The Case of the Disappearing Wheel!

As youngsters, growing up the only fun we really had on weekends was when my parents visited with their brothers and sisters and I got to play with my cousins.

On one such day, we all went to visit my Uncle Frank Kana. He lived on a farm near Ammannsville. I was playing ball with some of my cousins in the front yard around the parked cars. One of my younger cousins was dressed in a Superman costume, cape and all. He ran around the yard between the parked cars. He ran fast so that his Superman cape was flying in the wind. We didn’t pay much attention to him, but when he climbed on the roof of a nearby car shop we did stop and look. We really paid more attention to him as he came to the end of the ridge and held out his hands like Superman did before he flew away! Then, like in the movies, he decided he was going to fly and just jumped off that roof!

Problem is, he didn’t fly. As a matter of fact, he fell to the ground like a rock! His blue cape followed him and settled around his aching head. No, he didn’t get killed or break any bones but he did suffer a bad ankle sprain. After the crying and commotion subsided, he had to stay in the house the rest of the day with his ankle packed in ice.

The rest of us kids went back to our ball game. After a while that got boring so we ventured out of the yard, past the board fence, and into the pasture behind the big barn. Besides being a farmer, Uncle Frank was also in the scrap iron business. He would go to the neighbors and buy all old abandoned farm equipment, dismantle it, sell the old iron wheels for decoration and sell the junk iron in Houston. He had quite a pile of it accumulated behind that barn and we occupied ourselves playing with some of that junk. We even found a red wagon and although it was missing a rear wheel, we still hauled each other around on it.

I dug a little deeper into the pile and came up with a heavy cast iron wheel from a horsedrawn mowing machine. It weighed about 50 pounds. It was about 3 ½ feet high and about 4 inches wide. Once I stood it up and got it rolling, I amused myself rolling it around the pasture.

It just so happened the barn was on a hill and below the hill, about 150 yards away, was a cattle pond full of water. Well, this heavy wheel got away from me and started rolling faster and faster down the hill. I could no longer keep up with it, so I just stood there and watched it roll. You guessed it. It rolled straight into the pond and disappeared into the water.

About six months later, I happened to be with my dad as he was talking to his brother Frank. “You know that wheel I told you about that I just couldn’t find? I looked and looked because I knew it should be around somewhere, but never did find it. Well, the tank went a little dry and there I found this wheel sticking out of the mud. I guess my bull must have been rubbing around on it and got it rolling into that tank.”

I listened but didn’t dare tell him my side of the story!