The Wonderful Wizard of Wisconsin

Somewhere in Wisconsin, 1962

To Charlie Miller, the smartest man in the world was his Great Uncle Milton who he regarded as the real-life Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Charlie believed his small Wisconsin town was magical, as if the time was twenty years ago.

Charlie's heaven was his older brother's hell because,

'Nothing ever happens there.'

Charlie vehemently disagreed as he realised that Great Uncle Milton, his niece Auntie Mary, his Grandparents and all the townspeople made things happen. Each one of the very little things in their town that no one thought twice about in a city was, as his father sarcastically called it, a Big Deal! Every small event was eagerly planned and anticipated before it happened, revelled and savoured when it did occur to prolong the experience, then remembered and retold in an often-exaggerated way that made it enjoyed again and again. History...

Great Uncle Milton had toiled as a machinist and time-study man for 47 years at the local Engine Factory, the main employer in the town, until his retirement in 1957. When he wasn't doing his normal household chores or inside the town's library, he'd be hard at work inventing things in his garden shed. He was proud to show proof that his father Gustav had a United States Patent for a washing machine. Charlie imagined Great Uncle Milton could invent and build a successful rocket to the moon in his backyard had he so desired.

On Saturday summer afternoons he would run silent films in a meeting hall as a woman played piano where Charlie thrilled and laughed with Auntie Mary seeing Buster Keaton's The General. Afterwards over fruit punch and ice cream he treasured his conversations with the elderly audience who in those years of the Civil War Centennial were also history buffs. They told Charlie that when they were his age, veterans of the War Between the States were as common as World War One veterans were now. They listened spellbound to their war stories and retold a few of them to Charlie. Later, wearing his cardboard felt Confederate kepí, he would recreate those stories again and again on a variety of floors with his Auburn toy rubber The General train and his plastic Lido Civil War toy soldiers.

In the winter, whilst his father and older brother were ice fishing in a shed on top of frozen Lake Winnebago, Great Uncle Milton was the Official Marshal of the town's ice-skating rink. He'd hold court in a warmup cabin with the smell of wet socks drying on a giant heater and hot chocolate and marshmallows for sale. To Charlie's amazement he actually had an official Calumet County police type silver badge. Charlie concluded that he packed a six shooter that he was too proud to show. Like Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the OK Corral, he was kind of slow, and kind of easy go, but he was quick on the draw...and Milton's word was law...

Auntie Mary always created a sense of awe when she put on her skates and went on the ice. She skated backwards, and performed incredible manoeuvres with incredible names like spirals, swizzles and twizzles, axels, Mohawk turns, camel spins, bunny hops, Salchow jumps, shoot the ducks, and concluded with a final dizzying spiral where it looked like she would drill a hole in the ice and vanish beneath it or into another dimension. It felt as if her smiling efforts and the enthusiasm of the locals transmitted enough energy to melt the rink.

She was traditionally granted the first position where daring people held hands to play crack the whip. She started out slowly, then spun like a whirling Dervish until one-by-one people let go and were propelled to crash into the snowbanks surrounding the rink. Auntie Mary could also make and throw snowballs faster and more accurately that those younger than her as the town's punks found out.

The steel blue sky and the wintry sun going down told them it was time to go home for dinner.

'You'd better walk her home, Charlie...you're her fella!', Uncle Milton smiled.

Charlie felt ten feet tall.

* * *

During one of their visits when his father and brother were away fishing, Charlie, his mother, and her younger sister Auntie Mary visited Great Aunt Adeline. As his mother stayed for more 'girl talk' with her Auntie Adeline, Auntie Mary and Charlie knocked on the door of Great Uncle Milton's workshop in the backyard. Like the actors in Charlie's old movies and rerun TV shows, Great Uncle Milton always wore a suit, even in the summer. In the workshop he'd take off and hang up his suit coat and large fedora, then put on an ancient tweed jacket with pads on the sleeves that he said was the equivalent of his 'thinking cap'.

'What are you inventing today, Uncle Milton?'

He always responded with an explanation of his latest invention that would solve a certain annoying problem like a fantastic television commercial character. The pair were always fascinated, as Auntie Mary told Charlie she had been when she was his age.

Today, both of them were horrified and speechless. He made sense as he always did, but now he was more Mad Scientist than Mr. Wizard.

'Watch!'

He switched off the lights and the device on his desk glowed in an eerie unnatural bright colour. Mary's eyes reflected the glow in a look of terror, she found herself unable to scream...Charlie was entranced.

Great Uncle Milton produced a large bowl of crawling insects called hellgrammites.

'You can see that my fishing baits are alive and kicking....'

He placed the bowl on a table and pointed a sleek protrusion of the glowing glass device on the table towards the insect bowl.

'There's nothing to worry about, but just in case, we'll go downstairs.'

He lit a kerosene lantern on one of the tables, then moved a rug and grabbed a metal ring on the floor lifting a wooden door that revealed a stairway.

'I've set the timer; we'll only be downstairs for less than half a minute.'

Mary and Charlie found themselves entering a door at the bottom of the stairs, his Great Uncle sealed it like a ship's hatch. The room smelled musty. Charlie couldn't see how long the room extended, but he could see other doors, walls of books and canned goods, a glass weapons case containing a variety of antique small arms and an odd glass tube with brass fittings, two deep sea diving suits; a table and a submarine type periscope were in the middle of the room.

'This is our bomb shelter and headquarters. I built it during the Great War in case we were attacked with poison gas bombs by German or Mexican zeppelins...and don't forget Fu Manchu!'

He looked at his stopwatch.

'Time to go back.'

He unsealed the door, walked up the stairs first with his lantern, turned on the electric lights and put out the lantern.

'See?'

Every insect in the bowl and those that had crawled out of it were stone dead, in fact they seemed like they were now made out of lifelike plastic.

'With one of these devices, a house owner would be able to kill all vermin instantly. By setting the controls a bit more it can kill rats!'

Charlie had a brain flash.

'If you made it bigger, could it kill people?'

'Destroy it, Uncle Milton! Please!'

Charlie had never seen his Aunt hysterical.

'I think you're right, Mary.'

'Millll-teeeee! MILTIE!!!!'

Great Aunt Adeline was calling, and she wasn't in the best of moods.

'All three of you come in for tea with Margie and me! She hasn't all day, she has to get home for dinner!'

'Just a minute, Ad. I'm putting something into the incinerator.'

Great Aunt Adeline glared as Milton, Mary and Charlie sheepishly entered the room to sit at her tea table with Charlie's mother Marge.

'Honestly, Miltie! Not another Doomsday Machine!'

FIN

Author Notes: I am the author of three Extra Dimensional/Ultraterrestial military science fiction novels MERCENARY EXOTIQUE, OPERATION CHUPACABRA and WORK IN OTHER WORLDS FROM YOUR OWN HOME! as well as two travel books THE MAN FROM WAUKEGAN and TWO AUSTRALIANS IN SCOTLAND (all from Lulu.com). I live happily ever after with my wife in paradise (coastal Kiama, NSW Australia).

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