Chapter One
The Night the Bed Fell
I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in
Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father.
It makes a better recitation (unless, as some friends of
mine have said, one has heard it five or six times) than
it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary
to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a
dog, to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to
what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it
did take place.
It happened, then, that my father had decided to sleep
in the attic one night, to be away where he could think.
My mother opposed the notion strongly because, she said,
the old wooden bed up there was unsafe: it was wobbly
and the heavy headboard would crash down on father’s
head in case the bed fell, and kill him. There was no
dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten he
closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow
twisting stairs. We later heard ominous creakings as he
crawled into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the
attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some days
before. (On these occasions he was usually gone six or
eight days and returned growling and out of temper, with
the news that the federal Union was run by a passel of
blockheads and that the Army of the Potomac didn’t have
any more chance than a fiddler’s bitch.)
We had visiting us at this time a nervous first cousin
of mine named Briggs Beall, who believed that he was
likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his
feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during
the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been
accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at
intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon
this. He slept in my room and I told him that I was such
a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the
same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me
the first night-which I had suspected he would-by
holding his breath after my regular breathing had
convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however,
and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears a
little, but he took the precaution of putting a glass of
spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his
bed. In case I didn’t arouse him until he was almost
gone, he said, he would sniff the camphor, a powerful
reviver. Briggs was not the only member of his family
who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Beall (who could
whistle like a man, with two fingers in her mouth)
suffered under the pre-monition that she was destined to
die on South High Street, because she had been born on
South High Street and married on South High Street. Then
there was Aunt Sarah Shoaf, who never went to bed at
night without the fear that a burglar was going to get
in and blow chloroform under her door through a tube. To
avert this calamity-for she was in greater dread of
anesthetics than of losing her household goods-she
always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables
in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note
reading: “This is all I have. Please take it and do not
use your chloroform, as this is all I have.” Aunt Grace
Shoaf also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with
more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been
getting into her house every night for forty years. The
fact that she never missed anything was to her no proof
to the contrary. She always claimed that she scared them
off before they could take anything, by throwing shoes
down the hallway. When she went to bed she piled, where
she could get at them handily, all the shoes there were
about her house. Five minutes after she had turned off
the light, she would sit up in bed and say “Hark!” Her
husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation
as long ago as 1903, would either be sound asleep or
pretend to be sound asleep. In either case he would not
respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently
she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly
and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction, and its
mate down the hall in the other direction. Some nights
she threw them all, some nights only a couple of pair.
But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that
took place during the night that the bed fell on father.
By midnight we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms
and the disposition of their occupants is important to
an understanding of what later occurred. In the front
room upstairs (just under father’s attic bedroom) were
my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang in
his sleep, usually “Marching Through Georgia” or
“Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Briggs Beall and myself
were in a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier, Rex,
slept in the hall.
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which are
made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting
up, flat with the middle section, the two sides which
ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop-leaf
table. When these sides are up, it is perilous to roll
too far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely to
tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top
of one, with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact,
is precisely what happened, about two o’clock in the
morning. (It was my mother who, in recalling the scene
later, first referred to it as “the night the bed fell
on your father.”)
Always a deep sleeper, slow to arouse (1 had lied to
Briggs), I was at first unconscious of what had happened
when the iron cot rolled me onto the floor and toppled
over on me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from My Life and Hard Times
by James Thurber
Copyright © 2008 by James Thurber.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Perennial
Copyright © 2008
James Thurber
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-093308-1
