When a Nude
Morphed Into an Atom Bomb
by Don Drewniak
We journey
back a few decades (maybe centuries) to my having
to find an easy elective to fill out courses for
the second semester of my junior year in college.
I needed it to be easy because the other four
courses would require significant amounts of
study, and I was working three nights a week from
11 to 7 in a hospital. It was either work or not
being able to buy beer and put gas into my ’56
Chevy convertible. No gas, no dates.
After checking
with a couple of seniors, I opted for Art
Appreciation despite the fact that I had trouble
drawing a straight stickman. The reasons? No
tests, just a short mid-semester paper critiquing
a painting from the local art museum (a different
one selected by the professor for each student),
and an art project of our choice that was to be
completed by the next-to-last class.
The professor,
Miss Vertigo (name changed to protect the
innocent), was a woman in her late 30s or early
40s who was not blessed with the best of looks
and was more than a few pounds overweight. She
always wore tight sweaters that accentuated her
two main assets.
Once they
heard of my course choice and my rationale, my
girlfriend (now my wife, Dolores) and my best
friend, Charlie, opted to join me.
The painting
critique was due on a Monday, roughly halfway
through the semester. Armed with a notebook and a
pencil, I journeyed to the museum on a Saturday,
two days before the due date.
I found the
painting on the second floor. It was a landscape
without humans or animals. The neuron that once
held the image of the painting has apparently
escaped from my brain. What I do remember is that
the assignment required that we focus on the
elements of the painting (color, form, line,
shape, space, texture, and value). That’s
all that I remember except that whatever I wrote
netted a grade of B-.
With that out
of the way, I put the thought of the final
project out of my mind. Meanwhile, Dolores
finished her project, a plaster of a Paris ballet
dancer, by the beginning of May. She took dancing
lessons starting at an early age and went on to
perform in 1965 and 1966 as a summer replacement
with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in
New York. Marrying her is my only claim to fame.
The weeks
passed, and I woke up on a Saturday morning at
the beginning of June, having not started the art
project. It was due two days later. An ancient
God of Pity must have taken notice. As I opened
the refrigerator (I lived off-campus), I had a
eureka moment as I looked at a two quart
cardboard carton of milk.
I bolted down
my breakfast and drove to the nearest hardware
store, where I bought five packages of wax.
Back at the
apartment, I poured the wax into a pot and heated
it until it melted. While that was happening, I
poured the remaining milk out of the carton, cut
off the top, and washed out the interior. I
poured the liquified wax into the carton once it
had cooled.
Dah-dah!
All that was
left was to let the wax harden, peel away the
cardboard, and carve out a nude female with my
jackknife. What could go wrong?
I quickly
discovered what could go wrong after only two
minutes of carving, when I realized I had no
chance of creating a nude female or anything
worthy of even a D-.
Dolores and I
were out on a date that night when I had another
eureka moment. “Do you have any leftover
plaster of Paris?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you
mix me a batch tomorrow?”
“Why?”
“I need
it for my new art project.”
“You
haven’t started it yet?”
“I ran
into a minor problem.”
“It took
me over a week to make my dancer. You can’t
make anything that isn’t junk in part of a
day.”
“Wanna
bet?”
“Yes,”
she said without hesitating. “Two dollars?”
“Five, if
you have enough plaster to fill a medium-sized
pot.”
“I do.”
We shook hands. I knew that her parents had the
other four things I needed: a butcher knife, a
red-wax candle, a black-wax candle, and two coat
hangers.
I began the
next afternoon at her house, with Dolores and her
parents watching as I set to work on my revised
project. With the block of wax placed on her
father’s workbench, I used the butcher knife
to slice off a five or six-inch chunk of the wax
that had hardened inside the milk container. That
was the base.
I then pulled
one of the coat hangers apart and jammed the
straight end of it as far into the wax as
possible. Next, I kept about seven inches of the
hanger straight as it projected out of the wax
and then twisted the rest of it into a mushroom
shape. I wove the second hanger in between the
spaces in the “mushroom.”
At this point,
none of the three had a clue as to what I was
doing. It took me about an hour to press and mold
the plaster of Paris over the mushroom. About
halfway through the molding, Joe, Dolores’
father, yelled. “It’s an A-bomb!”
Once the
plaster hardened, I covered the top of it with
melted red and black wax from the candles. My
nude female was now an atom bomb.
“You’re
not going to bring that monstrosity into class
tomorrow, are you?” asked Dolores.
“I most
certainly am.”
I purposely
walked into class the next day about a minute
before the start. A towel covered my priceless
atom bomb. Most of the students, including
Dolores, were seated. Miss Vertigo was standing
behind three six-foot-long tables, on which were
about thirty projects. Half, or thereabouts, were
paintings. I placed my masterpiece on one of the
tables and, with a flourish, removed the towel. I
had placed a sticker on the base that read,
“Atom Bomb.”
Laughter
rolled through the room.
I focused on
Miss Vertigo, who was smiling.
So far, so
good.
The final
class: Miss Vertigo called us up to her desk one
at a time and handed each of us a double-folded
white sheet of paper. I was the last one to be
called up to the desk. As I walked past Charlie,
he whispered, “She saved the F for last.”
Returning to
my seat, I slowly unfolded the paper. There were
three lines of printing: “Project A, Final
Grade A-, Please see me after class.”
As the class
emptied, I walked up to her desk.
“How did
you come up with the idea of your atom bomb?”
I laughed and
asked, “Can my grades be changed?”
“No.”
I told her
exactly how it came to be.
Holding back
laughter, she said, “That is quite the story.
Perhaps you can write it up for Reader’s
Digest.”
After a few
more minutes of small talk, I left the room.
Waiting for me was Charlie, who received a B.
“What did
she tell you? That you flunked?”
I showed him
my grades.
“You must
have boffed her.”
“You’ll
never know.”
Footnotes:
Dolores did not pay the five dollar bet. Shortly
after she and I married following our graduation,
I placed the atom bomb on top of a table in the
living room of our apartment. It disappeared
three days later. I theorized that a wealthy art
collector paid a second-story thug to steal it.
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