LIFE IN THE COLE BIN

By Burton W. Cole

Playing tag in the cornfield with dirt clods had gotten boring. So boring that we even were willing to talk about school.

While my cousin Ollie tried to fix one of the corn stalks that we’d bent, he said, “That was a silly question the teacher asked today: ‘If you stood on top of a tall building and dropped a sack of nails and a sack of feathers, both weighing one pound, which would land first?’”

“Yeah,” I said. “They’d hit at the same time.”

“No way. Feathers are lighter than nails. Unless the feathers are still attached to the chicken.”

“You have one pound of nails and one pound of feathers.”

“Feathers float. Especially if they’re still attached to the chicken.”

I looked for a fresh dirt clod that maybe could knock some sense into Ollie. “They’re not. Just feathers. No birds. And the feathers are bagged up.”

“Nails weigh a lot more.”

“Listen!” I huffed. “Each sack weighs one pound. They’re exactly the same.”

“Feathers fly. Maybe not very well, if they’re attached to the chicken. They’re a lot different than nails.”

“No chickens. Just a little bag of nails and a big bag of feathers.”

“Tell you what, Burtie. Let’s do one of those spearmint things.”

“Experiment?”

“Yeah, that. Pop has a box of nails in the garage. I’ll borrow Ma’s meat scale and weigh out a pound.”

I nodded. “And for the feathers?”

“Be right back.” Ollie dashed into the house. A minute later, he zipped back out, a scale tucked under one arm and a pillowcase dangling for his other hand. “We’ll put the feathers in this.”

I looked around. “What feathers?”

“Race ya to the chicken coop.”

I sprinted after him. “We can’t pluck the chickens. They’ll catch colds.”

“And Pop would yell at us. But there are lots of loose feathers in the coop and scattered everywhere in the chicken yard.”

Scooping up feathers while trying to avoid other gunk in the grass and dodging chickens and their sharp beaks is a lot harder than it sounds. “This is gonna take forever,” I moaned, jamming another three feathers into the still-mostly empty pillowcase.

Ollie eyed the pillowcase. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Uh-oh.”

He zipped into the house and tiptoed back out, an old-looking pillow clutched to his chest. The pillow weighed two pounds. Ollie dug out his pocketknife and cut a slit in the pillow.

“We’ll take out feathers until the pillow is one pound. Then you can sew it back up.”

“Me? I don’t know how to sew.”

“How hard can it be if even girls can do it?”

“I guess. My dad sews buttons back onto his own shirts. If my dad can do it…”

“Let’s use duct tape. It’ll be faster. Race ya to the barn.”

We ran up the hayloft and swung open the door. A curl of dizziness swayed me. The gravel driveway looked like it was a long way down.

Ollie handed me the pillow. He held the box of nails. We were ready for the spearmint, er, experiment. “On three, we let go. One… two… THREE!”

A second later there was a simultaneous explosion of nails and feathers. We hadn’t taken the time to duct tape either one.

The other thing that happened at that exact moment is that Uncle Rollie and Aunt Tillie walked out the back door. I remember there was a lot of yelling about nails in tractor tires and Grandma’s antique pillows, but that part was a blur. And probably not something I’m allowed to repeat.

“Told ya.” After picking up every last nail and feather, we had been grounded and sent to Ollie’s room for a “month of Sundays,” I think is what Aunt Tillie said. “The pound of nails and the pound of feathers hit at the same time.”

“If only the pound of parents hadn’t hit the back steps at the same time,” Ollie muttered.

He looked up and shook his head. “The nails exploded first.”

“You’ve got feathers for brains. With the chicken still attached.”

I needed a dirt clod.

“Spearmint” with Burt's tall tales at news@falmouthoutlook.com.