The Boy With The Burnt Up Hand (part four)

Imagine my surprise when my wife and I bought a new TV and I discovered one of the free channels that came with it featured The Three Stooges. It was a pleasant surprise for me. For my wife? Not so much.

     The Stooges were a slapstick vaudevillian act from the 20s to the 70s that consisted of Curly, Larry, and Moe, and sometimes Shemp, and occasionally Joe Besser, and finally "Curly" Joe DeRita. 

     In Horsing Around, where The Three Stooges have a horse for a sister (it's better if you don't ask), Moe laments the three of them not owning a car.

     "That's nothing," my father, who's also a Stooges fan, told me. "When I was twelve, my uncle was the only one in our family who had a car."

     I know that sounds like the makings of a horror story to kids these days ("You mean you had to go to a store and rent a movie?"), but believe it or not people weren't automatically given a car for their 16th birthday back in those days.

     My father was always mechanically inclined, so his uncle made a deal with him: if my father would fix it for free, his uncle would let him drive it around. True, cars were simpler back then, but I don't know of a 12-year-old these days that I'd trust with a shoehorn, much less a combustible engine. 

     Apparently, my father was a good mechanic because he got to drive around his uncle's car a lot.

     When we were in the ER and the man with the burnt up hand was finally called to the back for treatment, my father said, "That's nothing," and he told me about the time he was working on his uncle's car and cut the palm of his hand pretty badly. A nasty gash that poured blood. 

     My father thought fast. He called out to his uncle. His uncle thought faster. He grabbed a bottle of tequila. He told my father to hold out his injured hand, palm up. Trusting him, my father did. Blood was dripping to the ground. Like a scene from a movie his uncle opened the bottle, took a swig, and then poured tequila over the open wound. It burned like hell. My father almost passed out from the pain, but he held his mud. It cleaned the wound, but the cut was still bleeding. So his uncle touched the red tip of his cigarette to the liquid. The alcohol ignited. Skin burned. The wound was cauterized the old-fashioned way.

     "What did you do?" I asked my father.

     "What did I do?" my father asked me like I was stupid. "I passed out!"