the imaginary capers of the Caputo clan:
Jodi Picout in her book 'Handle with Care' wrote: It is one thing to make a mistake; it is another thing to keep making it...
Jodi Picout in her book 'Handle with Care' wrote: It is one thing to make a mistake; it is another thing to keep making it...
WHICH IS WHY WE THOUGHT THAT NO MOVIE MAKER OR NOVELIST COULD HAVE EVER...
INVENTED THIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SON,WHO MOST FOLKS SAID WERE A TRIO of felonious outlaws, and the tale that follows is about what nefarious errors in judgement that the three of us were about to make with regard to the three of them. The father was named Grayson. The son, Tate. Grayson seemed to be a man rife with cynicism and one who despised children. Tate was the family black sheep who everyone was certain was 'A little-light-in-the-loafers' because he had dainty walk; and they were both manipulated by the equally odd wife and mother by the name of Ambrosia. Although nobody had ever actually seen Ambrosia do any of this, hearsay had it that even as attractive as she was, she liked to tend to her vegetable garden with a pistol tucked into a holster at her hip with a toothpick jutting out of her mouth, always wore pink slippers and bib-overalls without a top when she watered the front yard, and sometimes stood naked behind the drapes of her living room as she peered-out at passing trucks filled with old-farmers kicking up the dust of the dirt road in front of the family farm.
They all resided in a small tight-knit farming community called Windsor, Colorado, 59 miles north of Denver where strangers were rare, and they had appeared out of nowhere in early spring. Since we had no true history of how they arrived in Windsor or where they had actually come from before that, circulating stories were packed with theories that the family had once robbed banks back in the 1930's in places like Nebraska and Kansas and Wyoming, which had enabled them to live a life of relative ease. This was due to the fact that there were still old-timers around town who talked about The Notorious Heists of the Caputo Gang; and Caputo happened to be their last name. One rumor had it that they may have been responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh toddler back in June of 1930 because some folks around town said that they thought that the Caputo's might have originally been from East Amwell, New Jersey, where the kidnapping had taken place even though a fellow by the name of Bruno Richard Hauptmann had been convicted and executed for committing the crime.
The Caputo family happened to own the farm adjacent to my Uncle Jake and Aunt Eugenie's farm just south of town. Tate went everywhere his Mother went. They shopped in town, he dressed in a linen suit and straw hat with a red feather sticking out of the band, while Grayson spent the majority of his time building a large tugboat on an acre of land near the rear of the property . There was a quality of fable to all of this, of course, a tale of intrigue about why a man would build a tugboat in a Colorado potato patch.
At the age of 6, my cousin Charlene and I had little doubt that we had the answer to all of the above. The war in Europe had just begun and it was obvious to the two-of-us that not only were they responsible for robbing banks and kidnapping babies, they were, in all likelihood, Nazi spies, as well. We we were almost certain that the boat was being built in order for them to fulfill their Utopian dream of eventual escape when the villainous Adolph Hitler found a way to flood America with water in order drown our crops and starve us to death while Hitler's henchmen rode away on the top of the rush of water to the safety of some place like Mexico in the tugboat.
Charlene's brother, Arthur, who was then 8 years-of-age, was equally convinced that Grayson's boat was a mere ploy designed to take our minds off-of-the-fact that the Soviets of the Stalinist regime were planning to invade Colorado in order to get our potato crop because he'd read in the local newspaper that Russians were almost devoid of food due to the Russian winter, and he was as certain as we were that they were planning an invasion with motorized tanks, now hidden within the bowels of The Rocky Mountain Range somewhere near Colorado Springs in order to steal our food. By then, of course, all of this did not answer the question as to why a tugboat would be in a Colorado potato patch, but our collective imaginations had now grown by leaps-and-bounds, and we then began to evoke the images of the nefarious Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, since Caputo seemed to us to be and Italian name, we began asking ourselves: Could Benito be behind the building of the boat? And if so, Why? But we knew how important it was to find out, and it was then that Arthur said: We're going to confront the Caputo's head-on!
What we now needed was A Master Plan. The task at hand would have to be one of stealth and deception and be absolutely fail-safe, in order for us to succeed. The fate of our Nation was at stake. We were, after all, about to deal with a family of potential saboteurs with an absolutely evil past of both carnage and corruption. So we came to the decision that Arthur would be in command of whatever our brilliant plan would turn out to be. The first thing Arthur did did was grab his father Jake's' binoculars and we all went outside to survey the Caputo farmhouse to see if any of them were home. They were. We were now filled with that unnerving sense of menace, one which precedes any frightening adventure into the great unknown, as we made slowly our way through their potato patch toward their farmhouse in the distance.
Neither Charlene nor I knew what Arthur's plan was until we walked up the steps to the front porch and he knocked on the door, then asked in a loud voice, Is anybody home? Grayson was standing in his underwear when he opened he drapes, peered out at us, then yelled: Get off of my front porch!!! We quickly scurried down the steps and across the potato patch, through the yard, and up to the front porch of a uncle Jake and aunt Eugenie's farmhouse, where we balanced ourselves precariously on the front porch railing completely out-of-breath, as Arthur wheezed, I think I need to think of something else...
It was then that he decided to kidnap Tate in order to get the truth about what this nefarious clandestine family of his was actually up to. The Caputo's happened to own a black 1936 Hudson Teraplane which he would drive to The Windsor Hotel, order scrambled eggs with crisp bacon with a side-order of mashed potatoes and gravy almost every morning, then take a stroll to the grocery store to buy roses for his mother, and make his way to the Sugar Beet and Potato Dump to negotiate the selling price for his father's crop.
Arthur's plan was to capture him and take him hostage as he returned to his car, where he would be made to drive the three-of-us back to uncle Jake's barn, we would then tie-him-up and sit him down in a horse-stall, and the questioning would begin. The problem with that was this: We waited until 2 o'clock in the afternoon across the street from the hotel on the following Tuesday morning and he never showed-up. We then found out from the owner of the grocery store that Tate he had apparently been drafted and was now off to the war in Europe.
That minor problem did not seem to deter Arthur at all. He decided that when we returned to the farm, he would call the FBI Office in Denver and inform them that they had just sent a potential archenemy of the United States of America off to the European front, where he would no doubt be a saboteur for either Hitler or Mussolini and even perhaps, Stalin. The call was made. Arthur gave his name; and the trouble began almost immediately thereafter when a tan Chevrolet came roaring through the front gate of of aunt Eugenie's and uncle Jake's farmhouse as the sun was about to set and the three of us out were on the porch waiting for dinner. We watched in fascination as two FBI Agents exited the car, showed us their identification, walked up the front porch steps, and gave a rapid knock to the door.
Once uncle Jake had answered the knock and they once again identified themselves, one of the Agent's motioned for us to come inside and then told us to sit on the sofa, the three of them went off into the kitchen where aunt Eugenie had been cooking dinner, and they had a long whispered conversation while we waited in the living room. By the looks on their faces, it was obvious to the three-of-us that they were not the bearers-of-good-tidings. It was then that uncle Jake made a telephone call and the next thing we knew Mr. and Mrs. Caputo were rapping on the door, one of the FBI Agents answered the knock, escorted them through the living room past the three of us, and they too were now in the ever-growing crowded kitchen. I think something's up and whatever it is, it's not good, Arthur whispered.
He was obviously right, because it was then that the two FBI Agents came back into the living room and ordered Arthur to stay seated on the sofa, as Charlene and I were escorted back out onto the front porch, told to plop ourselves on the porch swing, while one of the Agents sat on the railing with an ashtray in his hand, kept-an-eye-on-us, and began to smoke a Lucky Strike cigarette. Arthur was grilled for about an hour and from what we could see through the front screen door, it did not look as if it was going well because Arthur was crying and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake and Mr. and Mrs. Caputo, who had now returned to the front room, were all glaring at him.
When I thought it could not get worse, it did.
It was then that I saw my Mother and Father drive through the gate. They quickly got out of the car and walked past me without so much as a word. A half-an-hour passed. Then an hour, as Charlene and I sat silently on the swing. The FBI Agent finished another Lucky Strike, put the stump out in the ashtray now full of cigarette butts, and then Mr. and Mrs. Caputo came out the door, slammed the screen door shut behind them, and began to walk back against the hard-packed gravel of the driveway in the direction of their farm.
It was shortly after that when my Father stepped out onto the porch, stared down at me with a look of disappointment, and asked, Dick, where did you come-up with the cockamamie story that the Caputo's were some kind of foreign agents? I felt a small tremble about what might come next. Were you aware that Mr. Caputo served under General 'Blackjack' Pershing and his American Expeditionary Force that led to the victory over Germany in World War One and that Mr. Caputo won several citations for bravery including the Purple Heart? I sheepishly replied, No Sir. And he said, Or that Mr. Caputo became a tugboat designer in New York City after World War One came to an end and that the tugboat on his farm is a prototype for a new design in order to allow bardges to turn safely in narrow channels? I had some time here now to think of an apt reply but could only come up with, No Sir, I didn't know that. I then idiotically added, I guess that means he didn't kidnap the Lindbergh baby or rob any banks, either, right? At that moment uncle Jake came out on the porch, looked at my Dad, and said, It's all settled. The FBI is satisfied and the three of them will start at dawn tomorrow morning. Dad asked, Caputo is OK with that? And uncle Jake answered, He said that he'd be more than happy to work them from dawn to dusk seven days a week but wants to know if he needs to feed them lunch. I told him No.
I somehow became painfully aware that I would be spending more than my planned two-week stay at my aunt and uncle's farm and that we were not, in all likelihood, having any dinner that night.
It was on a Tuesday in the second week of the three of us digging into the damp well-drained soil and hauling the potatoes in a wheelbarrow to a large barn when we saw the huge truck from New York City pickup the tugboat. We were now surrounded by German prisoners-of-war who were digging ditches for Mr. Caputo to plant even more potatoes, and the German prisoners got fed every day promptly at noon. The one that Mrs. Caputo had cooked for them. While they were resting and eating and telling each other jokes in German, we were milking cows and cleaning-up cow dung and pigeon poop and sipping small canteens of water. Each day had begun prior to dawn at at 4 o'clock and ended at 7 PM after the sun had begun to set. One day Arthur said, Do you think it would help if we apologized to Mr. Caputo? We did. It didn't. He then decided that we would also paint his barn each-and-every night until 9 o'clock in the evening.
One afternoon wet with rain about a month after that, I saw Mrs. Caputo in a yellow dress coming out of the house, peeling an orange. I could hear the sound of an engine, saw an Army Jeep coming up the road, watched the Jeep pass me with a man in a uniform driving and Tate in the passenger seat dressed in civilian clothes. Later it would be reported, without details, as a minor incident involving Tate attempting to solicit his Drill Sergeant by asking the Drill Sergeant if he would like to spend a little time with him naked on a cot, and that Tate had then earned himself a dishonorable discharge for asking a simple question. This did not surprise us at all, because as rumor had it, his Mother liked to get naked too. From that day forward, Tate dug potatoes with us but got to eat with the German prisoners and only had to work from 10 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
When summer's end eventually came, my Mother and Father arrived to take me back to our home in Denver. My Dad paused as he looked at me and said, It looks like you've lost a little weight, Son. I have, I said. Later Charlene and Arthur and I sat silently on the living room sofa while my Mother and Father and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake sat smiling and sipping coffee in the kitchen. They were joined shortly thereafter by Mr. and Mrs. Caputo and Tate, who sat quietly on a chair next to us and Arthur asked him in a low voice, How come you like to diddle men? And Tate replied, How come you like to tell lies about my parents? You tell me why you do that and I'll tell you why I do what I do. The uncomfortable silence returned to the room.
Eventually, Mr. Caputo came from the kitchen into the living room. It was the first time we had ever seen him smile. He said, I want you to know that I'm not upset about the the fibs you told about my family, I'm upset that you have put your parents in a position where they can no longer believe a word you say.
He then looked at Tate and added, And that I have put my own son in a place where he was afraid to tell me the truth about who he was and is. I would like it if all of us would take the time to get to know each other before we start talking about one another behind their backs. With that, he walked over to Tate, gave him a hug, and they departed the farmhouse to go out for a long walk.
Over the years that followed, Tate would become a leading advocate for Gay Rights with Arthur marching at his side, Mr. and Mrs. Caputo became good friends to all three of us, she would make Charlene and I a rhubarb pie every time I came to visit my aunt and uncle, and he would show all of us the schematics of how to build a boat...
...Our lesson learned was this: Never again attempt to second-guess who people are because you may be way-off-base and destroy the reputations of some really fine people along-the-way...
They all resided in a small tight-knit farming community called Windsor, Colorado, 59 miles north of Denver where strangers were rare, and they had appeared out of nowhere in early spring. Since we had no true history of how they arrived in Windsor or where they had actually come from before that, circulating stories were packed with theories that the family had once robbed banks back in the 1930's in places like Nebraska and Kansas and Wyoming, which had enabled them to live a life of relative ease. This was due to the fact that there were still old-timers around town who talked about The Notorious Heists of the Caputo Gang; and Caputo happened to be their last name. One rumor had it that they may have been responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh toddler back in June of 1930 because some folks around town said that they thought that the Caputo's might have originally been from East Amwell, New Jersey, where the kidnapping had taken place even though a fellow by the name of Bruno Richard Hauptmann had been convicted and executed for committing the crime.
The Caputo family happened to own the farm adjacent to my Uncle Jake and Aunt Eugenie's farm just south of town. Tate went everywhere his Mother went. They shopped in town, he dressed in a linen suit and straw hat with a red feather sticking out of the band, while Grayson spent the majority of his time building a large tugboat on an acre of land near the rear of the property . There was a quality of fable to all of this, of course, a tale of intrigue about why a man would build a tugboat in a Colorado potato patch.
At the age of 6, my cousin Charlene and I had little doubt that we had the answer to all of the above. The war in Europe had just begun and it was obvious to the two-of-us that not only were they responsible for robbing banks and kidnapping babies, they were, in all likelihood, Nazi spies, as well. We we were almost certain that the boat was being built in order for them to fulfill their Utopian dream of eventual escape when the villainous Adolph Hitler found a way to flood America with water in order drown our crops and starve us to death while Hitler's henchmen rode away on the top of the rush of water to the safety of some place like Mexico in the tugboat.
Charlene's brother, Arthur, who was then 8 years-of-age, was equally convinced that Grayson's boat was a mere ploy designed to take our minds off-of-the-fact that the Soviets of the Stalinist regime were planning to invade Colorado in order to get our potato crop because he'd read in the local newspaper that Russians were almost devoid of food due to the Russian winter, and he was as certain as we were that they were planning an invasion with motorized tanks, now hidden within the bowels of The Rocky Mountain Range somewhere near Colorado Springs in order to steal our food. By then, of course, all of this did not answer the question as to why a tugboat would be in a Colorado potato patch, but our collective imaginations had now grown by leaps-and-bounds, and we then began to evoke the images of the nefarious Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, since Caputo seemed to us to be and Italian name, we began asking ourselves: Could Benito be behind the building of the boat? And if so, Why? But we knew how important it was to find out, and it was then that Arthur said: We're going to confront the Caputo's head-on!
What we now needed was A Master Plan. The task at hand would have to be one of stealth and deception and be absolutely fail-safe, in order for us to succeed. The fate of our Nation was at stake. We were, after all, about to deal with a family of potential saboteurs with an absolutely evil past of both carnage and corruption. So we came to the decision that Arthur would be in command of whatever our brilliant plan would turn out to be. The first thing Arthur did did was grab his father Jake's' binoculars and we all went outside to survey the Caputo farmhouse to see if any of them were home. They were. We were now filled with that unnerving sense of menace, one which precedes any frightening adventure into the great unknown, as we made slowly our way through their potato patch toward their farmhouse in the distance.
Neither Charlene nor I knew what Arthur's plan was until we walked up the steps to the front porch and he knocked on the door, then asked in a loud voice, Is anybody home? Grayson was standing in his underwear when he opened he drapes, peered out at us, then yelled: Get off of my front porch!!! We quickly scurried down the steps and across the potato patch, through the yard, and up to the front porch of a uncle Jake and aunt Eugenie's farmhouse, where we balanced ourselves precariously on the front porch railing completely out-of-breath, as Arthur wheezed, I think I need to think of something else...
It was then that he decided to kidnap Tate in order to get the truth about what this nefarious clandestine family of his was actually up to. The Caputo's happened to own a black 1936 Hudson Teraplane which he would drive to The Windsor Hotel, order scrambled eggs with crisp bacon with a side-order of mashed potatoes and gravy almost every morning, then take a stroll to the grocery store to buy roses for his mother, and make his way to the Sugar Beet and Potato Dump to negotiate the selling price for his father's crop.
Arthur's plan was to capture him and take him hostage as he returned to his car, where he would be made to drive the three-of-us back to uncle Jake's barn, we would then tie-him-up and sit him down in a horse-stall, and the questioning would begin. The problem with that was this: We waited until 2 o'clock in the afternoon across the street from the hotel on the following Tuesday morning and he never showed-up. We then found out from the owner of the grocery store that Tate he had apparently been drafted and was now off to the war in Europe.
That minor problem did not seem to deter Arthur at all. He decided that when we returned to the farm, he would call the FBI Office in Denver and inform them that they had just sent a potential archenemy of the United States of America off to the European front, where he would no doubt be a saboteur for either Hitler or Mussolini and even perhaps, Stalin. The call was made. Arthur gave his name; and the trouble began almost immediately thereafter when a tan Chevrolet came roaring through the front gate of of aunt Eugenie's and uncle Jake's farmhouse as the sun was about to set and the three of us out were on the porch waiting for dinner. We watched in fascination as two FBI Agents exited the car, showed us their identification, walked up the front porch steps, and gave a rapid knock to the door.
Once uncle Jake had answered the knock and they once again identified themselves, one of the Agent's motioned for us to come inside and then told us to sit on the sofa, the three of them went off into the kitchen where aunt Eugenie had been cooking dinner, and they had a long whispered conversation while we waited in the living room. By the looks on their faces, it was obvious to the three-of-us that they were not the bearers-of-good-tidings. It was then that uncle Jake made a telephone call and the next thing we knew Mr. and Mrs. Caputo were rapping on the door, one of the FBI Agents answered the knock, escorted them through the living room past the three of us, and they too were now in the ever-growing crowded kitchen. I think something's up and whatever it is, it's not good, Arthur whispered.
He was obviously right, because it was then that the two FBI Agents came back into the living room and ordered Arthur to stay seated on the sofa, as Charlene and I were escorted back out onto the front porch, told to plop ourselves on the porch swing, while one of the Agents sat on the railing with an ashtray in his hand, kept-an-eye-on-us, and began to smoke a Lucky Strike cigarette. Arthur was grilled for about an hour and from what we could see through the front screen door, it did not look as if it was going well because Arthur was crying and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake and Mr. and Mrs. Caputo, who had now returned to the front room, were all glaring at him.
When I thought it could not get worse, it did.
It was then that I saw my Mother and Father drive through the gate. They quickly got out of the car and walked past me without so much as a word. A half-an-hour passed. Then an hour, as Charlene and I sat silently on the swing. The FBI Agent finished another Lucky Strike, put the stump out in the ashtray now full of cigarette butts, and then Mr. and Mrs. Caputo came out the door, slammed the screen door shut behind them, and began to walk back against the hard-packed gravel of the driveway in the direction of their farm.
It was shortly after that when my Father stepped out onto the porch, stared down at me with a look of disappointment, and asked, Dick, where did you come-up with the cockamamie story that the Caputo's were some kind of foreign agents? I felt a small tremble about what might come next. Were you aware that Mr. Caputo served under General 'Blackjack' Pershing and his American Expeditionary Force that led to the victory over Germany in World War One and that Mr. Caputo won several citations for bravery including the Purple Heart? I sheepishly replied, No Sir. And he said, Or that Mr. Caputo became a tugboat designer in New York City after World War One came to an end and that the tugboat on his farm is a prototype for a new design in order to allow bardges to turn safely in narrow channels? I had some time here now to think of an apt reply but could only come up with, No Sir, I didn't know that. I then idiotically added, I guess that means he didn't kidnap the Lindbergh baby or rob any banks, either, right? At that moment uncle Jake came out on the porch, looked at my Dad, and said, It's all settled. The FBI is satisfied and the three of them will start at dawn tomorrow morning. Dad asked, Caputo is OK with that? And uncle Jake answered, He said that he'd be more than happy to work them from dawn to dusk seven days a week but wants to know if he needs to feed them lunch. I told him No.
I somehow became painfully aware that I would be spending more than my planned two-week stay at my aunt and uncle's farm and that we were not, in all likelihood, having any dinner that night.
It was on a Tuesday in the second week of the three of us digging into the damp well-drained soil and hauling the potatoes in a wheelbarrow to a large barn when we saw the huge truck from New York City pickup the tugboat. We were now surrounded by German prisoners-of-war who were digging ditches for Mr. Caputo to plant even more potatoes, and the German prisoners got fed every day promptly at noon. The one that Mrs. Caputo had cooked for them. While they were resting and eating and telling each other jokes in German, we were milking cows and cleaning-up cow dung and pigeon poop and sipping small canteens of water. Each day had begun prior to dawn at at 4 o'clock and ended at 7 PM after the sun had begun to set. One day Arthur said, Do you think it would help if we apologized to Mr. Caputo? We did. It didn't. He then decided that we would also paint his barn each-and-every night until 9 o'clock in the evening.
One afternoon wet with rain about a month after that, I saw Mrs. Caputo in a yellow dress coming out of the house, peeling an orange. I could hear the sound of an engine, saw an Army Jeep coming up the road, watched the Jeep pass me with a man in a uniform driving and Tate in the passenger seat dressed in civilian clothes. Later it would be reported, without details, as a minor incident involving Tate attempting to solicit his Drill Sergeant by asking the Drill Sergeant if he would like to spend a little time with him naked on a cot, and that Tate had then earned himself a dishonorable discharge for asking a simple question. This did not surprise us at all, because as rumor had it, his Mother liked to get naked too. From that day forward, Tate dug potatoes with us but got to eat with the German prisoners and only had to work from 10 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
When summer's end eventually came, my Mother and Father arrived to take me back to our home in Denver. My Dad paused as he looked at me and said, It looks like you've lost a little weight, Son. I have, I said. Later Charlene and Arthur and I sat silently on the living room sofa while my Mother and Father and aunt Eugenie and uncle Jake sat smiling and sipping coffee in the kitchen. They were joined shortly thereafter by Mr. and Mrs. Caputo and Tate, who sat quietly on a chair next to us and Arthur asked him in a low voice, How come you like to diddle men? And Tate replied, How come you like to tell lies about my parents? You tell me why you do that and I'll tell you why I do what I do. The uncomfortable silence returned to the room.
Eventually, Mr. Caputo came from the kitchen into the living room. It was the first time we had ever seen him smile. He said, I want you to know that I'm not upset about the the fibs you told about my family, I'm upset that you have put your parents in a position where they can no longer believe a word you say.
He then looked at Tate and added, And that I have put my own son in a place where he was afraid to tell me the truth about who he was and is. I would like it if all of us would take the time to get to know each other before we start talking about one another behind their backs. With that, he walked over to Tate, gave him a hug, and they departed the farmhouse to go out for a long walk.
Over the years that followed, Tate would become a leading advocate for Gay Rights with Arthur marching at his side, Mr. and Mrs. Caputo became good friends to all three of us, she would make Charlene and I a rhubarb pie every time I came to visit my aunt and uncle, and he would show all of us the schematics of how to build a boat...
...Our lesson learned was this: Never again attempt to second-guess who people are because you may be way-off-base and destroy the reputations of some really fine people along-the-way...
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