The Irresistible
Hole in the Wall
by Don Drewniak
It was off to
South Shore Beach in Little Compton, Rhode Island
two weeks after the end of the 1954 school year
to stay with my Uncle Al and Aunt Jenny.
South Shore
was divided into two sections: a beach area
covered with white sand and a rocky area
extending fifteen to twenty-five feet from the
shore line, depending on whether the tide was
high or low. There were approximately fifty
trailers and a half-dozen cabanas in a grassy
area beyond the rocks. Three of the cabanas had
been built by my father. My aunt and uncle owned
a trailer in the first row ocean side.
I was eleven-years
old and more than a little curious about female
anatomy. My cousin Walter, who also was staying
in the trailer, was no less curious. There were
three, perhaps four, weather-beaten, wooden
changing stalls on the beach. One side was for
females, the other for males. They were separated
by a wall of boards no more than an inch thick.
We generally used them only to change into dry
clothes at the end of beach days.
About halfway
through our two-week stay, we were in one of the
stalls when Walter pointed upward at the
separating wall and whispered, “Look, there’s
a hole near the top.”
What boy my
age could resist the urge to peep through it?
Fortunately, I had fully changed. Walter was not
as lucky as he was buck naked. I cautiously
stepped up on a bench that was fixed to the wall.
The hole was no more a half-inch in diameter and
fairly close to eye level. When I looked into it,
I found that it sloped downward giving me a clear
view of most of the small room.
“What do
you see?” whispered Walter.
I returned a
whisper. “Nothing, it’s empty. I’ll
keep looking.”
The door began
to open forty to fifty seconds later. With my
right hand, I motioned to Walter that the door
was opening. Barely squeezing through the door
was one of the fattest women I had ever seen. She
was wearing a dark-purple bathing suit. I began
to feel a little sick, but I couldn’t take
my eye off her.
Following a
protracted struggle, she managed to start pulling
her suit downward. Out flopped two breasts three
times the size of the torpedo heads on the front
of an early ’50s Buick. Instead of sticking
straight out like the Buick torpedoes, her
torpedoes seemed destined to spill down to the
floor. Next out tumbled an enormous stomach or,
more properly, what seemed to be several stomachs.
I had seen enough. Trying to look as if I had
just gazed at Marilyn Monroe, I stepped off the
bench and mouthed, “She’s beautiful!”
That was
precisely what Walter wanted to hear. Once on the
bench, he had to get up on his toes as he was
about three inches shorter than me. He peered
through the hole and let out a scream that
sounded like it might be coming from someone
about to be eaten by a thirty-foot crocodile. A
scream returned from the other side of the wall.
I grabbed my towel and wet bathing suit, and
bolted toward the trailers.
When I reached
the end of the beach, I turned to look back.
Walter, with his bathing suit, a pullover shirt,
a pair of short pants and a towel in his hands
was about thirty yards behind me. I took off as
fast as I could, determined to lose him. Cutting
between a few trailers, I made my way to a two-foot-high
stone wall designed to prevent vehicles from
entering the trailer section of South Beach
except through a gate usually monitored by some
white-haired guy who looked like he was two-hundred-years
old.
I scrambled
over the wall and skirted its perimeter until I
made it to the opposite side of the trailers.
Finding an area with dunes and salt grass for
cover, I picked a spot from where I could see the
front of our trailer. It took several minutes
before my heart stopped pounding. Close to what
must have been a half hour went by — no
Walter. The thought that he had been nabbed by
the cops crossed my mind. Finally, he appeared
— fully dressed with bathing suit and towel
in hand. After hanging them on a short
clothesline, he entered the trailer.
On the lookout
for the cops, I slowly made my way to the trailer.
Both my bathing suit and towel were dry. After
shaking any remaining sand from them, I tried to
look calm as I entered the trailer.
“Where
have you been, Donald?” asked Aunt Jenny.
My brain
deserted me as I was totally unprepared for the
question.
What had
Walter told her? Did he confess?
“Watching
the turtles at the pond.”
“You look
a little guilty. You weren’t throwing rocks
at them, were you?”
Was she
setting a trap?
“No, Aunt
Jenny. Well, maybe one or two, but I wasn’t
trying to hit them.”
Then came the
stare. Five seconds passed, then ten. Finally,
she said, “Well, you know you’re not
supposed to do that. It’s against the rules.”
“I’m
sorry. I won’t do it again.”
Meanwhile,
Walter glared at me the whole time while munching
on Made-Rite potato chips he was pulling out of a
large tin container.
“Have
some chips,” she suggested.
Looking at
Walter, I figured he would bite my hand if tried
to grab any.
“What are
we having for supper?” I asked.
“Beans
and franks.”
“You make
the best. I’ll wait for supper.
Walter
silently mouthed, “Brown nose.”
He refused to
speak to me until late the next day when he
detailed having dashed into a men’s room
tucked behind the office of the trailer section.
It only had a sink and toilet. Not much bigger
than an outhouse, it always smelled like one that
hadn’t been cleaned in a year. After putting
on his clothes, he stayed in it until he could no
long take the stench. All the while, he prayed to
Our Lady of Czestozowa that he hadn’t been
followed.
“So that
was the stink in the trailer yesterday,” I
laughed.
He took a wild
swing at me, missing by more than a foot.
Slightly
changing a phrase I learned from Uncle Al while
watching a Red Sox game on his television, I
jokingly added, “You never could hit the
side of a barn door.”
He joined me
in laughing. The laughter continued for about two
minutes. When it came to a stop, I said, “Just
think, it’s all better from here.”
“How so?”
“We’ll
never see a woman with no clothes on worse than
that one.”
Walter blessed
himself three times.
Copyright
© 2024 by Don Drewniak. All rights reserved.
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