.

It had four port holes on it and an airlock and real bunks in it and lots of room for all that stuff that Skinny put in there.

But it didn't have a compressor and that's why.

What stuff?

Well, you know, the stuff that Skinny put in there.

Like the radar he made out of a TV set and the anti-gravity and the atomic power plant he invented to run it all with.

He's awful smart Skinny is, but he's not like what you think of a genius.

You know, he's not all the time using big words and he doesn't look like a genius.

I mean, we call him Skinny because he used to be skinny.

But he isn't now. I mean, he's maybe small for his age.

Anyways, he's smaller than me and I'm the same age as he is.

Of course, I'm big for my age, so that doesn't mean much does it.

Well, I guess Stinky Brinker started it.

He's always riding skinny about one thing or another, but Skinny never gets mad and it's a good thing for Stinker too.

I saw Skinny clean up on a bunch of ninth graders.

Well, a couple of them anyway.

They were saying, well, I guess I won't tell you what they were saying.

Anyway, Skinny used judo, I guess, because there wasn't much of a fight.

Anyway, Stinker said something about how he was going to be a rocket pilot when he grew up and I told him that Stinky had told me that there wouldn't be any rockets and that anti-gravity would be the thing as soon as it was invented.

So Stinker said it never would be invented and I said it would so and he said it would not and I said, well, if you're going to keep interrupting me, how can I...

Alright, anyway, Skinny broke into the argument and said that he could prove mathematically that anti-gravity was possible and Stinky said, sure he could.

And Skinny said sure he could and Stinky said sure he could, like that.

Honestly, is that any way to argue? I mean, sounds like two people agreeing. Only Stinky keeps going, sure, like that, you know?

And Stinky, what does he know about mathematics? He's had to take remedial arithmetic ever since. No, I don't understand how the anti-gravity works. Skinny told me, but it was something about mason, flow, and stuff like that, I didn't understand. The atomic power plant made more sense. Where did we get what uranium?

Gee, no, we couldn't afford uranium, so Skinny invented a hydrogen fusion plant. Anyone can make hydrogen, you just take zinc and sulfuric acid and...

Duterium, you mean like heavy hydrogen? No, Skinny said it would probably work better, but like I said, we couldn't afford anything fancy. As it was, Skinny had to pay five or six dollars for that special square tubing in the anti-gravity, and the plastic space helmets we had cost us ninety-eight cents each, and it cost a dollar and a half for the special tube that Skinny needed to make the TV set into a radar.

You see, we didn't steal anything, really. It was mostly stuff that was just lying around, like the TV set was up in my attic, and the old refrigerator that Skinny used the parts to make the atomic power plant out of from. And then a lot of the stuff we already had, like the skin diving suits we made into space suits, and the vacuum pump that Skinny had already in the generator.

Sure, we did a lot of skin diving, but that was last summer. That's how we knew about old man-brinkers compressor that Stinky said was his, and I traded my outboard motor for, and had to trade back. And that's how we knew about Mr. Fields' old compression chamber, and all that, like...

The rocket? Well, it works on the same principle as the atomic power plant, only it doesn't work except in a vacuum, hardly. Of course, you don't need much of a rocket when you have anti-gravity. Everyone knows that. Well, anyway, that's how we built the spaceship, and believe me, it wasn't easy. I mean, with Stinky all the time bothering us and laughing at us, and I had to do a lot of lawn mowing to get money for the square tubing for the anti-gravity and the special tube for the radar and my space helmet.

Stinky called the space helmets kid stuff. He was always saying things like, say hello to the folks on Mars for me, and bring back a bottle of Canal No. 5, and all like that, you know. Of course, they did look like kid stuff, I guess. We bought them at the five and died, and they were meant for kids. Of course, when Skinny got through with them, they worked fine. We tested them in the airlock of the compression chamber when we got the compressor in. They tested out pretty good for a half hour, then we tried them on in there.

Well, it wasn't complete vacuum, just 27 inches of mercury, but that was okay for a test. So anyway, we got ready to take off. Skinny was there to watch, of course. He was saying things like farewell, old brave pioneers, and stuff like that. I mean, it was enough to make you sick. He was standing there laughing and singing something like up in the air, Jr. Birdman, but when we closed the airlock door, we couldn't hear him. Skinny started up the atomic power plant, and we could see Stinky laughing fit to kill.

It takes a couple of minutes for it to warm up, you know, so Stinky started throwing rocks to attract our attention, and Skinny was scared that he'd crack a poor hole or something, so he threw the switch and we took off.

Boy, you should have seen Stinky's face. I mean, you really should have seen it. One minute he was laughing, you know, and the next minute he looked like a goldfish. I guess he always did look like a goldfish, but I mean even more like then. And he was getting smaller and smaller because we had taken off.

We were gone pretty near six hours, and it's a good thing my mom made me take a lunch. Sure, I told her where we were going. Well, anyway, I told her we were maybe going to fly around the world and skinny in my spaceship, or maybe go down to Carson's pond, and she made me take a lunch and made me promise I wouldn't go swimming alone, and I sure didn't.

But we did go around the world three or four times. I lost count. Anyway, that's when we saw the satellite on radar. So Skinny pulled the spaceship over to it and we got out and looked at it. The spacesuits worked fine, too.

Gosh, no, we didn't steal it or anything. Like Skinny said, it was just a menace to navigation, and the batteries were dead, and it wasn't working right anyway, so we tied it onto the spaceship and took it home.

No, we had to tie it on top. It was too big to take inside with the antennas sticking out. Of course, we found out how to fold them later. Well, anyway, the next day the Russian started squawking about a capitalist plot, and someone had swiped their satellite.

Gee, I mean with all the satellites up there, who'd missed just one? So I got worried that they'd find out that we took it.

Of course, I didn't need to worry because stinky told them all right, just like a tattletail. So anyway, after Skinny got the batteries recharged, we put it back, and then when we landed, there were hundreds of people standing around and Mr. Anderson from the State Department. I guess you know the rest.

Except maybe Mr. Anderson started laughing when we told him, and he said it was the best joke on the Russians he ever heard.

I guess it is when you think about it. I mean the Russians complaining about somebody swiping their satellite, and then the State Department answering a couple of kids borrowed it, but they put it back.

One thing that bothers me though, we didn't put it back exactly the way we found it, but I guess it doesn't matter. You see, when we put it back, we goofed a little.

I mean, we put it back in the same orbit more or less, but we got it going in the wrong direction.

The end. End of, we didn't do anything wrong, hardly, by Roger Cuykin doll.