THE MEDICINE OF MISCHIEF
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Medicine Of Mischief By ERNEST L. MEYER HALLOWE'EN has come and gone, and left me with a curious sense of loss. The celebration lacked the fervor of the old days. In my boyhood in Milwaukee—...
...I then expounded to him patiently that peas in cans were not suitable for tossing at people's windows because you might throw a brand the housewife didn't care about, and she'd ask for a refund...
...In my boyhood in Milwaukee— good heavens, it's 40 years ago—it was part of the official Hallowe'en program to tear up wooden fence pickets and gates...
...My heart sank further when I went to the grocery shop at our corner and found that not only did he lack penny pea-shooters, but there wasn't a split pea on the premises...
...There is nothing, I explained to the clerk, that annoys a housewife more on Hallowe'en than to sit at a window and have the wrong brand of peas crashing through the glass and landing in the family fish-bowl...
...So they merely wander about in innocuous, silly masks, or stay at home, and the malice accumulates year after year until suddenly they blow up with a loud explosion and murder their maiden aunts, or kidnap bankers, or start wars, or proclaim the mad precepts of Italia Irredenta or Nordic Supremacy or the mission of the Highborn Sons of Heaven...
...My Hallowe'en Was ruined^ Some day civilization will wake up and take notice of the grave harm it has wrought by removing wooden fences, wooden sidewalks, and structures...
...But in these dreadful times when you observe a man wrapped around a fence you suspect him, not of holiness, but of hiccoughs...
...It is a plot against innocent children to deprive them of wooden sidewalks...
...Somehow I had the feeling that he wasn't very fright...
...Not A Split Pea In Sight When I searched for wooden sidewalks to tear up, I was likewise disappointed...
...Lament For Hallowe'en But my chief disappointment came when I went around to the backs of residences in our neighborhood and looked for structures to tip over...
...The destructive impulse finds release in knocking over, violently, a set of ordinary wooden pins...
...There were no structures...
...That treatment is—the game of bowling...
...It is very possible that a psychopath like Hitler could not have developed if in his boyhood he had, once a year at least, sallied forth to tip over structures instead of hoarding his hatred against the day when he tried to tip over the world...
...And the patient goes away from the bowling alleys assuaged, confident that for the time being he has vent his spleen happily against the hostile universe...
...Feeling in the authentic mood last Hallowe'en night I sallied forth in search of wooden fences and wooden sidewalks...
...He agreed heartily, and then asked if a nice can of succotash or pumpkin wouldn't do...
...So I went home, weeping bitterly...
...Lovely cans with assorted labels...
...Concrete and cement walks were devised by a fiend who nursed a hatred for boys and girls...
...Wooden walks were not only useful on Hallowe'en, but they were grand to play knife on, and peg-top...
...Hitler Was Never A Bowler To be sure, modern psychiatry is beginning to recog>-nize the value of the medicine of mischief, though its application to human ills is as yet quite restricted...
...In all of our New York City neighborhood, not one...
...These things allowed every youth to get rid of his malice against adult order and adult rules and regulations, and against adult society as a whole at least once a year...
...Science knows that the impulse to destroy is innate amongst most of us, and that it can be rendered harmless if diverted to channels relatively innocent...
...This is one of the most structureless cities in the nation, and I don't think Chic Sale would approve...
...I told him I had set my heart on shooting peas at people's windows...
...hoist-Mr...
...Research will prove, I think, that a man like Herr Hitler was never a bowler, that he never played a game like football where 22 men battle like maniacs for possession of an inflated pellet of pigskin, that he never blew split peas at a neighbor's windows, and that his sole revenge against adult society in his youth was to paint bad pictures—a revenge that was robbed of therapeutic value because he thought they were good...
...In the old days when you saw a fellow wrestling with a wooden picket fence you knew immediately that he was Hallowe'enish, and you walked away on tiptoes and left him to his pious deeds...
...Also people running for street cars used to lose coins between the cracks of the sidewalk, and it was one of the keenest pleasures of little children to tear up $10 worth of sidewalk in search of seven cents...
...He explained there had been a run on dried peas since the ration points had been removed, and he then insisted on selling me some choice peas—in cans...
...Schlukebier's sleigh to the top of his woodshed, pull up the planks of wooden sidewalks, shoot split peas at windows, and steal around to the back of homes and tip over structures...
...Perhaps a lot of present day wars and homicides and general gangsterism can be traced to the fact that our children nowadays can't go out on Hallowe'en and raise the devil...
...This was depressing...
...I tried manfully to tear down a large wrought-iron fence in Stuyvesant Park across the way, but gave up in sorrow when a woman passed with a young child aad the child cried: "Ooh, mom, look it the man playing monkey-in-a-cage...
...For example, only of recent years has a new treatment been added to the care and possible cure of certain mentally unbalanced patients...
...All that is past, except, perhaps, in remote villages...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 46
