Who Was That Masked Kid? 6bt5h

Who Was That Masked Kid?

DAN NEISER

Copyright © 2017 Dan Neiser.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-7576-1 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-5127-7578-5 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-5127-7577-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902176

WestBow Press rev. date: 4/19/2017

Contents

Chapter 1 Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Chapter 2 A Need for Adulation

Chapter 3 Whaps against the Wall

Chapter 4 A River Runs Through It

Chapter 5 Meet the Neighbors

Chapter 6 Bright Days, Black Nights

Chapter 7 Who Was That Masked Man?

Chapter 8 Winter Coming On

Chapter 9 The Dark Side of the Moon

Chapter 10 The Winding Road to Kindergarten

Chapter 11 Skeletons in the Closet

Chapter 12 Guns of the Lone Ranger

Chapter 13 78 RPM and Other Marvels

Chapter 14 First Grade

Chapter 15 Meanwhile Back At the Ranch

Chapter 16 Christmas and Cowboy Boots

Chapter 17 Who Is That Masked Kid?

Chapter 18 Cold and Wet

Chapter 19 The Lost Christmas Outfit

Chapter 20 The Ooze That Crawls Down Your Throat

Chapter 21 Butch Cavendish Becomes a Hero

Chapter 22 Mysteries in the Month of June

Chapter 23 Speck and the Voice of Donald Duck

Chapter 24 Varieties of Religious Experience

Chapter 25 Floating Upside Down

Chapter 26 No Longer an Only Kid

Chapter 27 Goodbye to Paradise

Chapter 28 Our Miserable Night

Chapter 29 The King of the Cowboys

Chapter 30 Dark School

Chapter 31 King of the Hoffman Television Set

Chapter 32 Death and age

Chapter 33 Welcome to the Neighborhood

Chapter 34 Cowboy Wars

Chapter 35 Television at Last

Chapter 36 The Agony and the Ecstasy

Chapter 37 The Old Fredon Place

Chapter 38 You Can Fly

Chapter 39 You Can Do Anything

Chapter 40 Tom Sawyer Days

Chapter 41 Baseball and Suckers

Chapter 42 Pollywog

Chapter 43 Theater Wars

Chapter 44 It Looks Like You Are On Another Planet!

Chapter 45 From Smelly Banks to Saturn’s Rings

Chapter 46 The Universe in 3D

Chapter 47 Climbing the Lutheran Church

Chapter 48 Miscellaneous Weird Stuff

Chapter 49 I Find an Odd Friend

Chapter 50 Peter Pan Didn’t Bawl On His Ninth Birthday

Chapter 51 The Road Out

Chapter 52 You Will Find Him in the Forest

Chapter 53 Across the Wild Country

Chapter 54 The Captain’s Spot

Chapter 55 The Evil Purple Sky

Chapter 56 The Infamous Grandma

Chapter 57 King of the Wild Frontier

Chapter 58 The Evil Weed

Chapter 59 If You Can’t Lick ‘Em

Chapter 60 Worshipping Sixth Grade Deities

Chapter 61 Off To Church Again

Chapter 62 When The Going Gets Weird

Chapter 63 Brain Dead in the Garden of the Gods

Chapter 64 The End of Happy Valley

Chapter 65 A True Robot

Chapter 66 Mrs. Harkhurst and the 3D Dinosaur

Chapter 67 The Trip to Mars

Chapter 68 The Plodd Brothers

Chapter 69 Summer of War

Chapter 70 The Rest of the Neighborhood

Chapter 71 Adventures in Time and Space

Chapter 72 Four Miles to Hornby

Chapter 73 The Cross Across the Way

Chapter 74 The End of Summer

Chapter 75 Junior High

Chapter 76 The Hardest Kick

Chapter 77 End of the World at the City Dump

Chapter 78 The Fight in The Park

Chapter 79 The Dark Side Arises

Chapter 80 The Dark Side Part 2

Chapter 81 Through the Lens and into the Darkroom

Chapter 82 Woodshop and the Flopped Cake

Chapter 83 Mr. Snooze Shows Us the Stars

Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Chapter 1

Part 1: Heading West

S ee that kid riding a red and white tricycle down a cracked side walk in front of a three story Victorian house? Do you hear the silence of the tree shaded street broken only by the rumbling engines of a round backed ’38 Ford coming this way and a Stutz Bearcat going that? Do you smell the aroma of the planted summer flowers, slightly tainted by the exhaust of the light street traffic? Nothing unusual about that scene, and if you didn’t know what is to follow you might yawn and return to your business…whatever it is you were doing before you noticed the kid. But take a good look at those rich green, well-manicured lawns covering this upscale neighborhood, circa 1946. That’s where you’d expect a kid like me to live who has a father ascending the tiers of middle management of Corporate America. But faint voices tinged with desperation emanate from that Victorian home. If you listen closely you can hear them… (“I have to get out of here, I can’t stand it anymore.” “They are so phony; I hate their socialite parties most of all. Their smiles are disgusting…just veneers to cover their rotten horse manure, and I hate it…I hate having to wear a suit every day, sit in an office, it drives me crazy….” “Most of all I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?” “Scared of what they threatened to do if I ever…” “We both belong, it’s just a ritual.” “Is it? Why did I get into it? How do I get out?”) Take a good look at that scene. Despite the bright sunlight, the verdant grass, the hot quiet sidewalk, there is darkness lurking behind it. And sometimes, when you try to escape that darkness, you only exchange it for a different one…a different darkness that still hides behind a scene illuminated by white, bright sunlight. I was destined not to see the like of this…civilization…for years to come. My father was at heart a country boy who was one of nine children born to a German immigrant that grew up on an impoverished dirt farm in the Midwest. City life was slowly killing him. He was fifty pounds’ overweight and hated this whitecollar job that severely taxed him with the strain of supervising the harvest of tomato crops to be canned. He was desperate to break out of it and find a simpler life…the kind he had known when he was a kid. My mother hated the “hoi polloi”, as she would put it–the upscale, upper middle class snobs with their hypocrisies and cliques…and secret societies that threatened death if their secrets were revealed. Like the American pioneers of old who took Horace Greeley’s advice: “Go West Young Man”, my father finally decided he’d had enough of life in corporate management, sold everything and ‘pulled up stakes’. (“If you don’t do it,” my mother had threatened after a year of waffling, “I will.”) He did it. He actually did it. He went West.

Part 2: The Lost Bucket

I was born an only child in the Midwest. I was probably the first (and last) son in my family…although rumors came much later in life that I might have been just the first “surviving” son, if you know what I mean. Perhaps some of you know my home town. I don’t. I wouldn’t know it from a hole in the ground. My parents must have stayed there long enough to have me, and then beat it for more lucrative pastures. I’m not knocking it, you understand. How could I since I have no recollection of it? In the same vein, I have no recollection of the Northeastern states my parents moved around in before and after I was born. I do , vaguely, one of the Great Lakes where I lost my toy bucket. I was sitting in the bow of a rented fishing boat, watching my father nurse a balky outboard engine through white caps that splashed water over the transom onto the deck. Dark clouds were growing steadily blacker with the threat of rain. Within minutes, rain materialized and totally obscured the hint of land in the far distance. The wind ripped my new toy bucket out of my hand as I dipped it in the water. I lost my grip on the handle, and it was gone. I immediately burst into loud “caterwauling”, as my dad would put it, which resulted in an exasperated response from my father, “Well, what do you want me to do, dive in after it?” Now, I thought that was a very reasonable offer. But when he didn’t do it, I continued to loudly bemoan my loss, learning a lesson at a very early age: In the middle of the highest ecstasy, you can be sent to the depths of the despair of loss, and that loss is irrevocable. Nobody will dive in after your bucket and get it back for you. Perhaps a corollary to this lesson is that, yes, your actions have definite results, and nobody can undo them or return to you what you once had. Well, not to put too fine a point on an incident that occurred at the ripe old age of three, I also do that paved sidewalk—pavement I would not see again for many, many years because of my parent’s decision.

Part 3: Facing the Dogs

And because of my parents’ decision to move west I found myself lying down and getting carsick in the backseat of my parents’ ’41 Buick at the age of three and a half. What did I know at the age of three and a half? Well, not much. I knew I was sick to my stomach because the car kept twisting and turning. I was lying down on the back seat because I was sick…which, of course, made me sicker. Beyond the rear window above my head, I saw an intensely blue sky; harsh white light regularly dimmed by dark shadows, an action that makes the inside of the car appear to flicker. Occasionally I caught sight of the tops of dark green trees, and, when I got to my knees, I saw a brilliant rushing river beyond the gaps appearing between their trunks. I heard the low tones of my parents’ voices. They talked to each other over the hum of the engine and occasional bumps that bounced the Buick. I sat up and said, “I’m really sick, Mommy”, and my mother said, “We’re almost there, honey”. That was the fifth time she’s said that, but I had no idea where “there” was. I’d been rolling around in the back seat in a hot car for a long time. And then we rounded the last bend of the narrow, twisting road. I looked off to the left down at a swirling, foaming river and, up ahead, a white bridge crossing it. The car slowed, and I was thrown to the side as it turned. Thumps came from under the wheels as we crossed the bridge and were followed by a crunching noise as the car came to a stop. My dad got out and Mom pulled back the enger side backrest. Feeling nauseous as I did, I didn’t exactly jump out. I crawled out, and when my feet touched solid ground I almost vomited. I stood for the first time in this western state. My eyes were squinting painfully in the harsh sun at a mountain slope gloriously covered with yellow and purple wild flowers spreading upward to the edge of a dark forest. The fresh mountain air and scent of the pines revived me, and my stomach settled down. Sickness forgotten as it does sometimes suddenly for us in our childhood, I started running up the slope but froze, my mouth falling open in horror. At the top, where the meadow ended at a ridge, far to the right, two large dogs separated themselves from dark houses and, barking vigorously, raced down the slope directly towards me.

A Need for Adulation Chapter 2

I ’ve got an old picture of my dad and myself taken behind the house he built in Jim Bridger Canyon about four miles downriver from Arapahoe City, the town located at the end of the road we’d been traveling on. It’s a picture of him in a formal business suit, and you could tell he was unhappy. He kind of stared out into space directing a grimace at whatever he was staring at. He hated to dress up. He hated a lot of things that had to do with civilization, but dres in a business suit ranked at the top of the list. As far as that list goes, any formal dress-up situation also qualified: dances, plays, dinners—all shared the number one position. But number two was reserved for one thing: Church. You can stick number three in there while you’re at it: Preachers. There was no easier way to get him red in the face and shouting at the ceiling than to bring up church people and their shepherds, and my mom had an easy way to instigate it, mainly by taking me to church on Sunday. I don’t think she had any idea of the fuse she lit the day she took me to my first church service. Dad was a country boy, born on a rented farm to a poor German farm family descended from immigrants who had become Southeast dirt farmers. Fred Neiser (obviously an adopted name made up by somebody who tried to hide his German heritage and failed), moved to another rented farm in the Midwest, and Dad became one of nine children brought into the world for the primary purpose of serving as unpaid farm hands. He refused to talk about himself, and everything I learned about him came from my mother. These are some of the stories she told: He was driving a team of horses when he was old enough to walk. One of the stories has it that he was feeling lonely and unloved out there plowing the North

Forty at the age of five. He stopped the team and went into the kitchen, hoping for some love and tender care. His mother shouted at him: “What are you doing in here with those dirty boots on? Get back out there and get your chores done!” So much for love and affection from good old Mom. He and his brothers slept in an attic with one broken window that nobody fixed, side-by-side crossways on the only bed in the room. In the winter, he’d wake up to an inch of snow on the bedcovers. I suppose it served as insulation. In the summer (hopefully the only season of the year they did this) his parents would wake the kids up to a day’s work by throwing a bucket of water on them. After a hard day’s work, he and his three brothers would run to a swimming hole and dive in. I kind of doubt they were provided with swimming suits. It was one of the perks of a hard farm life. One Christmas all he received in his stocking was a lump of coal. In case you don’t know it, in those days that was the sign of being a bad boy for the entire previous year. Maybe he had complained about waking up wet and cold. Who knows? Come to think of it, he did tell me a few things. He did make all his own toys. He made sleds for himself in the winter, and put together a crystal radio to listen to the first broadcasts back in 1915. He was half German and half Swedish, and by temperament a Stoic, a man of very few words on any subject, and even fewer about himself, but nothing about Grandpa and Grandma. He’d get a hard, bitter look on his face if my mom was foolish enough to mention his parents. Only occasionally would he mention one of his siblings. With the pleased look that flushed his face whenever he thought of something he liked, he’d recount how his sister Ardys was such a bad cook she baked an Apple Pie without peeling and coring the apples beforehand and how the family had spit out seeds for the rest of the day after eating it. Another favorite story was about an unnamed sister who would fix dinner, put it on the table, and then when everybody sat down to eat it would discover

something she had to do, like wash the kitchen floor. Everybody had to sit and let the food go cold until she was finished. Later in life, after I traveled through his home state on my way to the funeral of Dan Brandeis, I wondered how my dad found a hill to slide down on his homemade sled…considering the entire state was flat as a desktop. I’ve got one old picture of Grandpa Fred which is located on the “back side” of a portrait of Dad and Mom (pull the picture of them out of the frame and you’ll find it behind it). Fred looks like a skinny Adolph Hitler, but Grandma looks like she spent her life making great cookies (and ate a lot of them herself). Fred, however, looks lean, tough (and mean). I guess you had to be to brave dirt farming in the bleak Midwest in the early 1900’s. On the other hand, I’ve got a 78 rpm voice recorded of Grandpa and Grandma Neiser wishing me a “Merry Christmas” and expressing how much they want to visit me. I think it was made around 1945 or 46, a couple of years before Dad and Mom “bolted” for the Rockies. There’s a tremendous wistful sadness and yearning in their voices (which I discovered when I found it and replayed it later in life), and well there might be. My dad “cut them off” and never saw them again after he left his home town. That’s the way it was. You crossed the line with HIM, and that was it. You would never see him or talk to him again. Which, later in life when I was trying to “cut the apron strings”, made things just a bit difficult—and dangerous. But, Dad was a kind and faithful man. There was never a night when he wasn’t home; there was never a night when he didn’t let me sit on his lap, singing a mournfully sentimental song like “Down in the Valley” or reading me a story. And as you will see, he wanted me to be with him…to share his life and share mine. But tender mercies can often be cruel, and he did some damage to my psychological make up, unwittingly and not intentionally. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a cat that wasn’t weaned properly. If they didn’t get enough nursing from their mother, they turn into vampires. The cat will jump onto you and start sucking your skin, trying to make up for the fact that their nursing time with their mother got cut short. They can never make up for the loss

though, no matter how much they suckle; if they don’t get it when they are young…when they need it. Further suckling as an adult will never be enough. My dad was like that. He didn’t get noticed enough when he was a kid, and from the stories, didn’t get enough love. (That is probably a gross, and major, understatement). He spent the rest of his life trying to get attention from people around him. No, ‘attention’ isn’t exactly the right word. ‘Adulation’ would be more appropriate. In any event, he needed…he really needed…an audience to feed a bottomless well that could never be filled. As I said, he was half German, dominant, intelligent, and a powerful man, who had built everything he owned from the moment he stood on two feet, giving him a vast mental and technical skill, but… The major question: where did he get the knowledge to do what he did? Where did he get the “know how”, as he would put it, to leave a middle management position in the Midwest, load his family into a black ’41 Buick and head West to build a complete house on a vacant lot he purchased at eight thousand feet in the Rocky Mountains? How did he do it without subcontracting the electrical wiring, the concrete work, the plumbing, the framing, the roofing and everything else that goes into a building a house? How did he keep his family alive through two bitter high altitude winters while nailing shingles on the roof in an icy wind with a forty degree below zero wind chill factor? I don’t know where he got the ‘know-how’—but he did it all, while my mom and I shivered in a tar paper shack built just above the raging Jim Bridger River —a river that would one day destroy everything he built.

Whaps against the Wall Chapter 3

Part 1: A Bird Sings

B ack in the days when people married for life, my mother and father married for some reason known only to them. From an outside standpoint, they were total opposites in just about every way you can think of. While Dad was raised on a farm as an outdoors farm boy, my mother grew up in the city, her father a banker. He probably spent all his free hours in his den in the basement of his urban house, when he wasn’t at work in a downtown office. Of course, as the story goes, he never left his basement den because his wife was crazy. Like really crazy. Later, when the word ‘psycho’ was made famous by Alfred Hitchock, it might have been applied to her. The story continues (scraps and sketches come from both Mom and Dad) that Grandma had a white-hot temper instantly ignited by the most minimal of provocations. “It’s like something grabs me,” she once said. “Grabs me and takes over.” “Something grabbed her” so many times that her husband spent half his life locking himself in the basement where she couldn’t get to him, having been inspired by an incident in which she chased him through the house with a wood cutter’s axe. Grandma kept my mother, metaphorically speaking, in a small, cramped cage, carefully insulated from all knowledge of the ways of the world at large. Mom had little outside input except what Grandma allowed, and she didn’t allow

much. In other words, Mom accompanied Grandma everywhere she went, listened to everything she said, and had little or no interaction with anything else. She grew up with a hyper intensified sheltered and stunted view of the world. One experience I was privy to was the “Singing Bird” spiritual epiphany. It seems that Grandma and Mom took a trip to Cold Water Springs, a city on the Eastern side of the Rockies which was Grandma’s favorite escape from flat farmland, and both found themselves in the center of town sitting on a park bench. My mother later described the experience: “A bird sang, and suddenly we were transported into a Nirvana I’ll never forget. Everything suddenly became crystal clear. We heard angels sing and we ascended far above the clouds of everyday life.” Or something like that. She never forgot this experience that occurred when the “bird sang”, and spent the rest of her life trying to get back to Coldwater to recapture it. This would have an impact on the rest of us in the family, who would one day also be physically transported to Coldwater Springs in search of the mystical bird and the heavenly experience.

Part 2: The Unpredictable

She was a short woman, about five feet tall in contrast to my dad’s six foot two. She had brown hair and hazel eyes and carried an expression that conveyed either practical, down-to-earth common sense, or complete incomprehension of anything going on around her. Sometimes these were coupled to give her the appearance of somebody with a perpetual toothache. The moments creating that expression occurred to the detriment of all concerned. She was beautiful in her youth, and photos of her with her clear skin, red lips and hazel eyes peering from behind a net veil attached to an elegant hat upon which was fastened a rose, revealed her to be something Humphrey Bogart might have wanted to meet in Casablanca, if he hadn’t run into Ingrid Bergman first.

Photos taken in the ‘20’s and 30’s show my parents to be a very handsome, though mismatched, couple. Dad was at least six foot two, weighed around 280 pounds (before he went West), had jet black hair and a light Germanic complexion. He sported wire rimmed glasses which were popular at the time. Together they looked like the giant who had chased Jack down the beanstalk, except that the fairytale had gotten mixed up and he had missed Jack and ended up with Jill instead. I got bits and pieces of how they met–in a bank where my mom worked as a teller. She said she took one look at him and thought to herself, “Now here is a real man.” Throughout my early years I blamed the fact that I had not quite attained the height of six feet on the fact that she was short. Most of my other qualities were inherited from her, rather than my dad. In fact, they say that characteristics skip a generation, and I looked more like her grandpa, based on pictures I’ve seen of him, and had a temperament more suited to sitting around a bank office smoking a pipe than one that ran around in the woods like Smoky the Bear. On the other hand, to contradict her complaint that she was “dragged into the sticks”, she would tell the story of how just before my dad left the Midwest and the Ketchup Corporation, she was the one who told him that “if he didn’t go, she was going to.” Go figure. She was an unpredictable woman, and I never knew whether she was going to laugh and think something was funny, or get mad at the same thing, and the oddest things would make her mad, especially when trying to explain to her what was going on in the world or what was happening to you. I do , when I got older, that she would make my bed and clean up my room herself twenty-five days out of the year, and then for five days “go on the warpath”, as my dad would say, and run around yelling at me and my sister about how we needed to straighten it up ourselves. I never could figure out why she “went berserk” for that five days. Oh well, I thought, maybe someday I’ll figure it out…

Part 3: Boy or Girl?

When she gave birth to me I think she wanted a girl. I was too young to be suspicious in this regard when she put bows in my hair at the age of two, made me wear a pink dress, or give me dolls to play with. My dad put a stop to it one day when he found me in that state when he came home from work. I think later he had to fix the ceiling after the plaster fell, but it was worth it. No more bows and pink dress. The thunder of God from Mount Sinai remains in my memory, ordering her never to do that again. When he spoke like that, you stopped…and never did it again. As a youngster, I vaguely knew there was a war going on between my parents as to whether I was going to be a boy or a girl. This was manifest by the fact that at the age of five my room was full of dolls. I beating them up. I bashed many a doll around the room. One day they all disappeared, mainly because I think somebody heard the “whaps” against the wall.

Part 4: End of the War

My mother believed that a Christian “turned the other cheek”. Since by her definition I was pronounced to be a “Christian”, I was supposed to go and do likewise. This created a lot of problems for me in the real world, since older boys more than enjoyed helping me practice my new-found virtue. My dad, however, believed that if you were provoked, you fought, and spent time trying to teach me how to fight. He was good at that, but not as good at counteracting my mother’s “turn the other cheek” philosophy. This managed to put me in a strait jacket of conflict when confronting bullies and anybody else that wanted to fight. The intra family war over what sex I was supposed to be ended with finality when my mother, at the age of 44, gave birth to a baby who was, thank God, a girl.

It is possible that the birth of my sister may have had more to do with the removal of the dolls from my room than all my dad’s efforts: I was decisively declared to be a boy and officially my father’s child by that one blessed event. From then on I belonged to my father, and my sister belonged to my mother.

A River Runs Through It Chapter 4

Part 1: Meeting the Neighbors

S ee that kid getting out of the black 1941 Buick Sedan? He’s been riding in the backseat of his parent’s car for the last one thousand miles or so across wheat fields and through cities, and for the last three or four hours up a road winding like a snake between shear canyon walls on the right and a raging torrent of a river on the left. The car pulls across that white bridge on the left that spans the river, and stops on a bare spot in the lot my dad purchased. He’s going to build a house there; he has no experience building houses, and he’s going to subject us to brutal winters eight thousand feet while he does it. But I didn’t know that, so never mind the house for now; I’ll get to that later. Just look at the kid, overwhelmed by the shear awesomeness of the mountains in June. He’s small for his age, with blond hair cut straight across his forehead–an artifact produced by a deep mixing bowl, which his mother places over his head whenever and cuts around the rim. Fortunately, he isn’t wearing the Dutch uniform with a flat hat, red scarf, black pants, and wooden clogs he had to wear during “Dutch Days” back East, not too long ago. No, he’s wearing ordinary clothes, a blue shirt, darker blue jeans, and a pair of brown shoes of indeterminate style. More importantly, he was the first to leap out of the car after it ed bumpily over the bridge spanning that raging river, and is now standing petrified in the bright sunlight, gazing up the slope covered in the riot of blue, purple and yellow mountain flowers at a pair of dogs that have detached themselves from a house located at the base of the dark tree line far above his head and are racing toward him.

And here come those two barking dogs, racing down the slope with absolutely nothing between themselves and him to stop whatever they intend. He grows more terrified as they approach, their barks growing steadily louder and more menacing. He watches transfixed as they separate and surround him, barking on both sides. “Get the out of here!” A rock sails ed him and hits one of the dogs in the hindquarters. It yelps and runs back the way it came, the other one giving out a couple more yaps then following close on its heels. Naturally, the kid, being not quite four years old, runs back for the protection of his mother. The first impression has been made. This place definitely isn’t as safe as the place he left.. Two figures detach themselves from a house off to the right, near the one from which the dogs came. They are a little too far away to make them out clearly, but they look like three kids, one much smaller than the other two. “I think I’ll start here,” my dad says, standing in an open flat spot near the dirt road that hugs the river and climbs the side of the mountain. I glance behind and see him pacing out the lot, as my mom moves around, stooping over to pick some wild flowers. Meanwhile I’m confronted by the kids that had come down the hill. One of them was a large boy, and had I been able to evaluate such things, I would have estimated his age at around eight. He was taller than the other two. The second and third were girls, one of them about his age but the other closer to mine. “Get back up to the house,” the boy said, turning to point back the way they had come. She started crying, turned and ran back up the hill, falling a couple of times. He turned to look at me again. From under a mop of black hair, the boy’s black eyes regarded me with an expression that, coupled with an unpleasant twist to his mouth that resembled a triumphant smirk, I would have found disconcerting, had I been older. The girl who had stayed with him had an expression that was almost a mirror image of his. They gave each other a look, and something seemed to between them. They turned to regard me again, the unpleasant smiles growing slowly wider on their faces.

I would get to know these two well. Too well.

Part 2: Setting Up

Dad opens the trunk and pulls out an army-green bundle and some long sticks, rolling the canvass out on the ground. With my mother’s help, he erects a tent. Carrying more bundles out of the trunk, he puts up three cots inside the tent and unfolds a camp fuel stove which he places on a rock under the awning. This will be our home for the next three or four months while he builds something that will keep us from freezing to death in the icy winds and heavy snow of a deep winter high in the Rockies. We are going to live here for the next four years beside the raging, white capped river with its continual roar, the white bridge spanning it, the shear rock face on the other side of the highway across the river, the gently sloping mountain that increases in steepness up to the dark, almost black, pine forest. Farther up, the sky is an intense blue broken by white Cumulous clouds, their dark underbellies scudding over our heads and portending the periodic rain that falls almost exactly at four in the afternoon every day. There is the wind, softly sighing in the pine branches, the heady smell of pine, the chittering of Chipmunks, Blue Jays hopping here and there in search of food and giving off a raucous caw now and then, and the crisp mountain air somehow promising a glorious future. But all is not perfect in this Garden of Eden, as I would soon discover.

Meet the Neighbors Chapter 5

Part 1: Running Out of Cheeks

T he kids that came down to look me over were Len and Jasmine Trefzger. They were both dark…swarthy, if you will, and in fact German, from a family that hadn’t bothered to Anglicize or hide their last name. Perhaps they had not faced the persecution the Jungenneichneizers had. They had no German accent, and were, like me, second or third generation. I later learned that their younger sister was named Mary, but I saw very little of her. My fourth birthday party was celebrated in late September in the canvas tent. We stood around a rickety card table, and the kids sung the requisite “Happy Birthday” to the background of the eternally roaring river. I blew out my four candles and opened my presents. My birthday party in a tent on September 28, 1948 went well, but subsequent encounters with the Trefzgers did not. Len and Jasmine were a brother and sister united, and they were united against me. Maybe the best way to describe it was in of the Peanuts Cartoon (which ran much later) where Lucy held out the football to Charley Brown, then yanked it away at the last moment. Except in this case Lucy also had a sister who worked with her against Charley to make a fool out of himself. They loved to “rope me in”, usually by some form of behavior they accepted in themselves and then condemned me for copying it. An example was—the mud puddle. Like the trusting dumb kid I was, I kept “climbing the hill” to play with them,

never ing what happened the last time I went up there. This time, I found Len and Jasmine sitting by a mud puddle. As soon as Len saw me, he did something silly, jumping into the mud puddle then falling down. Jasmine copied him. They both laughed. I copied them. They didn’t laugh. Psychological mind games like this were the usual norm. However, it got physical too. Len was larger than I was, naturally, because he was four years older. Consequently, he liked to “pick a fight”, which he always did with his relatives watching, and beat the contents out of me. One incident I was a fight while his uncles and cousins were standing on each side of us. He was also uphill of me and I couldn’t reach him with my fists. He could reach me, however, and I went home “bawling”, as my dad would put it. Well, I did one thing right, according to my dad, and I wish I had a memory of it. He said that Len, after bullying me, turned to walk away. I picked up a rock and hit him between the shoulders. I have no idea what happened after that. Presumably I ran the opposite way, as fast as I could. Dad said he wasn’t going to step in on the unequal exchange. “I want you to learn to handle it yourself,” he said. Later when I mentioned that the score was Trefzgers 10 and Neisers 0, he said, “Well, he is considerably bigger than you are.” That might offer some consolation, except it developed in me a phobia against fist fighting, since I never won. That, and the fact that my mother kept telling me that “Christians turn the other cheek” added to my inability to swing my fists. Well, I managed to master the art of cheek turning. I ran out of cheeks in the four years we lived in the Jim Bridger Canyon.

Part 2: Not Cat and Mouse

The other permanent neighbors in the area were Rick and Pete Detritus. Rick and Pete lived on the other side of the canyon highway, in a house reachable only by a narrow, winding, wooden stair with a rickety railing that looked like it would break off at any moment. They didn’t have much of a place to play since their house was perched high on the canyon rim. It had lots of potential for the careless to step off into space and I suspect their mother might have been worried about them falling off the edge if they played around it too much. Consequently, they were always over in our neighborhood. They were a couple of normal, late Forties kids, one brunette and the other a freckle faced redhead. They wore patched brightly colored shirts and jeans with holes in the knees. Like all of us backwoods boys, their shirts were rarely tucked in and their shoes rarely tied. The hero of the entire neighborhood of us five kids was the Lone Ranger. We were all rabid Lone Ranger fanatics, and regarded Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and all the other cowboy heroes as at best, nobodies, and the worst, as in the case of Gene Autry, sissies. We didn’t have any derogatory names for them, they just weren’t in our psyche. The Lone Ranger was it, and when we played our cowboy games, the kid with the highest honor, mainly Len Trefzger, always got to be the Lone Ranger. His sister was Tonto. Rick and Pete were either the Bad Guys or the Sheriff and his Deputy. I got to be the Indian. A nameless Indian. If I got to be the Outlaw, I was also nameless. No discussion of life in the Jim Bridger Canyon is complete without a substantial mention of Old Time Radio, comic books, and The Lone Ranger.

Bright Days, Black Nights Chapter 6

T he roar of the river, the sighing of the wind through the pines, the chattering of Chipmunks and occasional squawk of a Blue Jay were interrupted by the cracking of my dad’s hammer as he put together the framework of the two room shack the three of us were to live in for the next two years. By the time the flat roofed shack was up and covered with tar paper, the wind was turning cold. A definite change was coming; the shrubbery by the river had turned from green to red and gold, and there was a crisp chill in the air. The days were glorious. The sun rose over the eastern canyon wall and brought the forest to life; Squirrels and Blue Jays coming out of where ever they hid and the Columbines and other mountain flowers swaying in the breeze and drinking in the light. White cumulus scudded across an impossibly blue sky, momentarily hiding the sun and darkening the landscape, then moving on to let in the glorious light; as if a light switch was being turned on and off. But in the end, the war between light and dark was won by the latter, as the Cumulus became Nimbus and dumped their load of rain. The river never stopped, and its roar was a familiar background noise that became a constant that the mind eventually “tuned out”. Occasional cars ed by, their tires making a singing noise on the asphalt. On rare occasion, they would turn onto the bridge, bumping across it and either climbing the hill or heading down the road toward the vacation homes that lined the river on the right. The homes in our neighborhood were, for the most part, only occupied in the summer, and sparsely at that. In the winter, they were empty. The screech of my dad’s saws and the hammering of nails echoed off the canyon

walls and broke the natural sounds of the canyon. My dad worked tirelessly from dawn and into the night, at first working by the light of a lantern, and later by an electric bulb in a paraboloid reflector once he’d brought in electricity. The nights were not dark, they were black. Only a narrow strip of sky could be seen between the far canyon wall and the black forest on our side of the river. The only sounds came from the radio which I listened to religiously every night. Even in the “later” years, as I turned seven, when television was getting its start, there was no way of receiving a T.V. signal in that canyon—but we could get radio, and we got a myriad of stations. Our entertainment also included 78 rpm records played on a phonograph, and reading. But when we lived in the tent—at the first— we had no electricity. The only entertainment came from my mother who read children’s books to me by lantern light. I took baths in a tub in the middle of the tent in water we drew out of the river… and heated. Trust me, you didn’t want to take a bath in ice cold mountain river water. I have no idea where my parents took baths…probably sponge baths when I wasn’t looking. At some point in time we must have run out of money, because my dad took a job in an Arapahoe City cabinet shop and worked on the shack, and later the house, in the evenings and on the weekends. And…in the night…there often came an urge to run up the side of the mountain to the outhouse, which for some reason had been located above where we lived. At that time, no one had ever heard of the maxim—the crude saying that “sewage flows downhill”. Yes, and the “run for relief” was often accomplished through a sparkling field of snow reflecting the bone cold Moon that lacked pity for the wind slicing through your bedclothes and the pain in your freezing feet. But if you were lucky and could snuggle down in your cot for the night between your parents without any interruption by insistent bowls, the potbellied stove radiating warmth over your head, you just drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sighing wind and the roar of the raging river.

Who Was That Masked Man? Chapter 7

N ow, if you listen, you can hear the cries of us kids shooting at each other with our toy guns, as we played Cowboys and Indians, or engaged in the mind games of Len and Jasmine Trefzger. The latter, fortunately, were relatively rare; most of the time we ran through the forest shouting and shooting, playing at being “The Lone Ranger”. Today people still the Lone Ranger, especially when they hear the “William Tell Overture” which was his theme song played as he rode his Great White Horse “Silver”, shouting “Hi Yo Silver” at the beginning and end of each episode. “Yo” has become a standard slang greeting today and has been considered “in” by our modern generations. However, the Lone Ranger was the first to use the word “yo” and maybe it’s because of him that today we say, “yo, dude” as a salutation. I’d like to think that if the LR had named his horse “Dude”, the expression “yo dude” would have been even more cemented into our pop culture, and the salutation would have become “hi, yo dude” or maybe “hi yo, dude”. Perhaps it was so in some alternate universe, somewhere. Every Wednesday night, the Lone Ranger rode out of the radio, with Fran Stryker announcing him. He was the “Masked Rider of the Plains riding his great horse Silver, with his faithful Indian companion, Tonto”. (No, boys and girls, Tonto was not known as a ‘Native American’, and nobody suspected that he was from India, nor did anybody know that ‘tonto’ is a word for ‘fool’ in Spanish). “NEVER WAS THERE A GREATER CHAMPION OF JUSTICE,” Fran shouted.

And every day in our neighborhood…THE LONE RANGER RODE AGAIN!!!! I discovered my first Lone Ranger comic when I was four. My dad took a trip into Arapahoe City, probably to buy groceries, and I the major event distinctly: finding my first Lone Ranger comic on the newsstands. It depicted the Masked Man and his faithful Indian companion paddling a canoe down a turbulent mountain river, through a canyon just like the Jim Bridger Canyon in which we lived. For all intents and purposes, he was indeed rowing down THE JIM BRIDGER RIVER!!! I grabbed that comic book and eagerly poured over its pages, discovering first of all that the Lone Ranger always wore a mask; that everybody thought he was a criminal when indeed he was actually the nemesis of every outlaw in the west; feared by the bad; loved by the good; helper of the Law which was never sure which side he was on until he rescued the sheriff from the bad guys, caught the bank robber, solved the murder mystery, and brought the outlaws to justice by shooting the guns out of their hands instead of killing them. “We’ll shoot to wound, Tonto, not to kill.” I thought that was a good philosophy. It’s much better to cross the American West maiming your enemies rather than killing them, probably leaving a trail of broken and disfigured living victims behind you rather than corpses. That’s what the good guy does, doesn’t he? Eventually I learned about how the Lone Ranger came to be; about how he originally was a Texas Ranger who, with his brother, tracked the outlaw Cavendish gang to Bryant’s Gap and was ambushed, everybody in the posse being killed except him, how Tonto found him and nursed him back to health, and buried all his fellow rangers in graves. This was unlike most of the Native Americans I am familiar with today, who would have put them up on platforms ed by stilts—if they were inclined to bury dead white men they found out in the desert at all. However, Tonto being a ‘good Indian’ spent hours digging graves for no apparent reason, and dug one more unnecessary grave for the Lone Ranger, which he left empty since obviously he wasn’t dead. This was my first lesson in subtle deception, but unfortunately I failed to learn it. Life might have been easier if I had.

“Crook think all Rangers died in the ambush”, Tonto said, not asking the obvious question: why would anybody come around to investigate? Or the corollary, who would care, anyway? “Yes,” the Lone Ranger replied, “I’ll wear a mask, Tonto, and I’ll bring every one of those outlaws to justice!” Now, when you think about it, why would the Lone Ranger want to hide his identity? He was from ‘back East’, and nobody knew him anyway, and nobody gave a horse’s behind if he had been killed in the ambush or not. But he put on the mask anyway and vowed from then on never to let anyone see his face at any time under any circumstances. If caught naked by a group of late 1800’s cheer leaders while bathing in a pool of water, the first thing he ran for was his mask, not his pants. Anyway, the Lone Ranger had invaded the Jim Bridger Canyon, and in our games of the old West, as I mentioned, was always played by Len Trefzger, with Jasmine as his faithful Indian companion. Rick and Pete Detritus were the incompetent Sheriff and Deputy, both unable to track down and capture the bad guy (me), without the help of the LR. This always ended up with me in jail. I got used to being jail a lot in those days. And I can still hear the forest echo with childish voices. “Bang, your dead,” somebody would shout. “No, I’m not!” Shouted somebody else. “You are too!” “No, I’m not!” “You’re cheating! I’m not going to play with you anymore. You’re dead!” “No, I’m not.” “Yoo hoo, it’s time for dinner.”

And all was forgotten. Food at Mom’s table was all it took to end the argument.

Winter Coming On Chapter 8

T he wind grew colder, the shrubbery down by the river turned gold and shook when it blew, and there was a nip in the air that hadn’t been there before. October was turning into November, but celebrating Halloween was curtailed because of the limited places to “Trick or Treat”. Most of the houses on either side of the river were summer vacation homes and all the denizens had bailed at the first sign of a chill. Not many had the courage to live year ‘round in the Jim Bridger Canyon. School had started, and Len and Jasmine were gone most of the day, and Rick and Pete, about my age, still hung around, although somehow the fire had gone out of our Cowboy and Indian fights without Len, the Masked Man, leading the pack. My dad had laid the foundation and started building the frame, set on the side of the mountain above the tar paper shack we were now prepared to live in during the long winter. He had already dug a well and had put in the leach field downhill of it…which more than demonstrated that he was not an idiot. He’d used dynamite to blast through the bedrock to get to the subsurface water. He later related one scary moment when he’d been in the well and the cover had fallen over his head leaving him in pitch darkness. He thought he’d blacked out. When he realized what had happened, he managed to crawl up the sides and push the cover off the mouth of the well., discovering that he wasn’t hurt (or dead) at all. Nice. Nobody knew where he was, nor did either my mom nor I have the strength to get him out of the hole even if we found him after he had been rendered unconscious. Nobody had any realization of how ‘close to the edge’ we were living.

The framework was going up, and the wind was blowing. November First brought snow, and within a week the ground was covered; ice had formed along the river bank, and the canyon walls were glistening white. When the sun came out, the effect was blinding, and if sunglasses had been invented we didn’t know about them. It was not a place for somebody with sensitive eyes, and mine were extremely sensitive because, according to the optometrist, the pupils failed to close tightly enough. This resulted in a permanent squint of my left eye, which is there to this day. The shack was heated with a potbellied stove located in the back wall with an exhaust pipe that went through the roof. Two beds were located on either side of the stove. I slept in one of them with my mom, and my dad in the other. There was no birth control in those days, other than sleeping apart; and if you wanted to keep your family from becoming astronomically large you slept in separate beds. Thanksgiving ed, which I don’t much about; and it got colder, the wind endlessly encircling the shack seeking a way in. I had a chamber pot I did my duty in, but my parents trekked to the outhouse up the hill–way up the hill (I distinctly running through the snow to get to it at least once). Some hardy soul–one of the few who lived in Dredge, not too far from the Canyon–stuck it out through the high-altitude winter. He dressed up like Santa Claus and visited the families in the neighborhood. He knocked on the door of the shack, and my mom let him in. He was an enormous man with a vast pot belly and in the traditional Santa Claus costume. He sat on one of the cots, and the creaking of the s sounded dangerously like they were going to snap. “And what do you want for Christmas, little Dan?” I hated being called ‘little Dan’. Why couldn’t they call me Danny? My gaze wandered from his oversized belly to the potbellied stove, noting that the pipe ascending through the roof was considerably smaller than his ample girth. At this point, at the ripe old age of four and a half, my faith in the existence of Santa Claus was seriously shaken. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Jolly Fat Man, while he was indeed jolly, was way too fat to slide down that pipe.

Christmas came and went, and the grim months of late winter descended upon us. Old ladies who lived up the road above the Trefzgers, struggled down past our shack, carrying empty buckets along with hatchets or shovels. With them they chopped holes in the ice that bordered the river and filled up their buckets with ice water. They then trudged back up the hill, lugging the buckets heavy with water back to their houses. The snow lay deep on the ground, and I had snow ball fights with Rick and Pete, who for reasons I’ve mentioned, never seemed to play at their own house. The steep road down from the Trefzgers was great for wild sleds rides that always ended up with overturned sleds and your face in a drift. Winter didn’t stop my dad. By the time the spring thaw was upon us, the frames were up and the house was taking shape. The Lone Ranger, by now, was coming as a subscription every month in the mail, and he and his faithful Indian companion were at their peak. They weren’t just riding the range in the early Southwest, they were here, in the Canyon, foiling bank robberies, catching crooks, and protecting old ladies from harm. The canyon walls echoed with childish voices crying “Hi Yo Silver, Away” as he rode through our mountain neighborhood–and there was no greater Champion of Justice

The Dark Side of the Moon Chapter 9

S tephen King in The Shining described high altitude winters as the “Dark Side of the Moon.” Indeed, the snow fell…and fell…and fell. And got deeper. Outside I was up to my chin in snow, inside I was wet and cold until my mother got all my snow clothes off and dropped me into a hot tub of water, heated on the potbellied stove in the main “living room”. There was sledding. I had a sled that I dragged up to the top of the river road, above the Trefzger’s house. It was a wild ride down the slope, but I rode behind Len or somebody bigger who could steer it. We hit the bottom with a major “bump” that would throw us off, so we could struggle back to our feet and drag it back up. When it wasn’t snowing, in the rare event the sun came out, the canyon walls were covered with ice. Between that, and the snow on the ground, you were completely blinded. And it got worse when we all got Pink Eye. Pink Eye is a bacterial disease of the eyes, transferred when somebody who has it touches, say, a doorknob, and somebody else opens the door. Pink Eye does exactly what the name implies: it turns the eyes pink, and makes them extremely sensitive to light. In fact, under normal conditions (i.e. without snow), it will make it almost impossible to see in daylight. Your eyes itch, burn and sting. In the whiteout conditions of a Jim Bridger Canyon winter, it makes you effectively blind. We all got it (I don’t know if my dad did, because he kept going to work in Arapahoe and was up on the roof nailing shingles when he was home). At least I know I got it, and I was indeed effectively blind. I stumbling around,

mostly blind, until I finally got over Pink Eye, sometime in February or March. But…sometime in those months my parents discovered why people build houses with peaked (rather than flat-topped) roofs in snow country.

Part 1: The Shack

The Tar Paper Shack, as we called it, was built with a flat roof, no doubt because it was cheapest and fastest thing to throw up before winter set in. The trouble was that there were several feet of snow on the roof, and the depth was ever increasing. I distinctly the night my parents were both on their feet, talking earnestly with each other about it, and trying to decide whether to leave the Shack before the roof caved in. I knew something serious was going on between them, but as a kid the age of four I didn’t know exactly what it was. My mother later said about that night, “I just knew the roof wasn’t going to cave in and we were going to be all right.” Fortunately, she was right, or I might not be here to tell the tale. The winter howled on, it’s icy wind encircling the shack in dense flurries of snow and trying to find a way in. The potbellied stove burned bright, old ladies came down off the mountain to chop their way through the ice at the river’s edge, and we shivered in our shack, knowing there was only about one quarter inch of plywood and tar paper between us and the merciless elements.

The Winding Road to Kindergarten Chapter 10

Part 1: My Right From My Left

L en Trefzger’s mother worked in Arapahoe City and made daily forays over the narrow, icy highway winding between shear canyon walls and drop offs to the raging river. Snow storms made it especially difficult: the worst creating a kind of twisting “funnel” in front of the driver through which nothing could be seen. The progress was slow, and many times made only because Mrs. Trefzger kept her wheels between the center dividing line and the edge of the road on the right. Travelling to Arapahoe City was not as dangerous as traveling from it, when the right wheels had to be kept within the line and there was a substantial chance, in places, of plunging 200 feet into the river. The aspens had lost their leaves, and as we neared the town it was easier to see the herds of elk foraging in the snow, trying to find something to eat. Much later I would come to know the landmarks ing me on the right and left. Somebody might have told me that the massive white building sitting up on the slope was the Arapahoe Hotel, rumored to be haunted, and the building on the left that even to my young eyes seemed to have an aura of the medieval was a Catholic Church, its spires and walls of dark stone set back in a snow covered meadow. We reached Main Street and the nondescript building that housed kindergarten, overshadowed by the chaotic mountains that constituted the Shadow Range, probably because that for most of the day they cast everything beneath them in relative darkness.

Mrs. Trefzger let us off in front of the kindergarten building which was about three blocks west of the library. Located behind the library, that is, “set back” from Main Street were a collection of buildings that I would later discover. These consisted of the elementary school, junior high, and high school all gathered together in one public school complex. I was unaware of all this as I grabbed my sack lunch and jumped out of the car, climbing the short stairway following the Detritus brothers into a small room packed with kids. In kindergarten, I learned my right hand from my left, a lesson which to this day I have never forgotten. I also learned how to trace my shadow on black paper and cut it out, pasting it to a colored piece of construction paper. There are other lessons which I may have learned which I have now forgotten, like how to get along with others, share, be respectful, and not belch or gas in public (I know I have definitely forgotten the latter). In short, for the most part, kindergarten was a bust as far as teaching me anything, especially how to cope with Len and Jasmine Trefzger, who consistently “ganged up” on me. Seasonal events were celebrated in Kindergarten with glee: Halloween with frighteningly evil masks we made ourselves out of paper Mache–somehow mine always ended up completely black with no notable features, cut outs of turkeys being stalked by hungry Pilgrims ready to give thanks and con the local natives into inviting them over for dinner, and a Fat, Jolly Elf eager to slide down the narrow stove pipe of your potbellied stove to bestow upon you your heart’s desire. Continuing my effort to learn my right hand from my left, I encountered the wonders of Valentine’s day with bloody red hearts, again cut from construction paper, and a crazed rabbit dropping colored eggs (and other less palatable things) wherever it hopped. Spring was celebrated, and after a hard winter I’m sure the staff was more than eager to celebrate it with a field trip that got thirty energetic four year olds out of the small room where they had been confined since the first snows of late October. One late April we burst forth, shouting, screaming and lining up for our first

exciting field trip to the library down the street. With white clouds scudding through a painfully intense blue sky, we marched over the sidewalk, entered the library through its dark set of doors set in a wall of Rocky Mountain rock, toured the book lined rooms, got a lecture from the librarian, and marched back. And so my year in kindergarten came to a close. Mrs. Trefzger made the trek over the winding Jim Bridger road to home…a home that now consisted of a single bedroom house, set on the side of the mountain.

Part 2: The New House

I was reaching my fifth birthday when my dad finished the house. The outside walls were made from split logs, and the inside was finished with knotty pine. My dad was big on knotty pine, which was a blond wood full of knots that took on strange patterns, sometimes looking like faces entrapped in wood, in other places like phantasmagorical creatures, and others like… Well, I wasn’t sure, but the things in the walls did look weird. The living room was provided with a large picture window that looked out on the mountain slope that ran down to the river. From here we could view the white bridge that crossed to the highway and the canyon wall which had already provided so much discomfort during the months of snow and Pink Eye. A stone fireplace was set against the west wall and equipped with a sizeable chimney that would make Santa’s job a lot easier. On cold nights when the freezing wind rattled the windows searching for a way in, a roaring fire would quell its moans and banish its icy touch. And there was a genuine bath room with a tub (my dad had had to haul it up the slope and around behind the house, stuffing it through the bathroom window). Hot water miraculously came out of the tap. The kitchen was narrow, with a nook for the kitchen table and a single bedroom provided space for a queensized bed where we all slept, myself scrunched between Mom and Dad. The inside was unfinished; framed studs defined walls where Dad had yet to nail

sheetrock and cover with pine, and places where there was still a floor of planks in some places through which you could see the dirt underneath. There was only one bedroom, and until I was five, I slept between my parents, which I’m sure for them got old, fast, and it was amazing how quickly the next project, which was to convert the front porch to a narrow bedroom for me, got finished. Building me my own bedroom, and getting me to sleep in it were entirely two different tasks, and it would prove far easier to do the first than achieve the last. But the Tar Paper Shack was gone, and the elements, though not banished, had been set further at bay.

Skeletons in the Closet Chapter 11

Part 1: They Are Coming

M y mom said that during Halloween one of the neighbor kids, this time it wasn’t Len Trefzger, probably Tom or Jerry Detritus, dressed up like a skeleton and jumped out of the closet to scare me. He succeeded drastically, because after that I was deathly afraid of skeletons. One night (before my bedroom was finished) I was lying by myself in my parent’s bed looking out the window, which had no shades. Through it I could look up the mountain at the Trefzger’s house, where an electric light had been shining perpetually ever since we moved in. It was hanging from a pole in the middle of the dirt ‘courtyard’ between their two houses. Suddenly, two figures appeared as black shadows in the circle of light. In my overwrought imagination, they looked like skeletons! My bloodcurdling scream brought my parents into the bedroom looking alarmed and pale. They found me sitting up and pointing at what I’d seen, up the hill. “Skeletons are up there!” I shouted. My dad peered out the window. “I don’t see anything,” he growled. “Go back to sleep.” I couldn’t. I climbed out of bed and made a break for the living room where I sat on the couch shivering until my parents finally went to bed. “There are no skeletons, Dan,” Dad said looking increasingly annoyed, his face pale and blotched with color at the same time. “There are no skeletons.”

But I knew better. Skeletons were creeping down that hill toward us, and they could appear anywhere. Especially in the family closet. What were they going to do to us? On that I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was very, very bad. Sorry, dad, they’re on their way. They are coming. They are on their way.

Part 2: The Red Eye in the Dark

I could see it! Out there, in the dark recesses of the living room, shone a single unblinking red eye, glaring at me. I gave it furtive glances, making a supreme effort not to see it and trying to hide from it. I buried myself under the covers, hoping it would go away, but knowing it would not. I was under its baleful glare, as it peered out of the darkness. A skeleton. It had to be a skeleton! It was hiding by the radio watching me with its one red eye. “There is nothing there,” Dad said in a gruff, exasperated voice. He was determined to get me back into my own bed and led me back by the hand every time I showed up begging to be let in under their covers. He turned on the lights and showed me around. We went over to the console radio and he made me look behind it. “See? There’s nothing there.” Yes, Dad, of course it’s not there. It doesn’t come out in the light. Dad turned out the lights and I crawled back into bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there on my back, looking at the ceiling, too afraid to move. But I knew I had to look. I had to see if it was there. Against my will, like a moth drawn to a flame, I fearfully propped myself up on my elbows and peered into the cavernous darkness of the living room.

And it had returned. I could see it. The red eye staring at me. The red eye of the scariest, undead skeleton anybody could imagine. I have to get out of here. It’s coming to get me. And so, I did it again. Almost paralyzed by fear I slowly got out of bed, hoping it wouldn’t see me move. And it didn’t! I made it to my parent’s room alive. Unscathed. My dad sighed. “Ok, get in.” I had won, and lost. It would be awhile before I would again brave my single bed and my narrow room that Dad had built for me… And the eerie red eye that stared at me from the darkness.

Part 3: Carving Pumpkins

We celebrated my fifth birthday in the new house, and I’ve got pictures of me, Rick and Pete Detritus, and Len and Jasmine Trefzger all gathered around a birthday cake, a few birthday presents, and me. There was nothing like having the Trefzgers there to celebrate my birthday, after they had “ganged up” on me all summer. Both bore that smirk that said they were satisfied with a job well done. I had spent the summer tied to trees, tied to the ground, and tied to their porch. Len was an avid Boy Scout and saw me as an opportunity to practice his knots, as well as various tactics he needed to know to become an Eagle Scout. But he and his sister would always be there for this and future birthday parties, smiling to each other over their own private joke. The glorious summer was over, and the days were getting shorter again. The wind was singing its own secret song, announcing the coming cold, and the

orange and gold brush down by the river danced to its tune. Snow would fly soon. Halloween was coming. We were carving pumpkins, making masks, drawing out black cats on construction paper, and waiting for the ghosts, witches, goblins… and skeletons which were on their way.

Guns of the Lone Ranger Chapter 12

Part 1: Turn It Off

S omeday, I want you to do something. Turn off your television, your cell phone, your iPad, your computer, and put your land-line telephone ringer on mute. You can keep your CD or MP3 player and radio. That’s all we had. Radio. Phonograph. No telephone, no television, no computer, no Internet. Now, imagine, if you can, your entertainment coming from people you can’t see reading scripts and making noises in the background to simulate what’s going on. Imagine records, black disks that turn real fast, getting scratched up easily, or broken when people step on them (if you don’t put them back in their covers, because you are an irresponsible kid). Well, I must qualify that because the 33 1/3 vinyl’s lately have been making a comeback. The console radio had a dial that lit up and two knobs. The knob way over on the left turned the radio on, and the dial lit up. The knob way over on the right caused the pointer to move back and forth across the spectrum of AM frequencies, bringing in whatever station was available to a small log house set in a deep canyon in the Rocky Mountains. It stood on the floor and the top was about as high as I was tall. It was made from some dark wood, maybe oak or mahogany, and easily scratched, a fact I took supreme advantage of.

Nights and Saturday mornings found me sitting in front of the radio, listening to programs such as Big John and Little Sparkie, Archie Andrews, Fibber Maggie and Molly, Blondie, Amos N Andy, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Mark Trail, and… The Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger was mandatory. I sat glued to the radio listening to Brace Beemer (whose deep, powerful voice matched his name), Jay Silverheels (playing Tonto), Dan Reid, the L.R.’s nephew, the multitude of crooks the Masked Man brought to justice, Indians, and the stupid sheriffs he helped (who couldn’t possibly solve the crimes without him).

Part 2: He’s Got ‘Go Power’

Brought to you by Cheerios (he’s Got Go Power, there he goes!) there was no greater Champion Of Justice! Crooks trembled when he yelled “Hi Yo Silver Away”, which he always did after he had caught them and put them in jail. It was the last thing they heard before a rope dropped them into eternity (which was implied but never seen). He wore a black eye mask, and everybody that met him thought he was a crook himself until he handed them a silver bullet. “Perhaps this will tell you who I am.” The silver bullet explained everything, because he was the only champion of justice in the Old West that had a gun loaded with them. Now this would have been prohibitively expensive had it not been for the fact that he owned his own silver mine, worked by Jim, an old miner friend who, in addition to mining the silver, cast the precious metal into bullets. The Lone Ranger was originally a Texas Ranger who got caught in an ambush by the Cavendish Gang. His brother, John Reid, inadvertently led a band of rangers into a canyon where Butch Cavendish had set a trap. Ambushed by the desperados, The Lone Ranger was the only survivor, found by

a wandering Indian who, rather than scalping him -- which he probably should have done—nursed him back to health and buried his compadres, creating one more, empty, grave to fool the bad guys. “Crook think there were thirteen rangers killed in the ambush,” Tonto said in broken, but able, English. “Yes, Tonto, I’ll let them think I’m dead. I’ll wear a mask, and hunt down every one of those crooks.” “That good, Kemosabe. You are the last of the Texas Rangers. You are the Lone Ranger.” Now, everybody thought that “kemosabe” means “trusted friend”, however nobody really knows what it meant. And, since “tonto” in Spanish means “moron” or “fool”, “kemosabe” may not mean what the Lone Ranger thought it meant, and quite possibly it could have been Tonto’s secret revenge for being referred to as such. One wonders if Tonto might have spit in the LR’s bowl of Cheerios when he wasn’t looking. In any event, I was glued to the radio for each Lone Ranger episode; my mother could not up a box of Cheerios in the grocery store, and she could not resist giving me whatever special prize was in, or on, the box. The cereal companies were smart and kept us kids coming by putting trinkets inside the boxes, including coupons on the outside which if you cut them out and sent them away with twenty-five cents enclosed, a monumental sum for most kids, you could get a special prize that was absolutely essential to a kid’s wellbeing.

Part 3: The Mask on the Back

In other cases, the boxes featured cutouts of faces that could be worn as masks. Thus, one could actually become the Lone Ranger, Tonto, or Dan Reid. Anyway, they always…always…put something in the box which they also

d on the radio. This marketing technique managed to victimize mothers everywhere. But let’s get back to that wooden radio sitting over there in the corner by the kitchen. I hate to it it, but while I was sitting there listening to Jack Benny, Little Orphan Annie, and Sky King, I was adding to its decorative ambiance by scratching artistic creations into its dark finish. I guess my parents liked my artwork, or at the very least, they ignored it. By the time my parents got rid of it, there was hardly a square inch of surface I had not scratched SOMETHING on. “Hey, kids, now you can get Lone Ranger masks on your cereal box! Be sure to get your mom to buy them so you can cut them out. Now you can be the Lone Ranger or Tonto before it’s too late!” “Come on, Mom, I’ve got to wear it.” “But we’re not done with the cereal in the box yet.” “Mom, I have to be the Lone Ranger.” She picked up the box and looked at it. On the back was the spitting image of the Masked Man, with holes for the eyes (meant to be cut out), and dotted lines where you could cut the nose so yours could fit into it. “Please, Mom? Please? Huh? Huh? Huh?” Looking like she had a toothache (I’m not sure why), my mother dragged a chair over to the place by the sink and stood on it to reach the cereal boxes. She pulled down the Cheerios box where it had been sitting on the top shelf. Moving the chair over to the other side of the sink…she was not a tall woman…she climbed up and opened a cabinet door, taking down a large bowl. Muttering strange unintelligible things…which didn’t sound too good…she opened the box and dumped the contents into the bowl. “All right, but don’t blame me if your cereal tastes a little soggy from now on.” I seized the empty box greedily and ran to the utensil drawer, frantically

searching through it for a pair of scissors. “Now you be careful, there, don’t cut off a finger.” Climbing up on a chair at the kitchen table, I spread the box out and carefully started cutting out the mask, the “spitting image” of the Masked Man himself. “Mom, it needs a string so I can tie it to my face.” She helped me with that too, and as soon as I had it on I ran outside and up to the Trefzger’s house. “You can’t be the Lone Ranger,” he pronounced, ripping it off my face. “I’m the Lone Ranger. You are the Indian.” Silently I trudged back down the hill to my house, forever condemned to be the ‘Indian’. And the worse thing about that was… My tribe was going to have to eat soggy Cheerios for a month.

Part 4: Flowing Like Water

Pint size comic books, rings, silver bullets (obviously not made of silver), secret codes, etc. etc. were.to be had from box tops mothers were forced to rip off and sent in the mail before all had been eaten. The cereal must have flowed out of manufacturing plants like water down the Jim Bridger River into the hands and stomachs of obsessed, eager kids everywhere. One of the offers was a pair of six guns identical to those worn by the Masked Man himself. You got these by ripping off the top of the cereal box and sending it in with your check or money order for five dollars, almost a fortune. These guns came with genuine silver bullets. All right, more realistically, fake silver bullets. As you may have guessed. But bullets made of some kind of silver colored metal, none the less.

The guns were polished metal, with pearl handles, rotating cylinders in which you plugged in the bullets (not an empty chamber you just dropped them into), black holsters, and a belt to which were attached enough loops for all the bullets that came with the guns. It was the most fantastic offer General Mills ever made. Len and Jasmine, Rick and Pete, and myself risked our lives to run eagerly across the highway to our mailboxes located at the base of the rock wall every morning after the mailman came, expecting to receive a package with our guns in it. Len got his first, naturally, tore it open, and found the guns and the bullets. He stuffed each bullet into its holder on the black belt, six into the revolving cylinder of each gun, strapped on the belt and jammed the guns into their holsters. He strapped the belt to his waist. “Now,” he announced, “I am the Lone Ranger.” He looked at me with a smirk. He had guns and I didn’t, just the way he wanted it. When his sister received her guns the next day. Len’s smirk was followed by his sister’s answering identical expression which always preceded some torment they had mutually dreamed up for me. Now both the Trefzger’s had guns. Rick and Pete received their guns both on the same day, and they too strapped on their weapons and stuffed their silver bullets into them. A week went by, and mine didn’t come. Now I was playing with kids all of whom had Lone Ranger guns. I still had my trusty six shooter, but it wasn’t a Lone Ranger gun, and I was still playing the ‘Indian’, or sometimes “Outlaw” in our reenactments of the legendary exploits of the Masked Man, as presented by Fran Stryker on the radio. Finally, my guns came. I had no idea what caused the delay. I eagerly tore open the box, and found a note lying on top of the packaged guns. “Dear kid. We’re sorry, but we ran out of silver bullets. Instead we have included wooden bullets, painted with silver paint. We hope this isn’t a problem.” WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT?????? WOODEN BULLETS PAINTED WITH SILVER PAINT!!!!

I was devastated. I stared at the painted bullets. I ran across the street and tearfully told my mom. She tried to comfort me. “It’s ok,” she said in her comionate, conciliatory voice. “They will work just as good as silver bullets and nobody will know.” Nobody would know. Nobody would know. I clandestinely inserted the painted bullets into the loops on the holster, strapped on the guns and ventured out into the Wild West. “Hey, Dan, get out here! We need the ‘Indian’!” I could have been the Lone Ranger, with real silver bullets and the real champion of justice. Instead, I had become a wooden Lone Ranger, a fake, carrying bullets coated with silver paint. Or, alternatively, I could be the ‘Indian’. Once again.

78 RPM and Other Marvels Chapter 13

Part 1: Not Getting Shellacked

T he Lone Ranger wasn’t the only super hero that lived in our neighborhood. Walt Disney had let loose a bunch of cartoon characters, among them Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Uncle Scrooge. Br’er Rabbit was also trying to outwit Br’er Fox and Br’er Bar. On my record album, the sound track of the movie ‘Song of the South’, an old Black Man by the name of Uncle Remus, (whose stories would someday become ‘politically incorrect’), told Bobby Driscoll and his sister tales of the Old South involving a rabbit outwitting a couple of predatory villains who were much bigger and faster than he was. The tales, banned in the United States today, offered victimized kids hope for outwitting or escaping bullies everywhere. Elmer Fudd chased Bugs Bunny with his shotgun. The latter always got away in time for Porky Pig to stutter out “B-dbuh-B, That’s All Folks”. Those stories had no obvious point and involved no minorities to offend. It was 78 rpm record time, and I had a Victrola that whipped those discs around at blinding speed (as compared to the later 45’s and 33 1/3‘s, the latter format playing in stereo). We had no idea what stereo was. The records played in scratchy monaural, scratchy because I didn’t “have sense enough”, as my dad would say, to put the records back in their covers “when I was done with them”.

Consequently, the breakable Shellac records, mostly my parents’ classical music played by orchestras somewhere ‘back East’ all broke as my parents accidentally stepped on them when I left them out on the floor. I guess mine were vinyl and just got scratched, when I didn’t put them away. Or, maybe I actually did put them back in their covers. Who knows? This mystery is lost in antiquity.

Part 2: No Talking Animals

But there were also mysterious, more romantic, figures roaming the forest. One of them was Bambi. This small, talking deer had lost his mother to evil poachers who not only hunted illegally with dogs but set the forest on fire and killed her while she was attempting to escape. I returned from the theater to my log house in the mountain forest convinced that Bambi was somewhere out there searching for his mother and talking with skunks and rabbits. Problem was, in my wandering alone through the forest—and yes I did spend time wandering by myself when Len and his sister were somewhere else dreaming up more torments to subject me to, and Rick and Pete Detritus were out playing near their own house and trying not to fall off a cliff. I searched for Bambi. Not only was Bambi not to be found, there didn’t seem to be anything alive in the forest at all except for an occasional screeching blue jay. I don’t if I ever saw so much as a squirrel. Come to think of it, I couldn’t find any Chipmunks either, despite the fact my dad had taken a picture of me feeding them on a large flat rock at the entrance to the town. I most certainly didn’t find any talking animals. Maybe they are indeed out there somewhere in the woods. They must be, because there are so many people,

influenced by that small talking deer in the Disney movie, who seem to believe they are there. I sure couldn’t find them, but… Maybe I didn’t look hard enough.

Part 3: Bozo and Bugs

When not listening to the exploits of various heroes fighting villains on the radio, I was listening to my records on my table top 78 rpm record player. Two of them I found fascinating was a race between Bugs Bunny and a slow thinking tortoise, as monitored by Elmer Fudd (and vocalized by Mel Blanc). As I recall the tortoise won the race, but Bugs didn’t care because he found some carrots along the way and kicked back to eat them. The other record involved Bozo the Clown taking a deep-sea dive and meeting subsurface denizens such as octopi, squid and sharks. Bozo survived the effort, living to tell about it in his inimical, goofy way. I found out there were more albums featuring Bozo in other exploits, but couldn’t talk my parents into getting them. Once again, I found myself ultimately deprived. I was stuck with one record about Bozo. The one where he was under the sea. Who knows what else Bozo might have done? To this day, I still don’t know. Another record, smaller than the full size 78’s (the size of the 45 rpm’s that would appear much later) and colored yellow, provided a song about Peter Cottontail hopping down the Bunny Trail. As I recall, Peter Cottontail hippityhopped down the bunny trail announcing that “Easter Was on Its Way”. The other side proclaimed something about Billy Bunny, who didn’t care that it was raining because “rain caused the flowers to grow everywhere.” I liked to sit listening to it and looking at the rainbow printed on the label. I’d never seen a rainbow in the Canyon. The walls were too close in, and if, after a rain, a rainbow appeared–it appeared somewhere that I couldn’t see it.

Part 4: Thank God I’m A Country Boy.

One of my mother’s favorite pieces of furniture, before she got a piano, was a treadle Singer sewing machine with which she made all my shirts and pants. I think that was her only form of exercise, rocking that treadle back and forth with her feet while pushing the material under the needle. The latter rapidly oscillated up and down, stitching the material with thread unwinding from a spool held by a spindle at the top. The treadle sewing machine didn’t need electricity, and could operate anywhere under any conditions. She’d take measurements and make a pattern, cutting it out with a pair of shears and laying it over material she’d bought in Arapahoe. She would pin it to the material and cut around it to form pieces for the shirts and pants. None of my clothing she made seemed to fit me very well, but she could certainly make a lot of it out of one set of patterns. Well, we couldn’t exactly afford clothing from JC Penny or Montgomery Ward on Dad’s salary at the cabinet shop. For haircuts, she placed a bowl over my head and cut my hair around the edges. Together with the homemade clothing and the fact that I consistently forgot to tie my shoelaces, wandering around with the laces flapping, my somewhat unsophisticated image was complete.

Part 5: Jailed Numerous Times

After a summer of being jailed numerous times as the Outlaw, tied up as the Indian, or serving as the Deputy who carried wooden bullets in his six gun in our ongoing neighborhood re-creation of the exploits of the Lone Ranger, as well as losing several fights with Len Trefzger who invariably sent me home bawling with a black eye or bloody nose, the autumn winds began to blow again, and my parents sent me to First Grade at the tender age of almost six.

First Grade Chapter 14

Part 1: Fun with Dick and Jane

G oing on six with most of the other kids either in their middle to late sixes, I started First Grade. With a mixture of trepidation and anticipation I braved the crisp autumn chill of an early September morning and climbed into the back seat of the Trefzger’s 1942 Ford. Mrs. Trefzger negotiated the narrow, winding mountain road hugging the shear rock wall of the highway while I gazed vacantly at the raging Jim Bridger River ing by on the left. She pulled up to the stone steps of the school building of which we had only gotten a glimpse on our field trips as Kindergartners and we jumped out. No kid ever “walks” up steps. We all ran as fast as we could, bursting through the double doors into the wide, grayish green hallway, lined with lockers and classroom doors on both sides. I found my desk in the First Grade classroom. “Children, my name is…” the tall, buxom woman stood in front of us, looming over us like a giantess…maybe the wife of the giant in Jack in the Beanstalk. Unable to assess such things, I didn’t realize how young she was, but she certainly did loom large in my world. She wrote her name on the black board, which had a sheen of chalk covering it. The words stood out in large, bold, block letters. “My name is ‘Mrs. Parks’, as you can see by what I’ve written, and if you will look inside your desks, you will find what we are going to do next.”

I pulled the top of the desk up, and found books lying in the storage cavity under it. “Take out the first book you find.” The first book we found was titled, Fun With Dick And Jane. That was easy to read; I’d been reading Lone Ranger comics for a half a year, and Fun With Dick And Jane looked like something that if you came across it on the comics stand you would not only reject it, you’d laugh at while you did it. But we went on, discovering the fascinating life of Dick and Jane (See Spot Run, Run Spot Run), and other wonders (Dick and Jane Go To Town, Go To Town Dick and Jane!) --ad nauseam. We imbibed deeply the pleasures of construction paper cut outs of Halloween pumpkins, black witches, pilgrims and turkeys. And, of course, making the Pledge of Allegiance each crisp autumn morning when we arrived in class. Funny thing, I don’t think we every prayed, that I can . And I’d it too, because the first time I prayed was… Well, that’s for later. Then there was the playground. I was overwhelmed. There were kids everywhere, more than I’d ever seen in my life. For somebody who had spent most of his short life with four neighbors alone in the woods, it was an overwhelming mob. They were swinging on swings, sliding down slides, riding merry-go-rounds, laughing and screaming. Girls were jumping ropes and boys were racing around hitting each other. Some were throwing balls around and others were wrestling on the ground. The silence of the woods was gone. No wind blowing through the pines, no chattering of Blue Jays. It was noisy and chaotic, and I gazed upon the scene with a feeling of horror. The street in front of the school looped off Main Street and circled around enabling parents to drop kids off at the entrances to both the high school and elementary schools.

A sidewalk connected the elementary school to the playground, which hugged the school for the Big Kids who were fenced off from it. Beyond the high school building was a football field in which I would later see my first ‘live’ football game. The field would turn into a mud hole with late rains and early snow; the game resembling more a mud wrestling contest; a struggle for possession of a mud covered, oval shaped object made, presumably, of the skin of pigs.

Part 2: Kicking the Girl

In any event, I became quite proficient with Dick and Jane, perhaps too proficient. I quickly discovered that I was smarter than most of the other kids in my class (so I thought) --maybe the smartest in the class, and most certainly the cockiest. This attitude led to two incidents which I will, no doubt, have to answer for at the Pearly Gates. To this day I don’t’ doing it, but if I did do it, it happened on the school swing. I do swinging as high as I could and a girl walked in front of me. But…I’m absolutely sure I didn’t kick her. She walked past, and I can’t colliding with her. I imagine she would have been doubled up on the ground which would have created a disastrous scene. None of which I can . Anyway, the first time I heard that I had kicked a girl in the stomach was when I was sitting at my desk located against the wall at the back of the class. A girl I had never seen before came in crying and giving me hurt glances as she mumbled something to Mrs. Parks. Mrs. Parks kept glancing at me, each glance becoming more baleful than the one before it. Finally, she pointed her finger at me and crooked it. “Dan, come here.” I got out of my chair and went forward sheepishly (I think). “Suzy says you kicked her in the stomach. What do you have to say to that?”

Now to this day I do not or believe that I kicked her in the stomach. It must have been some other boy that looked a lot like me. A lot like me, I’d say, because she (the affected girl) maintained adamantly that it was indeed me. “I didn’t do it, Mrs. Parks. I didn’t kick her in the stomach.” “She says you did.” I shook my head. “I didn’t do it.” Mrs. Parks looked at me, then at Suzy who was crying, nodding and clutching her stomach, then back at me. “I think you did.” So, I became guilty until proven innocent, and there was no way of being proven innocent. I was discovering a fact of life: they always believe the girl. I again shook my head again in denial and the next thing I knew I was sitting on a stool in the corner facing the intersection of the two walls. “You can sit there until you apologize,” Mrs. Parks said. “We’ll have no girl kicking in this school!” I sat there feeling more disgruntled by the moment. I had not kicked the girl in the stomach, and to this day I am convinced that I did not do it. Perhaps on the Day of Judgement, when Christ calls all nations before him to separate the wheat from the chaff, I will find out if I actually did it or not. And I will view as from afar my heinous act of which I have no recollection: my foot colliding with her stomach, her doubling over in pain, and me waltzing off as if nothing had ever happened, forgetting the entire incident in the intervening few minutes between recess and class. Or not

Part 3: Breaking Up the Gang

The next incident involved a gang of desperate grade school delinquents which I, following in the steps of the Lone Ranger who was constantly breaking up gangs and sending their leaders to jail, would do likewise. In the process, I got another kid seriously beaten up. But let’s start at the beginning. There were a bunch of kids hanging out in the park between the school and the library. I’m not sure how I got involved with it, but some other kid and I formed a quasi-friendship which developed into a Lone Ranger/Tonto relationship, myself being the Lone Ranger, and he being Tonto, of course. (I failed to mention the wooden bullets painted silver). As the Lone Ranger, I immediately identified the leader of the “gang” of kids who were indeed harassing other kids when they went into the park across the street. I knew this because their leader, Tom, morphed into Butch Cavendish (the Lone Ranger’s arch enemy who ambushed his brother and the Texas Rangers in Bryant’s Gap). This kid became the embodiment of evil in my estimation, and I knew that the gang had to be broken up and Butch, I mean Tom, brought to justice. My sidekick, whose name I can’t recall (mainly because I had identified him as ‘Tonto’), was, like me, small for his age and easily picked on by bullies. He had a haircut that looked kind of like the top of a carrot. In fact, he resembled a carrot and, I’m sorry to say, wasn’t much brighter than one. We made a plan to destroy the gang. The next morning, during recess, we walked across the street to announce our plan. “All right, Butch,” I said, “your days of nefarious living are up.” “Who’s Butch?” Tom looked down at me, being about three inches taller with shoulders five inches wider. “And what does ‘nefarious’ mean?” “You, you evil snake in the grass,” I yelled, “You’re Butch Cavendish who ambushed us at Bryant’s Gap.” “My name’s Tom.” “No it’s not!”

“It is too!” “No it’s not,” he shouted and took a swing at me. The fist missed and I backed away, my fists raised like my dad had coached me. For some reason, however, the gang focused on Tonto, and the last thing I ed was that my faithful Indian companion was being beaten up by six or so gang , with real blood coming out of his nostrils. I was fighting one kid, who was so tall my fists wouldn’t reach his face (or maybe during the many neighborhood mock fights I had managed to train myself to swing just short of my opponent’s jaw). He had not been similarly trained, and I managed to take a few in the face before I broke off and ran for it, leaving Tonto to be mauled by the Cavendish gang. Somehow, my act of heroism had not quite turned out the way I had expected. Tonto and I were supposed to take on the whole gang and beat them into submission before bringing them to Justice. This didn’t exactly happen, but I did find myself in the Principal’s office the next day standing next to Butch and Tonto, facing a paunchy middle aged man with pattern baldness. Tonto had two black eyes, a bandage on his head and another covering his nose. Butch was unscathed, however. I think I must have sported enough bruises, probably from falling down while running away from that big kid. These did lend credence to Tonto’s accusations of Butch’s, I mean Tom’s, gang leadership. The last thing I , I was standing on the front steps of the school building gaping at Butch as he walked past me, a look of hurt accusation on his face as he noted, “You got me kicked out of school”. Well, I did feel that the Lone Ranger had triumphed and had “brought every one of those crooks to justice”, even if Tonto had got the detritus kicked out of him and he (the L.R.) had run like a scared rabbit to leave his faithful Indian companion to his fate. From that day forward, whenever I met him in the hall, he stared at me with an expression that seemed somewhat accusatory, and I never knew exactly why. The real Tonto never looked at the Lone Ranger like that.

Meanwhile Back At the Ranch Chapter 15

Part 1: The Lone Ranger Outfit

I still needed a Lone Ranger outfit and a mask to go with the guns and their painted wooden bullets and, Good Kid that I was, I never would have whined, pleaded, or otherwise bugged my parents for it. At least not every day. Somehow, they knew of my desperate need, however, and with each comic book I received in the mail (all the kids in the neighborhood–all five of us–braved traffic on the highway to hang out at the mail boxes waiting for the next installment of the Masked Man’s adventures), I dreamed of the complete outfit I would get for Christmas and how it would promote me in the neighborhood role playing games from being the nameless “Indian” to the Masked Rider of the Plains himself. Even Len Trefzger would have to acknowledge that I, even I, could be the Champion of Justice if properly attired. “It’s GOT to be a Lone Ranger outfit, Mom,” I wheedled. “It has to make me look EXACTLY like him.” And, for the one hundredth time I told her what the Masked Man looked like: white hat, black mask, blue shirt and pants, and black boots with silver spurs. “Otherwise I won’t look like the Lone Ranger!” This said in a desperately shrill voice laden with an emphasis that the world would indeed COME TO AN END if I did not find this outfit under the tree on Christmas morning. Day after day, week after week, with Halloween fading into distant memory and snowflakes beginning to fly converting the canyon into the aforementioned

blindingly white ice box, I whined to my mother. My anticipation grew with every ing day as I woke up dreaming of my Lone Ranger suit, wearing a mask, bringing crooks to justice. Each night I went to bed after feeding Silver, and making plans with Tonto—who still seemed a bit resentful… For some reason.

Part 2: Down in the Valley

My dad would come home at night from his daily stint in the cabinet shop in Arapahoe City, smelling like sawdust, sweat and cigarette smoke. When I was not listening to the radio, I would sit on his knee as he sang sad, sentimental songs. “Down in The Valley” was his favorite. “Down in the Valleyeeeeeeeeeee “The Valley So Low…. “Hang Your Head Over…. “Hear the Wind Blow…….. “Hear the Wind Blow, Love… “Hear the Wind Blowwwwwwww “Hang Your Head Over….. “Hear the Wind Blowwwww…” I actually heard the wind blow as he often told me that “someday he was going to die”, or that “someday I was going to grow up and leave him behind in an Old Folks Home and never come to visit him. (At the time, I had no idea what an ‘Old Folks Home’ was, but I determined that if I did leave him in one, I would most surely visit.)”.

My sister later told me that Mom was saying the same thing to her. “She was always threatening to die on you.” They were both going to die “down in the valley” and leave us kids to “hear the wind blow”. Listening to this repeatedly, on into my teen age years, I vowed two things: One, I would never grow up, and Two, I would never leave him behind. And as time went by I became more determined not do either. Mom fixed dinner in the small kitchen while Dad sang his sentimental songs in the pine ed living room lit by a single lamp beside his chair, with the radio in the opposite corner, the Singer treadle sewing machine beside it, and a fire crackling in the fire place. By now the house had both gas and electricity, so she cooked over a gas stove, and washed dishes in hot water. We ate together at the table in the kitchen. There was no television to draw the family away from the dinner table. My parents talked about things I didn’t understand while we ate, but we were all together, and despite the threat of dying at any moment, a feeling of security pervaded the house. I was a kid, allowed to be a kid, even though I was becoming a kid who would not only never grow up but would have terrifying nightmares of actually growing up—of being left alone in the world unable to take care of himself. But that would come later. Right now, I had nightmares of ghosts, skeletons and goblins. Especially skeletons. I should have been more afraid of not growing up.

Christmas and Cowboy Boots Chapter 16

Part 1: Running Home Bawling

C hristmas was fast approaching and soon I knew I would look exactly like the Lone Ranger. My position in the neighborhood would be undisputed and it would be acknowledged that a kid with a white hat, black eye mask, blue shirt and pants, black cowboy boots, and a pair of shiny six guns in black holsters with silver bullets inserted in the bullet holders would HAVE to be recognized as the Masked Man Himself. I had asked Santa for a Lone Ranger outfit with the calm assurance that Santa never failed to give me what I wanted. Len Trefzger would be vanquished and placed in his rightful position as a nefarious villain, a minor member of the Butch Cavendish gang. He and his minion would surely be sent to jail to await their trials followed by a just hanging. Maybe he would even stop beating me up in public. As I’ve mentioned, Len Trefzger was around eight years old (to my five), and loved to start fights with me while all his relatives were watching (as opposed to tying me to trees or hanging me from branches when there was nobody watching). In any event, Len’s staged fights somehow managed to put me in a position of being downhill from him, giving him an added advantage of another foot or so. I usually swung at him and missed, since his face was beyond my reach, before he started making my face the recipient of his substantial blows.

This invariably led to me running back to my mother “bawling” as my dad would say, to get sympathy and comfort, and to forget the incident. My dad would watch these fights but never intervene. I guess he figured sooner or later I would win one. In a conversation with him about the “Len Trefzger fights” which I always lost, he said with a laugh, “Well, you didn’t lose them all. One time Len hit you a few times and turned to walk away. You picked up a rock and hit him square in the back with it.” Yes, and I ran like crazy after that. Kind of hard to think of it as a ‘victory’ if it ended up with me running home like a scared rabbit., “bawling”. But this came to an end when, as I mentioned, my mother said, “I think you just LIKE to come home crying.” So much for sympathy, and so much for a good “bawl”.

Part 2: The Outfit

It snowed every day, almost all day, and the canyon was immersed in deep, white silence. A Christmas tree appeared in our living room out of nowhere, and was decorated by some invisible agent. My electric Lionel train, which I had received as a present at some time in a distant past of which I had no recollection, appeared under the tree, its oval track encircling it. A coal black engine pulled a coal car and a string of five green enger cars. They ran endlessly and hypnotically around the track, the whistle engaging every few minutes. A white sheet covered the base of the tree stand to simulate snow. This living room scene awaited the Jolly Fat Man who would slide down the chimney and dump presents around the tree…among which would be my Lone Ranger’s Outfit. Now, I must it that I had lost a bit of faith in the reality of the Jolly Fat Man.

With his eight Rein Ruminants, he was supposed to land his sleigh on my roof, throw a bag of toys over his shoulder, slide down my chimney, distribute them under my tree and climb back up to his sleigh. Had I thought out the mechanics of this entire operation, or the feasibility of him repeating it across the nation, delivering presents to tens of thousands of children or, even, to children around the world before the Magical Night ended, my doubts would have become more serious. I had no concept of that. However… The seed of doubt had already been sewn by the potbellied stove and its small exhaust pipe. I kept thinking about it, and realized that if he had been able to slide down that pipe, he would have gotten stuck inside the stove, and been too large to get out through the grated door. That was too horrible a thought to contemplate… But I had nothing to worry about along those lines this Christmas. We had a chimney big enough for the fattest Santa to slide down and a large fireplace for him to land in, and now, two years after the potbelly had disappeared, I was waking up on Christmas morning, rushing to the tree, finding it stacked with presents and tearing into them in an orgy of avariciousness. And finding… “Mom, what’s this?” I had pulled out of one box a black shirt, a blue bandana covered with black spots and a black cowboy hat out of another. Black pants out of still another. And, not a single package contained boots of any sort. “Mommmm, WHAT’S THIS?” Horror of horrors, it was not the Lone Ranger outfit I had waited for!!! It was something else!!! A note fell out of one of the boxes. I picked it up and, in my distress, had no trouble reading it. “Dear Dan, from Santa. I’m sorry but I had no Lone Ranger outfits in my toy factory. The elves only make Hopalong Cassidy outfits. I hope this is all right.”

Hopalong Cassidy! Who was he?????? Well, to my credit, I greeted the ultimate disappointment of my life with equanimity and self-control. And my dad didn’t get mad at me, at least not until after I had “bawled”, screamed and pounded the floor with my fists for a couple of hours. And that picture of me that is still in our family album, the one of me dressed in my Hopalong Cassidy outfit, pointing my matched Lone Ranger silver 45’s at the camera loaded with silver, I mean wooden bullets, does actually show a smile on my face. But my aspirations had been totally destroyed. Len Trefzger would still rule as the Lone Ranger.

Who Is That Masked Kid? Chapter 17

Part 1: The Lazy Eye

N ow one of the problems I had, and still have, is a lazy left eye. The problem runs in the family, though my dad never itted it until much later, and my sister, who was yet to be born would have it worse than I did. “He’s got a weak left eye,” the doctor said to my dad after putting me through a rigorous exam which left me with a headache. “His eye wanders, and he sees double, or, he would see double if his brain weren’t blocking out the left image.” I loved it when adults talked to each other about me like I wasn’t there or was too stupid to know what they were talking about. Mom and Dad did that all the time. My dad nodded and smiled grimly. “I’ve noticed he has a hard time catching the ball when we play catch, does that have something to do with it?” I think my dad was desperately searching for a reason as to why I was an uncoordinated lout and obviously would never letter in high school. As far as “not being able to catch a ball’ he might have checked into the fact that I was using his glove which he used as a younger man. It was vastly too big for me, too soft, and had fingers that weren’t wired together. The ball had to go exactly into the pocket, or it would bend the fingers back and keep going. The doctor nodded. “Yes, he has impaired depth perception, and probably can’t tell exactly where the ball is.”

Now, at the age of five, I didn’t know what “impaired depth perception” was, but I could certainly identify with the observation that I couldn’t tell “exactly where the ball was”. In fact, I saw two balls which left two hands. As they approached me they met somewhere in the middle of their…I mean its…trajectory and then split again, one ball going left and one going right. One of them, maybe, reached my mitt. Or not. “Well, Doc, do you have any recommendations?” “Yes, we probably should train his brain to see the left image, since he is blocking it out. You have to strengthen his left eye.” Now, on the surface that sounds logical, and to my five-year-old mind it did. The trouble is that my brain was not “fusing” the two images like most normal people’s brain does, and because of that it was trying to block out one of the images. Add that to a weak left eye muscle and you have vision that approximates a continual roller coaster ride, or what you get when you’ve been on the spinning cups for fifteen minutes. It might also for the fact that when I had a fight with Len Trefzger my fist never reached his jaw, and it was a great excuse for a lot of things. “How can we do that, Doc?” Dad’s low voice shocked me out of my fantasy which was, as usual, heading in the direction of actually winning a fight with Len Trefzger. The doctor paused and made some kind of snuffling noise. “Well, it’s often best to turn it into a game for him. Does he like to play pirates?” Dad shook his head, “No, I’ve never seen him play any pirate games. He does like the Lone Ranger, though.” Now, I could have told him that, but since I was an inanimate object with no brain standing just outside their ‘chat circle’, I wasn’t asked to comment. “Oh,” the doctor replied. They were both towering over me, facing each other. I was looking up at the

doctor wearing his white lab coat and my dad dressed in his sawdust covered work clothes: plaid shirt, and pants varying between army green and dingy brown depending on what section you looked at. His hair was still jet black then, and he wore the usual pair of wire rimmed glasses. Dark stubble covered his face…whiskers, as he called them. He liked rubbing his whiskers against my cheek when I sat on his lap which felt like sandpaper. The clean, antiseptic smell of the doctor’s office had been mingled with, and overcome by, the usual combined smell of cigarettes, sawdust and unwashed sweat…the odor that was distinctly my dad’s. “Hmmmm,” the doctor said, “well you could use a black eye mask and block out the right eyehole with a piece of tape. Color the tape black. “Make it fun for him.” “Yes,” my dad said slowly, “that’s a great idea. I’ll fix one up.” Leaving the doctor’s office, I, of course, knew entirely what they were up to. This was supposed to be a game and I was not supposed to know that they knew that it was a game, and I was supposed to be overjoyed that now I was playing a game. Go figure.

Part 2: The Mask

Meanwhile, back at the house, the Lone Ranger was introduced to his mask. “What’s this, dad?” I said, feigning stupidity. It was easy, and I was practiced. “Well, the doctor said you…blah, blah, blah…” And I found myself putting on the mask, and for the first time stumbling around bumping into things, trying to see out of an eye my brain refused to see out of. It

was almost, but not quite, like hopping back and forth from blindness to vision, but not quite, because the image my eye saw was restricted by the confines of the mask. I’d worn a Lone Ranger mask before, of course, but not for long, because Len always ripped it off. The ‘up’ side was that now I had to wear one, doctor’s orders. My brain was fighting it tooth and nail. “You’ll have a lot of fun with this,” my dad said, which pronouncement made me exceedingly glad. My dad even trekked up to the Trefzgers and announced what I was doing, as well as made a special trip to school to explain it to the teacher. The way was cleared. Len Trefzger at first was strongly considering pounding me for usurping the role of LR, but as soon as he saw me stumbling around blundering into things, he found a new hilarity he could share with his sister. Rick and Pete took one look at it and shrugged, returning quickly to their role play of sheriff and deputy. I, however, was now an Indian with one eye, and found myself bumping into a lot of things that seemed to come out of nowhere, accompanied by the sound of derisive laughter, and the first day of school wearing my new eyepiece found me the focal point of attention. Every kid in the class turned around in their seats and stared at me, mostly with expressions of shock bordering on horror. “Now, children, please don’t stare at little Dan. Little Dan has to wear that mask because he’s cross eyed and his daddy tells him to because he has a bad left eye and his doctor is trying to turn him into a normal kid.” The kids continued to stare as if I were some strange monster that had crawled out from under a rock. “Kids, please don’t stare. Kids… KIDS STOP STARING!!!” They all turned around and faced the teacher, and I continued to try to see what was happening as my brain flipped between blackness and dimness, trying to see the teacher, the classroom, and the kids who were told not to stare.

Winter at eight thousand feet meant lots of snow on the ground, and lots of snow on the ground meant lots of snowballs flying around. Slipping and sliding down the icy front door steps, kids that I couldn’t see rushing around me shouting and screaming, I managed to make it to the bottom without falling flat on my face. With my brain continually jumping between light and darkness and what I could see oscillating back and forth, drifting to the left and then to right, I stumbled across the circular entrance driveway and through the opening in the chain link fence onto the playground. To this day I think it was that girl. The girl I supposedly kicked in the stomach. She got her revenge, but coward that she was, she waited until I was masked and helpless. “Look out!” Somebody yelled. I looked up to see a snow ball arching toward me. Up, up until it reached its apogee, then down, down. KERRRRR….SMACKKKKKKK!!!! It was her, I know it. She whacked me in the face with a snowball. Picking myself up, I decided there had to be a better way to strengthen a lazy eye and/or bring villains to justice. Once home, I buried the wet mask in my toy box, and went to the bathroom to look at myself. I had a large, black “shiner” on my right eye. “Where’s your mask,” my dad said on arriving home. I shuffled my feet and said nothing. “How’d you get the black eye?” He gave me another scrutinizing look and dropped into his easy chair by the fireplace. Immediately, Mom called from the kitchen, “Dinner’s ready”, and we both went to the bathroom to wash our hands. He said nothing at the table and neither did I. With a silent sigh of relief, I got my first venture into ‘ive resistance’. By taking it off, hiding it, and not saying anything I had made it effectively disappear.

That night I began to get a glimmer of two new concepts: one, that wearing a black mask wasn’t all it “was cracked up to be”, as my dad would say, and two, maybe somebody was telling me something when I got that Hopalong Cassidy outfit. I should find out more about this guy Hopalong.

Cold and Wet Chapter 18

Part 1: Look How Deep I Am

O ur main job as kids in the winter was to stay indoors, get bundled up, go outside and get cold and wet, come back inside, get the floor wet, get dry and get warm. At stage three, outside getting cold and wet, we had many things to do. Run around, make snow angels (I need not describe this process), build snow men, have snow ball fights, and go sledding. Well that was all fun, but kids get bored fast, and we invented a new game called “Look How Deep I Am”. When the snow got deep, we’d find the deepest drifts and jump into them and yell the required phrase. The idea was to get deeper than the other kid, and the deepest kid won the contest. Except that Len Trefzger, creative kid that he was, would fall on his knees, thereby looking deeper than his sister, Rick and Pete or me. I, however, immediately saw through this ruse and began falling on my knees yelling the required phrase. Sounds good? It would have been except for one thing. My dad had not quite finished building the house, at least not the back yard, and as I yelled, “Look how…” I suddenly found myself underground, cold dirt walls enclosing me on both sides, and snow falling in my face. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, as you

might expect, and a scream came from the kitchen. I looked up to see my mother and father staring down at me in horror. Hands reached down, grabbing me and hauling me out. I found myself in the kitchen, shivering uncontrollably, wrapped in a blanket with hot tea forced down my throat. Seems I had won the contest, thanks to the fact that my dad had put off filling in the back-yard utility trenches. Cold and scraped as I was, I was happy. I’d finally beaten Len Trefzger. At something, anyway.

Part 2: A Long Walk Home

But then came a blizzard, and Mrs. Trefzger had to drive extremely slowly over the winding narrow canyon road that hugged the mountain side and over looked a steep drop to the narrow, raging Jim Bridger river. Wending our way to school in Arapahoe City was growing more dangerous as the weather worsened; sometimes it would take an hour of slow, painstaking driving into a swirl of snowflakes that blocked off the view of the road. We opened doors on the driver’s side going to Arapahoe and on the enger’s side coming from it to tell Mrs. Trefzger that she was indeed inside the borders of the road and not ready to drop off into the river or ram into the side of the canyon. Point was, it took a long time to make the trip, a point we had never realized until one icy cold evening standing on the steps in front of the school building waiting for her to pick us up. “She’s not coming,” Len said. “Where is she?” I peered into the growing darkness. There was no sign of her, and it was growing colder and darker by the minute. Jasmine, stuck like glue to her brother as usual, whined, “I don’t think she’s coming either.”

The Detritus brothers, who usually rode with us, were standing on the curb shivering and staring into the gloom. “What do we do?” Rick, or maybe it was Pete (They might have looked different, but acted like carbon copies) whined. Len was silent for a moment, no doubt consulting the spirit of the Lone Ranger. I was also consulting the Lone Ranger as well, wondering what he would do in this situation. Well, he was the DARING AND RESOURCEFUL MASKED RIDER OF THE PLAINS. He wouldn’t just stand here and freeze to death. Len stood like a living statue, obviously poised to make a decision, and we all watched him. He nodded, as if coming to a conclusion. “We walk.” That seemed logical to all of us; after all; it was only four miles. He set out in a purposeful stride, his face grimly turned in the direction of the highway, the look of determination of the mountain man Jim Bridger for whom the canyon was named, growing in the advancing darkness. Jasmine quickly followed him, Rick and Pete followed each other (and him), and I brought up the rear. It seemed like we were making good time. It wasn’t long before we ran out of sidewalk within the town and found ourselves out on the highway. We made our way past Bridger Lake and, with meadows on either side, approached the Catholic Church set in the center of a meadow on our right. The snowfall and wind had picked up, and the blowing snow in our face was turning into stinging sleet. It was amazing, though, how slowly we seemed to move. We were used to riding past this scene in a car, and in the car it flashed by rapidly. On foot, it seemed like it took forever to trudge past the church. But soon we were climbing toward the ridge that led to the canyon. It was getting darker, and the wind was picking up. To say the least, my feet were getting cold, and icy fingers were probing my coat and pants. I kept moving, but I was getting steadily colder. The snow fall was getting heavier, and we couldn’t see as far in the twilight. An occasional car moved slowly past us, their headlights flicking on emphasizing the fact that daylight was waning. Soon we would be trudging in complete darkness. An uneasy thought came to my young and stupid mind that if it got too dark, it would soon become too difficult to see, or be seen.

Difficult to see if the Trefzger’s were ever going to show up and rescue us. But, I had no fear. It was impossible for the Daring Masked Rider of the Plains to come to an untimely end. Such a thought was out of the question. Still, we reached the place where the road met the canyon and started hugging it. By now we had walked about two miles. We kept trudging…one foot in front of the other, staying on the edge of the pavement avoiding snow that would come up to our knees. By now it was so dark and the storm so heavy that the kids in front of me were little more than dim lumps, features indiscernible, bent forward against the rising wind. All the cars moving toward us were dark shapes out of which blazed two lights. Their tires ground in the snow as they paraded past, making a swishing sound that broke the frigid silence. Quite frankly, I don’t exactly how cold it was, but it was probably far colder than I it. The bitter wind was turning my face into an ice cube, and my feet, which had been like ice, were now beginning to feel strangely warm. As the wind continued to whip stinging snow in my face, I supposed I should have begun to think that, having trekked more than two miles through a snowstorm heading toward ‘whiteout’, I might not make it…I might actually freeze to death and be found as a frozen “corpsical” beside the highway…maybe having found my place in history as a small tourist attraction, kind of like the people who freeze to death half way up Mount Everest. But at the age of five I knew nothing about Mount Everest, and besides kids at the age of five live forever, and nothing ever happens to them. Right? Of course, I was right, because as I continued to slog through the slush and snow at the road’s edge, we neared the bend where the road broke out of the inland country and crossed the ridge. The Jim Bridger River came into view, fifty or so feet below the road (which seemed like a chasm to me), and Len and Jasmine both started to shout and cheer, their voices almost lost in the howling wind. Through the rapidly gathering darkness I saw a pair of headlights, and the dim

form of a car that looked very much like the Trefzger’s. It was indeed Mrs. Trefzger, who for some reason was very late. She pulled up, and we made the dangerous maneuver of crossing the road. I climbed into the back seat, my toes frozen, and my face a frozen mask. The warmth of the interior had almost entirely melted the snow off my face and my toes were starting to tingle as we pulled across the bridge to my house. I made it home frozen almost solid. My mother heated up a pan of warm water. I put my feet in it and sometime later I started to feel my toes again. I had no idea of the significance of what had happened: whether or not I actually could have been lost in a snowstorm, or whether I might have been hit by a car or fallen in a snowdrift. Ah, youth! We are untouchable; we will live forever. Nothing can harm us, death is impossible, or, if not impossible it might come at some indeterminable time in the distant future. Maybe. I went to bed listening to the wind complaining about how its icy grip hadn’t caught me in its clutch, rattling the windows with blowing snow, and proclaiming its frustration at seeing me warm and safe inside, well beyond its touch of death.

The Lost Christmas Outfit Chapter 19

Part 1: A Fourth of July Sparkler

C hristmas approached as did the big event of the school, the Nativity Play. The high school across the street put on the play, and naturally Joseph and Mary were chosen from among kids considerably older than I was. Most of the angels and shepherds were also older kids, but there was one niche filled by grade schoolers—the drummer boys. These boys were supposed to wear gaudy shirts and shorts; each equipped with a drum (as you might expect) and a pair of cymbals. At the right moment, after Joseph, Mary and Jesus had bedded down in the stable for the night, the star showed up, the three kings dropped in and deposited their gifts, shepherds oooh’d and aaah’d and their sheep did some requisite baaaa’ing, the drummer boys were supposed to make their entrance clashing their cymbals to wake everybody up. The catch was, that the uniforms for the boys were not provided by the school. Their mothers had to make them. Days in advance of the event my mother spent her evenings on her treadle Singer sewing machine making me a spectacular outfit, consisting of a red shirt and green shorts, red socks and a green bandana to wear around my neck. It was all festooned with sequins that flashed in footlights and made me look like Fourth of July sparkler designed for Christmas. She was pretty good at sewing stuff. It all fit perfectly, and in the dress rehearsals I stood out as having the showiest outfit among the drummer boys, and, more importantly I suppose, I was too young to think her outfit was “uncool”. The word “cool” had not yet entered the vocabulary of the populace, let alone into

mine. In the First Grade, I was still primed to think that anything my mom did was great. Too bad that attitude hadn’t stayed with me for the next fourteen years or so. So, after practicing the play every afternoon for at least three weeks in street clothes, the dress rehearsal was upon us, the play-for-real was only two days off, and we were down to the real event. I brought my outfit to school in a brown paper bag, and stuck it in my locker. And, I got my shoes wet during recess, so I took them off to dry them. After the school day ended, the kids, all of whom had been forced to be quiet and well behaved for several hours, burst out the classroom in a wild stampede, milling around in the hallway, and slamming their lockers open and closed. I opened my locker up, and pulled the paper back out of my locker intending to get my rubber boots on and slog through the snow to the auditorium where I would put on my outfit. I sat down on the pine flooring to pull on my shoes, setting my bag in front of me, when suddenly a kid kicked it. It vanished into the mob, speeding away and disappearing into the milling mass. When the hall cleared out, the bag was gone. Gone like it had never existed. Now, you would think, in a normal world where normal things happen that the bag would have burst open, the clothes would have spilled out and be spread around the hall. I would have been able to retrieve, at least, maybe, a pair of pants. With the kids gone, I searched the hallway, as far as it reached. I came back and searched around where I had sat to pull on my boots. No pair of pants. No socks. No shirts. No costume. I skipped the dress rehearsal, climbed aboard Mrs. Trefzger’s station wagon, and rode the highway home. Home to tell my mother.

There wasn’t time for her to make another costume like that one. She didn’t have materials either, so I showed up for the play in a white t shirt and a pair of jean cutoffs, looking like a drummer boy who desperately needed a handout from one of the shepherds. Fortunately, I still had the drum and cymbals since they were provided by the school drama department, and the teacher knew better than to let the boys keep them in their lockers. I woke up the audience, some of whom may have felt sorry for me. Not enough to throw money though, and not enough to think I was the hottest drummer boy there because of the costume my mother made which somehow had ceased to exist. I don’t know…for some odd reason my mother didn’t say too much to me for several days after that, and my dad, as usual, never said a word. It was my mother who seemed to be picking up his bad habit…of not looking at me or saying much. Parents should be careful of giving bad habits like that to each other.

Part 2: Unmasked

Dead of winter. When we weren’t in school, we threw snowballs, rode the sled down that steep road that came off the ridge, built snowmen, and got cold and wet. We rode the canyon in an old car over steep, narrow canyon roads built against the face of rocky walls that fell away into the raging river. We were safe and warm in classes, living rooms and our own bedrooms, while the ravening wind whispered, gibbered, and shook window glass, insanely trying to find a way in. We went outside dry and bundled, and came in soaked, removing muddy boots that usually dragged our shoes with them as we pulled them off. Sometimes we stuck our cold feet in hot tubs or buckets of water to warm them up, and drank hot cups of cocoa our mothers gave us.

We listened to the myriad adventures of our heroes on the radio, and read comic books that sometimes depicted our heroes fighting their way through the same blizzards we found ourselves struggling against. And though there was ice on the banks, the river never stopped raging. Old ladies still came down off the top of the mountain, not so lucky to have a powerful man who dug a well and put in a pump so they could have running water. They hobbled down off the ridge with buckets clutched in their gnarled hands, broke through the ice on the river bank, filled them and struggled back up the hill. January became February, which was followed by the coldest, bleakest month of them all: the month in which you lost all hope that winter would never end, a winter in which Christmas was a dim, distant memory. Each month was punctuated by an issue of the Lone Ranger, eagerly received in the mailbox on the other side of the highway, accessed after scampering across the bridge. “Wait, look at this!” Len shouted over the wind as he pulled out his March installment of the adventures of the Masked Man. It came folded over in a brown mailer, which created a vertical crease in the center of the cover. “No!” I shouted in horror, as I saw what was being depicted. But indeed it was…the cover showed the back of the Lone Ranger’s head, his face turned away from the viewer. He was facing an evil, vicious outlaw who had done the unthinkable! As Jim Croce would sing many decades in the future, he had “pulled the mask off the old Lone Ranger”, and, holding it in one hand, he was staring at his naked face. And worse yet, another villain was making a sketch of it! How could this happen? How could it be? Though the wind was strong in our faces we raced back across the bridge to get inside our houses to find out what had happened…fearing the worst…that the Lone Ranger had been unmasked, and the entire outlaw world would know exactly what he looked like.

No catastrophe could be greater. Inside, I ripped off my boots, leaving my shoes behind firmly stuck in their recesses, tossed my coat on the floor and raced to the couch. And sneezed before I could get my comic book out of the brown mailer. “What’s the matter?” My mother said. I sneezed again. “Nothing, mom,” I said, struggling with the hateful wrapper. She put a cool hand on my forehead. “You’re hot. You’ve got something.” “I’m fine, Mom!” I shouted. The comic would not come out! I started to rip the wrapper, and my mother took it away. I lunged for it, but it was too late. She put it up on the fireplace mantle. “No, you’re not. You’ve got a fever. You need to drink a lot of hot fluids and go straight to bed.” No…no, I thought, not a lot of hot fluids. Not confined to my room where there was nothing to do, imprisoned and quarantined from the rest of the world for who knows how long? But…on the other hand, staying in bed wasn’t too bad. It usually meant I got to read a lot, get waited on hand and foot and above all…stay home from school. “Mom, I’ve got to have my comic! It’s about…” “You’ll get it later, Dan. You have to get warm and get into bed, before you get any worse. You’ve been running around too much out in the cold.” She took me by the hand and pulled me away from the depiction of the major calamity of the Lone Ranger’s life, dressed me in my pajamas and put me to bed. “Mom! Please bring me my comic book!” Trapped in bed, the Lone Ranger being unmasked on the fireplace mantle, I felt a

growing sense of desperation. Listening for any sounds coming from the living room and hearing none, I decided it was safe to sneak out of the bedroom. I got out of bed, padded into the living room, reached above the fireplace, and froze, my hands almost on the fateful comic book. “What are you doing out here? You get right back into bed.” My hand was within inches of the book, but I quickly retreated. “Mom! I have to find out what’s going to happen!” “You will, I’ll get it for you. But first I need to take your temperature. Now get back into bed.” My throat was now blazingly sore, but the pain from the virus growing in it was nothing like the agony of not knowing WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO THE LONE RANGER. My narrow bedroom was starting to gain an unreal feeling to it. Mom shook a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth, reducing my pleadings for my comic to inarticulate mumbling. After a few moments, she pulled it out, examine it critically and made the final pronouncement. “101.8. You are sick. You will have to stay down and drink lots of fluids.” Everything around me was starting to take on an unreal, unpleasant quality, and I was having a harder time keeping my eyes open. “Mom…mom, the Lone Ranger…” “Yes, the Lone Ranger can take care of himself,” she said, as she retreated, returning the thermometer to the bathroom. “But, no he can’t, he’s been…” Unmasked, I wanted to say. But I was fading fast, the outlaws were winning, and I was sick in bed. Unable to do anything about it. But, the worst was yet to come.

Part 3: What’s the Matter with Him?

“Sick? What’s the matter with him?” “He came home from school and ran outside without his coat on and got sick. He’s running a 102 degree fever.” No, I thought half in and half out of a feverish dream, that wasn’t true. I had my coat on but when she saw me I had ripped it off. Growl, growl. “When is he ever going to learn?” “Now, Cliff. He’s only six.” “I don’t care, he should know better.” I woke up then and thought, yes, I should know better. “All right, well is he awake?” “I don’t know, he was sleeping the last time I looked.” “Okay, well let’s see what we can do.” I was fully awake with the powerful presence of my dad sitting on the edge of the bed. “Sick, eh?” I struggled to sit up. I opened my mouth to say something, but a raging pain in my throat stopped anything reasonably rational from coming out of it. “Okay, well, I’ve got just the thing.” Uh oh, I thought. I know what that will be. My dad retreated, and I heard him rummaging around in the kitchen. “Do we have any lemons?” I heard him say. “I think I’ve still got some. I bought them at the store last week and was going to make a pie.”

More rummaging, and my dad returned holding a glass with something dark brown in it, the piercing odor of which almost knocked me back onto my pillow. “Drink this. This’ll cure you.” I tried to sniff it and recoiled at the piercing odor. “Oh, no. It’s not…” “It’s a Hot Toddy—hot whiskey and lemon juice. This’ll fix that sore throat.” I took the glass. It was hot, and I sniffed cautiously. Ready for the searing odor, I wasn’t knocked back like the first time. “One quick gulp.” I took the quick gulp and somehow the shock that had come with the fear that the Masked Man had been unmasked didn’t seem to be the worst thing that had happened in my life.

The Ooze That Crawls Down Your Throat Chapter 20

Part 1: Snow Turns to Mud

T he winter winds kept howling, sleet pelted the living room picture window, the canyon walls were covered with glare ice, and the Lone Ranger survived being unmasked…in case you were wondering. I had finally retrieved the comic book off the top of the mantle and, opening it with feverish, trembling hands, discovered that he had previously put on a disguise which he wore under the mask. It was a fake scar cleverly drawn under one eye, so that when the bad guys drew a picture of him and circulated it around the Old West it was not a picture of him, but of another fake identity. Talk about being daring and resourceful! I’m sure that fake scar so totally confused the Outlaw World that he remained safe from discovery. But as March turned into April, we continued to ride the icy roads above the raging river, clinging to the canyon walls for dear life. I showed my genius in the classroom as the top reader of the exploits of Dick and Jane, drew great pictures of events such as Valentine’s Day, and displayed my mathematical prowess in adding and subtracting. My teacher became increasingly amazed at my intelligence and innate talent. Fighting off colds and flu as well as the measles in which my mother blocked off the windows to stop the glaring light reflected from the snow banks around our house, I valiantly braved each day to make it back and forth to school.

Each night I sat in front of the radio listening to Jack Benny, Our Miss Brooks, Fibber McGee and Molly (and the exploding closet), Abbot and Costello, and Amos and Andy on the scratched up, dark colored console radio. The sun was making longer appearances. Snow stopped falling and started melting, turning the surrounding mountain slopes into abysses of mud. My poor mother fought a ceaseless and unsung battle (to which I was totally oblivious), trying to keep the mud on the boots and out of the house, and the soaked kid dry.

Part 2: The Grey Ooze

I have already mentioned the ongoing effort of cereal manufacturers to punish mothers everywhere for sadistic reasons known only to themselves by printing wearable masks on the sides of the cartons, providing coupons that could be cut out of the box, and dropping trinkets of vital necessity into it before the cereal was added. This resulted in greedy, whining, spoiled kids like myself relentlessly badgering their mothers for whatever hidden item that might be fundamentally essential to our normal growth and development, and, should we be deprived of it, cause us to become warped and twisted, our psyches distorted for life. In short, we might be locked up as insane criminals if our mothers didn’t immediately leap to the occasion and do whatever was necessary to obtain our mask, toy or prize. My mother, afraid for my future as a human being, would quickly dump the cereal into a bowl to find the special booklet sized comic book, maps to buried treasure, or a secret decoder ring located inside almost all cereal boxes. Almost all, except Oatmeal. The manufacturers of Oatmeal, knowing that mothers everywhere knew of its intrinsic nutritional value, produced a product designed for the parent, not for the kid. No trinkets. No comic book filling in on the details of somebody like Dan Reid and his horse Victor, no secret decoder ring like Ovaltine offered with Little Orphan Annie.

Ovaltine indeed was a kid friendly product but as far as I was concerned tasted awful, which may have had something to do with Little Orphan Annie’s disappearance from radio. All that remained of her was her hollow empty eyes staring at you from a newspaper comic strip – and one spooky record that I had in my collection which scared me because the announcer, in a soft, quiet falsetto, announced that “ghosts came out to play when Annie did”. But I digress. Now, I concede that there are many people in this world who do indeed like Oatmeal for breakfast and will be offended by my recollections. I was standing in the break room one day at work, drinking my fifteenth cup of coffee and watching a female employee fixing Oatmeal for herself. I told her my experience with Oatmeal in my formative years, and, while she did chuckle at the story, maintained that Oatmeal was ‘good’. Yeah. She fixed it by heating some water and sprinkling a handful of oats into the bowl, tossing in some raisins and nuts, and letting it set, then pouring on some milk and brown sugar. I imagine that did make it tolerable. But that wasn’t the way my mother fixed it. I think she felt that Oatmeal, in order not to harm anybody in the house and make sure it was dead, needed to be cooked for at least fifteen minutes. At least. Cooked until it became a grey, rubbery ooze, which insinuated itself onto your spoon and, when it reached your mouth, crawled down your throat like some mad scientist’s laboratory creation designed to strangle you and assimilate you into its blobby mass where you would lose all individuality and knowledge of self. I knew it was going to be a bad day when I reached the breakfast table in the morning and found myself confronted by the evil goop in my bowl. “But, Mom! Why can’t we have Cream of Wheat?” (“Cream of Wheat is so good to eat that we have it every day!” So went the

advertising ditty that I had thoroughly memorized.) “No, today we have Oatmeal, and I don’t want to hear any complaining.” I stared at it, not even attempting to keep the look of disgust off my face. My dad, as usual, said nothing, but merely stared at his Oatmeal with the usual look on his face like he had tasted something slightly sour. I knew that look had nothing to do with the Oatmeal, because he always had it in the morning, but it still did nothing to encourage me to conquer the insidious mass. “Now here, put some milk on it, and a little sugar. Put some brown sugar on it too. That will make it taste even better!” She said enthusiastically. Better than what? In order to buy a stay of execution, I did as my mother bade me, taking my time with each step in the Oatmeal modification process. When I was finally finished, I picked up my spoon and stuck it into it, half expecting it to disappear accompanied by an obscene noise resembling a hippopotamus burping. As a result of much encouraging nodding and smiling, and in spite of the look of sour disinterest on the part of my father, I brought the spoon bearing the frightening stuff to my lips and inserted it into my mouth. Ugh! I said silently to myself. It was worse than it looked. Cold, rubbery, tasteless. (Cold because I had taken so long to doctor it). As it slithered down my throat, I hung onto the words of the Cream of Wheat ditty, hoping that by some miracle the horrible mass would somehow be changed into something warm and comforting. And who was the stalwart hero ed by Quaker Oats? It was Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, a thoroughly forgettable, unsavory and despised man who aided moms everywhere in forcing rubbery Oatmeal down their suffering kid’s throats. May he freeze in the dark, I thought as I fought my way to reach the bottom of my bowl.

Butch Cavendish Becomes a Hero Chapter 21

S now was melting and if you thought the Jim Bridger River was a raging torrent before, it was nothing like it was during the spring thaw. It swelled in size and gained in fury, but by now we had become used to it and dangerously complacent, living daily beside a true monster. In effect, it existed only for one purpose, and that was to grab somebody and drag them into it. And under. Years later, the river would show its true nature when a sudden downpour on Ridge Road would turn it murderous. It would come raging down the “Canyon”, as we called it, tearing out houses on both sides and ultimately drowning over 800 tourists. However, as I said, we never thought of the river as dangerous, and I recall no warnings from my parents to stay away from it. I played down by the river regularly, thinking nothing of it until one day… Len decided one morning we were going to go out onto the bridge and have a contest to see who could throw rocks farthest down river. I gathered a pile of pebbles and carried them out onto the bridge, and put them down next to Jasmine’s pile. “Okay, I go first,” Len said. Naturally, I thought. He always goes first. Len picked up a rock and threw it as far as he could. We were standing in the middle of the bridge, and he heaved it downriver. I could see it splash down there, despite the white caps of the raging torrent.

His face twisted into a dark, triumphant grin. If he had had a mustache to twirl, he would have twirled it, just like Butch Cavendish would after he shot down that band of Texas Rangers led into Bryant’s Gap. Jasmine was next and I was last. She threw her pebble bringing her arm straight back and straight forward. Probably, if I’d been older I would have thought, “Hah, she threw it like a girl”, but she was the only girl I knew, so I didn’t know how girls threw pebbles. The rock didn’t go very far, and I figured I could beat that, and I did. This did not please either Len or Jasmine. They conferred with each other, as they usually did when they needed to get the best of me in one way or another. After they had hatched their secret plot, Len picked up another rock and threw it. It sailed out farther than the last one did. Suddenly, Jasmine jumped up on the bridge’s railing and brought her arm back as far as she could. As she brought it forward in a better “wind up” than last time, she lost her balance and fell head first into the river’s wild rapids. As she was swept away with incredible speed; all I could see was one terrified eye staring back above the churning water. It had happened incredibly fast, and I was frozen to the spot. I couldn’t swim so there was nothing I could do. But Len could. He went over the railing in a head first dive that would have made Johnny Weissmuller proud and was swimming after her with powerful looking strokes. As I watched he grabbed her, went under, and came back up, dragging her behind him as he swam for the bank. “Get over here to the bank and help me, you useless Indian!” Except, to be honest, I don’t think he said the word ‘Indian’. Over the roar of the river it did sound like ‘Indian’. I dropped my rock and ran off the bridge, around to the bank. Len was dragging his sister out of the current with one hand and while grabbing at reeds with the other, and looking up at me for help. The trouble was, I was barefoot, and the bank was covered with sharp, pebble sized rocks. I couldn’t move very fast, my feet hurt too much.

“Come on, help me out, you Indian!” he shouted. I don’t think he used the word ‘Indian’, but no matter. I moved as fast as I could, but by the time I reached him he had already pulled both himself and his sister out of the water. And so, although I knew him as a villain who ganged up on me with his sister to put me through innumerable torments, the Arapahoe City Community recognized him as a hero. They gave him an award at a town meeting at night, and in the light of a giant bonfire praised him and the training he had received from the Boy Scouts. He had rescued his sister from the “drink”, as my dad would have termed it. That was the first time I had heard anything about the Boy Scouts, and I wondered what they were. Looking back on it, I don’t think Len had come anywhere near to being an ideal Boy Scout…he certainly didn’t do a good deed every day. Not as far as I knew. He, whom I had always thought of as the villain, had become the hero, once again affirming his assumed place as the best portrayer of the Masked Rider of the Plains. And while I, the epitome of moral virtue and undisputed Center of the Universe, had become, in fact, permanently relegated to the position of the useless sidekick Indian for my inability to run barefoot on a pebble strewn bank. My position in the hierarchy of the kid neighborhood had once again been confirmed. It was my first introduction to the hard fact that Life Isn’t Fair. It was a lesson I was destined to relearn many times.

Mysteries in the Month of June Chapter 22

Part 1: I Eat My Pet

F inally came the month of June, and once again white cumulous clouds marched across an impossibly blue sky, seas of green mountain grass punctuated by purple Columbines and white and yellow mountain flowers magically appeared, and the shadows of canyon walls plunged the inhabitants into inky darkness when the sun fell behind an unseen horizon. The heady aroma of a forest of pines promised a bright future just out of reach, and the silence of the forest was filled with the constant roar of the river, punctuated by the occasional song of automobile tires against hot highway pavement as cars whizzed past. And I was leaning against the bridge railing attempting to catch my first fish. My dad had given me a yellow rod equipped with a black spinning reel and set me up where I was standing now—in the middle of the bridge. He had baited my hook with a worm and then told me to drop it over the side, into the water. “Now all you have to do is hang onto the rod.” He said, as if I would probably throw it into the river at the nearest opportunity. Or, if not throw it, through stupidity and negligence let rod and reel fall in, no doubt with myself still hanging onto the handle. “How will I know if I’ve got a fish?” “It’ll yank on the line. When you feel a series of tugs you know you’ve got a fish.” To illustrate he reached over and gave the line, which was already hanging

straight down into the swirling torrent, a couple of tugs for illustration. Picking up his fly rod, he walked off the bridge and took a position near his favorite pool downstream. I could see the reflected flash off the iridescent line as he paid it out into the river, pulling it back and releasing more line to get it out to the spot he wanted. Well, fishing for a kid at the age of six gets boring real quick, and I was starting to wonder when I was going to get the next Donald Duck comic book in the mail, when I experienced, not the slight, quick tugs my dad had demonstrated, but a hard, solid yank on that nearly took the rod out of my hand. “I got one!” My voice was drowned out by the river’s roar, and my dad, standing in the shadows under a pine, didn’t seem to notice. “I got one! I got one!” I started to crank the reel, but the line wasn’t coming in. I stopped reeling and just hung on for dear life, the real screeching as line paid out against the drag, and the tip of the pole bobbing up and down frantically. My dad had set the “drag” on the spinning reel at just the right pressure, so the fish could take the line but not run with it, or pull hard against a line that refused to budge thus snapping the line or pole or both. The reel stopped screeching and I knew the fish had reached the end of its run, so I started cranking the handle, stopping when the fish pulled so hard I had to stop. So I learned on my first fish to “play” it. My dad would later onish me to “keep the line” tight, but he wasn’t there now to give me any sage advice, so I fought the fish until it gave up from exhaustion, reeled up the side of the bridge and lifted it over the railing. It fell to the running board with a plop and lay on the wooden floor, flopping around crazily. At that point, my first fishing experience departed from the norm. I dropped my pole and picked up the fish and the hook flipped out of its mouth. It wasn’t hooked badly and a notion came into my mind. I always wanted a fish for a pet. With it squirming in my hands (don’t ask me how I held onto it, because I didn’t know enough to put my thumb and forefinger into its gills), I ran up the

mountain slope to the house. Frankly, I don’t where the fish bowl came from, or even why we had one. We had never had a pet fish before and there was no real reason for us to have a bowl. I dropped the fish in the sink and pulled the bowl down off a shelf, filled it with water and carried it over to the “picture” window that looked out onto the canyon. The fish went into the bowl but, as you might expect, didn’t stay there long. In fact, it flopped out immediately, landing on the floor where it lay still, the entire ordeal too much for it. So much for making a wild mountain Trout into a pet. We cooked it sorrowfully, still dreaming of it as a pet… I ate it that night.

Part 2: The Mysterious Cow

The next day I was visited by the Mysterious Cow. I wonder, in retrospect, if the Cow might have had something to do with the fish. Perhaps it was haunting the tops of the canyon walls to watch me so that I didn’t pull anything else as stupid as the incident of the fish, but I doubt it. For reasons of its own, it just appeared one day, and started watching me. Now, you need to know that I could never get a fix on the Cow, by that, I mean, I could never “see it”, especially if I looked straight at it. But I knew it was there; I saw it in my mind’s eye, whatever that is. Again, there was the music that accompanied it, which sounded like it was played by…maybe a tuba. It was kind of a “boomba boomba ba boomba”, the notes going up and down, as if it were the actual sound of the cow’s hooves as it approached and took up its position on the ridge. It never stared at me “head on” but was always turned broadside, watching me

out of its left eye. Shrouded in semi darkness, it never did anything except watch, but it followed me wherever I went. It seems like the cow always showed up when I caught the fish, but maybe after all these years I could be wrong. However, whenever I’m driving in the country, and I come across a lone cow chewing its cud, I wonder if it isn’t the Mysterious Cow, still pursuing me; keeping an eye on me for some, well, mysterious reason. And after all these years, I thought I was through with the cow, but only last month I took a back road from town…a stretch of road with pastures that usually never had anything in them and suddenly I came upon a lone cow in the field where none had ever been before. Was it going “booomba booomba booomba?” Dunno, I had the radio turned up so loud I couldn’t hear.

Part 3: The Voice from Nowhere

As I mentioned before, but I want to emphasize it again because of what happened next: in the Jim Bridger Canyon, I had two neighbors, the Trefzgers up the side of the mountain (a long way away), and the Detritus boys who lived “down” the canyon, up on top of its wall and were a very long way away. Until my sister was born, there was only one person in the house (as I said, my dad worked during the day in Arapahoe for a lumber company) and that was my mom. Yes, there were cabins farther down the river road, but they were all empty; vacation houses that nobody seemed to use. It happened in the middle of the afternoon as I was running down the mountain slope in front my house, toward the river. There was absolutely nobody else around…anywhere…and the question remains: where did the voice come from and what did it mean? From behind me came a deep, masculine voice that said: “Dan, walk don’t run.”

I turned around and looked behind me, but there was nobody there. Naturally, I said, “Who’s that?”, but there was no response. The question was, what did it mean? Did the message have any deeper meaning than just slowing down and walking? After all, running down a hill is definitely an unsafe thing to do, but I mean…I’d fallen down many times, skinned up my knees, and so what? “Walk, don’t run” was said only once, and didn’t answer the question. I slowed down and tried to walk, but walking downhill against gravity made it difficult not to run. And in life, I ignored its advice. I’ve spent my whole life trying to make things happen when “they were supposed to happen”, to run ahead of my contemporaries, to climb higher than the rest of my peers, etc. etc., trying to be fulfilled, to succeed or, whatever and… I think it would have been a whole lot better if I’d just slowed down. Like the Voice said. “Walk, don’t run.” Was that a message from God? I have no idea, but it was good advice, I think, and maybe if I had followed it I might have been a lot less frustrated later in life. A lot less frustrated.

Speck and the Voice of Donald Duck Chapter 23

Part 1: Speck

W ell, I can’t go on without some mention of Speck. I have no idea where Speck came from. Speck was a quiet, and I would have to say, faithful cat. He was always there, ready to be fed and petted. I never had to go out and search for Speck. He always seemed to hang around the house either inside or outside, and he would pretty much just sit in certain spots and purr. He was another constant in my life, and looking back on it I have to say that I had a lot of constants in my life: a father who left in the morning and always came back, a mother who was always in the house when I came home (except for one traumatic moment, which changed my psychology in a profound way), and a cat that was always there, purring and ready to be fed. I did, however, catch Speck hanging out on the Trefzger’s porch one time and I was quite surprised at that. I’m not sure that I felt so much betrayed as I did suspicious. Were the Trefzger’s trying to take Speck away from me? I wouldn’t put it past them. Len Trefzger would grab anything he wanted whether it belonged to him or not. I once found a comic book up at his house when my parents were invited to dinner that I had been trying to find for weeks. It was one of those Lone Ranger omnibuses that was thicker than the average comic and only issued once every year. We’d finished dinner and my parents had retired to the living room for chit-chat. I sat down in an empty chair, and saw that comic book lying on the coffee table. Len and Jasmine had already gone to bed, and I thought they were asleep, so I blurted out, “That’s my comic!”

Len’s voice came from the bedroom, “You leave my stuff alone”. Well, suddenly it occurred to me I might be a wise to leave the book alone, even if that comic was clearly “my stuff” and not his. But what about Speck, was Len trying to get his claws on my cat? I picked Speck up and took him home, and as far as I know he never went back up there again. But he had gone missing for a while… But one day Speck disappeared, and just as I didn’t know where he came from, and I never knew what happened to him either. When, we left after three years in the canyon, Speck didn’t go with us. Maybe he had defected to the Trefzgers and was happily being fed and comforted. Well, it was better than starving or freezing to death somewhere in the high Rockies.

Part 2: The Sound of Donald Duck

But the real question, the burning question, in my mind was: would I go through life without finding out what Donald Duck sounded like? That is a genuine worry for a mountain kid who only goes to the movies once every couple of months…and then only to shoot ‘em up Westerns with no Disney cartoons attached. Keep in mind that I had lived in the mountains now for two years, with only radio for a companion. Television was in its incipient stages, and only available to cities that could receive the signals which were line of sight. Television didn’t bounce off the ozone layer the way A.M. Radio did and certainly didn’t make it between canyon walls. And, it was a strange and almost ethereal experience to move the dial to find different radio stations…in between strong stations there came a cacophony of voices, all coming from faraway places possibly all over the world. Later, as I

became aware of other planets, I thought that maybe some of them even came from Mars. And who knew? On Saturday nights, Dad would drag out his eight millimeter movie projector and show movies he had taken back East. Among them were movies of football games, which was how I found out what football was (he had nothing about basketball or baseball, so I wouldn’t find out about those until later). The catch was that the movies were all silent. Donald was screaming at his nephews and not making a sound. And I had to imagine, once again, what he sounded like. I was growing up a deprived kid, and I knew it. There he was, in glorious black and white, flickering on the silver movie screen Dad unrolled and placed against the wall, having a fight with a hive of bees at a picnic and being tormented by his nephews, screaming at them in silence as the eight millimeter film rolled past and the projector clacketty-clacked to the end, at which point all would vanish with a series of white spots and the end of the film would flap against the projector chassis. The odor of ozone from overheated projector circuits would dissipate as Dad turned the lights on and put the canisters away, the living room descending into total silence as the feeble lamps attempted to drive away the shadows. Every once in a while, my dad would take me down the winding mountain roads to the nearby town of Listless and we would see a grade B western movie, shot in black and white and projected onto a square screen. There was always a news feature and a cartoon that preceded the main attraction. The news feature was usually introduced by pictures of high level meetings with politicians, marching armies, or tanks firing projectiles off into some distant region, and the featured cartoon was always a Looney Tune starring either Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig. (I could mention Elmer Fudd who was invariably chasing Bugs shooting at him with his shotgun.) But never Donald, or Mickey Mouse either, for that matter. But then came news that would change my life forever.

Part 3: Mickey climbs a Beanstalk

My only other chance came with my turntable and my vitally important vinyl disks. which I played repeatedly. As I mentioned before, I heard the exploits of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and the politically incorrect Brer Rabbit outwitting a sly fox and a stupid bear, but there was nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that would tell me what Donald Duck sounded like! “Kids!” the announcer shouted in a commercial break on Saturday morning radio, “Just out! Get your red hot copy of Mickey and the Beanstalk! Be the first on your block to discover the daring exploits of one brave mouse confronting a GIANT at the top of the beanstalk. “Climb with him and his friends, Donald and Goofy, as he attempts to rescue the Magic Harp! Tell your parents: ask them, beg them, whine, roll on the floor, froth at the mouth…do whatever it takes to get them to buy you a copy of Mickey and the Beanstalk! Things suddenly came into razor sharp focus with the advent of this riveting tale contained in three recorded discs in a 78 rpm album, and I knew that finally… FINALLY…I would hear Donald Duck as he castigated Mickey for trading the cow for magic beans. I set out determined to persuade my parents. “Please, can I have it? Can I have it?” “You already have a whole pile of records, and you don’t take care of the ones you do have.” “But I don’t have as many records as I used to! I have hardly any!” “That’s because you leave them out on the floor for people to step on.” This was only partially true. I did take care of my records; it was my parent’s classical symphony records I left out on the floor ...the old brittle orchestrations

on a recording material called Shellac…for people to step on and break. So, I suppose if you think of their records as being mine (as I did), then I did have fewer records than I used to. Well, after arguing for probably fifteen or twenty minutes, I could see that I beginning to prevail. The stress was building in my father’s face and the stern look on my mother’s was beginning to dissolve into one of concern over the long term effects of my being deprived of this important experience. Fake tears were accompanied by the final coup de grace statement, whined in a tone of voice a victim of the sinking Titanic might use when he discovered there weren’t enough lifeboats to go around. The ultimate argument. “But if I don’t get that record I will never know what Donald Duck sounds like.” That did it. My parents broke. Full realization of the extent of the deleterious effects of my deprivation struck home like a lumberjack’s axe at the base of a white pine, and two days later I had the album in my hands. One minute later I found out what Donald Duck sounded like. He sounded like a hoarse screeching baby squawking through his nose in nonunderstandable gibberish. But now I could go on with life with the certain knowledge I was better prepared to face its challenges. Donald Duck had come to my rescue.

Part 4: An Impenetrable Wall?

As I mentioned before, my dad had played the Catcher position on a team at some time in his youth, and he liked baseball, probably better than any other sport that involved throwing balls around, fishing and hunting being an entirely different category. In the summer we would play catch: high balls, pitched balls, balls thrown off to the right and left and, as I mentioned before, the mitt he had given me made it almost impossible to catch them. But, aside from the attempt to fix my lazy eye,

he never seemed to notice. These were easy, good times. When he was fishing, playing catch, hunting, or just camping, he was relaxed and happy, with a pleased look on his face. But when he was sitting at the table at home during dinner he always looked like he had just tasted something sour and never spoke. I think as a seventy-five percent German his instinct was to exercise his “der Vater” position in the family, just as his father had done before him. I guess the question is, did he have an impenetrable wall around himself? The answer is, yes and no. He believed that being silent and stoical was an expression of virtue, and talkativeness was an indication of weakness. But the silence was broken when he was criticized. And both he and Mom came from a background where everybody was criticizing everybody else, and he was pretty vulnerable to it. It was red-in-the-face time, and sometimes walk-out-ofthe-house time, with me in tow. But most of the time those softballs came in–high, low and on the ground, and you would think that as much practice I had with him, I would have gotten good, maybe even to the point of becoming another Yogi Berra. But I didn’t, and it was the glove’s fault. It had to be…

Varieties of Religious Experience Chapter 24

Part 1: Something Religious in the Air

T here was something religious about Arapahoe City. Even though I was only six years old, I could feel it. Maybe the feeling came because of the majestic, cathedral like mountain range that surrounded and dominated the misnamed town, but…it seemed to permeate the canyon, too. Maybe it was the churches and public buildings made from Rocky Mountain stone…churches with their steeples and arched stained glass windows. The days were beyond glorious, and in the Summer, it was like stepping into heaven itself. It wasn’t too hard to meet God in those majestic heights where you could almost see His throne… My mother was a ‘church hopper’. She attended any given church just long enough to either get bored or offended, and then she was off to another. A seeker but never a finder. My dad had sought and found, and didn’t like what he found, to put it mildly. His maxim was, “I don’t need some preacher to tell me how to live a good life.” That statement was probably the most positive thing he ever said. Things went downhill from there. “Preachers are always talking about how wonderful it will be when they go to heaven, but none of them are in any hurry to get there. They go on and on about heaven, but when it comes time to go, they are the first to yell, ‘Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die!’” He waved his arms when he said this, and it sounded like it

came from hard, personal experience. But he would never elaborate on ‘who’ said this, and under what circumstances. Finally, later when I started getting serious about Christianity, his advice to me was, “You don’t need to worry about getting religious this early in life. That’s something you can worry about when you get old.” He never objected, however, when my mom dressed me up on Sunday and took me out the door, off to a church service. She had a black Bible with blank filler pages at the beginning and end. I don’t know why she let me scribble in it, but I could take my crayons to the blank pages but not the printed pages. Consequently, her Bible looked like it had been savaged by some demented monkey, maybe one of those who, with a lot of other monkeys running over the keys of typewriters, could write all the works of Shakespeare (in a billion years or so, and assuming someone was around to keep the typewriters from gumming up due to…uh…). This Sunday morning, we had left the house in silence, my father, his nose buried in the Sunday paper, refusing to acknowledge that we were on our way to church. Mom, a short woman of about five foot two, drove us to Arapahoe, peering over the steering wheel with a continually worried expression. She rarely drove, but since my dad would not set his foot on the lintel of a church building, she was forced to. We made it safely every time, but I it I might have left indentations on the dash board where my fingers had gripped it a little too hard. We parked in front of a stone building, and I was conveyed to a small room in which sat a dark haired man and five kids about my age. The kids barely looked at me and I took an empty seat. The unsmiling man said, “This is Dan Neiser. It’s his first time here. Everybody say ‘hello’ to little Dan.” (Ugghhh…once again, why, why, why?) Nobody said ‘hello’. He waited until he was sure nobody was going to do it, then said, “Okay, let’s start out the way we usually do, in prayer.”

At that point he folded his hands, looked down at the table and closed his eyes. I scrutinized each kid in turn. All of them had closed their eyes, and were looking down at the table. Thoughts exploded in my brain. What is he doing? The kids are doing the same thing! How can they see the table with their eyes closed? What are they seeing? They must be seeing something I’m not seeing. What is it? I closed my eyes. I didn’t see anything. I folded my hands. I still didn’t see anything. “Amen.” The teacher said. Amen? What does that mean? Now, to be fair, my parents had taught me a prayer which I said before we ate. It went like this: “The Lord has done great things for us whereof we are glad.” It comes from somewhere in Psalms, though if they had told me that, I would have had no idea what ‘Psalms’ was. And it was a great acknowledgement, and had I realized what the prayer meant, I would have agreed. The Lord had done a great thing for me by helping my parents see clearly that I had NOT heard the voice of Donald Duck, as described in the previous chapter, and that I would forever be deformed if I never heard it. (Although it could also be argued that giving me wooden bullets painted with silver paint wasn’t exactly a ‘great’ thing, and God could have done better). Anyway, the Sunday school teacher finally opened his eyes and began talking like a normal person who hadn’t just seen into some realm I couldn’t see. However, I had no idea what he was talking about. There were scribble free Bibles in front of us, and he had us open them. He told us where to open them, but I had no idea how to do it. On a board set vertically on an easel behind him he had placed a picture of people in colored, flowing

robes. He was able to move the cartoon people around, pulling them off the board and putting them in other, different positions. This proved to be boring, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Then came a very long time that was not only boring, but painful, sitting on a hard wood bench, listening to a deep voice booming from behind a wooden stand placed up in front of the building. Behind the author of the pretentious voice were multicolored glass windows depicting a picture of a man in a flowing robe with his arms outstretched. Surrounded by colored windows which formed pictures of people dressed in skirts and robes, I almost gave up hope that this this torture would ever end, when finally, the booming voice said “Amen” and everybody stood up. I had discovered what “Amen” meant: “It’s finally over.” Everybody met at the front door, shook hands with the purple robed man who had been the source of the booming, funereal voice from behind the wooden stand. My mom and I climbed in the black Buick, and started back down the long winding road toward home. My dad didn’t look up from the newspaper when we came in, and as far as I could tell, he never knew that we had left. I later learned that my mom had taken me to a Methodist Church. We returned a few Sundays in succession, followed by a hiatus when we didn’t go to church at all.

Part 2: No Catholics in This Family

that medieval looking cathedral I walked past in a snowstorm trying to get home from school? The one set in a meadow just outside of Arapahoe? It had a spire and stained glass windows, and a white statue of a woman out in front of an arched entrance.

My mother woke up one Sunday morning and for some reason decided to go to that one. When I walked in the door of their Sunday school, as I had later learned such things were called, I found myself facing two rows of boys dressed in white frocks, sitting in desks on either side of an aisle. When I entered, they all, with one accord, turned around and smiled at me with welcoming expressions. At the end of the aisle stood the teacher behind a desk, he too with a broad smile. Nothing like a warm reception! They were definitely eager to accept me into their fold, no question about that. But my dad was not happy when he found out about it, to say the least. I think if there had been plaster on the ceiling it would have fallen off and hit us all on the head. His face red as a stop sign and contorted in a way I had never seen before, he shouted: “THERE WILL BE NO CATHOLICS IN THIS FAMILY!” And there weren’t.

Part 3: Back to The Bible

Well, one important event remains to be considered on the religious front, and in the unlikely event this book gets listed on the New York Times Bestseller List it will rate a “cross” mark after it to identify it as “Christian”, much as Hitler’s made Jews wear five pointed stars. I discovered “Back to the Bible Broadcast” on the radio, bringing the sermons of Theodore Epp to my speaker directly from Lincoln Nebraska. In my opinion, Theodore Epp was probably the humblest and sincerest man preaching the Gospel that ever lived. He was kind and direct, and his sermons were spoken to you as a friend. There was no ranting or raving, and he just simply told you what you needed to know without embellishment. For me, the songs came from Heaven, and the message was to repent and ask Jesus to come into your heart, which I did, somewhere between the ages of six

and seven. I’m not sure what difference it made, except that I was beginning to ‘see’ what I couldn’t see before–what was behind the things I could see. Epp was fine man, and Back to the Bible was never the same without him when he died years later.

Floating Upside Down Chapter 25

W hile I had never seen evidence that Len Trefzger had set foot in a Boy Scout meeting (in spite of the testimonial he had received at the award ceremony for rescuing his sister), there was definite evidence for my involvement in the Cub Scouts. While I can’t any of the meetings I went to (if I did go to any, since they were no doubt held somewhere in town and my mother had no way to get me there when Dad had the car) I do starting out as a “Wolf”. I got pretty good at being a “Wolf”, and when it came time to becoming a “Bear” I couldn’t seem to identify with it. I did make it past it though, and got to the “Lion” stage. War at Sea raged between destroyers of the Red and Blue navies until the bath water got cold, or my mom started banging on the door demanding that I get out. In view of my interest in naval bathtub warfare it was little wonder that I decided to build up my armada by making a three ‘story’ boat. This was patterned after one of the building projects in the Wolf Cub Scout handbook, for which, if completed, would help further my progression to the “Webelos” level. I did it all myself aided by the blueprint provided by the handbook. I found a hand powered “band saw”, the kind woodcarvers use to cut out traced two dimensional patterns before they whittle them into three dimensional objects and, along with white glue, I started building the flagship of my armada. I cut out each level, including the two smoke stacks that went on top, assembled them and glued them together. By the end of the week I had a three level ocean liner that looked exactly like the one in the handbook.

I showed it proudly to my dad, who grunted, and then took me over to an armoire he had recently built for the living room. I sort of stared at the armoire, grasping the implication that his godlike woodworking skills far sured anything I could ever come up with, then picked up my boat and took it into the bathroom, filling up the tub with warm water. The boat floated upside down. I turned it right side up, but it promptly flipped over. I stared at it, not knowing what to do. Thinking I must have done something wrong, I went back to the handbook, but after studying it, I concluded I had done everything exactly according to the directions, and the stupid boat didn’t work. Well, I couldn’t figure it out, so after I had played with the boat in the tub, artificially aiding it in its necessary alignment, i.e. floating right side up, I began to experience the incipient stages of enlightenment concerning the printed word. This lesson can be codified with the following words: “Just because you find something in print in a supposedly reputable source doesn’t mean it’s true or that it will work”. It’s easier to throw an idea into print than it is to actually build it…and then put it into print. Why test it? Nobody will actually put what you have written into practice. Nobody will actually take it seriously, and try to turn it into reality. Well, in spite of the fact that the boat wouldn’t float upright, I presented it as one of the projects I needed to graduate from Lion, and it was, indeed, good for that. But my faith in Cub Scout handbooks, and indeed, in all manuals, had been drastically shaken.

Part 4: Distributing the Wealth

That night my dad came home with his hands behind his back, and when I saw that I knew he had something for me, probably the latest Uncle Scrooge comic book I’d asked for.

We played our game as I reached for it on his right, at which point he moved it to his left hand. I went for the left, and he moved it to the right. We went back and forth, until, shouting excitedly, I finally got behind him and grabbed it. Sure enough, Uncle Scrooge was off on another adventure with his nephew Donald along with the famous Duck’s nephews, Huey, Louie, and Dewey. I giggled wildly, and he laughed. I ran to my bed and flopped down, diving into Scrooge’s latest expedition to find the Seven Cities of Gold. Uncle Scrooge was a creation of the famous Carl Barks who used National Geographic magazines to craft the tightwad Duck’s adventures to acquire more money, and save it from his nemeses, the Beagle Boys who were forever trying to steal it out of his vault. Barks used his cartoon creation to propound his theory about wealth. In one issue, the Beagle Boys used too much dynamite to blow up his vault, and scatter his entire fortune all over the state, equally distributing Scrooge’s vast fortune. Scrooge got to work, and with what little he managed to save from the debacle set up various stores selling basic necessities. He then sat down to wait for the lazy populace to run out of what they needed and spend all their money to buy from him. In a short order all of the money Scrooge lost reverted back to his vault. So much for wealth distribution.

Part 5: More Sad Songs

As usual, after dinner Dad wanted me to sit on his lap. The Lone Ranger wasn’t going to come on for another half hour, so I jumped up, settled down, and he began singing his sad songs. I’ve got a picture of myself with my dad, probably when I was age three, before we made our trek west. He looks contented and happy, and I’ve got an incredibly sad expression on my face. As a kid, I think I sensed the fact that he had left a Christian path that he knew when he was younger, and had set out on his own…

a path of bitterness that he took because of the injustices inflicted on him when he was a farm boy in Nebraska; the hypocrisy of professing Christians, and a friend that had convinced him, as he put it later, that “the Resurrection of Christ was just hearsay”. He was a powerful man, one of those that were later deemed “the Great Generation”, and he relied on his considerable strength. “I don’t need some preacher to tell me how to live a good life,” was one of his favorite comments accompanied by forceful anger. And he was living it. He had the strength and intelligence to do everything he set out to do, from leaving a secure and promising career in Industry where he was rapidly ascending the management ladder, to sell everything he owned and head West like the pioneers of old where he single-handedly built a house high in the Rocky Mountains. This was something he had never done before in his life, but he built it without subcontracting out any of the specialized labor involved—electrical or plumbing work, for example. He loved to read. He was an artist specializing in creating objects from wood. He played the Banjo and later the Guitar, and his friends, which were “few and far between”, as he expressed it – those who were foolish enough to get into jam sessions with him—found themselves on the level of somebody who gets caught in front of a Buffalo stampede. He would beat them down. “I can’t keep up with you, Cliff,” one of his ‘jamming buddies’ once conceded after he had set a pace no living human being could match. Once this was said he would stop hammering on his banjo and sit back with a pleased expression on his face, like a cat that has just swallowed a tasty canary, not looking at the poor sap he had just defeated but at some point just beyond his own nose. And when it came to women, he grudgingly accepted that he was in some measure dependent on my mom, acknowledging but seemingly hating the male weakness for the need of a female. “Sex is not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said when I was older. (I lie not; he really said this.) “The most important thing is to find somebody that likes to do what you like to do.” And he seemed to need no human being, male or female, living or dead to do what he liked to do, with him.

Except me. I was like an appendage. I followed him everywhere he went. I was an unchallenging, applauding, appreciative audience that provided no competition whatsoever. My mom, however, offered an unceasing barrage of criticism of everything he did. Privately, however, when she wasn’t complaining about where she lived (out in the sticks) or criticizing what he was doing, she would it that he was a good man. In spite of their interests and proclivities which seemed to be in total opposition to each other –he the country boy, she the city girl—there was something in their natures that was basically compatible. On very rare occasions, he would give her a hug, or offer his cheek for her to stand on her tiptoes and peck. Spectacular shows of affection like this were pretty infrequent, however, and seemed like a rare ‘event’ for me. They called each other ‘hon’, short, I imagine, for ‘honey.’ But back to the sad songs—old, sentimental songs dredged from the thirties or forties: “Down in the Valley. Valley so Lowwwwwww… “Hang your head ooooverrrrrrrrr… “Hear the wind blowwww… “Hear the wind bloowwwwwww, dear “Hear the wind blowwww Etc. Outside, you could hear the wind blow, so there was definitely some immediacy to the song. “Bury me outttttt…

“On the Lone Praireee…” “Where the Coyotes howl…. “And the wind blows freeee…” (And here comes the real kicker) “And when I DIE…. “You can bury me… “’Neath the Western Sky….. “On the Lone Praierrreee…” The key word here, which I have capitalized for emphasis, is the word DIE. From my earliest memories he was threatening to die. Or, get old. Then I would run off and forget him and leave him to rot in some old folk’s home and, selfish child that I was, never, ever visit him. “Down in the valleeee…” “Valleee so low…” “Hang your head overrrrrrrr….” “Hear the wind blowww….” It emphasized what a real jerk I was at the age of five to want to abandon my dad and live my own life. “Oh, God!” I prayed fervently, “Do not let me grow up to be that kind of jerk!” “Hear the wind blowww, lovveeee…” “Hear the wind blowww…” Some kids suffer from their parents abandoning them to fend for themselves. My problem was the exact opposite.

“Yep,” he would say, “you’ll forget about your old dad and and leave me to die a lonely old man.” “Angels in heavennnnnn…” “Know I love you….” And so, the biggest sin in life would be to grow beyond the age of six…or maybe seven or eight. But, somehow, I resolved… Somehow I would avoid it.

No Longer an Only Kid Chapter 26

Part 1: Something Has Changed

T hen came the fateful day that changed my life, when I began the metamorphosis from a spoiled only son to the older, wiser, responsible and selfless individual I am today. Ha! That’s the way it should have been, but , I had made the vow never to grow up. My mother had been growing larger around the stomach, but I barely noticed this fact, and didn’t think it was worthy of much—if any—consideration. She spent a lot of time at the treadle Singer Sewing machine, making small clothing, all pink. She was spending more time than usual, but I took little notice. I was busy being tied up by Len for his and his sister’s amusement, and usually my mother was sympathetic to my plight, but one time he staked me out on the ground and put a loop over my “pinky” finger, tying it to one of the stakes that held my right wrist. He grinned evilly, hardly the smile of the heroic Boy Scout who had recently rescued his sister from drowning. “Now that will do it! If you try to get out of your bonds, you’ll break your little finger.” After testing all the knots the Scouts had taught him to tie, he retreated to the shade of a Pine tree farther up the hill where he lounged with his sister, plotting tortures for me, while I lay sweating in the hot sun.

By this time I had become adept at escaping his most elaborately crafted imprisonments. I managed to wriggle my “pinky” free without breaking it. Subsequently, I squirmed out of the rest of the bonds, and ran home to my mother crying at the top of my lungs. My dad called this “bawling” and elicited that pleased small smile on his face, finding my immature discomfiture not only humorous but evidence that I was nowhere near growing up. Now I didn’t actually need to run home “bawling”, because I hadn’t been hurt, but this response to Len’s diabolical torments always had gotten me sympathy and comfort. This time it was different. “I think you just like to come home bawling so you can get attention.” Mom said over the noise of the Singer. She hadn’t made a move to leave what she was doing and come to comfort me, so I stood in the middle of the room and bawled until it was obvious that I was going to get no attention. There were small pink pieces of cloth lying on the floor around her feet, and what she was pushing through the gyrating needle was also small and pink. “But mom!!!! Guess what he did!!!” “I don’t care what he did,” Mom said with an uncharacteristic lack of sympathy. “You need to stop running home bawling.” I wiped my eyes and blew my nose with the bitter realization that I had just wiped my own eyes and blown my own nose. She had not done it! For a brief moment I felt abandoned. Rejected. Thrust out in the cold. To fend for myself. I sniffed and wandered off, with the vague thought that something had changed and I wasn’t sure what.

Part 2: No Longer the Focal Point

Suddenly I was no longer the focal point of attention and I was too stupid to realize it had something to do with that pink dress she was making with her Singer Sewing Machine. Then the Sister appeared. She appeared as if from nowhere and lay there in my mother’s arms, making disgusting sucking noises and emitting noisome odors. She lay there…uh…feeding, while my mother looked up at me like I was some kind of stranger. I stared at this situation in complete helplessness, not having a clue as to what to do but feeling like the roof had “caved in.” While my dad, the Stoical Rock, kept his routine of coming home, reading the paper, eating, having me sit on his lap for sad song singing, and leaving in the morning before I got up, my mom was starting to put me to work. Work! I soon became terrified of the dreaded words: “Now that your sister is here I need more help.” Those words usually meant that I had to clean up my room, or that I had to fetch things for my mom while she nursed, or I had to sweep off the porch, or something else equally hideous. I could no longer live in my child hood and play my dreams…I had to work. I had to help. And this was all my new sister’s fault! She was the one who dropped in uninvited and ruined my scene as the child idol of the household. Was it any wonder that I started calling her “Stupid?” That I started giving her Dutch Rubs and making her bawl? That I grabbed her by the head and squeezed it until she burst into tears? That I once hanged her upside down in the garage while my parents were gone, watching her sway back and forth while lounging on the floor eating potato chips? Was it any wonder? And I hope nobody blames me because she started to suck her thumb. That had

nothing to do with me. I don’t even know when she started to suck it, but it might have had something to do with the “lazy eye” that ran in our family. Her eye was even lazier than mine, and probably went crossed when she pulled that hot iron off the ironing board one day and caused it to land on her arm. I definitely that day: the screaming went on for quite a while and messed up one extremely vital episode of the Masked Man as he was about to be hanged by a lynch mob. I never found out how Tonto saved him, and I never found out how my mom got her to the hospital or back home after they bandaged it up. One day there was loud screaming and the next there was a bandage. And next week, the Masked Man was back in action again with his neck unstretched. My sister acquired a very thick pair of glasses, after that, which magnified her eyes enormously and emphasized her left eye which now was entirely white, the pupil having turned completely inward. My parents tried everything they could think of to get her to stop sucking her thumb, including an ingenious technique of coating it with some evil tasting substance. This worked almost as well as when my dad would sit down at the dinner table, look at her and say a single word: “Thumb”, in a vain attempt to remind her that she was sucking it and should remove it from her mouth. He did this so often that I think she might have thought her name was indeed “Thumb”, and my mom complained to me about a father who would never say anything to his child other than this one word. I kind of hoped she wouldn’t stop sucking it because it would prevent her from starting to ‘bawl’ and I wouldn’t be able to hear the next episodes of the Masked Man when he was bringing crooks to justice.

Goodbye to Paradise Chapter 27

Part 1: And Suddenly, and It Was Gone

M y dad had a saying which he often repeated when something that he enjoyed came to an end, such as a fishing trip in which we caught our limit every day, cooked the fish at night wrapped in ‘tin’ foil on the camp fire while listening to the wind gently blowing through the pines and watching the stars swirl above our heads. The saying was: “All good things must come to an end.” The corollary to that was “All bad things keep going on and on,” but he never said that and I made it up. So it was with our time in The Jim Bridger Canyon. I was playing out in the flower strewn slope that was our front yard when I heard my dad whistle. He had this distinctive, loud whistle which he performed by putting his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and blowing on the resulting orifice. I have no idea how he did it, and I could never copy it. Anyway, whenever he wanted anybody in his family to come running he would put two fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. This included me, my sister when she got older and my mother. Later, I think my sister rebelled, refusing to come running when whistled for, or maybe he had just stopped whistling for us when she got older, or, maybe he decided that he didn’t want to “push it” by training her to respond along with his wife and his son as if we were his pet dogs.

Anyway, I heard the whistle, and I immediately stopped doing what I was doing and ran for the house. Inside the garage stood a strange man, balding, paunchy, and graying, but with one of those pleasant looks people get when they are enjoying themselves and satisfied with what they are doing. “Dan,” my dad said, “I just sold the house to Mr. Elmo here and he wants to give you something.” Sold the house? What does that mean? Already the garage had changed. There was a line of fishing poles on the wall that had not been there before, and Mr. Elmo pulled one down off the rack. “Here, I thought I’d give you this one.” He handed me a yellow fishing pole equipped with a casting reel. I took it and held it limply in my hand, a feeling that the walls of the garage were suddenly starting to close in. Without warning, my life had changed. I was now cut off from everything that I knew: the half-log framed house, my room, the forest, the river, mountains to play on, glorious summers, bitter winters, and above all, the mystical hidden mystery of the Canyon. I would no longer belong to it. I was going somewhere else. I stared at him, and for the first time, feelings of real hate were forming within me. Who was this man? What gave him the right to take it all away? He smiled at me and patted me on the head. I held the pole limply, feeling like I had just been eviscerated, my guts lying on the garage floor, steaming in the late morning mountain air. Gone. It was all gone in a moment. One minute I had been playing happily, never giving a thought to a change or, what was worse, an ending, and then it had ended. I can’t packing, but I think I a van coming and men carrying our stuff into it. I didn’t say goodbye to Len and Jasmine, or Rick and Pete. Didn’t even think of it.

Then I got into the backseat of my parent’s yellow 1952 Buick, and stared out the back window at the receding house as we crossed the bridge, the tires bumping underneath us. Like Adam, I was thrown out of paradise. Unlike Adam, I left the serpent behind. The one good thing was that I was finally freed from the torment of Len and Jasmine Trefzger. I’d left two serpents behind, but, as I was soon to learn, there were a lot more out there.

Part 2: Land of Listlessness

I have no idea why he sold the house and left Arapahoe. Was it because he wasn’t making enough money working for the lumber company? Was it because, and this was probably it, he wanted to have his own career as a contractor? Well that was what he did become. He moved to Listless, a town on the other side of the mountains, and started building another house. And put us up in the Miserable Nite Motel in Listless, which did indeed look like an outpost of misery.

Our Miserable Night Chapter 28

Part 1: Miserable Nite Motel

S haped in the form of an “L” the Miserable Nite Motel had a long line of doors opening to units in both branches of its wings facing a large parking lot consisting only of gravel. The walls were a dingy green of flaking paint, and the roof…well, I couldn’t see the roof, but I think it was probably tar paper in bad need of real roofing. The apartment we moved into consisted of two rooms. The main room had a kitchen nook with a battered table and two peeling Naugahyde backed chairs, a rusty stove and a stained sink. The main room had a Naugahyde sofa with strips coming off of it, which my mom bound with tape. It faced a twenty one inch console coin operated television set. The second room was the bedroom for my parents. I slept in a makeshift bed in the main “living” area, and my sister had a crib off in a corner. All in all, it was furnished in early ‘50’s rusty metal and cracked vinyl. This dingy, run-down apartment had only one good feature, and to my mind, it definitely redeemed everything in it: the television set which up until now had only been the subject of dreams. It was the gateway to actually being able to see what was going on in the radio programs. The only television I had ever seen was on trips to Listless with my dad. He took me to grade B western movies on occasion, and afterwards we’d walk back to the car past shops displaying television sets set up behind plate glass windows The first picture tubes were round and small, developed back in the late forties. By the time I was involuntarily transported from the mountains to “civilization”

the picture tubes had become “squarish”; more oval than square, with rounded corners displaying pictures in black-and-white. We’d walk by the stores, peering through the glass at the sets, staring in awe at snowy pictures of marching armies and flying jets which, because of the lateness of the hour, always seemed to degenerate into a caricature of an Indian chief in full headdress with diagonal stripes running behind him. This was known as ‘Test Pattern’. At least, that’s what I always saw because the movie we’d been to ended late at night at the time when the single station in town was g off. The television set in the Miserable Nite Motel was about the size of a washing machine. It had a dark brown cabinet; the squarish picture tube above the cloth covered speaker embossed with vertical rows of small copper colored metal bars. On the top right was a slot surmounting a square chamber under which was printed “Deposit twenty-five cents for thirty minutes”. Twenty-five cents!!!! “Mom, puleeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeee….!!!!” “No, that’s outrageous. I don’t have twenty-five cents.” “Come ‘on, Mom. I’ve never seen a television picture before. I don’t even know what it looks like.” (Hey, it worked with Donald Duck). This time, though, no amount of begging got through to my parents. Possibly because it was the newness of the technology. They were simply not going to put twenty-five cents in the slot and turn on the picture. I tried everything: begging, pleading, threatening insanity and promising future damage to my already battered psyche, but to no avail. By the end of the week, it was thriftiness 100 and kid 0, and things were looking bleaker by the day

Part 2: Twenty-Five Cents in the Slot

Day after day I sat in front of the dead T.V. in a miserable, run-down apartment with a front lawn consisting entirely of gravel, lit by a garish red, blue and green neon sign that flashed the words “Miserable Nite “Mo_ell” over and over again, the ‘t’ being broken, and the landlord too cheap to fix it. My sister was continually “bawling” because of diaper rash from her one thousandth dirty diaper, the odor of which easily overwhelmed the musty smell of old carpet and rotting Naugahyde. I sat in front of that T.V., trying to imagine what wonders would appear on the screen if my parents would only insert twenty-five cents into the slot. The alpine town of Arapahoe City, nestled high in the Rockies, in which something mystical and religious hid, ever on the verge of revealing itself but never doing so; the Jim Bridger River raging to provide fighting trout and peril for the unwary; the Cowboy and Indian battles in which childish voices echoed through the forest shouting “bang, your dead!” and “no, I’m not!”; the unequal fights with Len Trefzger; seas of mountain Columbines rippling across meadows in the spring wind; dormant grass shaken by that same wind turned frigid with the onset of winter—were all becoming distant memories blotted out by the roar of traffic, the flickering motel sign, the gravel parking lot, the dingy paint, rusted metal, and cracked Naugahyde. Here there was no place to play except for that big, gravel covered parking lot and nothing to see except the blank screen of this dead television set. There was one kid in the whole place. He was the son of the motel manager, and was handicapped in some way. I seem to him having red hair and big glasses that magnified his eyes. I played with him out on the pile of dirt that was dumped at the edge of the parking lot, underneath degraded trees of some illdefined species. It was summer, and school hadn’t started. There was nothing to do, other than play with our toy cars and trucks, driving them around in the dirt, and staying off the gravel parking lot because we ‘might get run over’ by guests parking their automobiles. But after weeks of torture living in the dingy motel room with my bawling,

nursing, pooping sister, I finally wore my mother down with incessant begging and she finally PUT A QUARTER IN THE SLOT! The picture leaped into life. It was “Test Pattern”. I sat transfixed. It was the Indian. He had a square nose. He had a headdress. There were the strange diagonal lines behind him. He looked stern and noble. And he was accompanied by a sound like a flute playing one note. Hooooooooooooooo. I stared at the Indian. “Mom, all it is, is Test Pattern!” Hoooooooooooooooooo. “Sorry, Dan.” Hoooooooooooooooooo. “How long will this go on?” “I don’t know, Dan.” My sister started to bawl, no doubt because of poop and pain. The noise went on. The Indian stared at something beyond the screen. “How long do we get? “Thirty minutes for twenty-five cents.” I stared at the clock. Five minutes had gone by. Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaa.” Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. The clock ticked on. 4:25. I stared, thinking, this can’t be! It can’t be! “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” 4:29. I waited, thinking, “This is my last chance. She’ll never put in another twentyfive cents.” There was a knock at the door, and I tore myself away from the screen. It was the kid. Bob something or other. “You wanna go play trucks?” “NO! I’M WATCHING TEST PATTERN.” “Gee, can I come in and see it too?” I practically dragged the kid in by his hair and plopped him down in front of the set. The Indian was still there, then… Marching armies, jet planes leaping from ocean carriers, flags waving, a totally unintelligible news feature speaking of distant dignitaries doing incomprehensible things, and finally appeared on the screen in glorious blackand-white that great space adventurer… Captain Video!

Part 3: Be the First Kid

Rockets flying through space. Space pirates. Robots. Other Planets. Ray Guns.

For some reason, Captain Video didn’t appeal to me that much…at first. Maybe it was because Captain Video was a fifty-year-old paunchy man who was demanding instant obedience from kids everywhere. But now I could actually see what was happening. The sets were cheap, the ‘special effects’ were ludicrous, and it was all kind of fuzzy, but I still sat cross legged on the floor with the kid next to me, watching Captain Video’s rocket flying through space and his Video Rangers shooting at Space Pirates with disintegrator beams which, if they hit their mark, caused the bad guys to disappear in a flash of light. “Kids,” the announcer shouted at the commercial break, “get your genuine Captain Video ray gun. It has five rays, each a different color and each ray deadlier than the one before it. Be the first kid on your block to disintegrate all your friends!” Bob and I glanced at each other nervously, and suspicion entered my mind. He wants that ray gun. I could see it in the enormous eyes staring out from behind those thick lenses. And if he did get it he’d disintegrate me into a pile of dirt for him to play on with his toy truck. At that moment I knew that I had to get a ray gun first. Then the picture went off, shut down like a dark blanket had been thrown over it. My thirty minutes was up, half of it wasted by Test Pattern. I leaped to my feet. “But Captain Video wasn’t finished yet!” I shouted. When last seen, The Great Man was at the mercy of a Space Pirate who had gotten the drop on him in the cargo bay of his ship. With shipping crates all around him, he was being threatened by the very ray gun in question, which would no doubt disintegrate him into a pile of ash. “Mom!” I screamed. “It shut off. Put another quarter in it!” “Sorry, Dan, I don’t have another quarter. That was all I had.”

What had happened to Captain Video? Was he alive or dead? I sat stupefied, staring at the blank screen. Suddenly my horizons which had expanded into Space, the existence of which I had been unaware until now, condensed into the confines of the dingy apartment in the Miserable Nite Motel. I was devastated. But, still, I had flown into Space, and now I knew exactly what I wanted…no, what I had to have. It was that Captain Video ray gun and it was a matter of life and death! And I absolutely had to get it before this other kid got one first.

The King of the Cowboys Chapter 29

Part 1: The Burning Question

F or some reason we moved out of the Miserable Nite to another motel. Motel Schlock was a lot like the Miserable Nite except it consisted of three long buildings each having twenty units; two that were parallel and facing each other across a wide parking lot and a third building perpendicular to them at the back. The lot, or driveway, had spaces for cars to park on each side, and was indeed a step up because it was paved with cracked asphalt out of which sickly looking weeds grew here and there, rather than being all gravel. The Manager’s office was up front, located under the neon sign that flashed Motel Schlock in red, green and blue alternating colors, which partially lit the parking lot back to about unit 10. The unit we moved into consisted of a kitchen, which you first encountered as you stepped through the torn screen door, noticing, of course, its flaking yellow paint and beat up kitchen table, and in the back the living room slash bedroom, complete with closet on the back right. On entering these sumptuous quarters, you first encountered, on the right, a rusting stove, a linoleum counter which no amount of scrubbing could completely clean, and a laboring refrigerator. On the left, please notice the dining nook which barely provided room for a spindly aluminum table, the top of which was a stained brown plastic intended to resemble wood, and three kitchen chairs with aluminum legs and cracked vinyl backs. Continuing onward past the sumptuous pantry, you will enter the second room in

the house: the aforementioned living room slash bedroom, in which rested a sagging dark brown couch, patched easy chair, and into which my parents moved the all-important radio. The apartment had the feeling of a dark cave, even more so than the sumptuous quarters at Miserable Nite. But worst of all, what was missing was another coin operated television set. Speaking of that, with my expertly honed badgering technique coupled with dogged persistance, I had convinced my mother to send away for the ray gun. And yes, I got it at about the same time Bob did. It ran on “D” cell batteries, and after I powered it up, I aimed it at Bob and pulled the trigger, the ray set to ‘red’. Nothing happened, even when I spun the dial to ‘blue’, green’ and finally ‘yellow’ Bob remained undisintegrated, and when we moved out of the Miserable Nite I left him behind still playing with his trucks in the dirt. I realized I had been conned by the Great Space Man, Captain Video, so in a sense I was not too unhappy not to find a television set in this room. Radio was better, and as I was to find out, all the other kids in the motel also had one, and none of them had television sets. And it didn’t matter. What did matter was the ongoing battle over the burning issue of 1951: Who was the King of the Cowboys?

Part 2: Radio Fiends

By now I was acclimatized to dingy motels and barren driveways, so Motel Schlock, created no shock or sense of loss. And the up side of my new domicile, unlike the Miserable Nite, was that there were a lot of other kids here, and they were all radio fiends.

Each show title always had an announcer that yelled out what it was about, and you could hear the answering shouts from the kids, emanating from each unit down the way, fading into the distance. One well announced show in particular was the exploits of a forest ranger named “Mark Trail”. MARRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK TRAILLLLLLLLLLL!!!! The announcer shouted. I gave an answering shout, “Mark Trail!”. This was followed by every kid in the complex yelling “Mark Trail!” You could hear them, one voice after another, and for all anybody knew there were a million kids all over the world yelling “Mark Trail” simultaneously, their voices rising to a crescendo that is still being heard as it travels out of the galaxy. But I was to discover a new social order here at Motel Schlock. The Lone Ranger no longer reigned as the greatest Champion of Justice. To my horror I discovered he had been supplanted!!! The new ruler was a fairy by the name of Roy Rogers, the self-proclaimed King of the Cowboys, and was iconically represented by one kid who had assume his mantra, Chris Ritchey. Chris Ritchey was the epitome of the clean cut fifties kid: short cropped hair, and a face that reflected light like a polished Q ball. He wore a tan, flat topped cowboy hat, a white shirt braided across the chest with gold braids, dark pants (with chaps, yet), and a pair of brown cowboy boots. He carried a pair a of six guns with polished pearl handles which he must have gotten by sending in some cereal box top just like we had done in the Canyon. Roy Rogers reigned supreme here, and the Lone Ranger who was never even a cowboy; remained a dark figure hiding behind a mask, never having anything to do with women, often mistaken for a villain, and accompanied by an outcast Indian, and who was not known for any skill in bringing outlaws to justice. In short, Chris Ritchey was the prime representative of the mainstream WASP culture of the 1950’s, and I, a mountain boy who had difficulty keeping his shoe laces tied, resided at its fringe. I suppose I should have hated him, but I didn’t.

It was just that I meshed with him about the way oil dissolves in water. We had endless arguments over who was the “King of the Cowboys”, but for me it was a losing battle. There was a minority of kids in the complex who held with Gene Autry, and Chris had most of his arguments with them. Unfortunately for them, that loser wimp never claimed to be anything other than being a ‘singing cowboy’, let alone some kind of king. He spent all his time playing a guitar and singing, and had a sidekick who didn’t even own a jeep. I disdained to argue about Gene Autry. He was a singing wimp beneath the consideration of any self-respecting cowboy kid. It was a losing proposition to fight a battle on two fronts. However, when we weren’t fighting over the Burning Issue, we were shooting up the place, and, unless they have torn the motel down, I suspect that it is still riddled with a multitude of imaginary bullet holes.

Part 3: The Dark Store

We also made trips to the comic book trade store. Chris and his buddies traded off their old comics with Big George whose ponderous mass filled a ratty overstuffed recliner behind a battered desk of some indeterminate wooden origin. The desk was piled high with comics of all descriptions, many of which were of a less than wholesome nature, no doubt predating the Comics Code and hidden from parents until traded off. Beyond his desk extended long wooden bookshelves with dark, narrow aisles between them. They ran the length of the poorly lit store which was permeated with the stuffy odor of mold and old newsprint. Here you could find everything from Donald Duck to DC superheroes to Bill Gaines horror. Doctor Death and other twisted nightmares roamed the store throughout its shadowy recesses, and I didn’t venture into it without a great deal of angst. It was actually my second introduction to the genre of Horror, having listened to

the creak of the door opening to the Inner Sanctum on radio (quickly switching the station as soon as I heard the creak), or listening to Little Orphan Annie as she encountered ghosts, goblins and pirates with Daddy Warbucks. None of the LOA characters had pupils in their eyes, making them look like ghosts themselves, and were as scary as the Phantom, who lived on a voodoo island with strange cult practitioners (he had a comic strip in the Sunday paper). Here in the store I discovered 3D comics, and became fascinated with it. With my lazy eye, I think I had subconsciously set as my life long goal to actually be able to view the world in true 3D, and it developed into an imperative to find as many 3D comic as I could, put on the red and green anaglyphic glasses, and try to see the 3D. Problem was, almost all of the 3D comics were horror, and so in my efforts to see the world as it was, I was pretty much seeing the world as it wasn’t.

Dark School Chapter 30

Part 1: No Fun with Dick and Jane

I think that whoever built the prison systems in the State must have won with the contract for construction of the elementary school buildings as well. Our stay in the luxurious accommodations of the Miserable Nite was accompanied by my placement in the local district elementary school in Listless, which had to have been constructed as part of the prison system and possibly rejected as being too substandard for it. A dark, brooding three story edifice of brick, its windows glowering over a playground paved with concrete behind chain link fences, the school looked like a place where teachers may very well be cooking and eating kids in the basement. My status as possibly the smartest kid in the second grade in Arapahoe City Elementary quickly evaporated. My proficiency at reading Dick and Jane had inadequately prepared me for what was expected here. Dick and Jane was long gone history, possibly read in the first grade but not beyond that, and now, instead of being the fastest reader in the class, I was evaluated at being the slowest in the Listless Third Grade and demoted to a remedial reading program. I had loved Mrs. Parks in the second grade. She was a bright, cheery, and above all understanding teacher with whom I enjoyed the favored status of being the class focal point of attention and favored child (until my reputation was

besmirched by the kicked girl incident). From those heights of glory I had been cast down…down to the basement of this miserable converted prison building. There, in an area dimly lit by a single overhead light bulb directed downward by a reflector, I sat in a circle of equally stupid children, all having difficulty reading a miserably boring text designed to bore remedial third grade students out of their minds, and conducted by a crone of a woman who would easily have doubled for the Wicked Witch of the West, or was it the East? I struggled with my new status, but couldn’t fully accept it. Thus, I found myself frequently sitting in a dark corner on a stool facing the wall with a dunce cap on my head. Bravely I endured this public humiliation, fully convinced that I had never done or said anything to deserve it. That was the problem with punishment as a child. You never knew exactly why you were being punished. One minute you were demonstrating your innate virtues which should have been obvious to all, and the next you were sitting in a corner. Oh, well. In some unfathomable way it must have done me some good. If nothing else, my experience with Third Grade Elementary in Listless at the age of six left me with a determination to avoid prison at all costs, even if that determination came at a much later time in my life.

Part 2: The Neanderthal

I was saved from further humiliation by our move to Motel Schlock, and God only knows what hideous fate would have befallen me had I stayed in the dismal torture chamber of that old school. The new school however was considerably more upbeat, and I found myself in a nicely sized third grade class filled with compatible students, taught by a comionate and empathic teacher, in other words one who was more adept at perceiving my considerable intrinsic worth.

For the first time since we had left Arapahoe, things were going well. They went even better when Halloween rolled around, and we were all supposed to wear a mask to class. I don’t know how I came across it, but I found this Neanderthal caveman mask, complete with coarse black hair (glued on), a low, beetling brow, and a heavy receding jaw with square teeth jutting up from it. In short, it looked like a humanoid creature that, had I known anything about IQ scores, would have had something around 86. Surely not more than that, and for some reason that is buried deep in the human psyche, it made me the most popular kid in the class. The sudden change in attitude of all the kids was phenomenal, and I had absolutely no idea why. I soon became the acknowledged leader of everything: art projects, class plays, and even ended up choosing who would be on what team and doing what. I distinctly choosing a team to draw a mural. There was one kid who had not been chosen for any of the teams and one of the kids on my team came to me and whispered, “Don’t choose him, he’s left handed.” Hmmmm. Now would the Greatest Champion of Justice not choose a kid because he was left handed? I think not. Having that kid on my team didn’t diminish my popularity in the slightest, nor did it prevent us from winning the contest. And besides, I figured that if my popularity dropped or dissipated, all I had to do was put my Neanderthal cave man mask back on. I guess everybody loves the mentally challenged. Go figure.

King of the Hoffman Television Set Chapter 31

O n raged the battle over who was truly the King of the Cowboys. One contingent, led by Chris Ritchey favored Roy Rogers and the other by a less charismatic kid named George Garnett championed Gene Autry. As I’ve previously mentioned, the Lone Ranger who was never a cowboy, was not even in the running. Each had his faction, five kids followed Chris, playing such roles as Pat Brady, the King’s Comical Side-Kick, and other assorted cowboys and villains who to this day remain nameless. There were no girls in the motel complex to take the part of Dale Evans, and Chris had to remain girl-friendless, which I don’t think bothered him a bit. (As an aside, the only time the subject of the opposite sex came up was when somebody invoked the name of Marilyn Monroe, at which point everybody yelled “Woo hoo”. I don’t think any of us had a real grasp on why we were yelling “Woo hoo”, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.) Pat drove Nellybelle, a broken down anachronistic jeep, out of place because supposedly Roy existed in some indeterminate time before Henry Ford introduced the technology. The jeep obviously placed Roy somewhat later than the Early West, and I think we all knew that, but ignored it in our personal confusion about history. How did we know Pat drove a jeep? Because this could be clearly seen on the “Roy Roger’s Show”, played weekly on the only television set in the neighborhood, belonging to a kid who lived in a house next door to the motel. Heretofore, it had not dawned on me that there was a jeep, let alone that the Comical Side Kick drove it, until the very image was displayed before me. This television set was a Hoffman, a console model about the size of a washing

machine and the neighborhood wonder. It was a wonder first because you didn’t have to put a quarter in the slot to watch it. This kid’s family, whoever he was (and nobody cared), actually owned it. They had a special room that contained it as the only piece of furniture besides a couch strategically placed to provide group viewing. The picture it displayed was perfect: no “snow” -- static caused by a weak signal from a station too far away. The tube was protected by a pain of safety glass, tinted yellow to reduce eyestrain, and was “edge lit”: framed by some kind of electric light surrounding it and providing what every television set needed – a room light to watch it by. It was because of this marvel that we could actually see Roy Rogers, his horse Trigger, his dog Bullet, his Comical Side Kick, and least of all in importance in our young minds, his girlfriend Dale Evans. Every week Roy Rogers used his six guns and his fists to subdue and defeat the bad guys, rescuing his girlfriend and Side Kick from innumerable perils, singing and playing his guitar, and remained the undefeated hero and indisputable King of the Cowboys. Well, not quite. “Gene Autry is the King of the Cowboys!” “No he isn’t. I vote for Red Ryder!” “No, Lash La Rue is the King of the Cowboys!” “Roy Rogers is the King of the Cowboys and always will be!” “Ha! He has a girlfriend. He’s a pansy!” Whack! Oof! Grunt! “That’ll teach you to call Roy Rogers a pansy!” And finally…

“WILL YOU KIDS SHUT UP???” That was another thing I didn’t like about that motel. It was packed with grouchy old people.

Death and age Chapter 32

Part 1: The Death of Little Sparkie

I t was late Saturday morning after all the radio programs had expired. Every kid in the complex had yelled “Mark Trail”, endured that miserable Oatmeal purveyor Sargent Preston of the Yukon, possibly listened to Archie Andrews crooning to his girlfriend Veronika, though considering the age of the kids this was unlikely, and finally, Big John and Little Sparkie. As an aside, for years I had wondered what Sparkie looked like and finally, after centuries of waiting, there came the “What Does Sparkie Really Look Like?” contest.” I was convinced that Sparkie looked like a duck. There was something in his voice that made me think he was a cousin to Donald. Anyway I set out to draw the best picture of a duck I could, but due an extreme shortage of talent ended up with something that was…somewhat ambiguous. “What’s that?” Mom said. “It’s Little Sparkie”. My mom studied the drawing, that one eyebrow knitting slightly above the other. “Are you sure he really looks like this?” “Yes, Mom,” I said in the deprecating tone of voice I used when my mom had drastically fallen short of expectations. “This is what he looks like. I know it.” The picture looked like three blobs: one for the beak, one for the head, and the

other for the body. A couple of stick feet were attached to it. “And you want to send this in.” There was a measure of disbelief in her statement that I didn’t catch at the time. “Oh, Mom.” I said in exasperation. Why was she so stupid? “Of course I want to.” The response came back three weeks later; a genuine letter signed by Big John himself. All it said was, “Dear kid. Sorry you didn’t win, but we are enclosing a picture of Big John and Little Sparkie so you can see what Sparkie really looks like.” I eagerly pulled the picture out and stared at it in disbelief. Little Sparkie didn’t look like a duck. He wasn’t even close. He looked like… “A fairy?” I muttered. “Little Sparkie is a fairy?” In truth, he was an elf, but he looked like some kind of half breed, a cross between a fairy and a baby; a happy little wimp. Staring at the picture, disappointed that I hadn’t won and disillusioned by what he really looked like, I threw it in the trash and strapped on my six guns. My fast draw, twirling my guns around my index finger in a display of trick gunmanship, was getting better and better. I set out through the screen door, encountering the blinding Saturday morning sun reflected off the sea of hot, cracked pavement, sure of one thing. I had left Little Sparkie and all his ilk. Fairies crossed with babies were definitely behind me.

Part 2: The Death of Grandpa

I was wearing my black Hopalong Cassidy hat and braided shirt as well as a pair of blue jeans that looked a little like the Lone Ranger’s pants.

“Dan, come back inside.” I heard a note of stress in Mom’s voice I had never heard before. She was gazing at a piece of yellow paper and had that look on her face which I dreaded. One eyebrow was kind of drawn in and down, a look that always spelled that something was not quite right. “What’s the matter, Mom?” “Your grandfather died.” “Oh.” Now I realize that wasn’t much of a response, however I had actually never seen any of my grandparents, or any of my relatives, for that matter. I think I mentioned that Grandpa and Grandma Neiser had made a recording…they had cut a record…and sent it to us when I was around three. The recording was specifically addressed to me, wishing me a Merry Christmas, so I knew what they sounded like. But that was all I knew of Grandpa and Grandma. My dad had left them, along with his eight siblings, behind in Nebraska, or wherever they were, and had gone West, never to return. My grandfather on Mom’s side had died of heart failure at the age of 62, and grandmother, known for her insane murderous rages was somewhere in California, a place I genuinely feared to go. So now he had died. And it was almost too coincidental that at that moment my dad had pulled up in the Buick. Not having any experience with death and grieving, it seemed to me that I should run out the door, cheerfully as possible, jump up and down waving my arms and say something like, “Yay! Grandpa’s dead! Grandpa’s dead!” This strategy was designed by a seven year old to cheer my dad up in the face of immeasurable grief. Fortunately, in a moment of abnormal wisdom that went beyond my years, I asked my mom if I should do it. “No, you better just keep quiet and let him read the telegram for himself.”

My dad stepped out of the car and my mom met him, handing him the telegram. He stood there in the parking lot, read the message, his face unchanging. He handed it back to her and walked inside, saying nothing. He never did say anything about it, and we didn’t go to the funeral in Nebraska. He had cut his parents off, and nothing was going to change that. After that, I found out what my dad had been doing while I was fighting the battle of the King of the Cowboys: He had been building a new house.

Welcome to the Neighborhood Chapter 33

Part 1: Unmentionable Things

I t was long and low slung; a single story three bedroom with the requisite living room and kitchen, two bathrooms, and none of it was finished when we moved into it. This means that you could look through the knot holes in the floor and see the dirt underneath. The walls were mostly just frames waiting for sheetrock and most of the electrical outlets were just capped off wires sticking out of walls. In short, we were once again in the same situation we had been in the “Canyon”, living in an unfinished house which would be sold as soon as it was finished, though I hadn’t realized that fact...yet. I was entering the fourth grade when we moved in, and was soon enrolled in an elementary school about a mile away which somehow and escaped the architect of the State Prison System. It was a much more cheerful looking building, possibly a newer one, and my fourth grade teacher was nice but didn’t live up to the memory of Mrs. Park. By now I had caught up in reading, so I wasn’t required to wear a dunce cap, but I had been relocated to a new place right in the midst of my astounding popularity at the previous school which I was never to regain (probably due to the fact that I had foolishly lost my Neanderthal mask). ittedly I hunted for it desperately after we moved with the intent of putting it on during class, but couldn’t find it. It had been lost in the move. Without the mask, and not possessing a beetling brow and a receding chin, I was sunk as a candidate for the next class president.

Things went well on the first day. The teacher, whose name I can’t , introduced me. I received a able reception from the kids and things went fine until recess. At recess I was standing alone on the playground, not knowing anybody and staring at a bunch of kids playing on swing sets. Suddenly, I was pushed violently from behind. My head whiplashed, I staggered forward and almost fell to the ground. Regaining my footing, I whirled around to stare at a bunch of girls that had been standing behind me, realizing with a shock that one of them had given me the push. “Get on your own side of the playground, boy!” “Yeah. Girls on this side and boys on that side!” I wandered off without saying anything. It was the first time I’d ever encountered a segregated playground. Well, when you’re a kid you accept whatever is, as is, but looking back on it, I wonder what the school officials were worried about. Would fourth graders start procreating if they were allowed to mix together unsupervised? Evidently at the age of seven and eight they thought we were lustful animals ready to rip each other’s clothes off and do unmentionable things, and the officials were no doubt unquestionably right in doing everything in their power to stop that kind of unauthorized behavior.

Part 2: Mentally Disabled Daughters

By this time my mother had reconciled herself to living in a house with no walls, a marginal floor, and a single working electrical outlet and surrounded by weeds. My dad worked on it every day putting down flooring and nailing sheetrock to the framework. The real charm of the place came in the railroad track that ran through a deep trench ten yards from the back yard. The trench afforded some protection from derailment but provided nothing in the way of sound deadening properties.

Consequently, the eight p.m. and three a.m. specials roared past us every day, shaking the house and rattling our teeth with train whistles and wheels pounding against track. The whistles were no doubt required to signal the railway station of the approach of the trains, but also to bring local residents out of their beds in the middle of their deep early morning sleep. Across the street we got a glimpse of paradise. This was the lush Alfalfa filled horse pasture of George Tryptophan, a multimillionaire who lived in a luxurious ranch style house set well back on the property behind a growth of elms and beyond a well-watered yard. Horses grazed peacefully in the pasture as reminders that, while the cowboy way of life was indeed possible—with ranches, wealthy ranchers, and splendid horses—it wasn’t going to come about in the lives of kids like me who played at it. While this scene provided a refreshing break from our existence in dust, screeching saws and weeds, it also served to remind us that there was a class of people living on another plane that we could never touch. On the other side of the weed filled vacant lot next door was an older, two story farm house which had probably been one of the first in the area; possibly where the farmer lived who had sold off his land for tract subdivisions. It was whispered that an elderly man lived there with his two daughters whose mental disability was somehow dangerous, and the fear of the unknown kept everybody away from the place. “Yeah, they’re weird,” said Waldo Bard. Waldo had caught polio sometime before I came on the scene and was confined to a wheelchair. He was a little overweight and had a cranky personality, both probably due to his situation, which was less than optimum at best. “Yeah, we stay clear of that place. They’re crazy.” Tim Wentworth who lived in the house next door to mine, said. “Old man Fredon has a shotgun, and he’ll kill you if you get near his house.” “Yeah, and the daughters will jump on you and put you in an oven for dinner.” We all contemplated this in silence for about two seconds. Tim was the first to come out of it. “I’m Roy Rogers!”

“No, I am!” Will Turney said. “No, I am!” “I’ll decide who gets to be Roy Rogers,” Waldo said decisively. He was the de facto leader, ruling all the other the boys in the neighborhood with an iron hand from the confines of his wheelchair—something I never understood. Today Tim was Roy, Will was the outlaw, and I was Pat Brady. I didn’t have a jeep, but that was no problem. Waldo told me to pretend I had a jeep, and I ran around for the rest of the day making putt-putt noises, and turning an imaginary steering wheel. Looking back on it I suppose it was better than being designated as Dale Evans, a notion none of us would have ever had in 1953, thank God. Just as none of us got near the old Fredon place.

Part 3: Two Times Four

I trudged the two miles back and forth to school over the over and had my first encounter with Multiplication which I absolutely could not understand. “What is two times four?” “I don’t know and I don’t care!” Idly fingering the dunce cap, Mrs. Bates favored me with a raised eyebrow. “Keep that up, Dan, and you are going to sit in the corner.” By now I was pretty familiar with the corner, but I still sunk down deeper into my seat and stared stubbornly at the multiplication table in front of me. I did not understand this, and I could not learn it. It seemed that anything verbal came to me with great ease, but anything involving mathematics was like trying to punch a nail into a brick wall. My brain resisted it with everything it could muster up.

In the last two years, school had become my worst nightmare. I didn’t know any of the kids, I couldn’t understand multiplication, and my Neanderthal mask was lost. I was alone and wandering around on the playground (staying away from the girl’s side, of course), and found myself in a class where the teacher thought I was an idiot. I had fallen from grace twice, once from Jim Bridger Paradise and the other from mind boggling popularity. But wait. I did have one, uh, friend whom I’ve previously mentioned, Waldo Bard. As I mentioned before, Waldo was a cripple with his leg in a cast but a natural born leader who had learned techniques of manipulation to manage all the kids around him who were still standing on two legs. When manipulation didn’t work, he employed the art of selective abuse. “Push harder, you idiot.” Walking the mile to school had become so much more pleasurable when there was nobody else but me to push his wheelchair, and if you believe that one I have a bridge to sell you. “What’s the matter, are you that weak?” This comment came as I struggled to get him up and over the over that crossed the railroad tracks. (Now my parents called it a “viadock”, which no doubt came from the word “viaduct”. But the overes I knew weren’t viaducts, and the word “viadock” was what I usually heard in reference to them). Somehow I became Waldo’s designated wheel chair pusher during the weekdays, and ed the pack of boys swarming around his house on the weekends where he directed the ongoing battles between Cowboys and Indians. But none of that helped me to figure out what Multiplication was, and I think I was running into the danger of being set back a grade. The teacher was becoming very frustrated. And so was I.

Cowboy Wars Chapter 34

Part 1: Better Armed

“H ey, look at my new gun!” One of the kids announced. “What’s so great about it, it’s just a gun?” Somebody else said. “Nah. It’s like a real gun.” Dave MacDood pulled it out of his holster and we all crowded around him. “Look at this. It works like a real gun.” “Lemmee see.” We ed around the gun. It looked real and acted real. It had a spinning chamber with six slots. You could press a button and it opened up so you could put the bullets into the slots, close it up and spin it. When you pulled the trigger it advanced the bullets, lining them up with the barrel. This was instead of just an empty chamber which opened up and you stuffed bullets into it, which was what we’d all seen up to now. It all but fired. “My dad says it’s just like the Colt Peacemaker they used. This one is a .38, but they also make a .45.” I knew in that moment I had to have one and the campaign began once again. Since the victorious end of the battle to hear the voice of Donald Duck and the subsequent acquisition of the 78 rpm album of Mickey and Beanstalk, my parents were beaten people, knowing that when I set my sights on something they had no choice but to get it for me.

So, after describing to them the new gun we began a search through the toy stores in Listless and found it almost immediately. My mother, however, was not going to give up so easily…I could tell by the pinch in her brow and the lifted eyebrow. She had lifted it now, in that worried, doubtful expression. She had raised it when I handed her the .45 version. “That big gun is too large for you,” she observed, and this time I saw her point. It was easy to see why the kid had chosen the 38. The 45 was big and heavy. It was definitely a replica of a gun used by major gunfighters in the Early West, but it was way too big for a kid who was eight, going on nine. I picked it up and hefted it. Aside from being too heavy, the gun’s grip and trigger were so far apart my hand barely fit around them. I had trouble holding it and reaching the trigger at the same time. The set of two holsters on a belt were separate items, and while you could take one of the holsters off the belt, it pretty much forced you, that is your parents, to buy two guns. Reluctantly I put the gun back and picked up the 38 demo. It was smaller, still authentic, but a lot easier to handle. Yes, it worked like the bigger gun, but once again I was forced to choose something that was second best. “Ok, Mom,” I said, vowing silently to myself that the day would come when I would get the 45. I left the toy store in a state of excitement that I hadn’t felt since I opened the package that had contained the Guns Of The Lone Ranger. This time there would be no wooden bullets. Sure enough, the bullets that spilled out of their containing box were made of metal and were silver in color, and I inserted them one at a time into the authentic chamber. I spun it, strapped on my belt and stuck the guns into the holsters; my parents, after some encouragement, having bought two. I was ready. I was now equipped to shoot any kid on the block with my lightning fast draw and my new, authentic, 38 caliber six guns.

Part 2: We Finally Get Him

On went the battles as directed by Waldo Bard. At least ten or twelve kids were always over at his house on the weekends, and not a single one of them could do anything without his express direction. He divided them up into gangs of Cowboys and Outlaws, and decided who the leader of each gang was and who would be on what gang. Nothing ever started without him, and he was always the arbiter, directing it all from his wheelchair. One of the biggest problems in kid warfare was that some kids refused to acknowledge when they had been shot, and it was even more difficult to get them to recognize that they were dead. One kid in particular was the worst. He had been shot (and killed) numerous times and went on playing like nothing happened. “Bang, you’re dead!” “No, I’m not!” Tommy Snodhead proclaimed. “Yes, you are.” “No, I’m not!” “I’m going to go tell Waldo!’” “He doesn’t know; he didn’t see it.” And indeed, it was difficult to get a judgement out of Waldo since, confined to the wheelchair, he rarely, if ever, saw what actually happened. So, this kid was irritating everybody and I decided to do something about it. Waldo put him in with the band of Cowboys, and I was designated an Outlaw. We fought out our usual battles, and the moment came. I had been outside in a running battle dodging behind the trees in Waldo’s front yard and had shot all my adversaries. I went inside to nail more Cowboys and

there was Tommy. Tommy had three kids backed into a corner and was covering them with his 38. What made it sweet was that he had his back turned to me, and Waldo was watching the whole thing. He could see what I was about to do. This time, I thought, I’m going to kill him and there will be no doubt that’ he’s dead. Under the ever watchful gaze of Waldo, I crept through the door and advanced on Tommy, who had his guns out covering the kids in front of him. Without making a sound I crept up behind him, stuck the muzzle into the small of his back, and pulled the trigger five times, yelling “bang!” with each pull of the trigger, and the final denouement: “YOU’RE DEAD!” Tommy knew he been had. He turned around and faced me, his face turning a bright red. He glanced at Waldo. Waldo nodded, and Tommy sunk to the floor, his riddled corpse brought down at last by my trusty new 38 Colt Peacemakers.

Television at Last Chapter 35

Part 1: Enthralled by Test Pattern

W e finally acquired our own television set. I got up one morning and a console television had appeared in the corner, its cabinet made of some dark wood. It stood on four short metal tipped peg legs and was about the size of a washing machine. It was a Crosby, with a roundish, square tube (or the squarish-round tube depending on your point of view) which Dad said was twenty-one inches. It had cloth covered speakers, and two knobs, one to change channels and the other to adjust the volume. On top of it sat two wire like objects, attached to a central metal core. It was a true miracle of modern Technology. I couldn’t wait to turn it on, but I had to wait until I came home from school that afternoon. For once I barely heard Waldo berating me as I pushed him over the ‘viadock’, and once I’d delivered him to his house I ran home and burst through the front door. There it was, ready to deliver programs in pictures and sound; things I had up until now been, except for a brief moment, forced to imagine. I dropped my Lone Ranger lunch pail in the kitchen and ran to it, turning the knob that served as the On/Off switch. Slowly it came to life, and I was enthralled to once again see a picture of an Indian Chief, his noble visage framed by odd, squiggly lines zig zagging around

him, the number of the channel that was broadcasting the signal, and other mysterious, occult symbolism located here and there about his hawk faced profile. This picture was accompanied by a steady, moderately high pitched, single note emanating from the speaker. Test Pattern. I sat and stared at Test Pattern for a few minutes. It was a picture accompanied by a sound. What did it mean? What profound significance was connected to it? I had not resolved this issue since I’d first encountered it in the Miserable Nite. The monotonal note eventually got to me, however, and I shut it off, running out to the barren backyard in which nothing existed except a set of metal prefab swings and some kind of tree, the species of which was unknown to me. As I swung on the swing, pumping it as high as it could go and watching the legs lift off the ground since they weren’t cemented in, I little realized that television would soon affect even my playground swinging and would eventually inspire me to climb up on the roof in a vain attempt to fly. Bored, I ‘bailed out’ of the swing seat and ran over to Waldo’s to shoot some more outlaws, and return in time for dinner. Returning, I stopped at the front door, my jaw parting from my palate. (As an aside, I had long ago noticed that most kids go around with the mouths hanging open and a vacant look in their eyes. I had long ago decided not to let my mouth hang open. I couldn’t do much about the vacant look in my eye, but I hoped it would go away eventually.) Something stood in the living room I had never seen before.

Part 2: The Living Room Abomination

In the center of the room stood a large and strangely shaped object. It was black, oddly shaped and mostly rounded. On top stood a lid, propped up at an angle by a metal rod. Standing on four legs, it was curved on one side and flat on the other, and had a long set of white and black rectangular objects set on a flat

board that stretched across the front and perpendicular to its main body. My mother sat on a bench facing the white and black board. She was running her hands back and forth over the them, and as a result, music was coming out of it. I knew this was music, because I had heard it before on the symphony 78 rpm lacquer records I had played on my record player before they had met an untimely end. As she sat on the bench moving her hands back and forth, a pleasant and satisfied smile broke out on her face. There was no sign of that half grimace. “What is that?” I exclaimed pointing at the instrument. “This is Beethoven’s sonata for the piano in B flat major.” Well, that was about as meaningless as if she had said the house had been invaded by small insects owned by Roy Rogers. I stood transfixed. “No, I mean what is…that thing?” I thrust my finger more decisively at the box. “This a Baby Grand Piano.” Oh…. “And you will soon be learning how to play it.” She continued playing, maintaining her pleasurable expression, while I stood listening to Beethoven’s sonata for the Piano in B flat, not quite realizing that a new era of torture was dawning. In addition to trying to learn the deep meaning of multiplication and how to implement it, enduring Waldo Bard’s abuse as I pushed him back and forth across the viadock, I was also going to be strapped to that piano bench where I would have to endure daily discipline in the new and unfolding world of music. And there stood the television set, its blank screen both beckoning and mocking me, unable to unfold the worlds of wonder I had dreamed of in my days of immersion in radio, as I struggled to visualize the scenes hinted at by those skilled in radio special effects.

So close, and yet so far. Frankly, I thought, the monotone whistle of Test Pattern sounded better than Beethoven’s sonata and I determined to watch that Indian’s profile and listen to the hooting background regularly if that’s all that would appear on the screen.

Part 3: The Piano

After weeks of school I had finally grasped that if you took four nines and added them up, you got 36. This is what was meant by the expression “Four times Nine”. I was working on “Five Times Nine” under the increasingly disapproving scrutiny of my teacher, but my agony over it was beginning to assuage. Waldo Bard was even more abusive than ever, calling me names that I had reserved for my sister, which included disparaging references to my intelligence, physical ability, and appearance–references which would have earned him a good beating had he not been a cripple (and I think he knew that). So it was with mixed emotions that I arrived home finding my mother waiting for me on the piano bench and smiling with her usual toothache. “Dan, come and sit up beside me.” I had already tossed my lunch pail on the sofa by that time, so I climbed up on the piano bench. “Cliff and I talked it over and we’ve decided that I’ll give you piano lessons.” I didn’t overtly groan, but I think some air went out of my lungs. “I’m going to teach you myself. Now…” My mother was a piano teacher in her own right, and she soon had a stream of kids ing through the house, each playing the same boring songs, and making the same stupid mistakes.

I’m not sure if my parents realized that it was a very big mistake to teach me piano themselves. There was too much they had let me get away with for that to work, and as I delved deeper into the mysteries of chords and scales, agonizingly learning to read music and play pieces from John Schaum’s Lessons for the Musically Challenged, my mother suffered almost as much abuse from me as my Fourth Grade teacher did trying to teach me to multiply. I had discovered that the two television stations in town didn’t start broadcasting until after 5:30 pm., right after the Five O’clock Special roared down the tracks, shaking our house to the foundations and after I had finished my piano lesson which involved a lot of moaning and groaning and overt display of anger at the music I couldn’t ‘get’. So ultimately there was no conflict. After five thirty, Test Pattern vanished and was replaced by black and white armies marching ‘over hill and dale as they hit the dusty trail’, naval guns blasting something in the far distance, and jets shrieking through a gray sky. Music practice was over, television had begun.

Part 4: The Mysterious Doctor Satan

And then came the first program of the day, the installment of the Republic Pictures Serial, The Mysterious Doctor Satan. This serialized movie came in twelve installments (as I was to find out most of the Republic Serials did), and involved a crime fighter whose family was killed by the mob, and who dons a hooded mask he discovers in his attic to anonymously fight them. The hooded mask was worn by his grandfather who was known as the ‘Copperhead’, and who, Lone Ranger-like, found the need to hide his true identity. The reborn Copperhead set out to avenge the deaths of his wife and kids, and in the process discovers a nefarious plot by a deranged megalomaniac to take over the world by means of evil robots.

I was too young to realize how closely Doctor Satan resembled Adolph Hitler, which was not a problem since he definitely looked like a bad guy anyway. Each installment ended with a cliffhanger in which you were certain that ‘our hero’ had died a horrible death, only to discover in the next installment how he had miraculously escaped by a means they hadn’t shown you in the previous installment. For example, our hero was shown to be driving a car that fell over a cliff and exploded, but it was revealed in the next episode that he actually opened the driver’s side door and jumped, thus escaping immolation as the vehicle was annihilated at the bottom of the abyss. It was truly amazing, and kept me rushing back to the set, day after day.

Part 5: Old Movies

But there was always an old movie to be watched as well, and when I say old, I mean OLD. The movies shown on television were dredged from canisters held in some ancient 1940’s vault, and usually involved Bad Guys led by some other Bad Guy who, when he wasn’t twirling his mustache, was trying to force a widow off her property. Why? The secret lay…and you never would have guessed it…that she had oil under her ranch. Now since the movie was set in a period before the invention of the automobile, it was never revealed why the BAD GUY wanted the oil, however he was foiled by some Western Hero, like Tim McCoy. Tim McCoy had the distinguishing characteristic of peering at you from under his wide brimmed cowboy hat, so all you could see was the whites of his eyes, his face in shadow. This was unnerving to Bad Guys, and always signaled their defeat, which was also due to his incredibly fast draw with his twin, pearl handled 45’s. Another old hero was Lash LaRue, whose name I had heard whispered by the Outlaw Kids of North Gargle as a possible alternative to Roy Rogers. Lash

carried a whip, which was implicated in his name, and was so good with it that he could whip the gun right out of the Bad Guy’s hand just as he drew it from his holster. Fortunately, nobody tried to emulate Lash. Kids carrying bullwhips around and beating each other with them might have been a cause for parental concern.

The Agony and the Ecstasy Chapter 36

Part 1: Cutting Off Your Ear

I n case you don’t know what the title of this chapter refers to, I’ll clarify it. The Agony and the Ecstasy refers to a book written in the early 60’s about Vincent Van Gogh, the famous painter with mental, and most probably, visual problems who cut off his ear and mailed it to his girlfriend. I wasn’t about to cut off my ear, but I was having to wipe the saliva off my mouth from the frustration of trying to learn multiplication and the piano while still acting as Waldo Bard’s number one, uh, verbally abused servant. The piano was an agony of frustration. I struggled with the scales, the chords, and the pieces in John Shaum’s Piano Book for Musically Challenged Beginners. Piece after piece was like wading through hardening concrete in leaden boots, until I finally reached a piece that was almost my Waterloo. Now, I want to ask: what idiot wrote Hop O’ My Thumb and why did he write it? I think my mother was close to throwing in the towel. I know I was. I found a crayon and attacked the printed music itself, writing comments in red which expressed my displeasure with Hop O’ My Thumb in no uncertain , marking it up to the point where you almost couldn’t read the music. However, expressing my displeasure did not impart to me the ability to actually play it, and at some point I realized I was going to have learn to play this piece. That is, if there was anything left of the sheet music when I was finished venting my anger.

Meanwhile, in school, I reached a point of discovery with multiplication that you could merely use an “X” in order to accomplish the task. For example, you could use an “X” to find what two fours added together were without having to actually add the fours. This revelation, or stroke of genius, as you may wish to call it, freed me to go on to the next even more challenging subject and no doubt was a great relief to my teacher, who, as I previously have mentioned, was about to put me back at least one year, possibly reverting me all the way back to kindergarten. And so, I advanced to the new concept of “division”. I pondered this word. What exactly did it mean? I felt there must be some, deep, mystical implication to it, and I proceeded try to understand it. My teacher, I think, knew we had entered a whole new level of struggle and frustration.

Part 2: Better in Black and White

Meanwhile, ecstasy came with the advent of actual television programming. The black and white, lined picture fascinated me and served as a reward for the years of imagining what the characters and scenes on radio looked like, but disappointed me in the fact than when they finally arrived, they looked so cheesy. Jack Benny and Rochester looked about like I had imagined them, and they were just as funny on television as they were on radio, but Amos and Andy didn’t look quite right. Much later it was whispered they were actually a couple of white guys with black shoe polish on their faces, which fact, I think, was revealed by the unforgiving light of television. Groucho Marx looked like a duck, and it was indeed appropriate that when somebody succeeded in saying “The Secret Word” a duck on a string came down, missing the poor suffering George Fenneman by inches who had to endure not only Groucho’s cigar smoke but also having a stupid looking duck almost strike him in his face on a weekly basis.

But that was evening television, mostly geared for adults. Afternoon television was the true ecstasy which included Captain Video, a program I still did not completely understand, and Space Patrol which was indeed what Captain Video should have been. But television programming reached its zenith with Superman.

Part 3: Up in The Sky

“Look,” shouts a woman, “up in the sky!” “It’s a bird!” somebody else says. “No, it’s a plane!” “No!” cries the announcer. “It’s Superman!” “Superman!” repeats the announcer in no uncertain . “Rocketed to Earth as a baby from the planet Krypton, Superman possesses powers far beyond mortal men. Disguised as mild mannered reporter Clark Kent, Superman fights for truth, justice and the American Way.” Now this statement leads to all kind of moral and philosophical dilemmas which have been expressed by American citizens during periods in which the “American Way” was being rammed down the throat of poor unsuspecting natives of various foreign countries. However, before we can delve into these considerations, we hear a “whooshing” noise and then behold the mighty figure of Superman, standing beside an American flag. A symbol emblazoned on his chest – the outline of a diamond with a large “S” in the center, he presented himself with his hands on his hips ready to bring justice to Bad Guys everywhere. He had a secret identity. As Mild Mannered Reporter Clark Kent, he hid behind a pair of horned black rimmed glasses, making himself look like an overly muscled nerd. This clever disguise was reinforced by the fact he perpetually

wore a suit and tie. It was impenetrable to his boss, Perry White who is too busy smoking a cigar and running around yelling “Great Caesar’s Ghost!”, and to his two friends of incredible stupidity, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson. These fellow reporters he must save repeatedly from the machinations of numerous Bad Guys and from themselves. (As an aside, Perry in one episode yelled “Great Caesar’s Ghost” one too many times and was visited by the spirit of the Roman Emperor himself.) Is it any wonder that Clark Kent bears a sort of permanent superior smirk when interacting with these slow-witted colleagues who are unable to reason out that when Superman is present, he is not, and ascribe that fact to an innate character flaw on his part, specifically cowardice? Be that as it may, I had discovered a new hero with which I could identify, one who would transport me literally off the playground (and into the air), one who can whip bullies at will, one who is so fundamentally superior that he can allow his peers to think he is a fool, but is actually one who can add, subtract, multiply and divide anything at will and… One who can fly.

The Old Fredon Place Chapter 37

Part 1: Halloween Morning

I t was a Donald Duck Halloween. A new Walt Disney cartoon had just come out entitled Trick or Treat in which Donald showed his usual magnanimity toward his nephews by playing a nasty trick on them when they made the mistake of trying to extract candy from him on Halloween. He’d set up a bucket of water over his front porch and dumped water on them, laughing his usual raucous duck laugh at their discomfiture. In retaliation, the nephews enlisted the aid of a witch who exacted a revenge on him which neither he, nor the audience would ever forget. I woke up on Halloween morning with the memory of the cartoon fresh in my mind. Our house, now with a front lawn of genuine grass which glistened with dew in the rising October sun, seemed to be a replica of Donald’s, and the empty field next door looked suspiciously like it could be a disguised graveyard, in which skeletons might lurk, ready to break forth from the ground and clutch my ankles if I attempted to cross it. The school room was full of construction paper cutouts of witches, ghosts and skeletons, peeking out from behind tombstones; the creations of the students. The usual papier-mâché masks lined the ledge under the windows, some were of cannibals, witches, goblins – created by the more artistically gifted students and sported grades ranging from A plus to B. I had started out mine thinking that it would be the face of the Lone Ranger, but had degenerated into a black man with red lips. I had given up and painted it black when I couldn’t achieve my vision. It was marked with a good, solid C.

Part 2: A Surprise

“Everybody ready?” Waldo Bard was again in his wheel chair disguised as an old man, his nose enhanced to appear long and bent with a large wart on top it. Hair was growing out of the wart. He was wearing a grey suit with a wilted carnation in the lapel, and a battered top hat that looked like somebody stepped on it, probably because they had. The other kids were unrecognizable as themselves. One brought chills to my spine by wearing a stock skeleton costume, white bones glaring against a black background. Another looked like a ghoul that had just finished a meal; eyes with red pupils, black circles, twisted nose and red, blood stained teeth. I had cleverly disguised myself as a ghost. “I’m not going to make you an elaborate costume this time, Dan.” “Why not, Mom?” I had said in my best whiny voice. My mother paused and let out a “whuff”, like a balloon that had just been suddenly deflated. “Well, you keep losing them. Or something happens to them.” “I won’t this time, Mom. I promise, Mom. Please? Huh? Huh? Please?” This time I had lost, and ended up with a sheet with two holes cut in it for eyes. My right arm stuck out from under it so I could hold my Jack O’ Lantern candy bucket, and my left so I could push Waldo’s wheel chair. There I was, surrounded by creative costumes, dressed as a kid in a white sheet. I mean as a ghost. “Everybody ready?” “You’re going to push, right?” Waldo said to me.

“Sure, Waldo.” I grabbed the handles of his wheel chair, holding onto the bucket handle and the chair at the same time.” “Let’s go.” We did a good, thorough job of canvassing Gargle Street, hitting every house except… “Don’t go there,” the ghoul said. “No! Keep going.” “Yeah, don’t even look at it!” We had come back up on my side of Gargle, and paused in front of the Old Fredon Place, standing there in a paralysis of fear. “What do you think is in there?” The red devil asked. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.” “They say he has two crazy daughters, and they’ll KILL you if you get near his house.” Waldo snorted. “You guys are just a bunch of chickens.” Nobody said anything. “Come, on,” he said, “who’s got the guts.” Well, not you, I thought, unless I push you up there. Nobody said anything. Bard snorted. “Bunch of…” “Okay, I’ll do it.” The voice seemed to come from far away, but in fact had come from my throat. “You, Neiser?” Waldo’s voice held a note of surprise. “I didn’t think you had…”

“Shut up,” I said. I took my hands off the bars and hefted my candy bucket, now heavy with treats. I faced the house. The front light shown in the gathering gloom, revealing the porch with its old-fashioned swing ed by chains creaking in the breeze. Light shining from behind drawn curtains in the front window demonstrated that someone was home. The wind picked up, and the elms draping their branches over the peaked roof sighed and swayed ominously. Light from the full moon danced across the white siding as the trees moved. The roof loomed like a black witch’s hat in the moon washed sky. I stood transfixed, fear gripping my stomach. “Well, go on, Neiser.” I took a step. Then another, and soon felt propelled up the cracked sidewalk by some external force. I hesitated at the base of the steps, then placed one foot on the lowest and heard it creak under my weight. The faint noise revealed that I was there, and the terror building within me almost caused me to bolt and run. One step. Two. Then three. And I was on the porch. The screen door was torn on the left side, and the screening sagged outward, toward me. I looked for a doorbell but found none. ing my ill-conceived Cub Scout effort to return the newspaper to its rightful owner, I knocked on the frame of the screen door and waited, the almost overwhelming desire to turn and run obviated by an inability overcome my paralysis. There was a shuffling noise from within, like an undead corpse from the Inner Sanctum dragging its feet. It grew closer, and closer… Then, the door was open. A figure, taller than I was, dressed in a baggy dress, a mop of hair that obscured most of its face except for a sharp chin, part of a cheek, and the tip of a nose.

It made a grunting sound. “It’s okay, Martha,” came a weak, shaky voice from within. “Just wait there, I’ll come.” Still fighting the urge to scream and run, I waited, my hands and knees shaking. A thin man with a narrow, lined face, wire rimmed glasses, and sagging jowls appeared in the porch light. I looked for a shotgun, but he held a bag in his hand instead. He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “Glad to see you, you’re my only trick or treater.” He looked down at the pumpkin bucket I held. “Got plenty of room in there, I hope?” I looked down at my bucket. In the light of the porch, I could see it was only half full. “Y…yes, Sir.” It was the first time in my life I’d called anybody ‘sir’. “Lots of room.” “Okay, well here you go.” He turned the bag over and poured its contents into my bucket. I stood and gaped at the cornucopia of candy that descended into my bucket. “Have a Happy Halloween,” he said. By now the odor of the house had exuded from the front door. It was musty, and smelled like old bodies and medicine. But I didn’t care. I stared at the bucket, then at him, and forgot that he couldn’t see me grinning through my sheet. “Th…thanks!!” I stammered. Adrenalin took over, and I ran back down the steps. “Come back next year,” he shouted after me. “There’s more where that came from!” “Well, what’d you get?” Waldo said when I reached his chair. “Obviously not a

load of buckshot.” “Nope. I got a surprise.” A big surprise.

You Can Fly Chapter 38

Part 1: I Won’t Grow Up

“T hink of the presents you’ve brought… “Any merry little thought…” Peter Pan hit the theatres and naturally I not only went to see it, I got Peter Pan “Golden Books”, Peter Pan coloring books, and a Peter Pan album which told the story on a collection of 78’s. (These were plastic and the size of the 45’s that would come later. They were brittle, and it wasn’t too much later that pieces of them started breaking off.) Superman wasn’t the only guy who could fly, Peter Pan could too. He snuck into Wendy’s bedroom with his sidekick Tinkerbell whom he ordered to sprinkle all the kids with Pixie Dust. Pixie Dust did the trick. All the kids rose off their feet, left the dog chained up in the front yard trapped in the world of adults, and zoomed off to an island filled with pirates and Indians. Alas, however, there was no peace on this island. One handed Captain Hook, wearing a scarlet cape and a flamboyant pirate hat was tormented by his sycophantic and idiotic servant Smee. He led an incredibly stupid band of classchallenged ruffians and was chased by a crocodile who, after consuming his right hand, was now obsessed with eating “the rest of him”. On the other side of the island was a tribe of Indians who had somehow escaped the Great Massacre of North America otherwise known as “The Trail of Tears”, and had been subjected to none of indignities inflicted on them by these and other events, including the commercialization of their culture. Or, at least, they

were unaware that Walt Disney was doing it. Well, everybody knows the story of Peter Pan. I think when I saw it I left the real world entirely. I yearned to live in the Walt Disney world of Peter Pan…to leave this dry, dusty, hot, weed infested, halffinished house behind and Peter, flitting around the island fighting pirates (and always winning). But above all, Peter had committed himself to “not growing up”. He codified my vow, made on my father’s lap while listening to his sad songs, with these lyrics: “Listen to your teacher, repeat after me… “I won’t grow up (I won’t grow up)… “I don’t want to go to school (I don’t want to go to school)… “Just to learn to be a parrot and recite a silly rule…” These words rang true in my innermost being, and I think they confirmed what my parents were telling me, most likely subconsciously (I think my dad more than my mom). If my dad could have expressed it plainly, verbally he would have said: “I want you to remain four years old, tagging me around and being not just my close companion but an extension of myself, just like my arm or leg. Except that, unlike my arm or my leg, you are separate from me for one reason and one reason only, and that is to watch what I do, listen to what I say, and applaud my every accomplishment. This is the only way in which you differ from my arm or leg: they cannot be my audience. “You will have no accomplishments of your own. Anything you do will not be recognized by me; they do not exist; anything you say will not be recognized if it disagrees with what I think. “In fact, you have no attitudes or thoughts of your own, I do not recognize them. “Here is what you will be: you will be an outdoorsman. You will be a hunter and fisherman, a skilled woodcrafter like me, except for one thing. Should you

become that, you will be in competition with me, and if you do, you will potentially be my rival and are in danger of becoming my enemy. I allow no one around me who can compete with me; who is better than I am or has the potential of becoming as good as I am. “So, if you separate yourself from me and become something other than a parasite that is fully and completely dependent on me but having my genetic heritage, and if you cease to serve the function of being my number one audience, you will have the strong possibility of being… “Cut off.” Here’s what he did say: “Obviously, you will never get married, or if you do, you should choose somebody who has the same interests you do because that means a whole lot more than the physical.” The physical, of course, meant sex. I think my parents probably only had sex twice in their marriage. After all, they did have two kids, didn’t they?

Part 2: You’re Being Pretty Stupid

So, as I was to find out in the coming years, any idea, thought or opinion that I expressed that did not stem from his ideas thoughts or opinions was met by the words “You’re being pretty stupid.” So, here’s how this worked out: I build a boat from a set of plans found in a Cub Scout manual. It flips over and floats upside down. It is met with a grunt, which translated means, “That’s pretty stupid” This was followed by him showing me the kitchen cabinets he had just built.

“Yay, Dad, those are great!” “Hey, Dad, I just learned how to play Hop O’ My Thumb!” “Uh huh.” He drags out his banjo and bangs out “Swanee River”, so loud and fast you can’t hear yourself think. “Yay, Dad, that’s great!” “Hey, Dad, I’m reading this book called Gene Autry Finds Happy Valley.” “Mmhm. That’s pretty stupid. Here read this.” He hands me a paperback, “Crossfire Trail”, the cover of which depicts a rustler with a five o’clock shadow rebranding some rancher’s steer. I try to read it, but it’s too far above my reading level, proving that I am, indeed, “pretty stupid”. We could go on, but I think you get the idea. This escalated as I unwillingly grew older and began to have more sophisticated and forbidden ideas of my own.

Part 3: A Faithful Man

However, to stave off judgement of my father, I need to say that he was a faithful man, faithful to Mom and us kids, he worked hard and provided for us, he was gentle, he provided a wholesome and secure environment in which we could basically ‘be kids’. We were not continually taken to some adult level we couldn’t function in. We played and had fun with no worries or insecurities. He loved me and spent most of his free time with me. He was a strong and dominant, but he did not dominate Mom in a bad sense. In fact, she was always voicing her opinion and driving him nuts which would result in him getting red in the face, yelling, and sometimes walking out. Only to return later, and pick up where he left off. Unfortunately, he had left the Light of Christ early in life, due to bitterness, hurt and anger inflicted by those whom he deemed “hypocritical Christians”.

“I don’t need some preacher telling me how to live a good life,” he would often say, but he was a man who “held to a form of godliness, but denied the power thereof”, and as a result, his “tender mercies had become cruel”. He didn’t go to church, but many who do go to church share the same problem: they seek righteousness without humility, in their own strength, apart from the power of God. Man, when he ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, came to know both. Man knows both good and evil, and he is capable of doing both; a great deal of the time without knowing he is doing either. Meanwhile, I, the developing parasite, wanted to fly. Pretty stupid, wasn’t it?

You Can Do Anything Chapter 39

Part 1: You Can Leap Tall Buildings

S o now I had a new hero who could “leap tall buildings with a single bound”, and “run faster than a speeding bullet”, and I had another role model, not a hero, who might just flit in through my window and deliver some “Pixie Dust” that would make it all possible. As I mentioned before, at the witching moment when Test Pattern disappeared from what would come to be known as the “Boob Tube” and the monotonous single noted tone mercifully silenced, there appeared images of marching armies, battleships cruising across the ocean with Howitzers blasting, and jets screeching through the Stratosphere on their way to convince some country, ignorant of Democracy into seeing the error of their ways. And, when the planes appeared, the stirring theme of the Air Force reverberated through our household: “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder… “Flying high, into the sun… ‘Here they come zooming to meet our thunder… “At ‘em boys, give ‘em the gun…” The closest I could get to this was the swing in my back yard, and if I swung high enough, there was a moment when all I could see between my feet was the blue sky, laced with cirrus clouds.

I suppose if this were somebody else, a desire to fly might have led to ultimately ing the Air Force and becoming a fighter pilot. I didn’t want to become a fighter pilot, I wanted to become Superman, or, short of that, Peter Pan. Preferably the latter, since he didn’t want to grow up (and why would Peter Pan want to the Air Force anyway?). Lacking Pixie Dust or anybody dropping in through my bedroom window to sprinkle some on me, I decided there was another way to fly, and as I kept watching the Superman episodes I began to think it might work. Thus I was found one day on the roof, wearing a cape. I walked down to the edge, my toes inches from the gutter. It was a long way down to the ground. I stood there transfixed, wondering if I could do it. Could I fly? They say that there is a section of the brain in children and adolescents which is not yet developed. This part of the brain has to do with the basic, common sense that warns you that if you do something stupid there will be a consequence. Something bad will happen. Something, maybe, REALLY bad. And, because it’s not fully developed in your brain yet, you think you are invincible. Nothing can touch you; you cannot die. Death is impossible. You will live forever. That part of my brain yet to develop stood a good chance, at this juncture, of never having the opportunity to do so. “Dan! What are you doing up there? Get down from there right now!” Fortunately, Mothers were substitutes for the missing parts of the brains of eightyear old’s, but the day was approaching when they no longer would be able to substitute for undeveloped common sense, and then the fun would begin. Hmm, maybe she used a poor choice of words, because the quickest way to “come down from there” was to leap off the roof and fly down. At that moment, however, I think something hazily sane penetrated my brain. I turned around and climbed down the ladder.

I’m sure Mom breathed a sigh of relief, but she didn’t pursue the issue of punishment. If she had, it probably would have taken the form of more piano lessons… In lieu of watching Superman.

Part 2: You Can Tunnel to Forever

You could call it a tunnel to nowhere. How it had been formed to this day I have no clue. The railroad tracks out in back ran through a deep trench behind our house, which was not only wide enough to it the train but allow people to walk along the tracks on both sides without being run down. Maybe, this had never been tried. The trench was about half as deep as the train was tall, so when the train roared past we could only see the top half of it. Somehow, a tunnel had been formed in the wall of the trench. It was big enough to allow a kid to crawl into it, and… “How far back do you think it goes?” Gerry Geeks said. Gerry was my new friend, weak, pale, and kind of sickly. I had met him at school and had him ‘over’ to play on the weekends. I peered into the tunnel. It went straight back into the dirt wall, vanishing in darkness. “I don’t know. Maybe it goes back forever.” Gerry was peering into it as well. “What do you think is back there?” “I don’t know. Could be anything.” We left the tunnel and went back to playing with our toy cars and trucks. We had built bridges over the rails and ran our small vehicles back and forth over them, oblivious to the fact that an unscheduled Special could come roaring down the

trench at any time. With its vertical walls of dirt, we would have no place to go to get out of its way. Gerry must have told the other kids about the tunnel, because it was a couple of days later that three of them showed up on my front doorstep. “We want to see the tunnel!” One freckle faced kid with a head of brown hair that resembled a mop said. “Yeah!” A kid said with black hair and blue eyes who looked like the Lone Ranger must have when he was eight. “Yeah, me too!” Another blonde kid said. He looked like Flash Gordon. I had seen serials of Flash at the twenty-five cent Saturday matinees at the downtown Bijou. Flash battled every known form of Man there was, including Mud Men, Snake Men, Rat Men and Bird Men on the planet Mongo. I stared at all of them, and then looked at Gerry. Gerry lived downtown, south of the school. He must have brought these three over the over and the mile or so down Gargle to my house. Just to see the Tunnel. I shrugged. “Sure.” I led them over the embankment, down into the trench approximately where I thought the Tunnel was. It always took a little time to find it, but after a careful search I located it. It looked dark and sinister, and led back into some unknown region, and it was anybody’s guess as to what that would be. The kids all stared at it. The word ‘cool’ had not quite penetrated the mass subconscious of the American public. Jimmy Dean Rebelling without a Cause, and Elvis shaking his hips wildly at the very mention of a Hound Dog or Blue Suede Shoes, were two cultural phenomena that had not yet appeared on the scene. They merely gasped, their mouths dropping open. “Wow. It looks scary.” “What do you think is back there?” one of them said in a low tone of voice,

squatting down and peering into it. That sparked our imaginations. What, indeed was back there? “Somebody has to go back there and find out,” Flash said. “Not me,” Young Reid said. “Not me,” Mop-head said. I looked at Gerry. He looked about as courageous as the Warner Brothers cartoon character Tweety Bird in the presence of Sylvester the Cat. We were all silent, and one of the kids spoke up. “I dare somebody to go in there.” Uh oh. It had started: The Dare. Well, things didn’t go as far as they did in the movie A Christmas Story, where the kids “double dog dared” Schwartz to stick his tongue against the ice-cold flag pole. But the Dare had started, and I knew in the deepest recess of my being it was my job to crawl back into the tunnel, since I was the one who had discovered it. I wish I could embellish this story with something like “just as I crawled half way into it we heard a train whistle and the distant rumble of wheels on the tracks”, or “just at that moment we had a rare (rare to the point of nonexistent) Rocky Mountain state earthquake”. Or something like that. But nothing happened. I crawled to the end and found a wall of dirt. That was it. Something or somebody had dug the Tunnel back into the dirt wall of the trench for no good reason. I backed my way out, stood up and brushed the dirt off my clothes. “Well, whad’ja see? Whad’ja see.” They all crowded around me with the anticipation of a big story.

“Nothing,” I said. Their faces fell, and ultimately Gerry led them off back to where they came from. But in the back of my mind there was a half formed thought. The Tunnel could have caved in for some reason and the kids would not have known enough to lead somebody to find me. I might be there…still, to this day. Buried in an unmarked grave. That night my mom asked me how things had gone that day. “Fine, Mom,” I said, diving into a mound of hamburger covered in gravy. “Anything unusual happen?” I could have gotten buried alive today, Mom. “No, Mom.” “Nothing at all.”

Part 3: You Can Derail Trains

“Hey, Gerry, take a look at this!” Gerry came rushing over from where he was running a toy truck over the rail over. I pointed out the huge rock I had found lying beside the railroad track. It was at least as big as my head. “Wow,” Gerry said, vacantly. “That’s a big rock” “Yeah,” I replied. We both stood there, contemplating the rock. “I’ll bet it’s big enough that if we put it on the track it would derail the train.” Gerry was silent for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll bet it could.” With an effort, I stooped down and rolled the rock up onto the rail. It fell off a

couple of times, but eventually I got it balanced and stood back to examine my handiwork. “That’s one big rock.” “Yeah. I bet it will derail the train.” We went back to playing with our toy cars in the dirt. I liked to do head on collisions with mine, making up stories about drivers that couldn’t drive, until finally Mom called me for supper and sent Gerry home. As I ate my dinner I kept thinking about the rock, balanced on the rail. From that part of that region of my brain that was hopefully developing, a thought came. Gee, if the train is derailed it will probably jump out of the trench and wipe out our house. With this thought came the image of train cars everywhere, and our house crushed flat. “Mom, I’ve got to go do something.” “Finish eating first,” my dad growled. I ate hurriedly and ran into the back yard and down into the trench. The rock was still there, balanced on the rail. I kicked it off so it lay between the rails, inside the track. That night the Three O’clock Special roared through, its horn blasting with perfect timing right outside our window as if to say, “I could have squashed you to death. Too bad you rolled the rock off the rail, you little… Trains didn’t use derogatory words back in the early fifties. As far as I knew, anyway.

Part 4: You Can Hang Your Sister

As long as I am confessing dangerous and stupid things in this chapter, I also have to say that I thought it might be, uh, wonderful if I hanged my sister upside down. In my own defense, I must say that I’d spent a lot of time, myself, hanging from trees, mainly by the wrists, in my unfortunate association with Len Trefzger, as well as being tied to the ground or to posts. It kept me out of the way while Len and Jasmine had their communal times together. For some reason my mother unwisely left me alone with my sister while she went shopping, thinking that because I looked innocent and trustworthy, I was indeed innocent and trustworthy. Heh. I found a long length of rope someplace, threw it over a beam in the garage, tied one end of it to her feet and hauled her up until she hung upside down. I tied the other end of it to a stud set in a frame that was destined to become a wall, and sat and watched her hang. After a bit I got bored and pushed her a little to watch her swing back and forth. She was only about two or three at the time, and didn’t know she was hanging upside down over pre-stressed concrete, so everything was copasetic. This meant that there were no undo protestations coming from her mouth. But somewhere in that poorly developed section of my brain presently under discussion came the thought, if the knot slips and she falls, SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN. This was a niggling and somewhat unwelcome thought, although it seemed to have no connection to anything with this endeavor, such as my lack of skill in tying knots. So, I let her down slowly, making sure she didn’t bump her head and start bawling. That would be bad, I hazily thought, if my mom came home and found her bawling. Even if she was only two years old and couldn’t “rat” on me. Everything was fine when Mom got home and I gave her an innocent smile coupled with a trustworthy expression. “Hey, Mom, did you get me that Donald Duck comic book?”

“Were you a good boy, today, Dan?” “The best,” I said, with the best and brightest smile I could muster. And from behind her back she, just like my dad often did, produced the comic book. Even before I tried to grab for it.

Part 5: Disassembling Your Gun

There comes a time, I suppose when you get bored with anything, and the incessant cowboy and outlaw fights were becoming a little old. After all you can only shoot a guy so many times, or get shot yourself before you start to look for meaning beyond this routine activity. Thus, in a lull in the latest gun battle, when Waldo had broken up several arguments over ‘who was dead’, I retreated to a corner of his kitchen and looked at my gun. I wondered how it worked. It was a double action revolver. When you pulled the trigger, the cylinder advanced one round, the hammer came back and struck the next bullet in the chamber. It was very realistic, and I wanted to see the mechanism inside. There were screws holding the two sides together, and I rummaged through Waldo’s kitchen drawers until, in the bottom drawer, I found a set of screwdrivers. Pulling them out of their plastic holder one by one, I tried each until I found one that was the right size for the heads of the screws on the gun. A little finagling, and the two halves of the gun fell apart. I laid the top half down next to the screws and drivers, and gazed at the innards of my Colt 38 Peacemaker. It was very fascinating; how the parts fit together. There were sprockets and wheels and springs and other mysterious things I would never understand until I pulled the trigger.

I suppose I should have learned something after that…and I suppose the lesson was to not take things apart when you don’t know what you’re doing because… It exploded. Parts hit me in the face and blew all over the room. I did my best to find them all and put them back together, but after that I never wondered again how it worked. Because it didn’t.

Tom Sawyer Days Chapter 40

Part 1: All Patches

I t was the middle of July, and the mayor of Listless had announced the advent of “Tom Sawyer Days”. You had to be twelve or under to enter, dressed like Tom Sawyer and can catch a fish in Listless Lake. The problem was that you could only use a bamboo fishing pole to which was tied a fishing line and a hook, and use only worms. You carried a woven straw creel into which you put the fish if and when you caught them. The prize went to whoever looked the most like Tom and caught the most fish. Alternatively, I think it might have been for the biggest fish. Either way, it was not good enough just to look like Tom. I was used to fishing with a rod and reel, and having to use a bamboo rod (one wondered where Tom got the fishing line) and a hook tied to it was beyond cumbersome. How was I supposed to get the fish, assuming I caught one, out of the water? Pull on the line with your hands and drag it to the shore? And then there was the issue of “looking like Tom”. Tom was supposed to wear ragged, beat up clothes, with a lot of patches. My mom made me a shirt that looked like a patchwork quilt. I stared at it. She had sewn together pieces of cloth of every color imaginable… yellow, red, blue, gold, orange, turquoise…and a whole lot I can’t think of. Quite possibly the Biblical Joseph had the same reaction when his father gave him the “coat of many colors”.

It made me look more like a circus clown than the literary ne’er-do-well boy. I stood speechless as my mom showed it to me, a sweet and clueless smile on her face and I finally found my tongue. “But Mom, isn’t it supposed to be a shirt that has patches on it?” “Well, this is a shirt that’s all patches.” I had no words for this latest catastrophe. But…hold on, this wasn’t the ultimate catastrophe. The ultimate catastrophe came when she dragged the pants out of her sewing bag. They were all patches too. “Try it on; let’s see how it looks,” my mother said happily. Suddenly, I had trouble moving; something was wrong with my arms and legs. “Go on, go on, let’s see how you look.” At my mother‘s urging --I was still putting on these atrocities right about the time my dad came home (so he could see them and comment). I might have to wear this outrageous outfit, but I refused to go outside where anybody else could see me, and sat instead in the living room in a dark place behind the piano. “Cliff, take a look. I made him a Tom Sawyer’s outfit for the parade. Come out here, Dan and show your dad.” I had difficulty moving. My arms and legs wouldn’t obey my brain. “Come on, Dan, show him. I worked all day on it, and I want him to see it.” I forced my appendages out of the paralysis to which they had succumbed and slowly moved into the living room. To my dad’s credit his expression didn’t change. The usual stoicism rarely gave way to any emotion, unless there was something amusing in which he allowed himself a pleased expression, or a flush of anger when outraged.

He looked me up and down with no comment, but there was a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth and a small twinkle in his eyes. His face flushed. “What do you think, Cliff?” He nodded. Then he went over to his easy chair and sat down, turning his back to face the television set, his shoulders shaking ever so slightly. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad you like it.” That was my mother’s cue go back into the kitchen to fix dinner while I scrambled to my room, shedding the gaudy abominations and donning my own clothes. But I knew for certain that I would soon be wearing the patchwork monstrosities in public -- parading down Main Street looking more like Bozo the Clown than the venerable Tom, the down-to-earth boy of Mark Twain’s fancy.

Part 2: The Big Day

As inevitable as Death and Taxes, Tom Sawyer day came and I ed 200 other elementary kids on Main Street, all dressed like Tom and Becky. Their faces painted with freckles, the Tom’s wore patched shirts and torn overalls, shouldered their bamboo poles and carried their straw creels at their sides—an army of country bumpkins, while the Becky’s wore full length hooped early twentieth century dresses, some of them carrying sewing needles and thread—another army of incipient frustrated spinsters. In the middle of this rag-tag mob each individual of which bore at least some vestige of authenticity, I stood out like a neon sign. I felt kids looking me up and down and subsequently shying away, probably hoping that whatever disease I had acquired that had resulted in my garish clothes would not be transferred to them.

And so we milled around in the hot July sun until the mayor stood up behind a podium and flicked the microphone with his index finger. The resulting noise sounded like a gun shot and made us all jump. Behind him hung a banner emblazoned with the words “Listless’ Tom Sawyer Day” in garish red and orange. “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Tom Sawyer’s Day.” He wore a suit and tie, and his puffy face was flushed with the mid-day heat. “Thank you for coming to this event.” His speech consisted of giving the background of the day, something Listless had been celebrating since Mark Twain wrote the book, and that every year one Tom Sawyer and one Becky Thatcher would be chosen by a of judges. These sat on his right, a collection of obviously upstanding citizens, obvious from the fact that they were in suits, ties, and in the case of the women, stylish dresses. In addition to having the best costume, the chosen Tom would also have caught the biggest fish out of Listless Lake, and the chosen Becky would have quilted the best quilt. The fish and quilts would be brought to the council for judgment. First prize was a front-page photo in the Listless Reporter Herald and a copy of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (unsigned). After the fishing effort and the judgment, we would all meet at Listless elementary school for booths, fun and prizes. I think I was a little too young to envision the full horror of winning first prize and finding myself in this patchwork clown’s suit plastered on the front page of the newspaper for all to view. The humiliation of that possibility was beyond my grasp. However, chaos was slowly overcome as a group of scurrying teachers assembled the mob into a semblance of order and a whistle blew. We all began to march down main street, our fishing poles slung over our shoulders, ing crowds of Listless citizens gathered on each side of the street viewing, no doubt with appalled astonishment, my unique costume. On we marched until Listless Lake hove into view. At the sight of our destination, kids broke formation and ran for the shore, unslinging their poles and baiting their hooks with the worms which, just like Tom, we were allowed to

carry. With my usual slowness, I was still struggling to get my line unfurled and my hook baited long after most kids got theirs in the water, but throw it out there I finally did, and sat down on the rocky ground and waited. Kids started catching fish, and incredibly enough, I had a bite. I set the hook and felt tugs and jerks as the fish fought. There was no reel, so with one mighty heave I brought the fish out of the water. It sailed up and over my head and landed with a loud ‘plop’ behind me. This time this fish was not going to go into the aquarium as a pet. The fall was too much for it. I put it in my creel, baited the hook and went back to fishing. Once again I suppose it would be wonderful to say that I actually won First Prize because I had caught the biggest fish and the judges for some reason had been ‘wowed’ by my garish outfit, but that didn’t happen. Somebody else won First Prize and got their picture on the front page of the Herald. Thank God. If it had been me I probably wouldn’t be recounting this. I’d still be at the bottom of Listless Lake after jumping off the pier to avoid that unspeakable embarrassment. But my mother didn’t care. “Dan, you were the best Tom Sawyer there.” “I know, Mom,” I said. And I knew she believed it.

Baseball and Suckers Chapter 41

Part 1: Glow Little Glowworm

S ummer had begun. On Saturday mornings I was still listening to radio programs. Big John and Little Sparkie had disappeared to be replaced by the romantic adventures of Archie Andrews and his gang of teenage goodie two shoes, along with Dannie Orliss, a spinoff of Back To The Bible Broadcast. At the age of eight, I didn’t understand either one of them. I listened to Archie all the way through the program, recalling in one episode that Archie was sitting on the front porch with Betty, his girlfriend, looking at the moon and singing: “Glow Little Glowworm… “Glimmer, Glammer…” Archie no doubt ripped off this song from the Mills Brother’s 1952 hit which appeared on television, now that I think about it, not that I saw the Mills Brothers on television since I didn’t have one in 1952, or at least my mom didn’t have a quarter to put in the slot so I could watch them. Anyway, Betty was no doubt impressed by his crooning and I think I flipped to another radio station. Danny Orliss was an entirely different story. A Christian evangelistic program aimed at teens, it was narrated by some guy with a high pitched, soft voice who talked so fast you couldn’t understand him. I don’t think Back to the Bible had

any idea what an instant snooze the program was. I tried to sit through some of the episodes, but never had any idea what was going on or what they were talking about. I liked their main Back to the Bible program a lot, though. Theodore Epp was a straight talker, while at the same time very gentle.

Part 2: Make Sure You Have Enough

My dad turned on the baseball game at one p.m. every Saturday afternoon, sat in front of the black and white tube watching Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford knock out the competition. It was usually narrated by the pleasant but somewhat hypnotic voice of Mel Allen. Dad was a Yankees fan. He had played baseball in his “younger years”, not for the Yankees, of course, but I was never sure exactly who, what or where he had played. He said his position was catcher, but he gave me the old mitt that he used, which was not a catcher’s mitt as far as I knew. In fact, this mitt became the bane of my existence in my incipient efforts at playing baseball. It was almost impossible to catch anything with it. It was way too big for my hand, and the fingers of the glove weren’t wired together so half the time, when I was out playing catch with him…and we did spend a lot of time on the weekends and after work playing catch…if the ball didn’t land exactly in the pocket, it would right through the fingers, because they would bend back and let it go. And I never figured out why I couldn’t catch anything. Years later, looking at the glove, I decided Yogi Berra couldn’t catch anything with it either. It was probably one of the biggest “fake outs” in the world of kid sand lot baseball. I watched the baseball game with him for, probably at the outside, 15 minutes. No, that’s being generous. The quiet, comfortable voice of the sports announcer droned on as pitchers wound up and usually walked the other team, the only exciting moments being when somebody hit a home run with the bases loaded. The ads kind of perked things up, though.

“How are you fixed for blades? “(Do you have plenty?)? “How are you fixed for blades? “Please make sure that you have enough… “’Cause a worn out blade can make shaving mighty tough. “How are you fixed for blades? Then came the final, enthusiastic chorus, voicing the crescendo: “GILETTE BLUE BLADES WE MEAN!!!” I guess in those days they never figured that kids or women would be watching baseball, but I determined from that encouragement to always be fixed for blades, and to make sure that I always had enough, a vow I broke after I started growing a beard much later in life. By this time my dad had almost completely finished the house, and I should have known after my experience with the canyon house down river from Arapahoe that it was near to being sold, but until then we still had some time for watching baseball games and fishing.

Part 3: Science Fiction and Suckers

We had no boat, so we fished on the bank everywhere we went. The first fishing trips were to Listless Lake, which quickly proved to be too close to civilization for my dad. After a few excursions to that lake, almost always roiling with white caps due to an ever-present wind, my dad decided to extend his quest for trout to more distant places. Thus I found myself winding over a narrow road between mountain slopes sparsely covered with Pines but rich in mountain flowers, headed for a ridge

upon which was built a dam that contained Mule Head Reservoir. Mule Head Reservoir to my eyes looked like paradise in the sky, but if you check it out on the web, you’ll probably conclude that it looks a little bit bleak. But pictures never give the vast glory of the morning sun rising into an impossibly blue sky over the deep azure of a mountain lake. Pictures won’t let you smell the fresh mountain air, hear the sighing wind in the trees and the call of a jay, or feel the intrinsic excitement imparted by the exuding fragrance of Rocky Mountain Pines. It was kind of anticlimactic that we finished the trip by pulling up to a muddy bank, climbed out of the truck, set up folding chairs and tossed our bait out into the lake. Dad took a picture of me sitting on the bank with a rod in my hand, and I look anything but happy. I didn’t take to his outdoor enthusiasm. For me, at least at first, fishing was boring. The sun was too bright; and sitting in one position with a rod in my hand waiting for something to happen was, to say the least, for an eight-year-old, a little difficult. But then again, that was up until I started catching fish. Once you get a fighting trout on your line, your rod tip bending, the line screaming against the drag, the tip zig-zagging back and forth as the fish fights to get off, the almost heart stopping excitement of seeing it burst out of the water shaking itself to get the hook out of its mouth, and the final dénouement as you get your net under it and lift it thrashing onto land, your perspective changes. The fish isn’t the only thing that gets hooked. And so it was at Mule Head. I started out bored, but as the fish came in, one after another, I gradually developed the fisherman’s lust. I think fishing is like gambling, though I’ve never been a gambler. You won’t understand it until you win, and the bigger you win, the desire to pursue it becomes stronger and stronger. The difference is, maybe that when you lose at gambling, you can’t pay the rent. When your fish get off the hook, you eat hamburger. But I also found that reading an exciting book – one that you can’t put down— also helped, not only to make the time more quickly during those intervals

when you didn’t catch anything, but also as an inducement for fish to bite. Fish would only bite during the most exciting, engrossing moments in the book. If it was one of those books you couldn’t put down, you would have to because every time you got to an exciting part WHAMMO! A fish would hit, you’d have to drop your book and reel it in. I’m afraid the librarian was not too happy when I turned in the book. Some of the pages were a little hard to read, streaked with mud as they were.

Part 4: Not All Smells Well That Ends Well

Fishing from the bank at Mule Head was a joy, which is why, to this day, I have no idea why my dad decided to switch to another, less savory body of water, Thousand Sucker Reservoir. Dawn broke over Thousand Sucker Reservoir as we wound down the mountainside above it. As usual, my dad had woken me around 4 a.m. by rocking my body gently back and forth in my bed. I was bleary eyed and my head ached, half asleep but unable to go back to sleep. The car heater blew warm air on my feet, and the tires hypnotically sang as we rolled over the road. I stared at headlights meeting us through the cold windshield glass, nothing ing on my sluggish brain as the horizon lightened and the sun started to come up. We pulled up next to the dock. My dad got out and started talking to a man beside the pier, who pointed vaguely in a direction off to the right. Dad got back into the car and we drove down a rutted road, finally stopping at a place where the bank jutted out into the lake. “Ok, this is the place,” he said, favoring me with the sound of his voice, which we rarely heard. My stomach lurched as I opened the door and got out of the enger’s seat. I gagged. “What is that SMELL?”

I had never smelled anything like this before, but in this case you don’t have to have experience with it to know the smell of Death, in this case, rotting fish. “The guy back there said there were a lot of suckers in this lake,” Dad said. I quickly discovered there were a lot of suckers on the shore as well…dead ones that fishermen tossed on the bank where they laid and died. The bank was covered with them, knee deep in them (well that’s an exaggeration, but it certainly didn’t seem like it at the time). (Warning: as you may be aware, fishermen are prone to embellishments, especially when size and quantity of fish are involved. You may wish to take some of this tale with a small grain of salt.) Trying and failing not to breathe, trying and almost failing to hold my pancake and egg breakfast down, I baited my hook and tossed it out in the water. Under my feet were rotting suckers. All around me, right down to the water line, were rotting suckers. The air was permeated with the smell of rotting suckers. And as the sun rose, the smell of rotting suckers got worse. At this point I should point out what a sucker is. I guess I could go into their biological classification (family Catostomidae) and tell you what any web search will tell you that they are a bottom feeding fish which “feed by sucking up invertebrates and plants”. More to the point, they are the ugliest, most disgusting fresh water trash fish on the planet. They’ve got large, full lips which surround a round mouth that seems to want to kiss you with the world’s grossest kiss. They have ugly, course scales and a hard, cartilaginous body, like a Carp. Now, I hate to insult anybody from Georgia, where they have annual sucker festivals, or the Carp Fishing Association of America, the of which hold tournaments to catch fish like these, but I’m sorry. In this state, in our quest for Mountain Trout, we toss those suckers out on the bank to die (and smell). And smell they did. I caught sucker after sucker, unhooking them and tossing them over my shoulder to their colleagues. I have no idea how many suckers I caught, and can’t

catching one trout. At the end of the day, nauseated and disgusted, I unstrung my rod and climbed back into the Buick thinking I never wanted to come back to this place again. But we did. Don’t ask me why. My dad had abandoned Mule Head for Thousand Sucker, and maybe it was in the end a good thing. Sitting on the bank and gagging at the odor might have inspired him to single handedly build his next achievement -- a fishing boat.

Pollywog Chapter 42

Part 1: Walking Through Walls

I t’s possible that the overwhelmingly nauseating odor of dead suckers finally got to my dad, and rather than returning to Mule Head Reservoir and continue to fish on the bank, he decided to build a boat. He showed me the ment in Popular Mechanics for plans for a fishing boat. He sent off for the plans and in less than a week, he was hauling building materials into the garage. By then the house actually had walls and a floor. I could no longer boast to my friends that “I could walk through walls at home”, all the time smirking knowingly. This always confounded them, causing them to stare at me in wide eyed wonderment, until I showed them I was actually walking through the gaps between the studs in the wall frames. Most…if not all…of their worshipful adulation vanished, to be replaced by a more customary contempt that resulted in several less than ideal responses: “Ah, anybody can do that if there is no wall,” said one kid. “Yeah, I can do that! Said another. “Yeah, and so what?” Came a third less than optimum response. I should have learned a lesson from that. A true magician never shows what’s up his sleeve.

Part 2: The Nail in the Socket

My dad had an innovative child teaching approach which, could be summed up in the words, “Never say the word ‘No’.” Just tell them what will happen if they want to do something stupid and let them find out what will happen when they do it.” A prime example of this was what happened when he was nailing sheetrock to the wall studs and my sister was playing near a light socket with a nail in her hand. He saw that she was about to stick the nail in the socket, and, rather than telling her not to do it or take the nail away from her and risk having her “bawl” while moving her to a new location, he merely said the word “Hot”. “Hot,” my sister repeated and stuck the nail in the socket, getting a 220 volt jolt of electricity that stood her hair on end. “HOT!” she repeated loudly, her glasses now askew and her hair a bit more curled at the tips. “Hot,” my dad affirmed, as smoke rose from her now curlier hair. There were two beneficial results from this incident: my sister never did it again, and my mom saved lots of money on curlers for her hair.

Part 3: Ringing Sounds and Strange Smells in the Garage

Anyway, the garage now rang with the screech of the DE Walt table saw and jarring noises caused by the collision of heads of nails with the flat head of a hammer, as my dad proceeded to build the boat. I watched as the frame took shape, not comprehending exactly what was going on, but that was not unusual. I spent a lot of time not comprehending what my dad was doing.

He cut pieces of plywood to fit the bow and both sides of the hull, heating water to boiling to steam the wood and make it flexible. He nailed the bow plywood down at one end and bent it around the frame as it got suppler. Finally, it was ready to be painted, and he chose a “Sea Green” for the deck and white for the hull and voila! There it was, standing on the sawhorses on which it had been built, ready for excursions far removed from sucker encrusted lake banks and out into the deep where lunkers lurked of legendary proportions. Problem was we had no trailer for it, but wait! That was no problem because my dad proceeded to build one. Acquiring steel beams, an axel, wheel bases and tires, not to mention a trailer hitch, he…this time…hired out a welder to build one. He implemented an innovative design to boat trailers that was destined to definitely not catch on. Instead of runners upon which the trailer would rest and side rails to guide it when it was hauled up with the winch, he designed a kind of cradle for the boat out of wide straps of rubber cut from old tires. He could back the trailer under the floating boat, which would be held in place over the rubber straps, and then pull it out of the water. The boat dropped into the cradle as it came out of the water. Once it was safely on land he could winch up the straps securing the boat to the trailer. He showed it to me proudly. “This way I will never have to get my feet wet putting it into the lake or pulling it out.” While I was still playing with my Cub Scout wooden toy boat that floated upside down in the bathtub, he had single handedly built a full size boat and trailer which would explore any lake this state could offer. The last acquisition was a Johnson six horsepower outboard motor. He named the boat “Pollywog”, which was the name the designer of the plans had given it, and inscribed the name on the left side of the hull in Sea Green paint. We were ready to go. At a bright and shiny four in the morning I found myself “rocked back and forth” in my dad’s standard method of waking me up. With a breakfast of bacon and eggs under my belt and bundled up in a coat and hat

against the chilly early morning air, I stood blearily watching as Dad lifted the boat up into the trailer, thanks to the ingenious set of winches set in pairs on either side of the trailer, and hitched it to the car. He carried poles and the tackle box out of the garage and loaded them into it. My job was to climb into the enger’s side of the Buick Supreme and gaze stupidly through the windshield as we pulled out of the driveway, this time headed for Mule Head. It was the maiden voyage of Pollywog. Maybe you are waiting for some sort of debacle, like “it promptly sunk when he tried to launch it.” No, it went into the water like a dream, the engine fired up as expected, and I experienced “trolling” for the first time—a term for going slow and dragging the lure behind us. It wasn’t until we returned that we discovered why Dad’s innovative boat trailer design would never catch on.

Part 4: Back to The Drawing Board

He did slow down for the bump in the road, but even if he hadn’t it would have made no difference in what came next. KER—WHUMP!!! The noise came from the rear, followed by the screech of something being dragging on the asphalt. My dad slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. I was just behind him in time to behold the boat which had jumped off its cradle and was lying in the middle of the road, about fifteen feet away sideways to traffic. The winch cable had unwound and was lying on the asphalt, limp and twisted. My dad looked chagrined – red in the face with a sheepish smile. “Hmmmm, I guess I never thought of that.”

It was back to the drawing board for the trailer. The boat was inspected for damage (there was none except for a few scratches), and I found myself once again fishing off the bank of Thousand Sucker Reservoir, ankle deep in dead suckers. It’s not easy to fish while you’re holding your breath, and especially when you kept wanting to snicker. But somehow I learned to manage it.

Theater Wars Chapter 43

Part 1: The Evil Robot

M eanwhile on the Hollywood front, Superman was still rescuing Lois Lane, Perry White, and Jimmy Olson from various Dangers their inept stupidity got them into. At one point a couple of malefactors (a man and a woman) discovered Superman’s identity and were going to publish it to the criminal world. Unlike the Lone Ranger, who had worn a disguise within a disguise so that when the crooks made a sketch of his unmasked face it wasn’t his face, Superman had no such means of subterfuge (or imagination). He merely flew the couple to a high mountain peak and marooned them there, bringing them food once a week. I think they both fell to their deaths trying to get down off the mountain, and Superman’s identity was preserved. This was a somewhat disturbing episode for me. While Superman was the ineffable “good guy”, incapable of doing wrong in his championship of Truth, Justice and the American Way, it demonstrated that he was capable of a ive aggression and private justice. While not actually killing to preserve his identity, he merely placed “unmaskers” in harm’s way and allowed them to kill themselves. Hmmmm… A moral ambiguity. One definitely did not want to be around when Clark Kent misplaced his glasses. There were other heroes pathologically as dedicated to the preservation of their secret identity. “The Copperhead” was still battling Doctor Satan, and at one

point tangled with the same robot Superman encountered in one of his episodes. However instead of tearing it apart, as Superman did, he managed to electrocute it due to its nature as a thing run on electricity. It took more brains to do that than Superman had, however Superman had time and time again showed that he didn’t need brains. The Indiana Jones movies have their creative roots in the serials of the forties, but were not presented as serials. Star Wars is one elaborately warmed over forties serial, although each installment, with the exception of The Empire Strikes Back, does not end with a cliff hanger. However, back to the robot. This robot was capable of autonomous action, not controlled by the Mysterious Doctor directly, although in his secret underground base he had monitors which displayed what the robot was seeing through its own electronic eyes. Orders could be sent to the robot from this base which would be carried out, but each and every individual action was not controlled. The Copperhead eventually defeated the robot, destroyed the Doctor’s evil plans, and put an end to the Doctor himself – who would never write a prescription for evil again. The robot, however, while neutralized, must have escaped because when it showed up later in an episode of Superman it was torn apart piece by piece. The denouement of that installment showed the camera aimed at Superman’s feet, with robot body parts bouncing off the floor around them. Never-the-less, these episodes revealed the existence of robots and ignited my fascination with them and desire to have one. It would not be long before I had my own Evil Robot.

Part 2: Saturday Matinee Wars

The serials of the forties, the ones not appearing on television, still lived in the

theaters and enabled the kids of Listless to fight the battles of the Saturday Matinees. For twenty-five cents you could go to a Saturday Matinee in the downtown theater and watch serials like The Mysterious Doctor Satan all afternoon long. The number one serial that was being played was Zombies of the Stratosphere, an illogical twelve installment romp which failed to hold our attention because it seemed to have no zombies in it and the aliens it depicted weren’t from the stratosphere. However, it did have the debut of Leonard Nimoy, who had not yet sprouted pointed ears to become Mr. Spock. What did hold our attention was the pack of kids up in the balcony, armed with half eaten candy bars, bags of popcorn, spit wads, and theater drinks. These they hurled down on another pack of kids on the main floor whose sole purpose was to assail the balcony by storming the single narrow stairway and disarm them. While Leonard Nimoy battled “zombies“ descending from the stratosphere (nobody knew what a “stratosphere” was or why it contained “zombies”, whatever they were), the lower mob fought their way up the stairway, theater treats hurled in their faces, while the rest of us, blocked off from the base by the mass of struggling kids, rocketed our drinks and popcorn at all of them indiscriminately, having taken no sides. This gained us a barrage of wet popcorn falling on our heads from above and lobbed at us from the stairwell. Perhaps there might have been one or two kids in the theater who actually watched the show, but if there were they probably had a hard time either seeing or hearing it for the barrage of containers and the roar of the battle. The theater manager must have liked to take long Saturday naps, because the war went on most of the day, or until the kids below broke through the top of the stairway and wrestled down the defenders. Perhaps he figured that the 25 cents he charged for the all-day matinee was worth it; that the kids might not return if they couldn’t pay to fight each other. However, some Saturdays were more peaceful than others, probably due to the content of the movies that were shown. For example, Superman and the Mole Men held our attention; installments in which Superman rescued a bunch of odd looking midgets living in underground caves from some indefinable menace.

Serials involving Lash Larue also tended to hold our attention as well, imparting to us an unhealthy fascination with bullwhips and black boots.

It Looks Like You Are On Another Planet! Chapter 44

Part 1: The One-Way Helmet

H owever, many of us were already advancing beyond the drama of the early American West to fascination with the Promise of the Future. Such television shows as Captain Video and Space Patrol had seized our imagination, and flights of the “rocketed to Earth” Superman and his crusade for “Truth, Justice and the American Way” had us all trying to fly and becoming scared of Kryptonite. Unfortunately, not many of us were that interested in “Truth, Justice and the American Way”. Not consciously, that is. This developing futuristic mind-set gradually replaced the neighborhood struggle over who, indeed, was the “King of The Cowboys” and ended Waldo Bard’s domination of the local kid struggles between cowboys, Indians and outlaws. For me, Captain Video continued to be completely incomprehensible. I had no idea what it was about, however Space Patrol was clearly an Outer Space adventure involving the familiar effort by good guys in Outer Space trying to apprehend the Evil Scientists and their henchmen out to dominate the Universe. Buzz Corey and his sidekick Captain Happy cleared the space lanes of evil doers on a weekly basis. As their mission expanded to keeping the peace in the Galaxy and Beyond, they encountered more and more planets. Each planet was depicted in relative detail and the megalomaniac Evil Doers had built medieval castles on some of them. The incongruity of this situation enhanced the fascination with the series.

Much of science fiction in the 50’s and early 60’s incorporated anachronisms such as this…a futuristic monarchy with a feudal system of government equipped with high technology; Dune is an example. One particular planet that sticks in my mind was described as being “much larger than Earth” and was essentially a Dinosaur planet. Buzz Corey’s rocket ship landed, as usual, in a crater surrounded by a jungle in which the long necks of Brontosaurus-like dinosaurs bobbed up and down above the jungles. Typically, Buzz’ rocket ship was a self-contained unit which was capable of vertical ascent and descent, and the camera always followed its take off and landings as it shot, nose up, from the surface of the planet and then seemed to level off when it reached Outer Space, thereafter flying horizontally to its next destination. Even I thought this was a bit strange, and it wasn’t until later that space ships in the cinema began to assume a more realistic flight pattern. Be that as it may, in each episode Buzz and Happy would use various pieces of equipment which then appeared in the commercials, from ray guns to utility belts, to…space helmets. “GET YOUR GENUINE SPACE PATROL SPACE HELMET!” “Mom!” I shouted. “Come look at the kids wearing their Space Patrol space helmets.” I was too enraptured with the sight of kids carrying ray guns, their heads embedded in a weird-looking helmet with a shiny visor, running around in circles shooting each other to hear the tired, long suffering sigh that came from the kitchen. (Now I already had a neat Captain Video Ray Gun which shot rays in red, green or blue depending on the position of a color wheel in front of a flash light bulb powered by a D Cell battery, but was that enough? What do you think?) “WHEN YOU LOOK THROUGH THE FACE PLATE IT LOOKS JUST LIKE ANOTHER PLANET!” “Mom, you’ve got to come! It’s a Space Helmet that makes it look like you’re on

another planet.” There came an odd noise from the kitchen. I think it might have been due to my mother dragging something across the floor that groaned as she moved it. I wasn’t sure. Anyway, she finally did come and positioned herself in front of the 21 inch squarish/roundish screen just in time to see the kids, still wearing their space helmets, their eyes obscured by a shiny visor in front, and ed by two oxygen tanks in the back, running around like strange looking insects. “AND LOOK AT THOSE OXYGEN TANKS!” The announcer screamed. “THOSE KIDS WON’T DIE FROM THE POISONOUS GASES THEY ENCOUNTER ON OTHER WORLDS!” “Look, Mom! Look at the face plates. Look, the oxygen tanks keep them from dying!” “AND,” shouted the announcer, “THE FACE PLATES ARE ONE WAY. YOU CAN LOOK OUT BUT NOBODY CAN LOOK IN!” That did it. At that moment my mom knew she was facing another losing battle and ultimate defeat, and I was headed for another world. One box top of Ralston Purina, two dollars and two weeks later the mailman delivered a large flat cardboard package from Buzz Corey of the Space Patrol addressed personally to me. I grabbed it, ran into the house and tore it open aided by a pair of scissors. There it was, my cardboard helmet, packed flat, yellow with orange stripes, an empty hole for the visor in the front and two oxygen tanks imprinted on the back. It was packed flat but folded out into an octagonal shape. I fitted the face plate into the hole, shiny aluminum side out, and put it on. Sure enough, I could see out but nobody could see in. I ran outside to see if everything looked like another planet. Well, it did, if other planets look kind of dim and greenish blue. Otherwise, it looked like the same old planet with the same old weeds in front of the yard, same old highway separating us from George Tipton’s horse ranch. The sky

looked different though. It was tinted the aforementioned greenish-blue, and the neighbor, out mowing his lawn, looked like an annoyed and sickly alien. I found my old Captain Video ray gun, located somewhere in the closet, replaced the batteries and ran around the house and yard for a while, wearing my space helmet and making ray gun zapping noises. Bored with that, I went over to Waldo’s house. He looked up from his wheelchair, his face set in its usual grimace. “What are you wearing?” “It’s a space helmet!” I yelled, zapping him with my Captain Video ray gun. “It looks stupid.” “Hah,” I said, pulling the trigger again, this time it was the blue ray which the gun shot accompanied by otherworldly zapping noises. “I can see you but you can’t see me! It makes things look like they’re from another planet!” ‘It looks stupid. It’s made out of cardboard. Bend down so I can see the visor.” I bent down so he could look at the visor. “You can’t see me can you!” He shrugged and looked bored. “Yeah, I can’t see you, and you still look stupid.” I stared at him. He didn’t look like he was from another world at all. “Yeah, well that’s just because you don’t have this one.” “Hey, push me outside. I need to get some fresh air. You know, you are as dumb as a post.” I pushed him outside, then left him there, thinking he could find somebody else to abuse while I ran off, investigating the new planet I’d discovered.

Part 2: The New Robot

I couldn’t take the helmet to school, but otherwise wore it night and day for a couple of weeks until another robot appeared on Captain Video…The Evil Robot. The robot was the invention of the evil Doctor Pauli and was the antithesis of… “Look at that robot! It’s going to destroy the ship,” the Video Ranger yelled pointing at a view plate. The Video Ranger had no other name, but looked like a semi grown up clean 50’s kid with short cropped hair and a fat belly. Captain Video rushed to the view plate. “It’s going to destroy the ship!” The scene cut to my first view of the Evil Robot, and it wasn’t the one Superman had destroyed. It had a square head, square body, two arms that swung back and forth, and hands that looked like clawed hooks. A machine like grimace scarred its inhuman face. It hung beyond the view plate, out in Space, bigger than CV’s ship, and was about to destroy it. Later, this robot appeared in toy stores and called itself “Robby”, bearing no relationship or similarity of appearance to that walking Juke Box in the movie Forbidden Planet. There it was, ready to destroy Captain Video, and would be my next acquisition as I embarked on my new exploration of the final frontier of Outer Space.

From Smelly Banks to Saturn’s Rings Chapter 45

I t may have been back to the drawing board for my dad and the boat trailer, but, as I said, it was back to the smelly bank of Thousand Sucker Reservoir for me. Every other week I once again found myself sitting on a pile of rotting suckers with my line in the water, hoping to catch something that didn’t look like it wanted to kiss me. However, a new dimension had been introduced into this tale of an odorous quest for edible fish, and that involved the discovery of Winston Science Fiction books. There they were, lined up on the library shelf almost as far as the eye could see with rocket ships depicted on their spines blasting off for parts unknown. While my dad with me in tow on one of his regular jaunts to the local public library searched for his monthly crop of Westerns, I had wandered into the juvenile section and suddenly had my universe expanded. The Secret of the Martian Moons. Vault of the Ages. The Last Planet. Rocket Jockey. Son of the Stars. All of them had a distinctive logo imprinted on the spine: a rocket taking off on a pillar of flame in the center of a circle with the word “Winston” imprinted on it. I opened one up. The end paper was a mural of giant robots blasting death rays

at terrified, screaming citizens, space men rocketing toward the stars riding flames from jet packs strapped to their backs, aquanauts exploring the depths of primitive seas infested with multi-toothed prehistoric creatures, all surrounding a scientist with the terrified expression of one who has just discovered a formula that will either destroy the world or enable him to conquer it and enslave all mankind. I chose my first book: The Secret of Saturn’s Rings. Written by Donald A Wolheim who was later to go on as the science fiction editor of Ace Books and founder of DAW, his own line of science fiction, the Secret of Saturn’s Rings riveted my attention with the story of a scientist and his son who had found an indication that there might exist a secret alien base located somewhere in the system of moons or within the ring system of Saturn. In a wild race against a rival unscrupulous competitor, the kid and his dad hitch a ride on an asteroid with an ecliptic orbit that will take them out to Saturn, where they begin a desperate search to find the artifacts, and an equally desperate attempt to elude the henchmen who are trying to kill them. I was now in the fifth grade and one of the best readers in my class in direct opposition to being one of the worst in math. The Secret of Saturn’s Rings may have been above my reading level, but it propelled me into higher heights on a quest to attain it. It also propelled me into catching more and better fish. I had discovered the real secret to catching fish. It had little to do with the bait you use, the strength of the line, or the depth to which you dropped your lure. It had everything to do with the book you read while you were trying to catch them. This is a secret I’ve never seen published in any outdoor magazine, including Field and Stream or Outdoor Life. It seemed that I would no more than get to a particularly exciting place in the book, for example a cliff hanger in which the kid’s rocket had crashed on one of the pieces of rock that made up Saturn’s rings so that he was forced to jump from rock to rock as the bad guy behind him tried to drill him with a laser bolt from his blaster than…

The rod tip would dip violently and start thrashing back and forth. The reel would screech as line whipped out of it. “Dan! You’ve got one!” This was no sucker. I knew in an instant it was a genuine Rocky Mountain Rainbow Trout. And a Big One. Dropping the book, I raced for the rod as it jumped off the stick on which I had propped it and grabbed the grip and the reel handle. It was a real fight, the line screeching against the drag as the fish roared away from the bank, and sweat (well, maybe figurative sweat) breaking out on my forehead as I let it run, keeping the line tight until it stopped and slowly cranking the reel when it came to a stop. “Dad! What is going to happen next?” I said. “You’re going to land that fish!” My dad shouted. “No, I mean in the book! Is the kid going to get away from the bad guys or are they going to shoot him?” “What?????????” It seemed to take forever, but I finally managed to drag the trout up to a place close enough to the bank where my dad could net him. He lifted it up, the fish thrashing in the morning sunlight, spraying shining droplets of water everywhere, and swung it over onto the bank where it thrashed, it’s distinctive rainbow mark shimmering. “You got a nice one,” he said in an uncharacteristic show of approval. Grabbing it under the gills he pulled it out of the net. “Give me some slack in the line.” I lowered the rod to do so and he worked the hook out of its lip. “Wasn’t hooked too good.” He hooked the stringer through its mouth and gill and tossed the fish into the water.

I quickly baited my hook, tossed the line back out into the water, propped the pole up and ran back to my book. “I’ve got to find out what’s going to happen to Bruce!” (Bruce was the name of the kid in the book). “Who?” I was back into it. Fish forgotten and the odious smell of the dead suckers evaporated away as Bruce tried to elude the bad guys by hopping from one ring ice fragment to the next. But it was not to be. The line screamed, the rod bent, and I was back at it, fighting another Trout. On my way home, I told my dad about it. “I’ve never seen you catch so may fish in my life,” my dad said, somewhat grudgingly. I think I outdid him that day, something that wasn’t too good an idea to do. “It was the book, Dad. It was such a good book, every time I got to an exciting place I couldn’t put down I caught a fish.” “Hmmm…” To my dad’s credit, he liked fun explanations like that. He wasn’t a hardnosed rationalist. “Well, I guess you better keep reading it, then.” “Ok, Dad,” I agreed. The Secret of Saturn’s Rings had become the Secret to Catching Fish.

The Universe in 3D Chapter 46

Part 1: Beings on Other Planets

W ell, it might have looked ‘just like another planet”, but it didn’t look like it for long. Gerry Geeks and I got pretty tired of our Space Patrol helmets pretty fast, but his little space figurines he kept interspersed throughout the underground basement where he lived and which he called home were pretty fascinating. One of them was a Mercurian, another a Venusian, a Martian and a Jovian. “Hey,” I said, examining the Mercurian closely, “Do you think this really looks like something from Mercury?” “Maybe,” Gerry said. I scrutinized it, imbibing its mystery, and thinking, Could there be beings like this on the planet Mercury? By then, I was beginning to get a pretty good idea of what the solar system looked like. My Captain Video space helmet, ray gun, and Robby the Robot were all forgotten in the new discovery that each of the planets was different. I had bought a book on stars, entitled, as you might expect, Stars. It had pictures and descriptions of all the planets…but the planets had little detail. I stared at them for hours, trying to see detail in them. Mercury did show craters, as did the Moon. But Venus was shrouded in clouds, and was no doubt encircled with continents and oceans, or maybe just one planet wide ocean like some of the space comics depicted. Mars had those tantalizing

green streaks that everybody thought were canals, built by an intelligent race in a fight to survive their dying planet. The other planets were even more mysterious, but could harbor intelligent beings. The comic books unanimously said so. But, could there be beings on other planets? Intelligent beings? Maybe every planet was populated with its own brand of humans, and these lifelike figurines accurately depicted them. I picked up each one and examined it. The Venusian looked amphibian. It had webbed fingers and gills, and probably lived deep in the oceans of Venus. The Mercurian looked like it was made out of rock, and had to be because Mercury was so hot. The Martian was tall and spindly, because the gravity on Mars was so light, and the Moon Man was even taller. The gravity on the Moon was even less and the inhabitants probably lived below the surface since the Moon had no air. On it went, the Jovian, fat and squat. Jupiter had heavy gravity and this creature probably floated around in the atmosphere since Jupiter had no solid land mass. Saturn? Almost as squat and no doubt floating in the atmosphere and designed for intense cold. The being from Uranus and the Neptunian both looked alike and had to endure the same conditions as Jupiter and Saturn. Then there was the being from Pluto, able to live in extreme cold but on a rocky surface. Looking at it made me shiver. I lined them all up. “Think we’ll ever meet these?” I asked. Gerry shrugged, and kept playing with his toy trucks. I thought it was amazing he owned these creatures and never wondered about them. But I thought they existed, and from that moment I knew we had to go out there and discover them. Or whatever really was there.

Part 2: 3D Again

3D Movies had hit the theaters, and the first one I saw was Hondo with John Wayne. Donning our 3D polarized glasses my dad and I sat transfixed as arrows were shot at us and came flying out of the screen. We were stabbed at by knives which poked into our bellies and gun barrels that fired bullets which seemed to penetrate our brains. Hondo awakened in me the awareness of the third dimension. On the way home he made no comment on the move, as usual. I have no idea whether he was impressed by it or not. If he was, he wouldn’t it it. However, no comment was usually a good comment with him. So, I went to bed, thinking about the old View Masters that we had had around the house ever since living in the Canyon. The next morning, I dug out the viewer and found the round disks that fitted into it. The right and left handed transparent photographs were embedded in the disks on opposite sides. When you dropped the disk into the viewer, and looked through the twin optical lenses your right eye beheld the right image and the left the left image (as you might expect). Put together by the brain, you saw a 3D image. Maybe. Unless you had eyes like mine. Keep in mind the days of the Lone Ranger mask with the right eye patched over. That was the doctor’s attempt to get my brain to see through my left eye, which was probably a mistake since it (the brain) refused to “fuse” the image of the right eye with the one from the left. The muscle of the left eye was weak, and if I did force myself to see the left image it tended to drift around. So if I did look through both eyes, I would see two images about eighty per cent overlapped, with the left image wandering back and forth.

Not too great, especially when you are trying to catch a baseball. When my dad threw a “fly” ball at me it would start out as two balls (assuming my brain was looking through both eyes) which would come together at some point in its arc and for a brief moment would be fused into one ball, then cross and become two images again, leaving me to guess which ball I should catch. Since this was too confusing for my brain to process, it made a subconscious decision to eliminate the left image, pretty much altogether, which raised havoc with depth perception. Consequently, I actually saw two balls, almost, but couldn’t tell exactly how far away they were. This translated into either not getting the mitt up when it needed to be up, or putting it in the wrong spot. Well, at least it provided a great excuse for the fact that I never got to sign up with the New York Yankees. But it also created a fascination with 3D, and a determination to “see” it. So after “Hondo” I started staring into the View Master, trying to see the threedimensional aspect of the photographs, which I couldn’t always quite make out. View Master never worked for me. Funny thing was, that the old stereopticons I found in the library did. These were 3D viewers made around the turn of the twentieth century, and viewed old black and white pictures. Inadvertently I had discovered a way to “look back into time” and see cities, automobiles, and people dressed as they did in the early 1900’s. Then I discovered 3D comic books. These were “anaglyphic”. They involved two pictures drawn from the aspect of the right and left eyes one in red and the other in blue or green. They came with a pair of red and blue glasses; the red blocking out the blue or green image and vice versa. Problem was, the 3D comics were primarily Horror comics. One I was drawn from the perspective of the narrator of the story, so that you were looking through his eyes. He had become grotesquely disfigured in some way; his appearance striking terror in the eyes of anyone who looked at him. This was glaringly obvious from the fact that as he (you) ran through the streets everyone stared at you in horror and got out of your way.

The second story in the same comic was about somebody who ed the French Foreign Legion and ultimately died in a siege of the fort he served in. The last picture-cell in the comic was actually a series of “cells” which started with the muzzle of his gun, traced the barrel one cell at a time right up to him. He was a half decomposed skeleton lying in the sand. The caption read “I…am…dead”. It was good 3D but kind of disturbing for an eight-year-old kid going on nine who was trying to see 3D. I complained to my dad, who had read the comic, that it was scary. “Yeah,” he said, “but it was good 3D.”

Part 3: Making Your Own

However, I was not to be deterred. I decided I was going to create my own 3D images. To this end I studied the 3D images in the comics and decided that the depth of the image depended on how far apart it was. For example, images far away would have their left (green) image a centimeter or so on the left of the right (red) image. As they approached the “plane” of the photograph the images would grow closer together until they would cross again for images “coming out” of the picture. Somehow this worked for people with normal vision, but not for me. I saw double no matter what I did. So, armed with a pair of anaglyphic red/green glasses, I drew 3D pictures for a while. My dad, who was always ready to try something new, saw me doing it and said, “Maybe we can take 3D photographs.” Now there was a thought. I had a camera shaped like a cube and made of black plastic that consisted of a fixed focus, fixed aperture lens and a viewfinder. It could do nothing besides take black and white photographs of no exceptional sharpness. Incidentally, in the early fifties color film was a novelty. My dad had his own darkroom and developed and printed his own pictures, which he “tinted” to make colored ones. We had three “8 by 10” black and whites of Bridger River

scenes which he had tinted, framed and hanged on our wall. To get a color photo, you took the picture with color film which produced a color transparency, made a black and white negative out of it, and printed the picture in black and white. Then, referring to the original color transparency, you tinted the black and white print using the color transparency for color accuracy. Ok, so now you’re bored. But see, my dad got interested in 3D, and he figured out a way to turn my Brownie into a 3D camera. He built a sliding platform for it which was twice as long as the base of the camera. I attached it to a tripod, placed the camera on the left side of the platform, took the picture from the “left eye” point of view, slid it to the right side of the platform and took a second picture from the “right eye” point of view. Develop the negatives, print the pictures and place them in the right and left side of the stereopticon that he built for that purpose and voila! 3D pictures of any stationary object you wanted to see a 3D picture of! It wouldn’t work on action shots obviously, but I bet he could have figured that out too if I’d mentioned it. Maybe get another camera and hook the shutters together so they would snap at the same time. He was a genius, all right. No question about it.

Climbing the Lutheran Church Chapter 47

Part 1: The Flannel Graph Battle

M y mother was off to church again, and this time it was the Lutheran variety. This was a stately building made of mountain rock and came with a solemn and dignified service that I rarely attended because I was in Sunday School. There’s nothing like sitting in a cold Sunday School room on a warm June day in which you should be outside hiking, swimming or playing ball, watching the teacher move cutouts of people dressed in odd clothing…mostly full length robes…around on what was known as a flannel graph board propped up in front of the class. Let’s see…David goes here, Saul goes there, and the prophet Samuel stands in the background. David is standing there with next to nothing on. Saul says (as quoted by the teacher): “Here, take my armor. You will have to wear it to slay the giant.” David puts on the armor (the teacher slaps pieces of flannel graph armor onto David which stick to him). “No,” the teacher says in a higher pitched falsetto, presumably simulating David’s voice, “this armor is too heavy!” The teacher strips off the armor. “I’ll just choose five smooth stones out of this river for my sling,” squeaks

David, “and run out there nearly naked and face that clown.” (Somewhat poorly translated). Sunday school teacher slaps four flannel graph stones in David’s purse and one in the pouch of his sling. Saul and Samuel are ripped off the flannel graph board to be placed in a nearby box, and on goes the giant, a large, rough man with a black beard, dressed in heavy armor. “Who is this little thing facing me?” The teacher roars in the giant’s voice, getting into the part. “Why are you sending a boy to do a man’s job?” “I am David,” he squeaks, “and I am here to teach you a lesson not to blaspheme the Lord Our God!” David winds up, lifts up his leg and pitches the stone, which, thanks to the teacher’s manipulation, flies out of the sling, and as it flies you can hear inside your head the voice of Vince Scully yelling “And it’s IN THERE!” The rock flies out of David’s sling, across the flannel graph board and becomes pasted to the middle of the giant’s forehead. The teacher grabs the giant, rips him off the board and deposits him on his back with sword still in hand. David trots (courtesy of the teacher) across the board to the giant…trot, trot, trot…and the giant’s sword is placed in his hand. “And so,” the teacher announces triumphantly, “David, a young boy armed only with a rock, a sling and faith in God defeats a giant ten times his size. Later, when I read this story in the Bible, I discovered that David cut off the giant’s head with his own sword, and concluded the teacher had given us a sanitized version. Apparently, the flannel graph people did not include copious samples of blood in the flannel graph kit.

Part 2: Climbing more than Sunshine Mountain

But Sunday school was finally out and I ran outside and up the steps to the real attraction of the Lutheran Church, or, I should say, the building in which the church met. This attraction consisted of a very narrow ledge that encircled the entire building. One could step out onto the ledge from the church steps, and climb most of the way around it. It was maybe an inch or two wide; just wide enough to allow you to inch your way along if you hugged the wall and inserted your fingernails into the gaps between the fitted stones. I started to circumnavigate the building, each week I made it farther before losing my nerve and coming back. Why my mother didn’t see me doing this, I don’t know. I think it was because Sunday school let out before church did. She was still inside while I was inching. As I moved across the wall, the ground fell away, I think because the church itself was built on a hill. And, I should hasten to add that the ground below me wasn’t made of dirt…it was concrete. I had progressed to the place where I was probably about ten feet above the ground when that developing portion of my brain kicked out a vague thought. The concrete below me looked awfully hard and was a lot farther down than it had been when I started out. The thought came: If I fall off this ledge, SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN! As sanity inched from that place into the rest of my brain, I inched my way back to the front steps and decided I might stop doing that. Watching flannel graphs in Sunday School might be overwhelmingly preferable to breaking my neck on church concrete.

Part 3: Playing Politics

Good Friday came and along with it a miracle. My dad actually went to church.

We stood at the back, as far back as we could get, and listened to the pastor talk about how Pontius Pilate washed his hands after delivering up Jesus to be crucified. “I am innocent of this Man’s blood,” the preacher quoted as he dipped his hands in a bowl of water and wiped them on a towel, “see you to that. “All the water in all the oceans,” the preacher went on to say, “couldn’t expunge (whatever the word ‘expunge’ meant) the guilt of Christ’s blood from Pilate’s hands.” Dad listened to that and growled, “Pilate was just playing politics.” We exited the church for the parking lot, and that was the last word he had to say on that subject.

Miscellaneous Weird Stuff Chapter 48

Part 1: The Streak

S ummer was ending, baseball season was approaching its climax with the World Series, mornings were dawning chillier, and my dad had built a new trailer for the Polliwog. Fifth grade was just around the corner as August started dissolving into September, and you could feel it coming. The days of freedom were rapidly coming to an end. Summer no longer stretched out endlessly before you, and you could see the trap about to be sprung. You were going to be thrown back into a cage and tied to a desk. Our house now had floors, walls and ceilings, and Dad had planted a lawn, and, although the back yard was still dirt and weeds, the time was nearing when he would sell it and move on. I continued to pump my way to the skies on the back yard swing, and to… See a flying saucer. The early fifties had developed a fascination with flying saucers; there were movies continually coming out such as The Flying Saucer in 1950 and The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951. I didn’t see either one of them, and although the word “flying saucer” was being thrown around, I wasn’t trying to see one. But I did. It was a simple and unexpected incident. I was sitting on the enger side of

the car in the front seat; my dad was driving. We were ing a radio tower which had attracted my attention. That’s when I saw the small bright object streak across the sky, moving from right to left with blinding speed. It was farther away than the tower. It stopped suddenly in midflight and zipped back in the opposite direction, retracing its path–like some kind of boomerang. When it reversed direction, I jumped in my seat. I was eight, going on nine, and I didn’t know much about planes or how they flew, but I did know that nothing could do what that object just did. It was impossible. Well, I can’t say it was a “saucer”, since it was just a point of light, but it certainly wasn’t anything that could exist in “known space”. Back and forth, like a boomerang, that was it. I actually never told anybody until I was much older. People might think I was crazy.

Part 2: The Black Cat

More weird stuff involved the appearance of a black cat on our back doorstep. I have no idea where it came from, but it was black and skinny. We adopted it and started feeding it. My dad said it was a female, and it hung around for a while. I keeping it in my bedroom with the light turned off thinking that it was a ‘witch’ that had taken the form of a cat. It wasn’t, of course. It was just a cat. It disappeared one day…and went back to wherever it came from. It went just as mysteriously as it came, but I’ll never forget it…its hard, black, diamond shaped face and the feeling that there was more to it than met the eye,

like some kind of embodied demon that came out of nowhere. Naw, it was just a cat looking for handout, and we probably didn’t feed it enough.

Part 3: Free Masons Aren’t Free

Both my dad and mom had been Free Masons before I was born and we had at least one ancestor that was a 33rd degree Mason. Dad was at least a 3rd degree Master Mason, and Mom was in the Eastern Star. She told me about a cousin who was in DeMolay, a Masonic order for young people. Masonry is not Christian; it is a secret society having its own rituals and subscribes to a belief in a Supreme Being but doesn’t state what that Being is, and leaves it up to the to define what they believe in and what codes they wish to adhere to. Three of the major divisions in Christianity condemn Masonry: Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, however the Anglican Church accepts it and some Anglican and Episcopalian bishops have been Masons themselves. The rituals of Masonry, while kept secret by its , are said to be symbolically violent. In one ritual, a member ascending the orders is symbolically “gutted”: a ceremonial knife is drawn up his belly depicting what will happen to him if he reveals Masonic secrets. With that kind of graphical warning, if it’s true and is indeed performed, it’s no wonder that the rituals are hidden in mystery. might be understandably reluctant to divulge them. My dad never mentioned his time in the Free Masons; it was only from my mother that I learned anything about it. But I can speculate that it might have been his experience with them that caused him to “bolt and run”; drop everything, quit his management job, sell his three-story middle America home, and “go West”. He was ‘getting off the grid’, so to speak.

Mom mentioned that she told him at one point that “if he didn’t do it, she would”. And maybe it was his involvement in Masonry that reinforced his antipathy toward Christianity and the Church, but probably not. It probably was due more to his exploitation on the rented farm by his God-fearing parents and the hypocrisy of the good people of his home town that was enough to embitter him against any pursuit of the Christian faith. Christianity needed no other help. He did have a friend, Dan Grosshead, who helped him along on the path away from Light, who told him that the Resurrection of Christ was nothing but hearsay. When you leave the path of Light and pursue your own righteousness into darkness, no matter how “good” you are, you and your offspring, will suffer… And Dan’s death was not a pleasant event

I Find an Odd Friend Chapter 49

Part 1: The King Kong of Sore Throats

W ho was Dan Grosshead? It turns out he was one of my dad’s closest friends in his twenties and thirties. He had a son who was also named Dan, but I think I got my name from the father. I never met the man who had just died in the next-door state, and for whom my dad showed more grief when he received the announcing telegram than he did for his own father who was, from all s, a very mean man. Anyway, here we were, loaded up in the 52 Buick headed East, out of town toward my dad’s home state, all trace of the Rocky Mountains fading behind us, and facing the incredibly flat land that stretched ahead and on both sides, covered with corn or wheat (or something else) as far as the eye could see. Above was a sky infested with bluish-grey clouds that looked like they wanted to congeal into something big that you really wouldn’t want to see (and might want to run from). My dad had left in the late afternoon for some night driving through this desolate land and I, being only eight years old and raised at a higher altitude, did not connect up the fact that the car had no air conditioning (of which I was totally ignorant), with the stifling hot, humid, 110 degree heat we encountered in this garden spot of planet Earth, the flattest place on the planet. The outside air had cooled off considerably in the early evening, and he opened the vents which blew air at our feet and…I foolishly removed my shoes and cooled my feet in it.

Foolishly, because when we arrived in the capital I had the beginnings of a raging sore throat. Events after that are hazy. We were put up in a large house. Older people milled around us. We ate with people I had never seen before and I was put up in a small bedroom with a twin sized bed. I had no idea what else was in the bedroom since it was too dark to see anything. I went to sleep easily enough…and woke up with the King Kong of all sore throats. It was a real rager. My mom tried everything except the Hot Toddy which Dad usually inflicted on me. He did finally try it --hot whiskey in lemon juice, and it almost killed me but did nothing for the throat except enrage it. So, there I was, in the Midwest in late August…not a nice, turning-into-a-highaltitude-low -humidity August, but a 110 degree, 100 percent humidity August that threatened to boil you like a plucked chicken in a soup kettle. Or, more like a chicken with an axe embedded in its neck, unable to cluck out its pain. Next morning dawned in fiery agony. My mother smeared some mentholated grease on my neck and wrapped a red bandana around it. I couldn’t eat breakfast, and could just barely down a little water. Morning light revealed the place we were housed in to be an old farmhouse. My room was on the second floor. I carefully got out of bed and dressed – my throat sending out shock waves with each movement -- and descended a long staircase with a railing made from some dark wood to a kitchen with faded, flowered wallpaper, tired looking cabinets, and chipped yellow tile. The table was set with old looking plates patterned with flowers and surrounded by tarnished, antique looking silverware. “Argus, this is Dan. Dan, this is your Aunt Argus.” She was an overweight woman in a flowery apron and grey hair tied up in a bun who, no doubt, had been on a lifetime diet of beef, potatoes and state corn, lacking in leafy green vegetables. She attempted to serve me bacon and eggs from which I recoiled in terror.

“He’s got a bad sore throat,” my mom said. “I don’t think he can eat anything.” I moaned again in assent. My throat hurt so bad I couldn’t let out more than a piteous squeak. “Is he gargling?” Argus said. “Did you smear mentholated grease on his throat and wrap it with a large red bandana?” I moaned, nodded and pointed to the bandana. Argus nodded in approval. “He’ll get over it then.” She removed the plate and went to the refrigerator, taking out the ice cube tray, whacking the tray on the counter to loosen the cubes. They bounced out of the tray, some of them landing on the floor. Picking them all up she placed them in a towel and folded it up. WHACK! She hit the towel against the counter a few times, and poured the resulting ice cube shards in a glass. “Here, he can suck on these.” She removed the plate of the mouthwatering, though pain inducing, breakfast of bacon and eggs. My stomach growling but my throat hurting so much it outweighed the hunger, I took my glass of ice shards up to my room and sat in a room that was already losing its coolness as the pitiless sun pushed its way above the horizon. Things were already progressing toward humid hotness and soon would become almost intolerable. I lay on my bed sucking gingerly on the ice, my throat raging, in the advancing heat that was quickly becoming stifling. Opening the window did no good; it was hotter outside. In fact, I decided, it might be better to go outside for the off chance that a breeze might blow up. Not only that, I thought, but being able to look around might take my mind off this horrendous throat.

Part 2: The Cats in the Barn

Down the stairs I went and out to a back porch enclosed by panes of dirty screen. Beyond the screen lay a small, parched grassy yard terminated by an expanse of dirt which constituted a parking area. On the other side of this stood a red barn. Beyond that, in every direction, stretched fields of corn as far as I could see. This was the country my dad had grown up in. It may not have been his old farmhouse, but it was one like it, and the fields were like the ones he had worked in from the moment he could stand up and walk. I opened the screen door and climbed down the wooden steps to the yard, which was semi-protected from the scorching sun by a spreading tree, perhaps an elm or something. The yard in its shade looked cooler than it was, and the grass was a shade greener than the unfortunate section that had no protection. But up until now I had just thought it was hot. As I climbed down the stairs and moved out onto the dirt lot, the full heat of the advancing day fully hit me. My throat raged more fiercely in the stifling humid heat. (Toto, to paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, you’re not in paradise anymore.) But I kept going across the hard packed earth through the barn’s open door. The smell of manure hit me like a living thing, and I found it populated with a few animals I recognized from “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”, one of my Golden Books. To be specific, with a few cows and a couple of horses; real ones, large and smelly. Farm cats were everywhere. With one accord one thousand cats turned to look at me with bright, panic stricken eyes, and started peeling off in waves in every direction. I’d never seen so many cats in my life, and all of them wild: animals which lived near humans but wouldn’t get within yards of them.

Part 3: The Odd Friend

Then out the back, in the corn field, grasshoppers were everywhere and flew away from me in droves, leaving behind corn ears with gaping holes in them. It was here that I found my friend. I had wandered around in the corn field for a while, watching the grasshoppers pause on the corn stalk leaves, panic, and then fly away. It was like being in a small city. The inhabitants looked like grotesque winged horses, their eyes on each side of their heads. They were six legged horses, having four front legs and two powerful back ones with which they could propel themselves enormous distances. They all flew away from me in panic, all except one. It landed on my sleeve and clung to me, its compound eyes seeming to study me. I reached for it, thinking it would fly off, but it didn’t move. I turned around and flailed my arms to get rid of it, but it still didn’t move. Maybe if I had been older I would have brushed it off in panic at its strange behavior, but at the age of eight going on nine, it seemed to me that I had acquired a companion, a strange friend. It was larger than the others, and therefore older. Maybe that’s why it was less subject to panic, I don’t know. I returned to the farmhouse, and went inside. “Dan, there you are,” Aunt Argus said. “Dinner’s almost ready, go wash…” She paused and stared at the grasshopper on my sleeve. “What’s that?” I shrugged. “A grasshopper. It landed on my sleeve and won’t leave.” She gaped at it. “Well, get rid of it.” “It’s O.K., Aunt Argus. It’s friendly. It’s my new friend.” She stared at it for a minute, shook her head and went back to cooking. With my

grasshopper on my sleeve, I went upstairs, washed my hands and came back down to eat. My mom stared at it. “What’s that on your sleeve?” “A grasshopper. My new friend.” Everybody stared at it, including my dad. “Well,” he grunted finally, “doesn’t seem to be hurting anything.” That was my dad’s philosophy. If it wasn’t ‘hurting anything’ you left it alone. Live and let live. I tried to eat the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob freshly picked from the fields, but my raging sore throat wouldn’t let me swallow so much as a bite. I ended up once again sucking ice; the large brown grasshopper clinging to my sleeve the whole time. “The funeral’s at two,” somebody said. My dad glanced at his watch. “Yeah, we should get in the car and go. The city is at least thirty miles away.” The grasshopper never left my sleeve as I climbed into the front seat, the enger side door slamming not inches away from it. With my dad behind the wheel and my sister and mom sitting behind me, the car pulled out of the long driveway and onto the long stretch of highway that ran between corn and wheat fields. I rode with my strange friend, its presence seeming to take some of the pain away from my throat. Fields flashed past us on either side along with an occasional farmhouse. Ahead a city materialized in the distance. It wasn’t long before we were into suburbia. Dad pulled up in front of a church and we all got out. We were late for the funeral and the only places we could find were in the back of the building. I sat on a pew, sandwiched between two adults and able to see nothing but the…uh… backs of adults in front of me. (Note: my dad would have said ‘backsides’) That’s how most kids see church, when they actually are allowed into it…if released from their Sunday school holding pens. They see the backs, legs, and uh, posteriors of adults. What’s going on up in front is heard but not seen. Maybe

not even heard. Mom must have either bought or made a suit for me; more likely it was “made” on her Singer, because I was dressed in it when transported to the funeral. The church was dark, and I could hear somebody talking up front. My six-legged friend clung motionlessly to my sleeve, seeming not to care about the mass of humans standing around it. Whoever it was up front droned on, and partway through the toneless message came a blood chilling, wailing scream. Loud sobbing followed that gradually lapsed into silence. Embedded in the cries was a chilling hopelessness that seemed to darken the already dark building. My friend didn’t stir, as if to say, “Don’t worry about this, I’m seeing you through it.” My sore throat raged, women were screaming and wailing, and the darkness of death hung over the place, but it—he—was unmoved. I don’t the reception, or the trip back to the farm house but when I got there I helped my insect friend onto an open windowsill so I could get my pajamas on. By now “it” had become a “he”, and I thought he would continue to hang out with me at least until we left for home, but when I turned to let him crawl back onto my sleeve… He was gone. I’m not sure what meaning there might be in this, but maybe it meant nothing. It was just a temporary friend…somebody, or something, to help me get through a hard time with a bad sore throat in a hot, unfamiliar place and a scary funeral. Who knows?

Peter Pan Didn’t Bawl On His Ninth Birthday Chapter 50

Part 1: The Bottom of the Pecking Order

S omehow, even though I had lost my Neanderthal mask, I had become more popular. Peter Dougall and Sam Wainwrong, a couple of kids who were considered to be popular and “in”, took a liking to me. They were mid-fifties kids of the short cropped hair variety. Equipped with crisp shirts, pressed slacks, and shined shoes, they looked like two of the “Four Freshman” in search of the other two. They were the guys who would hit the home runs, get the best looking girls, and probably end up at Yale or Harvard, but in the fifth grade, they were just getting started. My popularity increased and I was elected as my fifth-grade class president. The presidents of our class had a life span of only a month before they were deposed and replaced, a policy that allowed a lot of kids the shot and leadership. Being popular was a new experience, but it had its drawbacks…to stay popular you had to bend to the will of the majority, and that will was somehow not part of my psychological makeup. Evolutionists believe that Man evolved from the ape. I think they are wrong. He evolved from the chicken, and the consensus concerning Jerry Goophead was proof of this assertion. Jerry made you think of a carrot the color of a turnip. Red hair sprouted off a bulbous head in all directions, like some sort of weed that poked itself out of a

garden and should have been pulled by a zealous gardener. His narrowed face started wide at the top and narrowed rapidly to a pointed chin. His eyes bulged behind bandaged black rimmed glasses that were balanced on a narrow, pointed nose. His complexion might have belonged on a rare and probably poisonous toadstool. Yes, he was skinny (but most of us were skinny) but his hands and feet were big and gawky. Worst of all, from a Middle Class point of view, he had no athletic ability whatsoever. Had he been a chicken in a henhouse, he would have fallen to the bottom of the pecking order, with the higher-ranking chickens ready to peck him to death. The Masked Rider of the Plains, however, would have befriended this poor bottom feeding chicken and, because “There Was No Greater Champion of Justice”, would have defended him against all forms of persecution. Unfortunately, I was not up to the task. He became my friend, much to the consternation of those who had accepted me into their clique. “What are you running around with that guy, for?” Peter asked me. “He’s a loser.” “Yeah,” said Sam. “We don’t need that kid.” I shrugged and stared at my feet. I didn’t understand the dynamic of what was going on. I had no idea that, having been ushered into a state of higher status, I was now subject to popular opinion if I wanted to maintain that status. But I had an instinct for what ought to be. I shrugged. “Well, he needs a friend.” “So what,” Sam said. “He’s a loser.” “Yeah, I guess.” I said. “Yeah, nobody’s going to like you if you keep playing with him.” Peter said.

“Really? Why is that?” “Well, if you don’t get it I can’t explain it to you.” They turned and walked away. I took this in, but didn’t quite understand it. Maybe because I’d been a backwoods boy who had my formative years in a neighborhood with only four kids in it, or because I’d been on the wrong end of a brother and sister who teamed up together. I resented the barnyard “game” and how it was played. It was unjust. Came the day when somebody came to me, after school—a kid I didn’t know very well and said, “We’re going to beat him up. We’re going to wait for him on his way home from school and fix him good. You want to come?” At that point dread seized me. “Nah, I’ve got to get home right away.” “Okay.” The kid gave me a hard look and left. Jerry ed me. His place was on the way to my house, and I usually walked home with him. “You ready to go?” he asked. “Uh, I think I’m going over to Pete’s house this time.” “Oh. Okay.” I walked away in the other direction. I didn’t tell him that a lynch mob of chickens was waiting to peck him to death, and I didn’t go with him to defend him against them. I never saw that kid again. But I did find myself on another route home, trying to deny the realization that The Great Masked Rider of the Plains in reality just might be a coward. I had not defended the helpless and weak. I had chickened out.

Part 2: Nobody Here is Growing Up

However, Peter Pan still lived and was determined not to grow up. This was evidenced by the advent of my ninth birthday, which was celebrated gloriously by the presence of Waldo Bard and a shower of presents from every direction, not the least of which was a Peter Pan 78 rpm record album (it wasn’t the standard size of the 78’s, but was an album of records the size of what would be the 45’s in a few years) with an abbreviated sound track of the movie and all of the songs, including “A Pirate’s Life” and “Second Star To The Right”, the ultimate escapism for a kid turning nine who had some difficulty remaining in the real world. After a day of cake and ice cream debauchery and hoopla punctuated by streamers, whistles, noise makers, and my dad and mom providing every possible benefit, I went to bed highly overwrought and overstimulated. And bawled my head off. “What’s the matter with him?” my dad growled from the other side of the closed bedroom door. “We gave him a great party and everything he wanted, and he’s bawling about it.” “I think he’s just tired,” Mom said in my defense. “Yeah, well maybe I should pull him out of bed and give him something to cry about.” At this, I attempted to restrain my tears. “No, let him go to sleep.” As I listened to them retreat down the hall I wished they knew why I was shedding tears. I had turned nine and I could see it was the next step in “growing up”, which was inevitable, but I didn’t want to. My parents had given me consistent signals that they didn’t want me to grow up. I’d leave them to old age, rest homes, and

finally to crossing the Great Divide alone, without my . They didn’t want me to grow up, and neither did I. But it was inexorable. It was inevitable. I wanted to stop it… And somehow I felt I had ‘crossed the line’ with my ninth birthday.

The Road Out Chapter 51

Part 1: Leaving Listless

“I think we need a vacation,” my dad said. “Yes, we’ve had our noses to the grindstone for a long time and we deserve it.” Big things had happened in the last couple of weeks. When the house finally had grown genuine walls, ceiling, floors and rugs in all the rooms; the kitchen and bathrooms completely tiled; all electrical outlets covered with plastic covers attached to them by screws; and no sheetrock exposed anywhere without paint, it signaled that it was ready to be sold. Oh, yeah, another big indicator was a yard with real grass, front and back, and no weeds. Definitely a ‘heads up” that it was time to move somewhere else where I would have to start all over again trying to make new friends in a new neighborhood and at a new school. He sold the Polywog and we had bought a new car. All three of us were present at the dealership when my dad turned in the old black Buick for a two-year-old Buick Supreme with a sleeker yellow body, though still having a rounded rear end, longer body and a black top. Then came the day that we had no house to live in, and as far as I knew, no destination in mind when dad loaded up the car with camping equipment and the movers hauled off the furniture, television set, and piano to be stored somewhere else. I told Waldo I was leaving for good, and, had I been Richard Nixon who was

presently Dwight Eisenhower’s obscure Vice President, I would have said, “Now you won’t have me to kick around anymore.” Not that Waldo could actually physically kick somebody. I was leaving in victory of sorts: A few days ago Waldo had disliked something I did or said, so on the way home he summoned a few boys around him as I walked away from him, angry about some comment he had made. As I kept walking the one quarter mile home, he began to obviously talk to them about me, ‘bad mouthing’ me behind my back. Waldo was using one of his many techniques for punishing me when I crossed him, and I usually put up with them all, but this time while he was exuding his slander, I turned around and started yelling “Back Biter Bard. Back Biter Bard!” in that sing-song tone voice kids use to taunt somebody. I reached home, dumped my school work on the table and stood in window watching him roll past with a face as red as a beet, glaring at where I stood in the center of the picture window. I didn’t care. This time you got what you deserved, I thought, and next time you will get it again. Anyway, that had been a few days ago, and now we were pulling out. I went over to his house and told him we were leaving, and he said absolutely nothing so I left his house and returned to the new yellow Buick. “Okay,” my dad said, “you are now the movie maker.” He handed me the eight millimeter Eastman Kodak movie camera. It was a heavy and solid, mostly made of metal (and not pot metal, either), powered by a wind-up spring, made to last until the world blew up. I had watched movies which Dad had made with it, and run through his movie projector, showing them on the silver movie screen which stood on a tripod and rolled out of its cylindrical holder. Most of them had been in black and white and had a lot of spots and images of lint that came and went across the image. He’d made them in the 1930’s showing his high society friends.

He’d made one of his first trip to the Rockies that depicted people hiking up a trail winding through boulders and pines…which had probably been the inspiration for his ‘Go West Young Man’ move. “The film’s loaded into it,” he said, as he handed me the camera, “and here’s an extra roll. You don’t need to wind it up until you’re ready to shoot. Best if there’s no tension on the spring until you’re ready.” He also handed me his light meter. It had been dialed into the Weston rating of the film which was very low because the Kodachrome film was very insensitive to light. He had showed me how to get the right exposure settings by aiming the meter at the back of my hand. A dial on the meter showed the aperture setting based on the shutter speed of the camera, which was at thirty frames per second was, as you might expect, one thirtieth of a second. Usually you could set the aperture, or lens opening at “f8” and be about right. I had been taking movies with it for some time, and knew how to load and unload the film, making sure it didn’t get exposed to the light. The film was actually sixteen millimeters wide, double the size you would get after processing. This meant that when you came to the end of the roll you took it out of the camera and flipped it over, recording on the other side. When you were done, you sent the film to Kodak for processing. They developed it, sliced it down the middle, spliced the two ends together, and voila! One eight-millimeter movie which you threaded into a projector, erected a silver screen and enjoyed your role as a Hollywood movie making mogul. The camera was protected by a leather case that fit it exactly and exposed the wind-up knob, the lens and the shutter button. You pried the wind-up knob out of the side of the camera. It swung out perpendicular to the body: you grasped it with your thumb and forefinger and started winding up the spring until it stopped. It had no batteries; the camera had been developed either before batteries came into existence because they hadn’t been invented yet, or they were too big to fit into it. Probably the former–it was, after all, an early forties camera. It had interchangeable lenses, bayonet mounted, but we had only one lens so I didn’t need to worry about how to switch to another lens. Later cameras were equipped with a turret of three: wide angle, normal and telephoto.

I folded the second half of the leather cover, the part that protected the lens and the viewfinder, back over the camera and snapped it into place. Dad backed out of the driveway, and I said goodbye to the empty house next to the railroad tracks and watched idly from the back seat as we headed through town and out onto the highway. We headed north, the Rockies in the distance on the left and the open plains on the right, and excitement was growing with every mile. I knew this trip was going to be a whole lot more fun than the trip to the funeral had been. But, that was a no-brainer. It certainly couldn’t be worse.

Part 2: Not Entirely Wonderful

My parents, on a shoestring budget as usual, camped in the first campground they came to as the sun was going down. We pitched a large, tan canvass tent and stretched the “porch” flap out in front of it, ing it on two poles. Dad “fired up” the camp fuel powered stove. The camp stove had a tank which held the fuel. To “fire it up”, you worked a pump handle back and forth to inject air. When you turned on the burners, the fuel mixed with the air and you lit it with a match. Maybe you’d get a blue flame, which was the optimum gas mix, and maybe you wouldn’t. It would definitely be yellow if the stove wasn’t set on a level surface. Sometimes a lot of finagling went on to get that optimum flame. Once the stove was lit, Dad popped open the cots, spread the sleeping bags out on them, and unfolded the camp chairs. Mom got busy cooking according to the clear and defined division of labor which existed in my parent’s household. Within 10 minutes we were gathered around the picnic table eating Dinty Moore’s Beef Stew, canned corn and green beans which were greenish-grey and cut in small chunks. The green beans and corn probably had had every possible vitamin stripped from them in the canning process and offered only an illusion of nourishment.

However, we were happy at the end of the meal, and my mom had already heated water on the stove to wash the dishes. Dad was the breadwinner and took care of building the house we lived in, keeping it up in repair, and determined what landscaping we had and that it was maintained. He was the ‘hunter-gatherer’ that provided money for food and clothing, and literally put a roof over our heads. My mom’s province was the kitchen, washing, ironing, and cleaning the house. She made our clothing on her overworked Singer sewing machine, and was the anchor point for us kids. She was always there when we came home from school. Except for one time. When we lived in the Canyon, I came home one day after school and she wasn’t there. I went through the house in a panic, ‘bawling’ at the top of my lungs. I searched through every room of the house, and before I collapsed into complete catatonia, she came in the front door. She’d been out somewhere, maybe in town, and it was so unusual that in my mind it constituted a catastrophe on the order of, say, the San Francisco Earthquake. But back to the division of labor. They would not have had it any other way; in fact, they would not permit any other way. I stayed out of the kitchen except to come in and eat. Requiring me to cook was out of the question and not to be mentioned. I offered once to wash the dishes and was told to get out of the kitchen. “I’ll do it,” Mom had said. So, here at the first campground on our vacation, Mom did the dishes, Dad decided to go for a walk, and I tagged along. By now, I was fully aware that not everything was entirely “wonderful” between my parents. To begin with, they pretty much lived in their own worlds. How two people with such disparate interests, and disparate lifestyles could get together was, and is, beyond me. And it was even more amazing that they stayed together. My dad was essentially a farm boy. He loved the outdoors; he loved living in remote areas away from people. He would “grouse” to me about how there were “too many people”. He was always fantasizing about living up in the mountains where he would never see another human being, living off the land and hunting and fishing nonstop.

My mother was the exact opposite. She loved being in cities, in cultural centers, surrounded by art museums, music halls, and theaters where high society people met to make urbane exchange. They would “get along” for a while, and slept in the same bed for a great portion of their life (after finally kicking me out of it), but they did little in the way of kissing or hugging. My dad would allow my mom to “peck him on the cheek” as he went out the door on the way to work, and he’d allow me to do the same, up until I reached fourteen. Then I got a hostile reaction that resulted in me never doing it again. But physical between them was pretty minimal. And they would have explosions which would result in my dad shouting at what he saw as my mom’s illogic. He would then say, “I’m leaving. Come on, Dan.” The first of these events occurred in the Canyon. I followed him out the door and climbed into the Buick. In the dark, in the middle of winter, I sat in the front seat with visions of my world falling apart. He sat grasping the steering wheel and staring at it, while I proceeded to talk him out of leaving; trying to restrain my feelings of anxiety and insecurity at the prospect of my parents splitting up in the Jim Bridger Canyon in the dead of winter. These explosions would not occur that frequently, but they did often enough… too often, and I would always be the “negotiator” that would talk him back into the house. He obviously didn’t want to leave, or I never would have been able to do it, but, none the less, it didn’t do anything for my sense of security.

Part 3: The Sounding Board

And they complained about each other and criticized each other to me as the “sounding board”.

My dad complained that my mom “didn’t like to do the same things he did” and advised me that when I was ready to get married I should not make his mistake. “Marry somebody that likes the same things you like. That’s a whole lot more important than the physical side of things.” Indeed, the “physical side of things” didn’t seem to be all that important to my dad. In his stoicism, he conveyed to me that a need for women and sex was a sign of weakness at best, and an absolute pain in the posterior at the worst. It interfered with building houses and “stomping around” out in the woods. My mom didn’t mind criticizing him to me either when we went on walks. To “get out of the house” she liked to take me to pharmacies where we sat on stools in an antiseptically sterile atmosphere and drank Strawberry Parfaits while perched on a barstool at the pharmacy counter. “We always end up in the sticks,” she said. “He doesn’t want to get near any cities and we never do anything or go anywhere.” “Like what, Mom?” “Well, like going to concerts or plays. And God forbid we would ever go dancing or even live in a place where you could do it. And he always dresses like a bum and smells like one too. I can’t get him to take a bath more than once a month.” Dad had a distinctive odor that was all his own – a composite of cigarette smoke, sawdust, and sweat. And he did wear the same plaid shirt, greenish work pants sporting a thin layer of sawdust and heavy with ground-in dirt, and worn brown ankle high work boots, day after day and year after year. Later after retiring from cabinetry, he’d wear a Stetson and a bolo tie, usually inset with Navajo Turquoise. That’s on the extremely rare occasion when he ‘dressed up’, like, much later in life when he came to my High School graduation. There was a certain cologne that is etched in my memory almost as deeply as “the Dad smell”, but it was a rare thing, and only worn when we went on a trip or out to dinner.

In any event, one of my main roles was as a referee in the middle of a climate of criticism. I did serve one other useful function, however. They came together when it was time to criticize me. It was one of the few times they could completely agree on anything. In any event, when that critical moment in an argument had been reached in which neither of them could make any ‘headway’ and Dad turned toward the door vocalizing the usual “come on, Dan”, I knew the ball was in my court. And I always managed to do it. Somehow, I got him to turn off the engine before he left the driveway and return to the house. I don’t know how I did it, but I did.

You Will Find Him in the Forest Chapter 52

Part 1: Dennis the Menace?

O k, so maybe I had become Dennis the Menace –the kid with a talent for embarrassing his parents, but once and hopefully the only time in my life. It happened when Dad and I went for a walk through the campgrounds, and we ran across this, I’d say, younger woman hanging around outside a tent. He got into a fairly heavy conversation about what I don’t know. It lasted for maybe fifteen minutes. He bad her “goodbye” and started to leave, at which point I “piped up”, as he used to say, and vocalized the following: “Who’s this woman you’re flirting with?” At that point both of their faces went beet red and he walked away scowling with me running to catch up. Now, I know a comfortable silence with my dad from an uncomfortable one. And this is definitely the latter. It lasted five minutes, and the vibes I was feeling weren’t good. “What’s the matter, Dad?” “You embarrassed that woman back there,” he growled. I had the vague feeling I’d done something ‘big’, and only half knew what the word “flirting” meant, and I understood even less why it might be an ‘embarrassing’ thing to say.

But looking back I think my instinct was right. I needed to protect the family, and I’d been running interference for far too long. Dad hadn’t liked it, but he was the one who was walking away with a red face.

Part 2: Onward

We pulled up the tent and rolled up the sleeping bags, knocking down the cots and loading the car with our meager worldly belongings. Onward we went, continuing to head North and then Northwest, the range of Rockies on the horizon growing steadily larger. Dad filled up in a small town and came across another campground as the sun set behind the looming mountain range. Once again, Mom cooked dinner over a camp stove (after Dad ‘pumped it up’ and lit the burners). He ate his stew and started a campfire. Dropping into a camp chair, he lit up a cigarette and pulled out a paperback featuring an overweight cowboy leaning against a saddle, as depicted on the front cover. “What are you reading, Dad?” I asked idly. He glanced at the cover. “Saddle by Starlight.” Oh. Well, I thought, it beat wandering around through the campground looking for trouble.

Part 3: Progression toward Enlightenment

The next morning, we followed a two lane highway with grayish purple

sagebrush flashing by on each side; a stretch of land that seemed to go on forever. The low rumble of the engine and the high pitched whine of the tires gripping the asphalt enhanced the emptiness of this wide open land already feeling the heat of the rising sun. There was nothing to do except stare out the window. Long ago I had learned that I couldn’t read in the car – and I couldn’t ride in the back seat. I became car sick too easily, and after a few sessions baptizing the side of the road with the contents of my stomach, it had become understood that my mom and sister always rode in the back seat. So I stared at the prairie and read the Burma Shave signs when they came up. Burma Shave had hit on an ingenious method of advertising. The company peaked interest and curiosity by erecting a series of small signs, each displaying one or two words in an extended sentence that always ended with the words “Burma Shave”. “Don’t Get Caught…” “Looking Like… At this point you were practically leaning out the window thinking, Don’t get caught looking like—WHAT?” “A bum…” “Get rid of…” Get rid of what? GET RID OF WHAT???” “Those ugly whiskers” Yes? AND? “Use…” USE WHAT? “Burma Shave!

The denouement came as a crescendo of enlightenment, lending an air of finality unmatched by anything I was familiar with in the English language. I had been led step-by-step to the logical conclusion, and with the last Burma Shave sign my mind automatically assembled the progressive pieces of information. Yes, and the final message came as an epiphany. Stop looking like you’re worthless and shave with Burma Shave! Who could forget it? It never occurred to me that someday I would start shaving, but with those ads Burma Shave became indelibly etched in my memory as the primary means of removing whiskers from my face and not looking like a bum. Unfortunately, they quit making it by the time I was ready to consider improving my appearance marred by facial growth.

Part 4: Half a Roll

“Hey, look at that,” my dad said over his shoulder as the jagged string of mountains loomed in the distance. “Those must be the Tetons.” As the saw-toothed mountain range drew ever closer, a sign beckoned us to Grand Teton National Park. For some reason I didn’t turn the camera on the spectacular range, and only started filming when we reached Yellowstone Park. We had to slow down as we reached the entrance; there was a long line of cars. This gave us ample opportunity to see the bears which were begging on both sides of the road. Black Bears are probably the most dangerous bear on Earth. I am told that a Black Bear will not only maul you but also has it in its small, pig-like brain, motivation to actually eat you. Grizzlies are much better: they will just maul you and leave you for something else to eat. But Black Bears were everywhere looking for tourist handouts, and looked like cute and harmless Teddies, albeit black in color. I gave them about two film

minutes before I realized that I had to conserve my film. You only got about thirty minutes’ worth of film with a roll, so you had to be choosy about what you took. Having a camera that ran by a spring that you had to wind up helped, but I rarely took enough footage to cause the spring to wind down. One definite no-no that was pounded into my head was: you did not “pan” too fast. Panning meant moving the camera from one side to the other to take in a whole scene. Panning too fast resulted in a blur, when the movie was projected, that left the audience’s head spinning. And another thing, you gave each scene at least to the count of 15 before you went to another scene, otherwise the audience would be so jerked around they never would figure out what was going on. So, I gave the bears to the count of fifteen as we ed through the gates, and stopped filming as we drove into the forest, looking for a place to pitch our tent. We camped again, ate our Dinty Moore’s stew, my mom washed the dishes, and we climbed into our sleeping bags excited and ready to begin our adventure into the unknown wilds of Yellowstone National Park. I’ve still got that 8 mm movie around somewhere in an old box stashed in the closet. It’s got scenes of the gushing geysers–and too much footage devoted to Old Faithful. I’d never seen anything like it; a gushing spout of water that burst out of the ground and reached a height of twenty feet, then fell back into the earth, disappearing for exactly one hour until it did it again. I came close to u half a roll on that, along with the mud pots and the smaller burbling geysers, and never shot any more film until we reached the Pacific Ocean. And that took up a whole roll. We’d never seen anything like that in our lives, either.

Across the Wild Country Chapter 53

Part 1: Bull Elk in Neverland

W e left Yellowstone sufficiently awe inspired, and headed up to Glacier National Park. Hugging the Canadian border, we turned west for the coast. I wasn’t sure how much film I had on the second side of the roll, so I filmed sparingly, catching the jagged snow covered peak and a shot or two of our campsites where Dad, Mom and my sister sat at a park bench eating more Dinty Moore’s Beef Stew. Nights fell early in the canyons of Glacier Park and were absolutely pitch black until the Moon rose above the peaks. I buried myself in my sleeping bag, retreating from the cold night air as far as possible. Mummy bags hadn’t been invented yet, so you had to pull your head down as far as you could to get it out of the icy air. They didn’t call it ‘Glacier Park’ for nothing. On we travelled out of Montana, across Northern Idaho and the high desert of Eastern Washington, cold and crisp in the morning but hot at noon, the desert of prairie sage ending with the Cascades. My dad had seen a Disney wildlife movie in which bull elk had fought each other on some ridge in the Olympic Forest, and, he could never stop talking about it. Well, that is obviously an exaggeration. “Never stop talking about it” meant that he probably mentioned it briefly three or four times, which was a record for him. Repeated mentions of anything by

him always left an indelible impression on my mind. “I want to see those bull elk fighting on the mountain,” he said again, as we approached the park. “Cliff,” my mom said from the back seat, “that was a just a movie. We’ll never get to see that.” This dose of reality left little impression on me, so I doubt that it did on him. What we saw in a movie we, or should I say, I, expected to see in real life – the same way. We both knew those elk were up there, fighting each other and clashing their horns. And, naïve child that I was, I more-or-less expected to get to film it myself. In fact, the forest, which gets 220 inches of rainfall per year out on the Olympic Peninsula, looks like something out of a Hansel and Gretel Fairy Tale, something Disney failed to mention while filming the elk. As we entered the park we were surrounded on both sides by trees that were so tall that if you looked straight up you could only see a narrow patch of sky between their tops. Grey moss hung down from their branches like hair on old witches. The undergrowth was rather sparse, since nothing at the base of those trees got much sunlight, but anything that could grow without much sunlight seemed to thrive. Like toadstools. As we drove past the park entrance, I kept looking for a witch’s hovel, perhaps marked by ginger bread cookies shaped like bewitched children hanging out by the front door and playing with toys in the front yard. There were no witch houses to be seen, however, and we camped in the first campground we came to, lit a fire, cooked our stew and felt the night close in like a dark, wet blanket. No matter how far I crawled down into my bag, I couldn’t escape the damp cold, and I decided after a teeth chattering hour this wasn’t my kind of park. Morning found us back on the road, unsuccessfully searching for fighting bull elk, and seeing no wildlife at all. I have no idea if my dad was disappointed as we circled around the peninsula and back to the ranger gate, however he never mentioned that Disney movie again.

I think my dad failed to realize that the bull elk in the Olympic Park, like Peter Pan who could fly to Neverland, were about as easy to find as was the “Second Star to the Right”. And you couldn’t see the stars in Olympic National Park.

Part 2: Down the Coast

After a few quick “takes” of the somber and somewhat sinister park, I flipped the roll to its unexposed side and we headed down the coast for Seattle. Seattle was an impossibly blue city – water everywhere under a dazzling blue sky, bays and bridges framing its vastness in a breathtaking panorama where one day the Space Needle would tower. We crossed endless bridges, gaping at the tiny ships ing beneath us. My dad hated big cities so we kept going, heading down the coast to San Francisco. Mom got tired of riding in the back seat, so we switched at the next potty break. I tried not to get sick as we followed Highway One down the coast where we finally stopped at Winchester Bay where my dad got the fishing trip of his life.

The Captain’s Spot Chapter 54

Part 1: Baiting His Hook

A s we pulled out of the aptly named Salmon Bay Harbor, I ran out of film. I had taken too much footage of the wake behind the boat as we roared away from the coastline, headed for the captain’s fishing spot, so there was nothing left when we started pulling in fish. Out here we had left behind the distinctive odor of the Northwest saw mills, which pervades the western part of the state; an odor that, if you dropped me down blindfolded I would recognize instantly and know exactly where I am. I folded the cover over the camera lens and dropped it beside me. It was time to stop recording anyway and start fishing. We finally arrived at the captain’s destination point, the boat slowed down, fishing rods were put in our hands… and, amazingly enough, the hooks were baited for us. Then we started catching fish…huge (in my mind) salmon that fought as hard as a cutthroat trout. One seemed to follow another almost immediately after pulling it in and getting the hook back in the water. They probably weighed at least two pounds each, and I was worn out from cranking in fish after the first fifteen minutes. And this without an exciting book to read! I concluded that that theory only worked in the Rockies, and only for trout. Afterwards, my dad couldn’t stop talking about the fact that deck hands had baited his hook. I think he repeated himself (over the years), perhaps five times – and set a new record for loquaciousness. The other fantastic thing was that we were the only people on the boat. It wasn’t

a party boat, and it had been so reasonably priced that we could actually afford to rent it! The whole boat. No sharing. My mom and sister were along for the ride, so when Dad and I caught our limits the day was over, and by noon we were headed back in.

Part 2: As Far as the Eye Could See

In later years I would look back on this as time as a pristine, virginal time…when the population was low, commercialization was almost nonexistent, and The Northwest was virtually undiscovered territory. The sheer joy of fishing and catching wild Salmon onboard a boat guided exclusively for you at a price that the average person could afford, went out with solidly built automobiles whose bodies and bumpers were constructed entirely of metal; cameras made solely of real steel; gasoline at 15 cents a gallon with full service; paperbacks at 25 cents; and wild, unpopulated, unsettled; unpolluted land of unparalleled beauty extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was a time when a man could work one job that paid enough to his family, his wife could stay home and be a wife and mother (and was proud of it), and his kids grew up in a stable and safe environment; the thought of their family breaking apart so completely foreign that it would never occur in their minds (and constitute an ultimate, unheard of disaster). The word “divorce” was not to enter the vocabulary of the populace until the scandal of Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor, and was looked down upon as the reprehensible and scandalous province of decadent and debouched Hollywood. My dad would yell a word mild by today’s standards when he was having trouble with one of his constructions, or if he hit his thumb with a hammer. I never heard him use any of the profanity now considered to be part of the vernacular of the day, and later in my life, when I acquired a less than exemplary mouth, he was shocked.

My parents grew up in the early twentieth century, and DID NOT use profane words. If you see a movie or television show set in, say, the 1880’s depicting people using profanity, don’t believe it. Historians think that World War II ushered heavy profanity into the general populace, but my parents were the ‘Great Generation’ and considered that kind of language as belonging to the lowest echelons of society. Frankly, language they would not have approved of didn’t appear in the general populace until the sixties. But, what did all this have to do with unspoiled fishing in the Northwest? Not much except that it was all part of a world now gone; a time of innocence that would be lost when the people and the land would become polluted through affluence and perfidy. In not more than two hours we had both caught our limits and were headed back to shore. We traded our fish for cans of smoked salmon with a commercial smoker at the dock. The next morning, we would load up the car and head for San Francisco, a city that was to be the harbinger of the next era. But that night, as my dad went to sleep in our motel, I swear I could hear him mutter the words: “They actually baited my hook.”

The Evil Purple Sky Chapter 55

W e took Highway 101 out of Winchester Bay and headed south down the Northwest Coast Highway, driving past massive crystal blue lakes and dense forests punctuated by yellow goldenrod and illuminated by the summer sun to a dazzling green intensity, and finally onto an endless bridge that crossed an endless blue sea. This was a bridge over Coos Bay that led to the town of Coos Bay. The Conde McCullough bridge stretched on endlessly over the bay. I sat pretty much in awe (I’d been ‘in awe’ for the entire trip) as the body of water ed us on both sides. We drove through the town of Coos Bay and took Highway 1 for the rest of the way to San Francisco. I forgot to be car sick as I stared out the window at the rugged rock formations unique to the Northwest Coastline. “Stop, Cliff, and let us get a look at it.” I can’t say my mom “yelled” at my dad. Her voice was never loud enough to yell, but it contained a note of exasperation which usually got results. She knew how obsessed my dad could get and oblivious to what the rest of us wanted. She managed to break into his single mindedness with getting us to where he wanted us to go, and allowed me to get out of the car and let my stomach settle, as well as take care of a bodily function which involved providing a bush with moisture it probably didn’t need. The “scenic point” overlooked rugged, rock formations half in and half out of the water, some slanting like sinking ships, their prows pointing into the oceans’ endless onslaught, their decks at an angle that would cause everything on them to slide off into the water.

I stared at them, out of film and feeling helpless, mourning my lack of frugality in filming the geysers of Yellowstone and part of the fishing trip. Dad, having been brought out of his fixation behind the steering wheel and brought to a stop, accepted with equanimity the fact that we needed to “gawk”. He was the head of the house, but, as was said in a famous movie that was yet to come, Mom was the neck. The neck turned the head, and she had no problem doing it. On we went, stopping now and then to get out and view the other-worldly scenery, surprising in its uniquely rugged beauty. Town after town came and went. We stopped in a motel for the night and kept going, leaving Highway 1 for 101 and approaching… I looked out the window and literally screamed. “What’s the mattere with the sky?” Ahead, on the horizon lay a morass of buildings, highways and bridges under a dense, poisonous looking purple haze. Already I could smell a sickening, sweetish aroma that weakened and soured my stomach. “What is it?” I yelled. “WHAT IS IT?” My parents had no answer. None of us had ever seen a purple sky before, and nobody knew exactly what it was. The visage of the city grew larger and the bridges, bays and buildings became more defined. The evil purplish color intensified and I began to wheeze with each breath I took. Now entirely sick to my stomach, my breathing became more labored. For the first time, I felt like I was going to die. “Get me out of here! I gasped. “Get me out of here!” Now we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge which would have been another wonderful experience if I hadn’t been so sick. I lay in the back of the car moaning in revulsion. My parents’ plans for San Francisco were no doubt cut short, and we got out of there by the most convenient route possible. My sickness abated as we left San Francisco behind, taking Highway 5 into Southern California.

And thus, came my first encounter with pollution, which was for the most part unheard of in 1952. But the problem would grow as the population expanded and more cars like my dad’s Buick took to the roads. The people of San Francisco probably accepted it, and thought nothing of it, but for a country boy who had grown up in the pristine environment that once was, it was an unnatural nightmare… We left it behind, headed for Long Beach. My mother was intent on seeing her mom, Grandma Lewiston, in spite of the fact that Dad refused to come anywhere near her. And the reason for that is a story yet to be told.

The Infamous Grandma Chapter 56

Part 1: Not Meeting Her

G randma Lewiston was arguably the most infamous person in the Neiser/Lewiston family tree. I say ‘arguably’ because Grandpa and Grandma Neiser, my dad’s parents, German immigrants and poor dirt farmers were notably uh, somewhat notorious, in their own right. In the way they raised their kids, that is. As I mentioned, “Neiser” is obviously a German name and it’s probably shortened from the original German “Jungennachneiser” which, roughly translated means “young people who lived near Neiser”, wherever or whatever “Neiser” was. The Jungennachneisers immigrated into the United States sometime before World War I, and shortened and so Anglicized their name that hopefully nobody would ever guess they were Germans after the war broke out. Garden variety…I can’t say ‘native’ since most of their neighbors came from Europe…Americans were not very happy with German immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century. Although pictures of my Grandfather Fred seemed to reveal him as a leaner version of Adolph Hitler, complete with a stern look somewhat obscured by a handlebar mustache, and although he had nine children which he worked like farm slaves (Dad was driving a team of horses when he was five), and although they slept on beds in the attic under an open window that allowed snow to pile up on their blankets, and although the parents threw water on the kids to wake them up in the morning, and although my dad once got a lump of coal in his

stocking for Christmas (for being a ‘bad’ boy), my grandmother Lewiston on my mother’s side still held the most notorious reputation of the lot. She was known for her white-hot temper. “Something comes over me,” she once told my mother. “And when it does it takes me and I can’t stop myself.” Her most infamous act was to chase my grandfather through the house with an axe. Evidently she didn’t catch up with him, because he survived the incident to lock himself in the basement where he practically lived while Grandma and Mom lived upstairs in the rest of the house. She kept my mom from all with the world; sheltered, naïve and clueless up until the day Mom had to go to work for a bank and was exposed to the world at large, and subsequently, to my dad. They evidently met in the bank, and were married in secret. It was a year before they let Grandma know, probably by telegram sent from a somewhere else – far away. My dad’s only story about Grandma Lewiston was derived from an incident during the Great Depression when he was out of work, had spent the whole day job hunting, and came home for a little comfort and sympathy. Grandma saw him sitting in the living room looking dejected and said to Mom, “I think he’s looking for a soft place to light.” Dad never forgave her for that. We drove into Santa Morona and my mother visited Grandma while Dad and I stayed out in the car. She lived in a pink apartment building, surrounded with palm trees, and one of my fears became that we might, someday, be forced to move to a place like Santa Morona and live in a pink building with nothing but a small Palm Tree infested yard to play in, and surrounded by concrete streets choked with automobiles and people. It was a horror almost as great as being overshadowed by a poisonous purple sky that made me sick and caused me to wheeze. I never saw her, and was still wondering what the Dragon Lady looked like as

we pulled out of the parking lot and headed East, toward the Rockies and my new home in Coldwater Springs. Later I found out that Grandma played an integral role in that destination.

Part 2: A Bird Sings

It seems that years ago, she and my mom had visited Coldwater Springs on some kind of vacation. My mom had had a wonderful time there and a kind of spiritual epiphany. They had walked downtown and had sat down on the edge of a fountain in the center of town. While sitting on the edge of the fountain… A bird sang. With the singing of this bird came a profound enlightenment which had implanted in my mother an obsession for returning to hear the bird sing again and hopefully experience another life changing, or maybe exhilarating, experience. I found this out much later in life: the raison d’etre for our relocation to find again that source of illumination, which, I suppose, was difficult since that bird was long dead.

Part 3: Cheap Accommodations

However, we still had to cross the southwestern desert in a car with no air conditioning and baking us in a metaphorical oven in 100 degree heat. We were nearly dead (and out of money) by the time we reached the Gunner River Bridge and needed to stop for the night. My dad decided to camp under the bridge, where we ed a shanty town of homeless people living in tents. Mom hid in the tent while my dad and I walked around socializing with the vagrants who had no visible means of . I had

an uneasy feeling of insecurity while my dad exerted his diplomatic skills, which could be good when he wanted them to be. We cooked our evening meal, and after warming ourselves by the main campfire smelling the liquor and cigarettes and listening to the raucous drunken talk, I gratefully crawled into my sleeping bag. As we pulled out the next morning before most of them were awake, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Dad,” I said. “I don’t think I want to do that again.” “They’re people just like us,” he said as he negotiated the Buick up the steep incline of the river bank. The bright morning sun illuminated the graying stubble on his jaw and made it stand out as the cigarette flopped in his mouth. “Don’t need to worry about it.” Just the same, I felt distinctly relieved to get out from under that bridge, and hoped from here on out he would take up sleeping in a motel. Like people “just like us”.

King of the Wild Frontier Chapter 57

Part 1: Swarms of Girls

W e moved into a one story, two-bedroom house on Peasant Street in Coldwater Springs with hardwood floors on a raised foundation. I was given my own room, my parents slept in the master bedroom and I don’t know where they stashed my sister, probably somewhere outdoors, as far as I knew. Once again I faced a new neighborhood full of unknown kids, and another new school about a quarter of a mile away. Again, it looked like it had been built in the penal motif and could have been a possible state prison, but had been rejected from the system and had become a school instead. In the distance rose a range of fourteen-thousand-foot snow covered mountains, discovered by early explorers in 1860, which dominated the Rocky Mountain range that marched across the horizon. It was rumored that I related to one of those explorers, and the fact that Dad had left the comfort of the “known” East to push West was due to the pathfinder blood we inherited from a great, great, great uncle. My dad immediately went out searching for work, and I went out searching for other kids. Len Woodbust lived next door, and when I found out his name was “Len” I had immediate visions of him being one of the many insidious relatives of Len Trefzger which no doubt permeated the state.

Unlike his namesake, Len Woodbust, loved to “dress up” in elaborate, frilly costumes and put on “plays” with his best friends…the girls in the neighborhood, and he wasn’t shy about sharing their makeup. It seemed that he had no male friends, and was surrounded by swarms of girls, more than I had ever seen in my life (which wasn’t saying much). I was his only audience, watching the posturing that went on between him and his girlfriends. The more I watched what was going on the more repulsed I became and the more I was driven to exclusive masculine activities like gunfights with the other kids in the neighborhood.

Part 2: Kilt Him a B’ar

I had acquired a second 38 Colt Peacemaker and twin holsters. Now I had twin six guns to engage in the neighborhood battles (even if one of the guns no longer worked) between Cowboys and Indians, Cowboys and Outlaws, and wars over who was the “King of the Cowboys”. But these ceased abruptly when Walt Disney produced “Davy Crocket”. The television set was set up and running in the living room in our new house… which Dad had bought outright and was not constructing himself, and Walt Disney was broadcasting his weekly “Disneyland” series, which never showed the best Walt Disney stuff, but was guaranteed to hold your attention anyway. My mother had an endless file of piano students trooping through the living room, and I was still struggling with John Schaum. Hop ‘O My Thumb was, thank God, distant history, and I was actually able to play pieces in different keys without destroying the piano and everything and everybody around me. Fortunately, she taught all her piano lessons during the day, so that when Walt Disney came on at night there was no competition from kids obsessed with making ear splitting mistakes. Disney made television history by broadcasting Davy Crocket in installments before it was released in the theaters.

“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee… “The Greatest State in the Land of the Free… “Raised in the woods where he know’d every tree… “Kilt him a B’ar when he was only three…” Yes, that’s “B’ar”, not “Bear.” Davy killed himself a B’ar when he was only three. Now, I ask you, how could any kid in any neighborhood in the “Land of the Free” NOT go out and get himself a coonskin hat and a flint lock rifle…a replica of what ol’ Davy and his slow talking side kick Georgy (Buddy Epson) carried around…fightin’ Indians and Mexicans and eradicatin’ every one of them from Land of the Free? Davy (a.k.a Fess Parker) started out in Tennessee in the first episode where he and Georgy made their livin’ as Indian fighters and trackers blazing a trail for pioneers and settlers headin’ West. In the second episode they went to Congress to straighten up them evil politicians, and finally marched on to the Alamo to fight that enemy of all Righteousness and Freedom, Santa Ana. In the third episode, ol’ Davy went down swinging his single shot flintlock beatin’ off evil Mexicans after he had run out of bullets, and finally poured out his own blood on the fertile Texas soil of the new Republic. Walt Disney had run a calculated risk in showing the episodes before their release in the theaters, but it paid off. Each installment fueled the hysteria and raised it to astronomical levels, until every kid that could move and breathe was marching around singing “Davy Crocket”, a song that immediately went to number one on the “Hit Parade” and seemed destined to stay there into the next century. Then the movie was released and the line of kids ready to pay the movie ticket price of seventy-five cents wrapped itself around every block in America on which resided the theaters that showed it – in some cases a couple of times. I would imagine that every adult in the United States had been driven to the point of insanity. As soon as the song “Davy Crocket” was fired up, again, either on the radio, television, or sung by armies of kids wearing coonskin caps marching through the streets, they no doubt plugged their ears in a vain attempt to stop that endlessly repeated ditty from digging a permanently deep and

entrenched corridor in their helpless brains. Meanwhile, as the boys bore flintlock rifles around their neighborhoods like the ‘well armed militia’ spoken of in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the girls had discovered hula hoops and were engaged in their own version of obsessed insanity.

The Evil Weed Chapter 58

M aybe it’s because I was small for my age, blond and looked harmless, but I seemed to acquire a bully everywhere I went and Coldwater Springs was no exception. “Butch Cavendish” was a dark-haired kid with powerful looking arms and legs, icy-blue eyes, and a twisted, surly expression. He wore leather boots, black jeans and a black, dirty looking shirt. He had a skinny side kick with a narrow face, squinty eyes and a sallow complexion, his mouth turning down in a perpetual sneer except when he was enjoying what Butch did to bully me. Fittingly he was known as ‘Weasel’. Butch also had a girlfriend whom I didn’t pay much attention to, but he liked to show off for her -- which involved threatening me. I tried to avoid him, but it was impossible. He knew my route to school and would be waiting for me. “How’s the sissy,” Butch said, a fake look of innocuousness in his eyes. “Worn any dresses lately?” Thanks to my sessions with Len Trefzger, I always “froze up” when confronted by a bully. I worked my mouth, trying to get it to move. Finally, I squeaked, “No.” “I like the way you squeak, sissy,” Butch said, and pushed me on the shoulder. My fantasies which had migrated from being the Masked Rider of the Plains to being the “King of the Wild Frontier” suddenly evaporated. He pushed me again.

“What’s that you say, sissy-girl?” I worked my mouth and tried to “unfreeze” my arms. It was like being stuck in molasses. “I…”, I stammered, “don’t…uh…” “Don’t wear any dresses?” he pushed me again, harder.” “N…no…” I stared at the ground about half-way up his knees, hating myself because I couldn’t get my body to move and I couldn’t force myself to look him in the eyes. “Yeah, well I don’t believe it. Do you Weasel?” Weasel grinned, looking more like a rat than ever. “No, I think he wears one most of the time. I’ll bet it’s pink.” The school bell rang, mercifully. “Well, sissy, you’ve been saved by the bell, but next recess I’m going to beat you into the ground.” They both laughed and headed for class. I unfroze as soon as they left and followed them into the building. Butch and Weasel, who were both in my class, had already taken their seats by the time I sidled in through the door, and they stared up at me with expressions of smirking sardonic menace and I knew I was in for more of the same. Later. That day, though, they disappeared, and I rode home on my bike, quickly forgetting the whole thing as I glided onto my front walkway, threw it down and ran for my coonskin cap. Okay, I was once again Davy Crocket Indian Fighter, ready and able to kick any wild Indian over my head in a backward frontiersman roll or whack any Santa

Ana Mexican with the butt of my empty flintlock rifle. Butch had receded into empty space. Len Woodbust was putting on one of his dramatic performances, so I went over to see what he was doing. My dad was home, puttering around in the back yard. He was dressed in a flowery, turn-of-the-century hooped dress, his cheeks rouged and his red lipstick bright in the afternoon sun. Where he got the white wig…or the rest of the costumery…I had no idea. “Well I see the churl has arrived,” he said to his latest girlfriend, vaguely indicating me with a limp wristed wave. “What’s a churl?” I said, knowing the answer was going to involve one of his snotty insults. He talked with her for a minute, then walked up to me. “An ignorant, uncultured, brute. Kind of like an ape.” He turned his back. “Hit him.” I glanced over the fence. It was my dad who had overheard that, and who had probably overheard a lot of the insults he’d cast my way. I grabbed him by the shoulder and whirled him around. He faced me with an impudent, overly mascaraed face that belonged on a French tart, which was the comparison I would make later in life. I clenched my fist and tried to move my arm. It was frozen in place. I struggled with it, trying to move it to hit him. It wouldn’t move. He waited for a couple or three seconds, then smiled arrogantly and turned back to what he was doing. Len Trefzger had done a number on me. I was so inhibited that when it came to fights or hitting somebody, I was frozen like I’d been hit with an ice making machine.

But it might not have been all his fault. Surely my parents, who were hyper critical and perfectionistic and who grabbed things out of my hands and compared things I tried to build with their stuff, might have had something to do with it. In any event, I couldn’t connect my fist with Len’s smug jaw, and I walked away, frustrated and angry with myself. The paralysis promptly left, as it always did when the call to action or the threat departed and I was no longer faced with the prospect of swinging my fists. And the vast difference between what I was, and what my fantasy world had built myself up to be, was constructing a state of self-hatred that grew with each incident in which I found myself unable to move to defend or avenge myself. The evil weed of self-hatred had been planted early in my life and was watered and nourished at every turn; soon it would blossom and grow fruit, but not quite yet. Not at the age of ten.

If You Can’t Lick ‘Em Chapter 59

Part 1: It Only Works Once

B utch knew that my route to school went past his house and waited for me in the middle of the street as I coasted down the hill on my bicycle. The first time I dodged him was cool, because he was standing there on his bike in the middle of the road talking to his girlfriend, and as I made to go past him on my right he moved out to intercept me. Except that, as soon as he moved, I changed course to ride past him on my left, and got the satisfaction of watching his girlfriend laugh as I sailed past on to class. He was ready for that maneuver the next day, and as I tried to repeat it, he backed up and blocked my way, at which point I was outmaneuvered. He was twice as nasty, having to make up for his preceding day’s humiliation. I stood there and took his abuse, and kept on going when he was done. But it finally came to a head on the playground when I had had enough and we locked arms in a head on struggle, like a couple of bull elk in rutting season. Using a bit of psychological manipulation, he looked at my feet and said, “You’re slipping.” At that point, every guy in the class jumped on us and pulled us apart. Evidently some hidden leadership existed among the boys that felt it their bound duty to stop fights on the playground.

I was kind of disappointed. Yeah, he was bigger than I was, but I thought that I had held my own, and I sort of wanted to continue and have it out with him. However, it was not to be. The teacher gave us the assignment of becoming a television show host. We were to devise our own T.V. show and put it on stage, complete with commercials.

Part 2: The Free Washer

I decided to put on the “Ray Rogers’ Show” along with his comical side-kick Put and his dog ‘Dummit’, not to mention his horse ‘Snigger’. For a commercial I found a washer…you know, the kind they use to prevent a bolt, stuck through a hole, from pulling through after it has been fastened by a nut. It was a stainless steel, round washer with a hole in the middle. With that, I had it all figured out what I was going to do. “The Ray Rogers’ Show!” I announced, standing in front of the class. I had no stage fright…no problem with getting up in front of a group. “Starring that ‘Kink (this was before the word ‘kink’ took on a whole new, less than acceptable in polite company, meaning) of the Cowboys’, Ray Rogers and his comical kickside, ‘Put’ Brady. You can his name because it rhymes with…” I was about to say the ‘b’ word that rhymed with ‘put’. “Dan!” the teacher shouted from the back row of desks before I could get it out. “Yes, I said, clearing my throat. “Well you can imagine what it rhymes with.” I cleared my throat again. “And don’t forget his mongrel dog ‘Dummit’. (I made ‘woofing’ sound effects). Roy’s dog was named ‘Bullet’, and ‘Dummit’ rhymed with it.) There were a few sniggers from the back of the class, but mostly they just stared at me. “But, before we get to Ray and his comical kickside, we have a word from our

sponsor, ‘Made-Up Washers’. I changed my voice, making it deeper to simulate the commercial announcer. “Yes, friends, you can always get your clothes clean, no matter how filthy dirty they are, with a ‘Made-Up Washer.’ And now, since this is the first episode of the ‘Ray Rogers’ Show’, we are going to have a drawing for a free, yes folks you heard it right, a FREE Washer.” I looked around the class and noted that their eyes were growing wide, some in anticipation and others in incredulous skepticism. But I knew now I had them all hanging on my every word. Butch was sitting in the front row, the usual sardonic smirk on his face, anticipating what he was going to do to me after class, after I couldn’t produce a free clothes washer. “Who, may I ask, would like to win a FREE Washer?” Every hand in the room shot up, along with Butch’s, his sardonic bully look intensifying. He was on my left, and attracted my attention. Now, here is the thing that frustrated me. I should have left Butch sitting in his seat, like the scum-sucking low life he was, but I had a flash of wisdom that was definitely above my maturity level, which today I attribute to my mother. This ‘turn the other cheek’ approach, continually advocated by Mom, tied my hands behind my back and contributed to my self-loathing which had engulfed me when I was unable to punch out people like Len Woodbust who needed it. Instead of ‘knocking out’ the bad guys like the Masked Rider of the Plains might have done, I seemed to be able to show them only impotent mercy. Yes, the unwanted wisdom that always seemed to kick in at those critical times may be expressed as: “Do good to your enemies. Bless them that curse you.” It resulted in behavior that could…and usually was…confused with cowardice, mainly by myself. I chose Butch to receive the washer. The look on Butch’s face was impossible to describe. ‘Surprise’ wouldn’t even begin to cover it. “And here we have a winner of a brand new, shiny, stainless steel ‘Made-Up’

Washer!” I announced as I showed the audience the small round washer. The room burst into laughter. “Come up here, Butch, and get your new washer.” He stood up and I handed it to him. As the class burst into applause, the look of disbelief on his face became almost priceless. On the way home, as I ed under a tree I heard a ‘hissing’ noise coming from above my head. On a couple of branches crouched Butch and his rat-faced sidekick. “Thanks,” Weasel said, and tossed me the washer. Amazingly enough, I caught it in midair without fumbling and dropping it, thus looking like an uncoordinated fool. Weasel grinned -- a chilling sight— and Butch followed suit. “You’re cool, kid.” After that, Butch and I were friends. I actually played Davy Crockett over at his house a few times. But I had learned a valuable lesson, a corollary of the old saw, “If you can’t lick ‘em, ‘em.” It may be restated as: “If you can’t lick ’em… “Get ‘em to you.”

Worshipping Sixth Grade Deities Chapter 60

Part 1: The Courtship of the King and Queen

T he source of idolatrous ion infecting the entire sixth grade was the awe-inspiring sight of the courtship of the great Larry Stevens and Cathy Prowess, his stunningly beautiful girlfriend. It was a romance that was unattainable to the rest of us low life sixth graders, still afraid of girls and immersed in our prepubescent pursuits. Thus it exceeded our reach and was beyond our ken. While we girl-phobic boys were still fighting the giant squid that menaced Captain Nemo in Disney’s latest movie, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” that had more-or-less replaced our lust to become the ‘King of the Wild Frontier, we could not help but be woefully attracted to the romance in a sort of ‘approach-avoidance’ agony; ostensibly acting like we were above such an obviously ‘girly’ thing while at the same time secretly drawn to it. It was a state of envious misery we zealously kept to ourselves, fearful that our similarly girl hating friends would find out what pansies we were beneath our bravado. In such a state, I watched Larry carrying his girlfriend’s books home with him, which, if I had seen it in 1960, would have elevated him to the position of Prince Charming wooing Cinderella after finding her glass slipper, in a Disney-like, color saturated animation filled with singing birds and heroic mice. As it was, it was a fairy tale in the making, something Walt Disney might have grabbed, had he known of it. Yes, I became a stalker. I was fascinated with everything Larry did because of the fact that he was the sixth grade class President, re-elected over and over

again; the fact that he made straight A’s and was continually at the top of his class; the fact that he actually had a ‘bodyguard’, a muscular blond kid named Hal who shadowed him everywhere he went, waited on him hand and foot, and made sure that nobody bullied him (disregarding the fact that in the Larry Stevens religion in which the entire class was immersed there wouldn’t be anybody insane enough to try); and, of course, the fact that he not only had a girlfriend but was in no way ashamed of it, and paraded back and forth from school like a King escorting a Queen. I, the misfit, lately from another school relegated to the outskirts of the social milieu, having lost my presidential status at my former Listless prison facility, was now forced to watch from afar the regal picture of “perfection” of the kid whose feet never touched the ground. It also turned out that Larry was a Roy Rogers fan. It seemed like all the upper class, walk-on-water kids, were Roy Rogers’ fans. It was the hallmark of the elite.

Part 2: You Look Like A Girl

Meanwhile, life went on in the neighborhood. Len Woodbust still led his girlfriends parading around in dramatic costume, and I had new nameless and faceless friends who were privy to the secret knowledge of “something strange going on in the neighborhood”. And no, it wasn’t Len’s questionable behavior. “There’s a whole bunch of guys getting together today in a garage,” nameless friend number one said. His name was probably Steve. “Oh, yeah, what are they doing there?” I asked, pushing Robby the Robot around in front of my house and cranking his vocal crank, causing him to say “I am Robby Robot, mechanical man, guide me and steer me wherever you can”, over and over until my mother ran screaming off the porch. (I told you I was going to get an evil robot. It had been a long time since Captain Video had been menaced in Outer Space, but I never gave up). “Well, you’ll have to come and find out,” said nameless friend number two. His

name may have been Bob. I looked at Bob and Steve. “Okay,” I said. I picked up Robby and stowed him in my room, where I had pasted pictures of planets that I had drawn myself on the walls, forming one giant mural. So far I had read almost all the Winston Science Fiction Series which had taken me to the planets, and I had developed a fascination for all of them. I had drawn and colored this mural, copying each planet from the Golden Book of Stars, which depicted each planet as well as was humanly possible considering the state of astronomy in the middle 1950’s. Bob and Steve led me through the neighborhood to a nondescript house. Bob knocked on the garage door, and it slowly cranked open. Sitting on workbenches and counters and milling around in the open center were a bunch of boys, sitting and standing, all with their shirts off. The kid who greeted us at the door was also not wearing a shirt. I stared wide eyed, not exactly knowing what to say or do. Bob and Steve both took their shirts off, leaving me as the only ten-year-old in the garage still wearing a shirt. “We all have our shirts off,” said the greeter, pointing out the obvious. “Yes, I see that.” “Why don’t you take off your shirt?” I stared at him. He had already developed a middle aged paunch, although I could not have described the roll of fat around his middle as that. “I, uh…” Truth be told I was very embarrassed to take off my shirt in front of people. I’d grown up at 8000 feet in the Rockies where nobody who didn’t want to freeze would rather put clothes on than take them off. “What’s the matter, kid, have a chest like a girl?”

Amazing how he had voiced my number one fear. Yes, I did kind of look like that. I swallowed, looking around at the strange display, feeling more embarrassed by the minute. “Yeah…yeah, I guess so.” The kid’s expression was somewhere between a smirk and leer. Somehow I couldn’t exactly think of this as being a legitimate activity for a bunch of fifth and sixth grade boys. It certainly wasn’t in the same category as playing tail football, cowboys and Indians, Davy Crocket, or a sandlot baseball game. “I think I’ll go now,” I said and started edging away. “Hah, hah, you do look like a girl,” the kid yelled. This resulted in a rising chorus that spread around the room, “Looks like a girl! Looks like a girl!” I backed out of the open garage door, afraid it was going to close and trap me inside, and ran for home like a pack of demons was after me. All with their shirts off yelling at me that I ‘looked like a girl’.

Part 3: Working My Way In

As Larry Stevens paraded back and forth to school with his girlfriend accompanied by his faithful bodyguard Hal, my longing to insinuate myself into his elitist circle intensified, and I realized the only way to do it was to become friends with Hal. So, I hung around Hal. After a while it got through his dull brain that I posed no threat to Larry, and he quit acting like he was going to pound me into the ground

at any minute. We talked about every nuance of the religion of Larry Stevens until I felt that I was becoming accepted into the cult, and I was becoming friends with Larry! Larry, Hal and I were hanging out during recess and I actually walked home with Larry once, finding out where he lived. “Want to come in and see my room?” His mother barely gave me a second look, but I could see that she was tall, impeccably coifed and dressed, the very image of upper middle class semidivinity, and belonged to a class that my family fell far short of. (If my dad had not chosen to “go West” and get into the trades, we would have been part of that same upper crust elite ourselves. My mother always said, had he not made that decision, “my life would have been very different and I would be a different person”. Maybe she meant I would have been a Roy Rogers fan instead of adhering to a masked avenger who was indistinguishable from an outlaw by all the upstanding citizenry). I was ushered into the sacrosanct inner chamber of the demigod, and it was indeed a profound iconic expression of the rising cultural deities of Science and the Liberal Arts. Suspended from the ceiling were three dimensional replicas of the planets, not cheesy hand drawn crayon images pasted to the walls. Model airplanes hung down here and there, replicas of Jet Planes and World War II American and German fighters. On other tables sat a Microscope complete with slides, coverslips and sample bottles; on another was a rack of test tubes and glass testing apparatus; and on still another a 6-inch reflecting telescope. Encyclopedias and leather bound classics lined the walls. In one corner stood an easy chair for reading, in another a bed covered with a spread bearing a portrait of Albert Einstein, and a desk, chair and light in a third. “Well, how do you like it?” I stood dumb struck, my mouth hanging ajar, gazing around like a primitive

Neanderthal ushered into the scientific laboratory of an infinitely superior CroMagnon genius, and thinking it was probably good that I had lost the mask that had gained me such notoriety in lower grade levels. “It’s…it’s incredible.” I wandered around the room, saying the word “wow” over and over again, the incipient spirit of envy rapidly growing into the proverbial green eyed monster. He showed me what he did at each station, with his microscope, chemistry set, and finally his telescope. “You’ll have to come over some night. I can see Saturn’s Rings with this.” That did it. The remote, fascinating and mysterious world of Saturn complete with its rings that might be the domicile of mysterious alien beings was open to him, something I had only visited in my imagination. “Yeah, I’ll have to do that,” I managed to stammer. The tour ended when he said he had to do homework, and I was ushered out of his presence, to set foot on the pavement of the street and return to my mundane world of lower I.Q. existence. But not forever. I returned at a time when he wasn’t there. His mother ushered me into the inner sanctum and I stood alone and in awe, gazing at the rocket ship on the middle table, the planets hanging in space (or at least from his ceiling), the scientific equipment that he used to discover the fundamental essence of the Universe and hoping that somehow his mantle would fall on me. Little did I know that I would soon discover the advanced knowledge of the Krell and take a brain boost that would send my IQ to astronomical heights, sending the monsters that lay within my Id out to destroy all my enemies and especially those who were superior to me.

Part 4: No Aura

The next day I was alone in the boy’s room when a kid came in and suggested a lewd and perverted activity. I listened to it, trying to imagine the kids lined up in a circle doing what he suggested. “I don’t’ think the teacher would allow that,” I said. “Well, we’re not going to do it out in the school yard.” Feeling creepier by the second, I shook my head, washed my hands and headed for the door. He didn’t try to stop me, and I found myself out on the school grounds surrounded by kids, feeling a little sorry for myself. This would never happen to Larry. He walked on air, and his feet never touched the ground, and the question was...WHY? There was only one answer to that…I did not possess his aura and therefore would never, as long as I lived… Have a bodyguard.

Off To Church Again Chapter 61

Part 1: Dodging the Bullet

M y mother was off to church again and dragging me and my sister with her. This time it was a United Brethren Church, and don’t ask me why she picked that one. She took me to Sunday school which was pretty much like the Sunday school at the Lutheran Church or the Methodist Church, and again I was subjected to the bane of all Sunday school students…the flannel board. I’ve already mentioned this board. Today it might still be used somewhere in places where there is no electricity and nobody has ever heard of a movie projector or a television set. Possibly somewhere in the Amazon Jungle or in the middle of the Congo, maybe by missionaries telling a story to converted cannibals who can’t speak English. But when not watching cardboard cut-outs of robed characters being pushed across flat, two dimensional backgrounds, we all sat in a circle around a table where we discussed various aspects of God. Everybody could participate, and respond to whatever the teacher said. “So, God has our lives planned for us from start to finish,” the teacher said, “He controls every aspect of our lives.” “Even how we die?” some kid asked. “Yes, he even knows how and when we will die. We won’t die until it’s His time to take us.”

“So, if it’s not time for me to die, I won’t die no matter what.” I said. The teacher, a middle aged balding man with a few remaining silver hairs expertly combed and dressed in a dark grey suit and tie, looked at me with significance in his expression. “No, you won’t die until it’s your time.” “Nothing can kill me then, until it’s my time to die?” I reiterated. “Nothing.” “So if somebody shoots at me with a gun the bullet will miss.” The teacher cleared his throat. “Well, God will keep it from killing you.” A bead of sweat had formed on his temple, just under a string of greying hair. “How about if he holds the muzzle against my head and pulls the trigger?” Mercifully, the bell rang at that point signifying the end of the class. “Well,” the teacher said, his stately features taking on a reddish cast, “we’ll discuss this next time.” I left the class with a very strong impression that I might die before my time, especially if I kept attending that class. However, time ed, and my mother, sister and I trooped back and forth to that church until it came time to it. I was baptized, but I don’t having to make any kind of statement of faith. The Pastor, if there was one (it was a Brethren church, and I don’t think they had Pastors) sprinkled me three times with water out of a small white bottle, baptizing me in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Dad, of course, wasn’t there, and, in fact little did we know that he was going to have to leave home soon.

Part 2: Not His Kind of Town

“I can’t make a living here.” I overheard the conversation one morning as I was waking up. I found out much later that he had moved us to Coldwater Springs at the behest of Mom, who had had such a moving spiritual experience downtown with her mother and the bird that she insisted on coming here again. It was the wrong move for my dad. To begin with it wasn’t “his kind of town”. It was a wealthy man’s retirement community and there wasn’t a lot of construction going on. He was down to running a laundromat and selling greeting cards. I tagged around with him as he restocked the greeting card displays (I thought they were dorky and dumb) and hung out in the laundromat a few times as he helped women wash their clothes and oversaw the operation so there wouldn’t be any major accidents. Washing machines in those days were “ringer” machines. After you washed your clothes in the agitator and rinsed them out you put them through a ringer, a set of rollers spaced close together which squeezed the excess water out of them. My dad hadn’t been able to ‘make it’ in the construction industry. There were no new houses being built, and the remodel business was scarce. Things had not been going well here in Coldwater Springs, probably because his heart simply wasn’t in being here. He was out of the building trades which he loved, and reduced to helping women do laundry so that my mom could go commune with the ‘bird’. The ‘last straw’ that snapped the camel’s spine came when one of the women got her hair caught in the ringer. It took dad over an hour to extract her hair, which had gone in far enough to pull at her head painfully. After she stopped screaming she left threatening to sue. He had been looking steadily more and unhappy ever since. “We’re going to have to move,” he said. “I can find work in Plateau City. It’s growing fast and a lot of houses are going up.” My mom must have finally realized that this was the end of the road for her

idyllic quest. The ‘bird’ of spiritual enlightenment had flown, leaving behind only the odor of laundry soap, the sight of unsold greeting cards choking their racks, and the sound of screaming women who had narrowly escaped having their hair pulled out by the roots. “That means we’re going to have to pull Dan out of school again.” There was a momentary pause. “He’s been jerked around a lot. Well, there are only six months left until school ends. I’ll go over there, find a job and a place to live. We can move in June.” And so it was. My dad was gone out of the household for the first time in my life and I was left to figure things out on my own. The first thing I did was to build an altar.

Part 3: The Altar in the Trash

I had been attending a catechism class on Saturdays at the church, and the teacher handed out a white, spiral bound book that provided lessons and projects which would teach you more about God if you did them. Project number five was to build a home altar. It was supposed to be all white and made from cardboard. It stood about a foot and a half high and came in three parts, hinged together, with spires on the right and left sides. All in all, it looked pretty religious when I was done with it. I set it up on the dresser, and every morning when I woke up looked at it. Soon I was shying around it, not knowing exactly what to do with it. It seemed to weigh down on me, expecting me to be something I wasn’t, a religious kid off in a corner worshipping God when everybody else was out marching around with a raccoon’s tail hanging behind their heads and carrying flintlock rifles. One week later I took it down and I’m not sure what happened to it, although the trash men may have wondered why such a thing ended up out there in the bin.

Well, if Dad had been there it wouldn’t have lasted a week. Five minutes after it had been set up it would have been replaced by a pile of plaster… That fell off the ceiling after the explosion that came when he saw it.

When The Going Gets Weird Chapter 62

Part 1: The Unmovable Rock

M y dad was gone, and although we didn’t see him that much because he was always out there scrambling for a living, the house seemed emptier, darker and less directed. Yes, my mom was always there. It was the 1950’s and she, like most wives, didn’t work outside the home. But, I guess there’s no other way to describe it. The house…or maybe it was me, lacked the direction of a man who was a solid, unmovable rock and had definite masculine ideas of the direction I should go. So, without my dad there, we started doing things the way Mom wanted them, like sitting on a bar stool at a soda counter in the local Drug Store drinking Cherry Phosphates, gazing around at the sterile atmosphere and yearning for another fishing trip where I could get my hands dirty and end up smelling like fish. Even dead suckers were better than this. Or like trips to religious movies such as “David and Goliath”, which over-did the role of Goliath casting giant spears at David which arched high overhead and descended to catch him in his robes and pin him to the ground. This evidently was supposed to cause you to gain some deep spiritual insight or connection with the Divine, but merely acted to give me a greater case of hyper religious claustrophobia. Or taking bus trips into the heart of downtown Coldwater Springs in search of the spiritual experience invoked by the singing bird.

Or painting the house a dark blue with a yellow trim.

Part 2: Blue and Yellow

“I want to paint this house, but I don’t know what color to paint it,” Mom said. We were standing out in the front yard, she with her hands on her hips and my sister playing in the dirt, doing whatever sisters do, in the dirt. “It looks so rundown and drab.” “Hmmm,” I said, “how about blue?” “Blue?” “Yeah, blue. Blue is my favorite color.” It was true that blue was my favorite color, but what I didn’t realize was that there were a lot of different shades of blue, and it was not a good idea to paint the walls of a house with a solid primary color. “I don’t think blue is a good idea,” Mom said. “Aww, come on, Mom! Blue is my favorite color! It will look great!” “Yes, but it will make it look too dark. You don’t want to live in a dark house, do you? I don’t think it should be blue.” I was growing desperate, sensing my mother’s incipient departure from my developing plan. “It won’t be too dark,” I said in a flash of brilliant insight, “if we paint the windowsills yellow!” “Hmm…” “Yeah, Mom,” I said, growing more enthusiastic, “that’s it! Paint the walls blue and the window sills yellow! It will look great.” By this time my parents were thoroughly trained through the judicious use of the parental conditioning techniques of whining, wheedling, self-pity and temper

tantrums. I don’t think my mother wanted again to endure the gamut of emotional manipulation she could see developing. “Ok,” she capitulated, “blue with yellow trim it is.” We should have stopped it five minutes after the painters started to put it on, but by the time it was three quarters painted it was starting to look like…well, not like anything anybody had ever seen before. As the paint was rolled on, the blue color…which at the beginning didn’t look that dark…seemed to grow darker and more oppressive as it covered the walls. We both stared as the painters started painting the trim and windowsills with yellow paint. My mother’s jaw hung a little slack, and there was an evident expression of horror developing in her eyes. The bright primary yellow didn’t make the blue look any lighter, it just clashed with it and made it look darker by contrast. The house was gradually looking like something a demented (and depressed) clown might be happy to live in. There it was, finished…dark blue with a garish yellow trim. My mother stared at it without saying anything. My friends, however, were free with their opinions. “How come you painted your house such a yucky color?” “Yeah, it’s ugly.” “Yeah, it looks like a weird circus tent.” “Makes me feel like throwing up…yuck…uck…gah.” I tried to be optimistic at first, but as time wore on the oppression of the two… miserable…colors seemed to grow. We were all feeling depressed living in it. Winter was coming on, and feeling depressed wasn’t a very good idea. “Well, it was my mom’s idea,” I said, my memory becoming somewhat malleable in the face of peer criticism.

The kids gave me funny looks, somewhere between disbelief and disgust, leaning more to the side of “disgust”. “Yeah, moms get weird ideas sometimes.” They all nodded their heads. “Yeah,” I said and watched them run off. Why didn’t my mom have better sense? Didn’t she know my friends would make fun of me if she chose such miserable colors for the house? Fortunately, I decided, I had better sense than my mother. And I made use of that common sense when I saw her again that night and noticed her glowering expression, deciding to keep that opinion to myself.

Brain Dead in the Garden of the Gods Chapter 63

Part 1: Straight Down

L iving inside our dark blue house with the bright yellow trim, we continued to progress onward. I rode my bike back and forth to school and worked on gaining egress to the social strata occupied by Larry Stevens. My sister continued to play with whatever she was playing with, probably still sticking her finger in light sockets to see if they were “hot” or not. And as the weather grew colder and the chilly winds of Fall gave hint of Winter coming on, I celebrated another birthday (didn’t ‘bawl’ on this one – I had reconciled myself to the fact that if I couldn’t find Never Never Land and was indeed going to get older, if not grow up) and I discovered what every parent of eleven-year-old boys should have feared in Coldwater Springs -- the Greek Gods. The Greek Gods was a rock formation about two miles away where reddish sandstone rock formations rose straight up out of the ground hundreds of feet in the air. It was a great setting to play Cowboys and Indians, and a lot of the rocks were slanted on one side which allowed you to climb up to the top without needing to be an expert mountain climber. That was on one side. The other side of the formations dropped almost straight down, and when you got bored climbing one side you start getting fascinated with climbing, uh, down the other side.

The fascination, much like a moth being drawn to a flame, grew and grew, and every time my friends ran into the park to start our Western Wars, I got a little closer to the edge.

Part 2: How Close Can You Get?

“How close can you get to the edge?” ‘Brain-dead’ Johnson asked. I glanced at him, noting the vacant look in his eye and the typical slack jawed expression which kept his mouth hanging open. I inched my way forward. The edge of the precipice was rounded and obscured my view of the base but I finally managed to see down the rock face. It fell away precipitously, and there were eyelets pounded into the side of the rock where climbers had attached their ropes. That funny, very dull thing in my head was trying to tell me something, and, as I craned my neck over the edge I was vaguely becoming aware of its insistence that… SOMETHING-BAD-MIGHT-HAPPEN. I craned my neck father, feeling a bit overbalanced. “I can’t see the bottom.” What I could see was the first of the eyebolts; set there by rock climbers. “Ummmm…” “What’s the matter?” Brain-dead said. “I can almost see the bottom.” ‘Brain-Dead’s’ eyes widened, and he took a step forward but seemed to be still locked in place. “Are you going to try it? I dare you.” Once again, came the dare, which was in danger of escalating to the ‘double dog dare’, which as the kid in A Christmas Story pointed out, was a challenge with

serious social consequences for the kid not rising to it. But a thought had egressed from that malformed place in my brain, the one that later, when found in the mind of an older human being, would yell: “YOU-STUPID-IDIOT-GET-OUT-OF-THERE-YOU’LL-FALLAND-KILL-YOURSELF!!!” A bit of logic was indeed forming in my brain, which went as follows: “If a professional rock climber needs a ring to attach his rope to, what are you doing here with nothing to hang onto?” The moron side of my brain had an answer to that, “You can stick your finger in the ring.” And I looked at the ring again. Yes, I could stick my finger in that and hold on. I could lower myself down to the next ring, using my toes to brake myself. Then I could grab the next ring… “It’s got a ring pounded in the wall?” Brain-dead asked, when I voiced this strategy. “Yeah, I bet you could do it!” Again, I hesitated. “I dare you to do it!” But the malformed place was again talking. “Yeah,” it answered, “but how long can you hang on?” “Do it,” Brain-dead said. “You’ll get to a place where you can climb down and you’ll be the first kid who has ever done it.” I hesitated, and listened to the voice of sanity. “I don’t think so.” “What’s the matter?” Brain-dead said. “Are you chicken?” I looked at him, glad that I had retreated up the slope, away from the edge. It was getting harder and harder to hold on down there. “Yes,” I said, “today I am.”

The End of Happy Valley Chapter 64

Part 1: The Clone and the Invisible Monster

M eanwhile I was advancing in the realm of science fiction. I had discovered pulp magazines, probably on the local drugstore magazine rack while sucking on another Cherry Phosphate. I’d picked up “Super Science Wonder Stories”, which had a picture of shirtless man clutching sticks of dynamite in a laboratory. Surrounding him were vats containing some bubbling greenish liquid immersing what looked like human beings in various stages of development. The story, printed in 1955, was about cloning. The individual depicted on the cover was, in fact, a clone. He worked in the cloning lab in which he himself had been conceived and gestated in a vat. He now lived in a society where clones had no rights and were used to harvest organs by the original people whose genome they copied. He had decided to strike out for justice and “clone rights” by blowing up the laboratory, and, precociously, himself with it. It was a story far in advance of its time, and left me unsettled, not exactly knowing what to do with it or how to “process” it. It was, in addition, also a story that was pretty far in advance of the maturity level of a ten-year-old in 1955. I read it, but didn’t entirely understand it. However, now drawn to the bizarre and mysterious, I purchased another magazine whose cover pictured a colony on Mars. By now I had romped through the solar system with John C Winston, publisher of the here-to-for mentioned series of science fictional space adventures geared for juveniles, so a colony on

Mars was not a new or novel idea. But an invisible monster attacking the colony was. In this story, Mars had no life on it. It was a reddish inhospitable desert with a barely breathable atmosphere, and the colonists had to wear suits that protected them from the cold, which was bad but not that bad. In other words, the Mars depicted in this 1955 pulp story was not much like what scientists would later discover. Where did the monster come from? Was it a creature indigenous to the planet? It was attacking the perimeter of the town, protected by an electric fence, not a force field, and seemed to come from nowhere and vanish into nowhere. I had ventured into the adult world of the disturbing. I don’t think I read the story all the way through. I quit after two or three attacks by the monster; the colonists were unable see it or protect themselves against it, and it raised some questions. Were there things I couldn’t see or protect myself against? My safe and secure world was breaking down. It was becoming too scary now in a situation where my dad had gone to some unknown place and I was no longer sure of what was in this one.

Part 2: Caught in the Act

I retreated to Golden Books which now had full length novels written for my age group, and started reading “Gene Autry in the Valley of Gold”, in which Gene rides into a place called “Happy Valley”, which wasn’t too happy since it was full of ranchers losing their herds to cattle thieves. The title was a come-on, since no gold was present either in the story or in the valley. Gene, however, despite the initial suspicion by the inhabitants that he might be connected somehow with the rustler gangs, demonstrated his sterling character by singing and shooting his way through the book, ultimately bringing the leader of the rustler gang to justice and restoring the stolen cows to their rightful owners.

Anyway, in the middle of the book my dad showed up and moved back into the bedroom next to mine. I vaguely suspected my mom stayed in there, but maybe she slept out on the couch. Or outside, who knew? His inscrutable expression underwent a subtle nuance which indicated that he thought my reading material was “pretty stupid”, and his grunt confirmed it. “Here, try this,” he said, and handed me a Western paperback novel called “Crossfire Trail”. The cover depicted a cowboy in dire need of a shave kneeling beside a cow lying prone on the ground. The cowboy, whoever he was, had a red hot branding iron in his hand and was about to rebrand the helpless beast. We, the readers, were made fully aware that the cow was being rebranded because it was depicted as already having a brand on its haunch. This, in addition to the six o’clock shadow and the cigarette with a two-inch ash hanging from one side of his thin lips gave the strong impression that he was probably not a good guy, but somebody of ambiguous moral character who had no motivation for single handedly cleaning up Happy Valley. And the fact that he appeared to be startled, and was reaching for his gun further confirmed that he had been caught in the act of attempting to steal that cow. Not only that, but my guess was that he neither played a guitar nor sang things like, “Back in the Saddle Again.” It was the first paperback novel I had ever seen and therefore a true novelty. I think I experienced some of the ambiguous feelings that many book lovers had toward the evolution of the bound book from something that was meant to last for generations on public or private library shelves to something that was more ephemeral, meant to be read once and thrown away. It had a cover price of 25 cents, which made it more available to readers with limited budgets. I was more fascinated, I think with the form and format of the book than the book itself, and after perusing the promotional blurbs on the back and inside, I proceeded to read it. It seemed to make little, if any if any sense. There was no singing, fast shooting,

two fisted hero who commanded instant respect on walking into a saloon. There were people talking about things I didn’t understand. And there was a woman in it who was always in dire need of rescuing, something unheard of in the Golden Books featuring The Lone Ranger and Gene Autry. The featured woman was the Helpless-Female-From-Back East-WhoNeeded-To-Be-Rescued. Outlaws were rustling cattle on her uncle’s range that she was going to inherit but probably wouldn’t because she was kidnapped by an all-powerful range baron who was going to trade her for her uncle’s legal rights to the ranch. There was a good guy, but he drank, gambled and wasn’t all that fast with a gun or a good shot once the gun got out of his holster, and was suspected of being an outlaw and a cattle rustler himself but was half way reformed because he “fell in love” (whatever that was) with the Helpless-Female-From-Back-East. He was a drifter who rode into town and got involved in a range war, and got seriously beat up before he finally defeated the wealthy and all powerful range baron and saved the girl. I struggled to read the whole novel, encountering writing that was well above my level in the sixth grade, while at the same time fully aware that I didn’t fully understand what the characters in it were doing or why they were doing whatever it was they were doing. However, I had been led onward, beyond the province of Gene Autry cleaning up Happy Valley while singing and playing his guitar, into a new realm where things might not be quite as cut and dried and where heroes were tarnished, could be defeated, and victory was not assured from the outset. Which prepared me for my next “adult” paperback novel, Forbidden Planet.

A True Robot Chapter 65

I must have gotten my copy of Forbidden Planet from the paperback rack in the drugstore where I was drinking Cherry Phosphates. It had cool scenes from the movie, with a picture of the new Robby the Robot on the cover. Unlike the old Robby the Robot, which was now stored in my closet along with my Davy Crockett coonskin cap and flintlock rifle, the new Robby was far and away a more advanced version that wasn’t controlled by a wire and a crank. Robby was a true robot, and as I discovered in the book, walked, talked, made things and could think. He, or “it” -- since robots are sexless—was later compared to a “walking juke box”, but since I had never seen a juke box couldn’t comprehend that comparison. In any event, Forbidden Planet was a truly scary science fiction novel, mainly because it was told in the same style as “Dracula”, Bram Stoker’s horror novel, which I was destined to read much later. Set in the 24th century, it was presented in a series of journal entries made by each of the officers of a United Planets spaceship sent to investigate a colony that had landed on Altair 4, which, as you might suspect, was the fourth planet orbiting the star Altair. The spacefarers discover that the colony had been entirely destroyed except for one super scientist, Edward Morbius, and his daughter Altaira. The rest of the colonists, as Morbius, so eloquently describes, were “literally torn limb from limb”. A few, who had tried to escape in the spaceship that brought them there, were blown up on lift-off, leaving Morbius and his daughter the only survivors. This story was revealed in incremental entries from the journals of the officers; a very effective means of telling a horror tale, since the reader, identifying with each of the first person narrators, does not know if they are going to survive or

not. With no assurance of a positive outcome for each of them, the suspense increases exponentially. My dad took me to the movie which permanently hooked me on science fiction. For its time, and even for today, the special effects were outstanding. Most of it was done by Disney studios, and provided a thoroughly convincing stage for the events of the movie, as good as or better than anything that followed it for decades. The United Planets saucer ship (which prefigured the design of the starships in Star Trek) landed in a desolate desert with a backdrop of spire-like rock formations, overshadowed by a greenish sky that faded to black with elevation. The crew descended from the ship and began to set up a fenced perimeter and defensive weaponry, while the captain and his officers visited Morbius. To make a long story short, Morbius had discovered an ancient civilization called the Krell, whom we never see, who had developed a technology for augmenting their intelligence and was capable of materializing anything they were able to imagine, anywhere on the planet. And because of the innate evil present within them, the technology enabled them to inadvertently destroy themselves. Morbius had augmented his intelligence with it, and his Id, the unconscious portion of the human brain which Freudian psychology postulated was a primitive residual left over from human evolutionary development, had also been boosted and was given the ability to materialize anything it desired anywhere on the planet by the vast underground nuclear power source. Morbius showed them the power source residing deep within the planet’s crust, designed and built by the Krell, which converted energy into matter (the reverse of Einstein’s e = mc2) and formed it into whatever the conscious (or unconscious) mind could conceive. Thus was created the monster which could go anywhere and destroy anything that Morbius saw as a threat, and the developing relationship between the Captain and his daughter was a definite threat, as well as the Captain’s intention to reveal the discovery of the Krell and their civilization to United Planets bureaucrats.

In any event, Leslie Nielson who played the captain, brings Morbius, played by Walter Pidgeon, to full realization that he himself is the source of the monster. His expanded Id has created it. Morbius dies in his confrontation with himself, the monster, and tells the captain how to destroy the planet. The saucer ship takes off and flies far enough away so as to not be destroyed as the planet blows up. And, although taking the Krell ‘brain boost’ had the unfortunate side effect of creating monsters from my Id, the possibility of boosting my limited IQ which, at present, was unable to even come close to matching Larry Stevens’s, was more than intriguing. I would become a super genius with the bonus ability to send out monsters to take care of any bullies which might bother me. That was much better than having a personal bodyguard. I was more than ready. I sat down behind Morbius’ desk, put on the Krell headset, and pushed the lever… Expecting to conquer the world.

Mrs. Harkhurst and the 3D Dinosaur Chapter 66

Part 1: Clock Radio

Q uite possibly the best teacher I had had so far was my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Harkhurst. What made her so good? I kept trying to figure that one out, but I’d say that it was the fact that she seemed to understand you. She seemed to care about you as a person. You were not just another kid she was hired to teach. She looked for your best qualities…and your talents…and brought those out. She encouraged you when you did well, and kept on drawing the best out of you when she encountered less than that. And she did that…except for one time. She had assigned the class the task of writing a short story which was immediately followed by the predictable chorus of groans from everybody except me, who was gleefully “into” writing fictional stories. “I know,” she said as the groaning reached a crescendo, “this is a difficult assignment and I’m only going to do it once, but we’ve been reading a lot of short stories lately and I want you all to try to make up one.” She glanced at me briefly, giving me a knowing look. She knew she was tossing me into a metaphorical briar patch, the one in which, like Brer Rabbit, I had been born. “One short story. You can all do it. Give it your best.”

The bell rang and as I stowed my books and stuff in my desk (the top of it swung back on hinges allowing you to store everything in the space underneath). A story was already coming to mind. As usual, when a story was forming, I rode home in a kind of a daze, only vaguely aware that I had to navigate my bicycle in such a way as to not get run down before I reached home. But reach home I did, and already the main character was taking shape. His name was “Tim”, and he lived in a cave. Now the question was: Why? Why did he live in a cave?” I vaguely greeted my mother and offhandedly observed that my sister, as usual, was rooting in the mud by the front porch steps. Either that or she was playing around with some dirty looking dolls. I was never sure exactly what she was doing. Yes, I thought as I distractedly entered my room. He was living in a cave. Why? I questioned him. Why are you living in that cave? Because… the answer came from seemingly far away. Because I bought a Clock Radio. A clock radio? “Dinner is ready!” I sat down at the table, still wondering what living in a cave had to do with a clock radio. The clock radio had just come out, and had a timer built into it which caused the radio to turn on and broadcast whatever annoying station you set it to the night before and thus wake you up. It was a new device, almost as advanced as Robbie the Robot. “Dad’s coming back at the end of the week,” Mom said as I dove into the hot roast beef sandwich drowned in gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. These were staples in my family. We had them almost every day. The canned beans had not changed. They were, as usual, a sort of greenish gray and lay limply on the plate, like homeless worms.

For dessert, we had the inevitable mixed fruit straight out of the can. The fruit was supposed to be a mixture of pears, peaches, cherries and other things more poorly defined, however there was no distinction in taste between the various moieties. I know, once I tried to distinguish between them, eating each piece of fruit and washing out my mouth in water before I tasted the next. It was to no avail. They all tasted the same in the sugary sweet syrup they languished in before my mom served them in a small white bowl. I sipped my milk feeling growing excitement. “This weekend,” I said. “He’s coming home.” “Yes, and we’re going to move to Plateau City.” “That’s great,” I said absently. A clock radio. Now why, Tim, do you live in a cave because of a clock radio? Because, Tim said from somewhere deep in my subconscious, It was connected to everything. Then I understood. I had seen ments on television for the new invention, the clock radio. A clock radio could be connected to a coffee making machine and a toaster. Why couldn’t it be connected to everything else in the house? Thus, Tim started to tell his story. Tim, a mad inventor, had decided to connect his clock radio to everything in the house, including his refrigerator, clothes washer, television, and furnace. But somebody else popped out of my subconscious. ‘Ben’ intervened and said it was actually his story to tell. He had heard about Tim living in the cave and went to visit him, so the story was going to be told from his point of view. He is an investigative reporter who goes out to find what happened to Tim and why he is living in the cave.

Part 2: Living in a Cave

It seems that Tim had connected the clock radio to the toaster, the coffee maker, the oven, the electric lights, the gas furnace, the egg beater, and had set up a Rube Goldberg sequence of events which would wake him up, cook breakfast for him, start the laundry, wash the dishes, turn on the shower, and dump him out of bed if he failed to get up. The trouble was that the whole process had shorted out and burned the house down. Voila! He was now living in a cave. The problem was, that being ten years old I had no idea exactly why the house blew up, just that it did. But I thought it was pretty funny anyway, and laughed to myself as I wrote it. I gleefully finished the story and read it in class. Nobody laughed. Afterwards, Mrs. Harkhurst called me to her desk and said, “Dan, you’re a good writer, but stay away from the silly stuff.” Years later, I would listen to a LP record of the Limelighters, a folk group competing with the Kingston Trio. In it Lou Gottlieb proclaimed that his fans “would rather hear his partners tune up” than listen to him sing. “I raced home tearfully,” Lou would say in that future recording, “jumped into bed, assumed the fetal position and turned the electric blanket up to nine.” I have news for him. I reached that fetal position way ahead of him. Utterly deflated, I dragged home repeating the words “silly stuff” to myself. “What’s wrong?” Mom said, as I morosely entered the house, clutching the paper on which I’d written the story. “Nothing, Mom,” I said. “I just wrote some silly stuff.” It was a hard pill to take, but afterwards I knew that anything I did had to be

rooted in reality, and in this case, that meant coming up with a credible reason for the explosion that took down Tim’s house. It had to be well thought out. And much later I would realize that the real story had to go deeper than that. It wouldn’t be funny if it didn’t.

Part 3: The Three Dimensional Dinosaurs

So, how would I know if something was silly or not? And how would I stay away from it if I did? After she pointed out the debacle of the clock radio, you might think that Mrs. Harkhurst was cruel. After all, aren’t kids today constantly praised and told they are intrinsically awesome? That they can do no wrong, make no mistakes; and reign as the kings and queens of their own universe, their self-esteem sacrosanct and built to the maximum? In that light, the question becomes, how did Mrs. Harkhurst shine as a teacher? Well, she did recognize good work when she saw it and praised the individual involved, but she wasn’t afraid to let you know when your stuff wasn’t good as well, and that gave her praise a lot more credibility. Amazingly enough, my “good work” came in making a chalk drawing of a scene taken from the pages of Life magazine; a two-page illustration of dinosaurs in the Jurassic Age. We were all supposed to select a scene from an issue of Life Magazine which had many scenes involving different dinosaurs eking out their miserable prehistoric existences. I chose one in which a Tyrannosaurus Rex was fighting a Stegosaur over who was going to get lunch. My artistic ability had up until now never progressed beyond the stick figure stage, and so it was somehow miraculous that I was actually able to draw out these creatures in a way that made them look almost exactly like the pictures in Life, but what was more important and even more amazing was that in filling them in with chalk I actually came up with something that looked three

dimensional. Maybe it was because of all those 3D comics I had read in Listless. However, the bodies and appendages actually looked rounded; and the whole scene seemed to have depth to it. Mrs. Harkhurst was dutifully impressed, and announced to the whole class that I had created a masterpiece. I took my figurative bows, both to awe stricken kids and those who suddenly had attacks of jealousy. I listened to kids who complained that she did not praise their works to the extent she praised mine, to which she responded: “I will definitely tell you that you have done well, and it would be wrong not to acknowledge Dan who drew such a wonderful, three-dimensional drawing.” And what was even better was that this was the last week of school. I exited on the last day, still glowing from my artistic triumph in the knowledge that there was no time left to screw up. But secretly I was as surprised by what I had done as everyone else was. I had no idea where it came from.

Part 4: Goodbye

My last memory of Mrs. Harkhurst, was while crossing the playground for the last time on my way home. I knew she was still up in her classroom, wrapping up the year with whatever it was she wrapped it up with. “Goodbye, Mrs. Harkhurst!” I shouted up at her. “Goodbye!” Came the matronly, love-filled voice, and I felt my heart sink as I left behind forever somebody who cared about me. And that was what made her a great teacher: She loved her students, not with some kind of sappy love, but with a tough love that brought out the best in them. Along with her I left Larry Stevens, Hal his bodyguard, Butch Cavendish and his

rat faced sidekick, and the sixth grade where I had created a work of art that would never be forgotten. That week, my dad came home. “Ok,” he said. “Time to move.” And Peter Pan wanted to “bawl” again as he viewed the inevitability of “growing up”.

The Trip to Mars Chapter 67

Part 1: Transit through Interstellar Space

W e left in the night. Don’t ask me why. Well, I wasn’t so “out there” that I didn’t know we were traveling over the Rocky Mountain range that lay between us and the new place we were going. I rode in the back seat of the Buick, my head leaning against the enger’s window and feeling its cold seeping into my forehead. Below me yawned a black abyss, and above the black night laden with stars. I couldn’t see the headlights on the road ahead of us, and neither could I see the road falling behind us. And that must have been because I was actually in Interstellar Space, in a saucer ship on a flight to the Forbidden Planet, except that this spaceship had tires that thrummed beneath me, and the voices of my parents drifted back from the front seat like the murmurings of Captain JJ Adams giving orders to Lieutenant Farman on their way to Altair 4. Sunlight reflected off the tops of canyon walls as we crossed the divide and wound around the highway wending its way downward along the Massive River. The canyon opened up to a vast flat plateau, the sun rising on our left over a looming flat topped mountain. It was supposed to be impressive, but to a kid used to real mountains with peaks on them, was a distinct disappointment. The Massive Plateau didn’t look like anything, really. To the Northeast were the Lookatthat Mountains, which looked like a collection of books set partly open on some librarian’s shelf with their spines facing you.

We travelled through a city that sprawled in every direction, traversed a railroad yard, ed some dilapidated houses lining the Gunner River, and across the bridge that I recognized as the one we had camped under during the last leg of our cross-country vacation. Fortunately, this time my dad had chosen to actually live in a house, rather than camp in a tent under a bridge, and we did indeed cross that bridge again following a highway headed directly toward Massive Plateau and the rising sun. A quick exit to the left and a turn to the right put us on a gravel road. Low, ranch style houses with weed filled yards ed us on the left and vacant empty lots infested with weeds of the same species regaled us on our right as our wheels kicked up clouds of dust. Gravel crunched under our tires until we took a quick turn into a driveway that brought us to our new home on Patton Drive. Even though I was only eleven, I had a bit of a hard time getting out of the car, having been “scrunched” in the back seat for almost eight hours. I stood up and stretched, squinting in the morning sun at the dry mesas in the distance, the low slung houses to the right and left, and the heat waves dancing off the white gravel in front of the house. This was not Forbidden Planet. We had clearly traveled through interplanetary space and landed on Mars.

Part 2: Alkali and Weeds on Mars

My muscles quickly responding, I ran around to the other side of the Buick and confronted the house. It was low-slung, with no porch and had a carport. Later I was to discover that the tar paper roof was covered with reddish gravel, rather than shingles. Weeds as tall as I was would have choked the front yard had it not been for white streaks of alkali that ran as seams in the ground. The front door opened into the living room which was unfurnished. The floor was brown tile and the walls painted a nondescript grayish green. I went from room to room, noting that while the walls all seemed to be of the same color, the tile changed from brown to other shades, in some cases bordering on yellow.

This primary color was found in the kitchen. In one of the back bedrooms stood a cot with a half open sleeping bag that seemed to be trying to slide off it. Littered about were a few paperback novels and a soup bowl filled with evil smelling cigarette butts. Dad had been sleeping here, next to the bathroom, waiting for us to arrive. A smaller bedroom was sandwiched in between the two larger rooms. Across from the sink and counters in the kitchen stood a table and four chairs, and my mom immediately went to work fixing breakfast while dad unloaded the car. I ran out into a huge back yard overgrown with weeds the size of small trees. The yard extended to a drainage ditch on the other side of which was a field of green Alfalfa in which a horse was feeding. It was almost ten in the morning; the inside the house was heating up, and I was coming to a realization. This was not Forbidden Planet. We had migrated to some other planet which was even more desolate. This was actually Mars, and I knew what we had to do based on the story I had read in that pulp, the one I never finished because it scared me too much. Now we needed to set up a force field perimeter to prevent attacks by invisible monsters.

The Plodd Brothers Chapter 68

Part 1: Headed Again to Dumball’s

M y parents showed no inclination toward installing a force field. Furniture, however, appeared magically in the living room and bedrooms along with the black baby grand piano and the black and white television set. I was given the middle bedroom (the smallest) as “my room”; Dad took a bedroom at one end of the house and my mother at the other. My sister was placed somewhere in between. Dad went to work somewhere it town, and everything settled down. It was early June, I was out of the sixth grade with an endless summer ahead of me and not a trace of the coming school year in my mind. When you’re out of school in June, summer stretches out before you forever. It will never end. You could feel the coming heat of the day as the sun rose over Massive, the mesa that was supposed to inspire but was somehow singularly unimpressive. As it moved higher into the sky the heat increased, until at its zenith everything, the weeds and alkali in the front yard and the gravel in the driveway, baked in ninety-nine-degree heat. And the inside of the house turned into an oven. My parents had never heard of air conditioning or swamp coolers. We sweated it out inside the house to keep out of the direct sun. My dad had gone to work at the Belabored Lumber Company on the other side of town as an ant, and

no doubt spent the day in an air-conditioned office. Meanwhile, Mom started once again to take in piano students who trooped in and out like roaches looking for table scraps, all playing the same novice pieces (like Hop ‘O My Thumb) and incessantly fumbling with scales they should have been practicing at home. I also continued taking lessons from my mom, but was rapidly approaching the age where she needed to turn me over to somebody who wasn’t a relative and wouldn’t put up with my tantrums. This situation would soon prove to be my undoing as a budding young heterosexual Liberace. I also got my bike when the furniture magically appeared. It was the “second generation” bike, the next larger size after the first Schwinn my dad gave me in the Canyon which he had painted red with my name emblazoned in yellow on the fenders. It went well with my patchwork quilt Tom Sawyer outfit, though I never wore that while riding the bike fearing that come circus short on clowns might kidnap me. This bike was mostly a purplish color, and looked like a normal bike and it was good that I had it because the Plodds, three seriously overweight brothers who were the kings of the neighborhood, accepted me right away. Phil, Galt and Tim sat on their bikes in front of the last house on Myriad Road which took off from Patton, and accepted me right away. Good thing too, because you never knew what might happen to you as the new kid in an unfamiliar neighborhood running into three kids who were clearly larger than you were. “Hey, kid, you new here? What’s your name?” “Dan,” I said. “I’m Phil,” the big red head said. He had that pale, freckled complexion that was a requisite for that well-defined race. And, as I was to find out, he also had a wild disposition with a hair trigger temper that got out of control rather easily. Galt was next in line with a more even tempered, retiring approach to life, a fact that got him into trouble with bullies who picked on him because he was big but overweight and not inclined to fight.

Tim was also even tempered and, really, the “gentleman” in the group, a disposition that somehow put him beyond the reach of the bullies. He was just a kid that nobody even thought of messing with because he seemed to be above it. At the same time he wasn’t arrogant in any way that would make you mad. “You want to go to the Dumball’s?” “Sure.” Dumball Drugstore seemed like a natural destination to me where I’d read many a comic book, and drunk many a phosphate soda perched on a barstool next to my mother. They started out ahead of me, their excess, uh,…drooping on each side of their bicycle seats as they bounced over the graveled road to the end of Patton drive, down B and 3/8 road past the Alfalfa fields from which emanated the strange two pitch screech of Redwing Blackbirds, to the older neighborhoods where elm trees overhung paved streets bordered by cracked and buckled sidewalks and two story homes built before the tract developments.

Part 2: Oasis in the Desert

We reached a pond set in a natural depression bordered by Elm trees. It was next to the highway, and slopes of grass ran down to it. “That’s the ‘Sink Hole”, Tim yelled over his shoulder. He was always last in line of the Plodd progression. It was surrounded by mature verdant trees and stood out as an oasis in the middle of the semi-arid desert. Beyond the grassy area and older houses on the other side of the highway ran the National Cathedral in the distance, an arid but spectacularly beautiful area full of unusual spire like rock formations, not visible from here. Nearer to the Hole, evaporation seemed to dissipate the heat somewhat which beyond it was now pushing ninety-five degrees. Out here on Plateau Mesa it was probably the only place where you could have a picnic and not burn off the top of your head.

We reached our destination and I discovered DC comics on the comic stand. Superheroes galore fought evil villains in the racks: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Justice League of America, and others… Like the Challengers of the Unknown and Mystery in Space. The Plodds loaded up with candy, but I was broke. On reaching home, I announced to my mom that I wanted to buy some comic books. Big mistake. I was soon to discover that when it came to stuff I wanted, things were about to change.

Part 3: It Gets Hotter

“Well,” Mom said, “we don’t have a lot of money. I’ll talk to Dad about it.” “See those big weeds out there?” My dad said when he got home. I tried not to see the weeds. “Come out to the carport.” I followed him out and he handed me an oddly shaped tool. It had a long handle with a metallic end that stuck out at right angles to the handle and was serrated on both sides. “That’s a weed whip. Let me show you how to use it.” He took me out in front and whipped down a few weeds as a demonstration. “Knock down all the weeds in the front and back yard. I’ll give you fifty cents an hour.” my lengthy description of how hot it got when the sun rose above the Plateau Valley? It’s a whole lot hotter when you are whipping down weeds trying to earn up money to buy a few comic books.

Summer of War Chapter 69

Part 1: Getting Outfitted

C owboy and Indian days were over, and although I was still subscribing to Lone Ranger comics, a new day had dawned. Modern warfare had replaced silver bullets and arrows, and the next day after my venture to the Dumball Drugstore riding behind the prematurely corpulent Plodd brothers and after two requisite hours wielding a weed whip in the mounting heat, I got on my bike and rode around the bend to the Plodd’s. Mrs. Plodd, an amazingly portly red headed woman from whom the boys no doubt got their genes, was in the kitchen cooking something that raised the temperature about ten degrees. She announced that her sons were in their rooms. I was new and hesitated to go to the back of the house, but fortunately Galt came out wearing an army helmet and carrying a military style rifle. “Good you showed up,” he said, donning a heavy, army green jacket I was later to learn was a “flak jacket”, though I didn’t know what “flak” was. Strapping on a belt from which hung six plastic grenades, he yelled over his shoulder, “Dan’s here!” “Good.” I heard Tim’s voice from somewhere in the recesses of the house. He came out, dressed like Galt clutching a military style rifle, the strap of his helmet dangling under his chin and his plastic grenades flapping against his ample thighs. “We got something for him to wear?” “Yeah, I’ve got an extra helmet and he can carry this.” Phil was right behind

him, ready for war. He handed me a helmet, flak jacket and grenades. “What about a gun?” Phil ed me a plastic machine gun. Tim and Galt both grinned. “We’re ready to go!” “You boys be careful, now,” Mrs. Plodd said, stirring a pot out which rose a cloud of steam. “I’m fixing dinner and I want you all back here no later than 5 p.m. to get washed up.” “Ok, Mom.” Clutching their weaponry, the three brothers stampeded for the door, and the house would have shaken under their feet had it not been built on a concrete slab identical to ours; all of the houses in this area had been built as part of the same tract. Quickly strapping on my uniform, I made it out of the house and jumped on my bike. The Plodd’s were already half way down the street. “Wait up!” I yelled. “Where are we going?” “You’ll see.” Back down Myriad and up Patton, the Plodd’s found a well-worn path between two houses that may or may not have been occupied, since both had weed infested alkali riddled dirt back yards and empty windows without shades. Seemingly oblivious to the fact they might have been on private property, they parked their bikes. I followed them to a deep cut drainage ditch, on the other side of which was undeveloped open prairie chock full of cactus and sage. The Plodd’s gathered in a tight, conspiratorial knot. “They aren’t here yet. Where are they?” “Who?” “Blue Army,” Phil said. “We’re Red Army. We are at war.” “Oh.”

“Okay, now here is what you need to know,” Phil said. “We do it almost all with dirt clods. But you can make a kill by aiming your gun at one of them and yelling, ‘bang, you’re dead’. Trouble is, he has to agree and fall down, in which case he’s out of it until the end of the battle.” Well that sounded like the fights we had with Waldo Bard as . I wondered if there was a ‘Waldo Bard’ around. “If you get captured, you’re out of it until the end of the battle.” “Yeah,” I said, ing that kid in Listless who wouldn’t it he was dead until I snuck up behind him and shot him in the back, “but what if the kid doesn’t go down?” “Most everybody will if they get caught out in the open and somebody has a gun on them.” “Yeah, but what if he won’t?” “Well, we take care of that when the time…” “Okay, they’re here.” Four kids stepped into the clearing from four different directions. “It’s about time,” Phil said. He was clearly the leader of our group. “We can’t wait all day.” The kid, a big blond, shrugged. “So what? That’s the way it goes.” Phil’s face grew redder, and his red freckles seemed to stand out even more. I learned that when his face looked like that the ‘Berserker’ was about to manifest itself and it might be best to find yourself somewhere else. The others weren’t as large as the blond was, but they looked wiry, fast and mean.

Part 2: Call It

“All right we’ll give you a running start. To the count of ten.” “What d’ya mean -- ‘We…us…will give you a running start’?” Phil glared at him. “Toss a coin. Who’s got a coin?” I had one. I’d been paid with a fifty cent piece for whipping down the weeds in half of the front yard. The blisters on my hands burned as I dragged the quarter out of my jeans. “Here,” I said, handing the coin to Phil. Phil tossed in the air, yelling “Call it!” “Heads!” It landed in the dirt. Heads. I grabbed it before anybody else could. “Okay,” Phil said, handing me back the coin and shifting his rifle to his right hand. “We’ll give you to the count of ten. Start running.” The kids vanished into the sage brush, and Phil stood in the clearing, yelling “One, two…” He counted rapidly to ten. “Stay with Galt,” he said to me. He and Tim disappeared into the sage. I followed Galt down a path winding through the forest of head-high dried out brush, clutching my rifle and trying to see everything in a 360 degree circle around me. “Keep sharp,” Galt said. “They’ll try to ambush us.” “Yeah, but what do I do if they shoot me?” “Well, if it looks like they got you and there’s no question, you go down. If you

don’t it ends up being a big argument and sometimes turns into a fist fight. “Now shut up and follow me.” I thought this was ridiculous since I had only known these kids less than one week and already I was in the middle of a war. The prairie was silent and growing hotter by the minute. Nobody that ‘had any sense’ (another of my dad’s aphorisms) would be caught dead in this heat… which must have been rapidly approaching 100 degrees…except a bunch of brain-dead kids intent on killing each other. Role playing it, anyway. Galt crept silently through the maze of trails, keeping his gun at ready. I was beginning to think maybe Blue army had, as a joke on us, decided to go home and kick back in front of their television sets, although it was too early for the one station in town to begin its programming day. Right now there was nothing to watch except the head of an Indian warrior chief surmounting Test Pattern. Suddenly a kid jumped out from behind a pile of brush, his chattering machine gun aimed at Galt. Galt’s machine gun chattered in return and they both went down, yelling “AGGGGGGG”. I stood there above the two prone bodies, my gun drooping and my mouth no doubt hanging open. “So, you are both dead?” “Yeah,” Galt said. “We got each other at the same time.” “How long are you dead for?” “Till there’s only one kid left standing.” Well, that didn’t look like much fun, lying there in the hot sun until everybody got killed. “Keep going,” Galt said. “Take out as many as you can.”

I squared my shoulders, ready to do my duty. “Ok,” I said, and if I’d known more about the Army would have saluted and yelled “Yes, Sir!” I plunged down the trail, the brush closing in around me. The area now seemingly more silent than ever with Galt lying dead behind me. I hadn’t gone very far before a bush to the right shook and I heard a sound of something crashing in my direction. I raised my gun, determined to get off the first shot. “Ratatatatatat!!!!” The gun gave off a very realistic noise, considering it was made of plastic, as I drilled Phil Plodd emerging suddenly and almost colliding with me. “It doesn’t count if you shoot your own team,” he said, glancing warily around the clearing. “Yeah, ok.” “We’ve got to get them.” “Where are they?

Part 3: Ordnance in the Dirt

Suddenly a dirt clod sailed over the brush to the right in a high arc… WHACKKKKKKKKKKKKK …hitting me square in the helmet and knocking it off. “Over there,” Phil said, pointing in the direction the dirt clod came from. “You sure?” I said sarcastically, putting my helmet back on. Phil picked up a dirt clod and heaved it in that direction. “Hit ‘em with some grenades.”

It became obvious then that the plastic grenades hanging at my belt were for show only, and the real weapons lay at my feet…rock hard clods of dirt that had been formed by winter rains and baked for months by hundred-degree heat into objects as hard as bricks. I picked up a few clods, and together we lobbed several in their direction. These were answered by a hail of more clods landing all around us. We stood in the middle of the bombardment, the clods pelting our helmets, arms and flak jackets. “Owwwww!” I yelled when the clods hit my arms or legs. Phil lobbed more clods and then signaled for me to follow him into the brush. “We’ve got to move. They know our position now. I’m hiding behind this piece of brush, you take that one over there.” I ran to the sage he was pointing at and crouched behind it. There was no trail here, and another plant was at my back. I waited in silence, cranking back on the spring that would set off my gun when I pulled the trigger. Pretty soon there came loud scraping noises, and three of the Blue Army kids entered the clearing. “What?” One of them yelled. “Where are they?” RATATATATATAT!!!!! Phil jumped out from behind his hideout, his machinegun blazing. I burst from behind mine, my own gun chattering. “We got you! You’re all dead.” Three bodies fell before us, lying stunned in the dirt. Phil laughed wildly. “We won! We won!” He cupped his hands. “Game over! Galt, Tim you can come out now.” The kids lay there looking disgusted. We went back to our vehicles and started pedaling. On my ride back home, I could still hear their threats to “get us next time”. There would be a lot of “next times”. It was going to be a long hot summer of war.

The Rest of the Neighborhood Chapter 70

Part 1: Snitz

S o went the weed whipping and the neighborhood dirt clod fights, mostly with kids from somewhere else that I never got to know. My mom set up the Baby Grande in the corner of the living room and soon an endless stream of piano students was trooping in and out, all playing the same boring scales and learning pieces I’d heard a thousand times before, and more importantly, making the same endless, cacophonous mistakes. It was during one of the breaks in my ongoing battle with the backyard weeds that I met Snitz. I arrived at the Plodd’s as usual around two in the afternoon, just as the thunderclouds were amassing in the West over the National Cathedral. They would start out as just a few white clouds on the horizon and build up reinforcements before they marched like Patton’s army across the sky, growing darker as they approached, dumping their burden of rain around four p.m. and then ing on to dissipate in the East, still flashing lightning accompanied by thunderous booms that sent shivers up your spine. Anyway, the clouds were just appearing when Phil, Galt and Tim ejected themselves from their house, met me and ed me by. “We’re going over to Snitz’s,” Galt announced. Okay. I thought. Whatever a ‘Snitz’ is.. I turned my bike around and followed them to a house kitty corner across the street and drew up in a state of mild shock.

There was a kid sitting near his front door, staring at something in his yard. The shock came from the fact that he seemed unnaturally pale, so pale that he sort of ‘stood out’ in the shadow of the house. His black, horn-rimmed glasses had been broken and taped together with a wad of white medical tape and magnified his bright blue eyes enormously. He wore a buzz haircut; the hair couldn’t have been more than a quarter inch long. At first impression he looked abnormally thin, not emaciated, but like he was definitely in need of a few good meals, more exposure to sunlight, and some fattening up. Galt, the Plodd social diplomat, introduced me. “Verne, this is the new kid we told you about.” Verne Snitz didn’t move, or acknowledge my presence. “His name is Dan.” Snitz didn’t stir, still apparently transfixed by something in the yard. Awkward silence ensued. Finally, I said, “What are you doing?” “Ehhhh.” He kind of screeched as he cleared his throat. “Looking at that sprinkler. Seeing how the bubbles come up out of it.” We all turned our eyes on the sprinkler. It was slowly twisting; one of those rotating types that spray out water like a pinwheel. Finally, Galt said, “I don’t see any bubbles.” Phil brayed a laugh that sounded like a cross between a Jackass and a Hyena. “I don’t see anything either.” I don’t know if Tim said anything or not. One never knew if Tim said anything or not. I stared at the sprinkler looking for bubbles. Nope, no bubbles. “Okaaayy…” Galt said. “We’re going to go play army. Just wanted to see if you were coming.”

Snitz stirred slightly, and re-emitted the screeching noise. I was to learn this would happen every time he cleared his throat. “No, I think I’ll watch the bubbles.” “Okay.” Phil said finally. “All right, let’s go.” All of us had on our uniforms and were armed to the teeth. I ran and jumped on my bike. Behind me Snitz still sat unmoving. There were still no bubbles coming up out of the sprinkler head. None that I could see anyway.

Part 2: Grower and Deidre Laundry

“We’re still short on guys,” Phil said. “Let’s go get Grower.” “Nah,” Galt said, “we don’t want Grower. “He’s the only one we’ve got. Blue has at least five.” Galt shrugged in acquiescence. Whatever Phil wanted, Phil got, and I followed them to a drab single story tract house kitty-corner from Myriad and located one house over from where Patton made its leisurely bend. Phil pushed his way through the rusted gate in the broken down chain link fence, following the cracked walk through which weeds, in desperate need of whipping, grew profusely. A woman’s voice called for us to “come in” in response to Phil’s overly vigorous pounding on the door which threatened to put a hole in it, being the stock cheap hollow core door the contractor had used on all these seamy tract houses. We pushed through the door and found a stocky woman sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette in one hand and a small glass of some dark colored liquid in the other.

“What do you boys want?” She said, flipping a frowsy tousled lock of hair out of her left eye. “We’re looking for Harry.” She gave us a look like we all might be suffering from some incurable form of insanity. “He’s not here.” “Come on, Mrs. Grower,” Phil said like he was used to being put off by this woman. “We need him to play army.” She offhandedly waved her cigarette in some ill-defined direction. “Well, he’s probably over at that girl’s house. What’s-her-name. He’s always over there.” ‘Okay.” Without another word Phil turned and pushed past us. “Come on we’ll go drag him out.” “Good luck,” Mrs. Grower yelled after us as we retraced our steps out the front door to our bikes. Back on my bike I followed the portly Plodds – I was becoming used to the unappetizing view I had from behind – to a house back the way we came on the corner of Patton and Myriad. Phil Plodd barged through the front door without knocking, and the rest of us following behind him found ourselves in the dark interior of the living room, the only light coming from what was clearly the kitchen. Plodd pushed onward through the gloom, and we suddenly found ourselves in the presence of a movie goddess: black hair, bright green eyes, clear fair skin, chiseled features, and voluptuous figure. She turned her attention from the kid wearing a red apron with his hands in a sink of dishwater. This skinny kid did not exactly grab my attention, standing as

he was in the presence of this gorgeous female. Phil laughed wildly. “I figured Grower’d be in here working as Deidre’s slave.” “Come on, you guys,” the kid said, pulling a dish out of the water and rinsing it off. He wiped his hands on a towel and pushed the black horn rimmed glasses up his nose. Phil laughed again. “Deidre, you going to take off the leash and let him out of here? We need another guy.” Deidre gave us a dazzling smile that looked triumphant and mean at the same time. “Well, as soon as he’s done with the dishes.” Grower turned red, accentuating his blond flat top and bright blue eyes. Right away I thought that he looked a little crazy. No, maybe a lot crazy. “How long’s that going to take?” “Well, you boys can always help him.” She glanced at Grower and he immediately put his hands back in the dishwater. It was Phil’s turn to turn red. Turning red was easy for him. “Not us. Okay, Harry, hurry up. We’ll wait outside.” Back on the front porch we stood around in a circle. “What’s the matter with him? I asked. “Why’s he washing her dishes?” Deep in my gut I thought I knew the answer to that question. It was beginning to develop within me, a feeling rapidly growing stronger and starting to war with prepubescent misogyny. I started fighting a deep, intense desire to wash her dishes too. “Yeah, stupid I guess. Grower is pretty stupid.” “Nah, not stupid. Crazy.” They all nodded. “Yeah, Grower is crazy.” The screen door banged, and Harry Grower emerged, minus the red apron.

“Okay. I’m done. Let me go get my stuff.” Behind him, watching us through the screen door stood Deidre Laundry and for some reason, I had the feeling her eyes were on me. Girl phobia was in serious trouble.

Adventures in Time and Space Chapter 71

Part 1: The Siren of Patton Drive

D ad was at it again in the carport – building another boat. He was using the same plans he’d used for Polywog One, and had already constructed the framework. The steam generator was shooting steam out of the carport into the early morning Saturday air as he once again steamed plywood to bend around the frame to create the hull. Half of June had gone by, and the weeds were well whipped. Dad had roto-tilled both the front and back yards, mixing weed killer and horse manure into the alkali streaked soil. The whole place smelled like a herd of horses had wandered through it, confusing our property with an equestrian bathroom. An occasional car drove past the house, raising dust off the gravel of Patton Drive, tires applied to hot payment were singing out on Highway 50, and blackbirds kept up their odd, two-part whistle out in the Alfalfa fields surrounding our house. It was Saturday morning, and the ambient temperature was headed for at least 95 Fahrenheit in the shade, and that was if you could find any shade. I stood to one side watching him bend the plywood. “When are we going fishing, Dad?” I said. “Soon as we can. Does the boat look like we’re ready to go fishing yet?” I swallowed. “No.” He nodded. “We’ll go when we’re ready.” The plywood was almost completely bent to mold itself to the frame. With a last push he held it down.

“Here, push on this.” Hot steam blasting me in the face, I put my palms against the plywood and pushed it against the frame, fighting its tendency to spring outward. I held it down as the drill screamed into life and he drilled holes through the plywood into the frame. Wielding a screwdriver, he drove Phillips Heads into the holes. “Whew,” he said, laying the drill down and backing away. “That’s the hardest part.” He went to work on something I couldn’t see, saying nothing. I had no idea what he was doing and found I was again of no use. My brain sailing off into fantasies, I went back into the house to find something else to do. My mom was playing Beethoven, and my sister was in a back room somewhere playing with whatever she played with. “I’m going over to Plodd’s,” I announced. Jumping on my bike, I rounded the turn past Deidre Laundry’s house. I found myself riding past her house pretty frequently, feeling excited, drawn, and scared all at the same time, not to mention ashamed of myself for showing a weakness toward girls. And somehow, I seemed to speed up as I went past, wanting not to ride, but to fly. She was the siren of Patton Drive, beckoning all of us boys to the dangerous shoals of, uh, something we weren’t sure. The Plodd’s weren’t home. “I think they’re over at Snitz’s,” Mrs. Plodd said, ironing what must have been Phil’s shirt. It looked enormous, draped as it was over the ironing board with both sleeves almost touching the floor. “They’re always over there.” Indeed. I had learned that Verne Snitz was the true leader of the Patton pack. He was a year older than everybody else; an eccentric nonconformist who was very smart and with a sense of humor that kept everybody in orbit around him.

Yeah, sure enough. Snitz and the three Plodd’s were at a card table, playing poker. “Neiser!” Snitz said. That was his leadership quality – he greeted everybody enthusiastically and treated them all impartially. He made you feel like you belonged. “Pull up a chair.” “Nah. I want to look in your closet.” “Sure.”

Part 2: Buried in Time Travel

The real attraction of Verne Snitz for me was his closet. You had to be careful opening it because the stacks of science fiction paperbacks piled almost to the top of the doorway would cascade down on top of you, threatening to bury you with years of accumulated space adventures and time travel. But the real danger didn’t come from paperbacks. Verne had accumulated a couple of years’ worth of hardbacks from the Science Fiction Book Club. Those definitely hurt when they hit you on the head. I tried to open the door carefully, but Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Hal Clement, Frederick Brown, L. Sprague de Camp, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, John W. Campbell, Alfred Bester, and a myriad of other writers all descended on my head. This resulted in a pile of books surrounding me on the floor – two piles if you counted what was left in the closet. “Hey, be careful opening that door!” Snitz yelled, followed by, “I’ve got the Queen!” Hearts, and cards in general, bored me. In the back of the closet somewhere, he kept his backlog of pulps. These were digest sized science fiction and fantasy magazines, but for some reason I didn’t discover these until later, maybe because I was enraptured by the cornucopia of

his book collection. “Hey, can I borrow one of these?” I yelled. “Yeah, if you bring it back.” I picked out Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and stuffed the rest of the books back into the closet, barely getting the door closed. Leaving the card game behind, I pedaled home, my heart again hitting the inside of my mouth as I ed Deidre’s, wondering if Harry was in there washing her floors. I dropped the bike in the back of our carport, ing my dad who had fired up the sander and was starting in on the deck. I retreated to my room and flopped down on my unmade bed. Mom ignored the state of my room most of the time, except for one day each month when she went “on the warpath”, as Dad would say, and would make me clean it up. “You kids are a mess,” she yelled. “You need to learn to pick your rooms up and make your beds.” Well, we did learn to do that…once a month. Meanwhile… The Galactic Empire was falling. A man by the name of Hari Seldon had developed a theory called “Psychohistory” which predicted that the Empire would fall and that it would take 10,000 years to restore it, unless… Unless he established something called the “Foundation” which would preserve the cultural history of the human race, hidden at the edge of a galactic arm, and be ready and available when it came time to bring fallen humanity out of darkness. I was hooked. Card games were gone; the Polywog a vapor of steam ascending into Space. Hari Seldon had it all figured out, but there was something coming. Something he could not predict…

Part 3: Getting a Head

But my dad was also off to the library on a quest for westerns with me in tow. I started rummaging around on the shelves I could reach. Running along the bottom of shelves, in a far corner away from the checkout desk, were rows of some exotic books written by a man by the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now I had a little Golden Book by the name of Tarzan and Golden Lion, where the Ape Man had befriended this savage creature in the African jungle. The lion saved him from martyrdom at the hands of a lost Roman civilization that had somehow been cut off from the Empire for a couple of thousand years. And, of course, I’d read some Tarzan comic books where he swung through the trees with his mate Jane and his creatively named son, ‘Boy’. (I could identify with ‘Boy’, because everywhere I tagged behind my father in his visits to building materials shops in Plateau City, he always introduced me to his friends as ‘his boy’. I made the mistake in going into one of those shops where I’d been so jovially greeted by the proprietor who knew my dad, and to whom I’d been introduced as his ‘boy’. “Hi, Joe,” I said enthusiastically, having ed how welcoming he had been. Dad had called him ‘Joe’. He looked at me like I’d just crawled out from under a rock, and turned his back to whatever he was doing, thus emphasizing that this was Dad’s town, not mine. My dad knew him, but to Joe, I didn’t exist (and most assuredly I wasn’t supposed to call him by his first name). Anyway, here in the library was a treasure trove of ERB books, and they were not all about the Ape Man. He had written books set on Mars, Venus, the Moon, and at the Earth’s Core. And some of them were not all that wholesome. I checked one or two out every time Dad set out on his quest for Westerns, and I started reading about the adventures of heroes bent on saving lost and helpless

women from strange half-human races and loathsome creatures. One book, I distinctly , involved the discovery of a race on Mars whose heads were separated from their bodies. The heads could dismount from the bodies and control them without being attached to them. I never got past the first chapter. Suddenly I began looking at my body as being a separate entity from my head. My head controlled it, but it wasn’t necessarily a part of me and could go walking off somewhere else – completely out from under my control. Now that I think about it --if I’d been older I might have considered sending it off to find a job, while I, the head, kicked back reading novels. That book went back on the shelf, unread.

Part 4: Glowing Cross in the Darkness

However, as I descended into the world of the increasingly bizarre, I was also looking out my back window. Right after the sun set, a Christian cross, electrically lit from within by white light, beamed brightly in the blackness of the Western night about a quarter of a mile away. That cross and the church it adorned would soon turn my life in an entirely new direction.

Four Miles to Hornby Chapter 72

Part 1: Four in the Morning

W eekends my dad was busy working on the front and back yards and building another Polywog out on the carport. I had whipped and whipped weeds until I could see them being whipped in my sleep, and by now I had grown more or less used to the Plateau Valley summer heat which rose to close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade (and until we planted trees, there was no shade). He didn’t wait until Polywog was built to go fishing, however. “We’re going tomorrow,” he said one Friday night. “I’m waking you up at four am.” I went to bed, knowing that the next morning he would wake me up by gently rocking my body back and forth in bed until I got up. I was not disappointed. When we pulled out of the driveway in my dad’s olive green International pickup, the night was still jet black; the sky a blaze of stars. The Milky Way splashed across the sky—yes—like somebody had dropped a pitcher of milk on a black carpet, and there was no hint of light on the horizon. I blearily watched the few lights go by that lit the Highway as we headed into town, wishing I could go back to sleep. My stomach felt queasy, the way it did when my sleep was interrupted, but not bad enough to invoke thoughts of throwing up.

We picked up two men in Plateau City; one of them got into the truck cab, and squashed me against the floor mounted gearshift lever Dad had to operate. The other got in the bed with the camping gear, fishing rods and tackle that my dad had loaded into it the night before. Now there was no place to rest my head, so I had to stare straight ahead out the windshield. My dad put the truck in reverse, cranking the gearshift over next to my leg, and backed out of the driveway. He put it into low, which jammed it into another part of my leg, and the engine made a low rumble as he pulled out into the sparsely lit street. Ahead, the sky was starting to brighten as the sun threatened to rise and burn us all to crispy critters. “Sam, this is my boy Dan.” Sam mumbled something that sounded like “hello”, and leaned against the enger’s window. After this feeble articulation, he would not do anything else except moan, groan, and turn green for the rest of the trip. I got used to Sam. He was chronically car sick from the moment we left the curb until the moment we returned to it. Dad pulled over to the side of the road and rolled down the window. “You all right back there, Abe?” “Yeah I’m okay,” came a hoarse voice. “A little chilly but I’ll make it.” I was soon to find out how he coped when ‘he got a little chilly’. Making his way through the dark, empty streets, Dad reached the Interchange out by the Plateau Eatery, garishly lit at this early hour, advertising itself as the only major restaurant in town, and took Highway Sixteen East. The sky was growing brighter and the dark masses of the Lookatthats loomed against it as we entered the Gunner Canyon headed for the exit to Massive Plateau.

Part 2: Heading up the Plateau

Now known as the “Massive Plateau Scenic Byway”, Highway 32 took us through a canyon bounded on each side by gradually lightening grey rock walls. On the winding road, we ed small farms and ranches hugging the canyon walls; the canyon eventually opening onto a wide expanse of verdant ranch land. The deep-throated rumble of the engine was augmented by the perpetual moaning of our enger, who demanded that we stop occasionally so he could get out. When Dad found a good pull out, we heard retching noises through the partially open enger’s window. It got worse when we reached the roadway that led up the side of the mountain. It was steeper, narrower and winding. I was descending into misery myself; a disrupted sleep cycle giving me a disoriented headache and a queasy stomach exacerbated by the faint odor of vomit that now permeated the cab. The sun had broken the horizon and was shining in our eyes, just at that level where lowering the sunshades above the windshield doesn’t help. By the time we had reached the top of the mountain and entered the forest it had risen to the point where we could see the wildflowers in the meadows, everything becoming slowly visible in the growing light. Deep blue lakes peeked out from between the trees or appeared at the bottom of sloping hillsides. Known by the cliché as “a fisherman’s paradise”, Massive Plateau has over 300 lakes regularly stocked by the State Game and Fish with Rainbow Trout. As I was to find out, the only way you couldn’t catch fish was by not baiting your hook and keeping it far out of the water where they couldn’t jump out and grab it.

Part 3: A Bumpy Ride

Finally, my dad pulled off the road and stopped the engine. In front of us stood a weathered sign that read “Hornby Lakes 4 Mi.” A blast of icy air hit me as he opened the door. Stretching he said, “Abe, are you

still alive back there.” Sam moaned and I decided not to ask him to get out so I could follow. I heard a voice from the back saying something indistinguishable as I crawled ed the gear shift lever and steering wheel and extricated myself from the cab on the driver’s side. The cold air woke me up – partially – and my stomach started feeling better. “Okay. Well, get ready for some bumps,” Dad said. “Dan, get back in the truck.” I obeyed. Sam had gotten out and the enger’s door was standing open. He was outside heaving into roadside ditch. My dad looked over my head, his expression souring. He shook his head a little and started the engine. Sam wiped his mouth and climbed back into the cab. Knowing my dad, I think he was contemplating leaving him there, but Sam, as Dad described him later, was probably too self-absorbed–and sick—to realize how thin was the metaphorical ice upon which he was treading. The next sign pointed off to the left, and my dad turned the truck onto a rutted dirt road that wound its way through the meadow and into the forest. We bounced along at probably less a tenth of a mile per hour, jarring our teeth and shaking our tendons loose from our bones as we hit incredibly deep ruts. My dad worked the transmission, sometimes having to back out of ruts and taking different routes to negotiate the road, the gears grinding out their protest. “Hey, Cliff,” came a voice from the back, “can you miss some of those?” “Some of those” referred to the rocks the front wheels tried to get over while the back wheels spun in ruts. Here and there were pools of muddy water…melted snow left behind from a long winter. Dad tried to drive around these, but the tires slid off the slick edges and spun into the pools. A whoop from the back indicated that Frank was experiencing some of the icy water first hand. Sam finally sat up straight, gripping the door handle and staring fixedly ahead. I hung on as best I could, but there was nothing to hang onto except the dashboard which left little in the way of handholds, or even finger holds for that matter.

Finally, the forest opened up onto a meadow sloping down to a small lake, gleaming like a blue jewel in the morning sun. “There it is,” my dad said, pulling to a halt. “Hornby Number One. Abe, you want to stop here or go take a look at the other Hanbies?” There was no sound coming from the back except a hoarse, choking noise. Finally, I heard, “Let’s stop here, Cliff.” Sam was already out, his motion sickness evidently completely forgotten, and rummaging around in the back of the truck. I crawled out of the driver’s side, miserably queasy but thankful the ride of torture had finally ended. I found Sam sitting on the back bumper pulling on his waders, his rod leaning against the tail gate and his tackle box sitting on the trampled grass. Without a word, he picked them up and headed downhill for the lake. By my now my dad’s expression had reached the ultimate in sour. To say the least, Sam was not making any points with him.

Part 4: Honest Abe

A tall, gangling man, longish graying hair, a lean, lined, sagging face, wearing overalls, a farmer’s hat and wire rimmed glasses, “Honest” Abe Link, whose name invited a comparison to our sixteenth president, pitched an empty bottle over the side of the truck. It landed at my feet with the label side up. The label read “Jack Daniels’”. He pulled another bottle out of his grey vest and uncorked it, the Jack Daniels’ label shining white in the sunlight. Taking a long swig, he put a leg over the side of the pickup bed and rolled over the rim dropping to the ground in a feat of agility that seemed too skilled for somebody of his evident age, although at the age of eleven I was certainly no judge of such things.

“I’m sure glad that’s over,” he said, referring to the ride. “Yeah,” Dad said, pulling out a pack of Camels and lighting one up. He offered a cigarette to Abe who took it. Dad handed him his cigarette lighter. Together we gazed downhill at Sam, who had already waded out in the water and was working his fly line. Neither of them said anything as clouds of smoke fought with the crisp morning air. Dad had already introduced me to Honest Abe, a jovial man who ruffled my blond hair when he first met me. “Yes, we’re going to be good friends,” he said in a hearty laugh. “Good friends indeed.” In fact, Abe, somewhere in his sixties, probably had not witnessed a sober day in his life for the last forty years. My dad had said something about how he’d been divorced from his wife and remarried to his bottle, a companion that had stuck with him far better than his wife had. Abe took another drag on his cigarette and offered the bottle to my dad. Dad shook his head with the grimace that ed for a smile. Dad wasn’t a drinker. “We better find a place to set up camp.” By now, having lived on this side of the Rockies for a month, I knew that that Thunderhead army was going to start marching soon and we needed a place to dive for cover when it did. Dad and Abe put up the tent, got out the camp stove and the lantern, unrolled the… Oh, no. They didn’t unroll the sleeping bags. Because there weren’t any. For some reason they…if indeed there were any, were left back in the carport. Worse than that, the tent…the same one we camped in under the Gunner River bridge when we were ing through Plateau City on our way to Listless, had undergone some awfully rough use. The floor for the most part was ripped out.

My dad extended the front flap above the door and propped it up with two poles, using ropes to counterweight them so they wouldn’t fall over due to the pull of the tent, and set up the stove on a couple of rocks he’d dragged over from the hillside. He hung the lantern inside the tent from a hook at its apex. We were all set except for the sleeping bags. “Now don’t you worry none, young feller,” Honest Abe said, returning to the truck. Out of its bed he dragged some multi-colored quilts. “These here are Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets” hand quilted by Grandma herself. (You could hear all the capitals). “Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets will keep YOU warm.” My dad later told me that he had acquiesced to Abe who had insisted that he not bring sleeping bags because of the warmth of these blankets. I suspect he had succumbed to one of his (very) rare attacks of diplomacy. Abe took another swig of Jack and unrolled the blankets. “No, donch’a worry none, young feller. Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets will save the day. You’ll be as warm as worm in a fresh cow pie.” With that analogy under my belt, I wandered over to the truck to find my fishing pole. I baited my hook with a fresh worm, which had never seen a cow pie, and was soon down at the edge of Hornby Lake Number One. In five seconds I had a fighting trout on the other end, tail walking across the surface of the lake and shaking its head to throw the hook. It was Mountain Paradise in the summer. The sky was deep blue, the forest dark and mysterious, the pine scented air fresh and full of the promise of immortality, the glorious wildflowers strewn across fresh meadow grass like precious jewels, and the fish ready to bite and fight like devils seized by the Archangel Michael himself. And the clouds ready to dump rain on you as soon as you dropped your hat. Well, I didn’t drop my hat, but about four pm the Thunderheads rolled in like clockwork and it started to rain. We all crowded under the tent awning listening

to the rain hammering on it, jumping at the occasional flash of lightening followed by rolling thunder, hunkering down on the camp stools, breathing in the rain freshened air mixing with the smell of old canvass and cigarette smoke emanating from my dad’s Camels. No one gave Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets a second thought as the clouds marched on and the westering sun reemerged. And none of us gave them a third thought when we cleaned the trout (wait did I say “we”? I meant “I”. My dad had given me that job back when we were throwing away suckers caught at Thousand Sucker), built a fire, wrapped them in “tin foil” and threw them in it. This was my dad’s favorite way of cooking Trout, which worked great…the Trout got cooked in the foil which served as a plate to eat out of. And, of course, when the sun sank behind the tree line the Massive’s mosquitoes appeared. The size of half dollars…well, maybe copper pennies-–let’s not go overboard…the mosquitoes insidiously announced their presence with a high pitched squealing screech and a sudden sting that turned into a reddened bump with an uncontrollable itch. They were warded off with 6-12 Insect Repellent which we shook out of a bottle and rubbed over our exposed flesh. Spray cans hadn’t been invented yet. We did, however, finally give Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets a thought when it came time to go to bed. Honest Abe had dropped them in the middle of a floorless tent pitched on the side of a hill. Somebody had failed to “trench” the tent which means what the name implies -- there was no trench dug around it to keep water from running under it in a rainstorm. In short, they were… “These blankets are wet!” my dad exclaimed. Honest Abe gave him a blank look and took another swig of Jack. “Nah! They ain’t wet, they’re just a little damp. And don’t chew worry; Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets will keep YOU warm no matter what!” He proceeded to kneel on the dirt floor…or should I say ‘muddy’…tent floor and began to unsteadily unroll them, nearly falling over a couple of times in the process. “There they are, Dan, you go ahead and climb into them! You’ll be warm as…”

“That’s okay, Abe,” my dad said, deftly avoiding another analogy involving cow excrement. He got under the blankets. I followed suit, clothes and all, huddled next to my dad breathing his signature odor of sweat mixed liberally with cigarette smoke and sawdust. Abe crawled under the blankets next to me, his alcoholic breath strong enough to potentially blow the tent up if we kept burning the lantern with the flap closed, and laced with the heady odor of cigarette tars, unburned nicotine and necrotic halitosis. Sam, who up to this point had failed to speak a single word to anyone since we landed on the shore of Hornby Number One, still bore the faint odor of car-sick vomit which no doubt permeated everything he wore. He crawled in on the other side of Honest Abe. There we were, one big happy family, huddled together under the protection of Grandma, whose creations were at that point somewhere between damp and wet depending on what part of the blanket you were under. The blankets in actuality were not soaked. Yet. Abe turned on his side, regarding me with his benign, bloodshot, bleary, fatherly eyes. Sam muttered something unintelligible and the blankets crawled in his direction. “Don’t chew worry, young feller, Grandma’s…” At this point I had almost drifted off to sleep, and his encouragement woke me up. I now had the headache accompanied by disturbed sleep, and was beginning to vocalize my discomfort. “Abe, shut up!” Dad yelled. Abe appeared to consider this as a new thought. He was blessedly silent for the next few moments, just long enough for me to start to doze off again. An overpowering blast of fetid alcoholic breath jerked me once again awake. “Don’t chew worry young feller…” At that point I had not learned that boys weren’t supposed to cry. “Abe, if you don’t shut up I’m going to take an oar to you!”

Incoherent mutterings came from the far end of the tent and the mold-laced blankets started to crawl. Abe mumbled something and closed his eyes. I started to drift off to sleep when a sound like tap dancing mice came from all directions through the tent walls. It had started to rain. The sound grew louder and continued…growing stronger and incessant. The mice were turning into rats…large ones. My dad flipped on the flash light and pointed the beam at the walls. It revealed streams of water running down the walls. “Somebody has been touching the walls of the tent,” he said. A thought penetrated my miserable thick headedness. Yeah, the same person that tore up the floors. “Huh,” Abe said in the dark. “A tent is waterproof as long as you don’t touch the walls,” Dad lectured, “then it lets water in.” Judging by the width of the streams running down the walls, one would hazard a guess that the tent had been used as a platform for ballet dancers. My dad relit the lantern. Its light seemed dimmer than before, but we could still see the streams of water were meeting in middle of the floor like the convergence of the Gunner and the Arapaho rivers. Abe was silent for a moment, apparently regarding this phenomenon for a moment. “Don’t chew worry none, young feller,” he finally said, and produced another bottle from somewhere, twisting off the cap. He took another swig of Jack and hiccupped, blowing more alcoholic laden breath in my face, his superficially confident words belied by a look of uncomprehending alcoholic horror, “Grandma’s Pure…uh….” Abe’s voice faded in the flickering light of Dad’s dying flashlight beam as I shivered in the increasingly sodden blankets, quietly expecting mosquitoes to start breeding in the pool growing in the middle of the tent.

After an interminable time, day finally broke on a group of miserable, rain soaked sufferers huddling together under Grandma’s blankets, and I wasn’t sure whether I was dead or alive. Alive I was, however, and the rain had stopped. Dad cooked breakfast, Abe broke dead and dry branches, sheltered from the rain by the overhanging canopy, and built a fire. He gathered up his blankets and took them outside, hanging them from tree branches to dry out. Sam immediately headed for the lake to fish until Dad yelled that breakfast was ready. I sat down by the fire and its warmth immediately permeated my damp clothes. I almost couldn’t what it meant to be warm. We ate our breakfast pretty much in silence, Abe sober enough to realize that “Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets” hadn’t fared so well after all. Dishes washed, we hit the lake where the Trout were rising to catch the first insect hatch of the day. Grandma’s Pure Sheep Wool Blankets might not have kept us warm, but they certainly didn’t prevent us from limiting out before the sun was half way up… In the impossibly blue Western sky.

The Cross Across the Way Chapter 73

Part 1: On Columbian Time

S ummer past, the lawn was seeded and watered, my dad was building a fence around the property and had planted Alders at intervals along the west property line. Polywog 2 was finished and ready for our first boating style fishing trip on Massive Plateau. The Patton Drive Army was still at war. Captain Verne Snitz shared leadership with Phil Prodd, and Galt, Tim, Harry, and myself were the grunts bringing up the rear. Snitz was the “brains” of the outfit. A year older than the rest of us, he was half German and half Jewish. Born in Columbia where evidently his parents had emigrated, no doubt escaping a marriage proscribed in Nazi , he was an exceedingly intelligent kid with an insightful, cutting sense of humor and a sleepy, affable disposition that made him easy to be with. In fact, I think he was still on Columbian time. Rarely up before ten, or sometimes eleven am, he still didn’t seem to be awake even by two in the afternoon when he was languidly lying around his front yard watching bubbles come out of his sprinkler system, as if he were on some sort of permanent siesta. He was a heavy reader, mainly of science fiction, and as I mentioned before his closet was a packed treasure-trove of paperback and book club novels. The Science Fiction Book Club hated him. “Don’t you think you ought to pay this?” I said, picking up a notice threatening

legal action for an unpaid book. It was sitting on top of a pile of papers, books, and assorted junk that defied description. The whole room was, essentially, a scene of havoc. Clothes, underwear, shoes, books and papers were scattered across the floor, piled on the dresser, and buried under the desk. Snitz, sprawled across the bed, covered with a blanket except for one bare foot which stuck out into the room, a band aid wrapped around its big toe. He opened one eye and grunted that kind of screeching noise he was known for. “Neiser,” he said. “What time is it?” “Eleven o’clock. Day’s wasting and we’re going to war. This time the fight’s over in that old ranch house by Prodd’s.” The lump that was Snitz stirred under the blanket, and he sat up, one eye closed as he fumbled for something on the nightstand. He pulled out a watch with half a plastic band. “Oh, yeah.” He got out of bed wearing his briefs and wife-beater undershirt, pulled on a pair of ragged jeans and shrugged on a stained shirt, working his lips like he was forcing the bad taste of yesterday’s cigarettes out of his mouth, and went to the bathroom. “Don’t you think you ought to pay this?” I said, holding up the bill I’d found. It was for War Against the Rull by A E Van Vogt, the Club Selection for July. The toilet flushed and Snitz emerged, opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a hunting knife. Taking the bill out of my hands, he grinned and held the Past Due Notice against the bedroom door, driving the knife into it. It hung there, fastened by the black handled knife. I stared at it at a loss, unable to believe that he wouldn’t pay the bill. Seeing my expression, he said, “I didn’t tell them I wanted it. They just sent it to me.” “Oh, okay.”

Not knowing what else to say, I followed him into the kitchen where he pulled a box of Rice Crispies off the shelf and ate it noisily out of a bowl of dubious cleanliness. “Where’d you say they were going?” “The old Tipton place. Blues are going to hole up inside, and we’re going in for the attack.” Snitz ate and said nothing, leaving me to feel awkward. He wiped his mouth and shoved the bowl in the sink on top of a pile of unwashed dishes. “Okay, let’s go.” I followed him with as sense of accomplishment, having actually rousted the Captain of the Patton Army out of bed (no minor feat indeed) and inspired him to action and leadership. It was going to be a good day.

Part 2: Casualty of War

The Blue Army was holed up inside the abandoned Tipton Ranch House at the end of Myriad Drive. The only brick house in the neighborhood, it wasn’t part of the cookie cutter tract home building effort that had taken place on Patton and Myriad Drives sometime in the “distant” past (distant for me, anyway). It was an unfinished single story “rancher”, set back on the alkali ridden, weed infested lot. It had been started for some upscale executive who, somewhere toward the end of the construction effort, had decided the neighborhood was too low class for him and had abandoned it, probably moving to the Uplands—a much higher class section of town. All the windows had long since been knocked out by exuberant, destructive kids, and the bare concrete floors were strewn with broken glass and other detritus. Pieces of wall material had been ripped off the studs, and trash left over from kid’s camp outs was blown over the dangerous, broken glass covered floor.

The Plodd Brothers as usual led the charge, with Snitz and myself in tow, Grower as usual bringing up the rear. A barrage of dirt clods erupted from the windows, and a few of them hit me in the helmet. I lobbed some back, a few, very few, making it in through the windows. The bombardment went on for five or ten minutes until the defenders ran out of clods and the Red Army burst in through the doors, plastic machine guns rattling. I ran up to a window, stuck my gun through it, cranking back the slider and ing in the rat-a-tat of the advanced weaponry and… Cut my left thumb on a piece of glass sticking up out of the window. As the first genuine casualty of the Patton Drive wars, I dropped my gun and, clutching my gushing thumb, ran back to the Plodd’s house where Mrs. Plodd, as usual, was cooking something on the stove. “What’s the matter with you?” I showed her my thumb and she took me into the bathroom, stopped the bleeding and bound it up. The scar has finally faded after 60 years, but I bore it for all those years, reminding me of the fact that I had indeed been wounded in battle, no doubt deserving the first Patton Drive Purple Heart, which was never awarded.

Part 3: Patton PTSD

However, I digress. I have noted that Harry Grower followed us into battle. Harry was indeed part of the Patton Drive warriors, but was regarded as just this side of being “sane”. A highly intelligent kid, maybe way too smart for his own good, Harry was high strung and had an exaggerated “startle” reaction to everything that happened to him. In these modern times that could be described as the result of Post

Traumatic Syndrome Disorder, or PTSD. It didn’t seem to matter what you said to him. Let’s say you said something like, “It’s hot outside.” The bright blue eyes would fixate on you like a couple of lice on a long-haired dog. He might get up from where he sat or lounged, stop whatever he was doing and advance toward you saying something like, “Yeah, Neiser, it’s hot outside! It’s hot outside. That’s why I’m in here! That’s why I’m not out there…because it’s HOT outside!” So, you didn’t want to talk to Grower very often if you could help it. No matter what you said, you were bargaining for something considerably more than you expected or wanted, probably with a lot more detail than the subject deserved. It was said that Grower’s father was an alcoholic, which was nothing unusual since Snitz’s dad was also an alcoholic, except that Grower’s father was seen crawling home from the bar on his hands and knees at night down Patton. He must have had to crawl a long way, because the nearest bar was downtown, probably around ten miles away. Maybe he crawled home from the bus stop. While Snitz was the atheist in the Patton Drive pack, Grower held up the religious side by being a Seventh Day Adventist, and that fact explained why he never accompanied the Patton Drive Red Army into battle on Saturday. Grower didn’t drink, smoke, or swear and was always trying to convert everybody to the SDA version of Christianity. Atheistic Snitz met this with his usual sardonic humor, but Phil Plodd regarded it with complete contempt. Grower held out valiantly as the Lone Ranger of his brand of Christianity, and, in addition to being crazy, also was regarded as a complete religious fanatic. He was soon to crack under the persecution as the Patton Drive boys turned from pre-adolescent army games to less innocent behavior. When he did, it was like everything else he did, extreme and crazy. But I digress again.

Part 4: Off to Church

My mother was again off to church, and this time it was the church which bore the luminescent cross I could see from my bedroom window. I followed her out the door on Sunday morning, wearing my best clean shirt, jeans with all holes patched, handkerchief stuck in my pocket so you couldn’t see it dangling out the back, and leather shoes with the shoe laces actually tied and not flopping around. I sat as far back as I could get in Sunday School, and after the teacher introduced me, I immediately noticed the fact that the class was comprised predominantly of girls – who all seemed enamored with one kid. He was handsome in a kind of prissy but not quite effeminate way. His hair was a jet black that contrasted starkly with his pale complexion. He had an aquiline nose, sharp blue eyes, and a narrow face. All in all, you could say he had finely chiseled features. I still had not quite reached the point of adolescence yet, so the fact that a bevy of girls surrounding him like crows around fresh road kill was something that I just took in, like any new experience for which I had no means of judging or understanding. Week after week it was the same thing. He was the pastor’s son, and girls couldn’t get enough of him. Maybe if I had been older I would have envied him, but at my age I didn’t care. Considering that I had seen this phenomenon before in Coldwater Springs in the case of Len Parker, I guess it wasn’t all that unusual after all, but somehow the whole thing completely overrode the Sunday school lessons. I never had any idea what they were about. I always found my mother afterward and we took a pew about three from the front. The pastor looked very familiar. He had jet black hair, a light complexion, and had sharp features. In his mid-forties, presumably, his face was fuller than his son in Sunday School. Reverend Hardover was the father of the junior high girls’ favorite lady-killer, Harry Hardover. It took a few trips to the Caramba Community Church for me to recognize that I

was hearing the same gospel message I’d heard from Theodore Epp on Back to the Bible Broadcast, mainly that “God Loved You, died for your sins, and you should respond to this by inviting Him into your heart.” I may as well get back into it again, I thought as I went forward during one of Reverend Hardover’s altar calls, and a few weeks later I was baptized. Dunked this time. Sprinkled once by the United Bretheren, this time I was dunked, I mean “fully immersed” ... A second time.

The End of Summer Chapter 74

Part 1: The ‘Honey Dipper’

G rass had been planted in the front yard and had sprung up, making a thick carpet, which I now had to mow for my fifty cents a week, but the back yard, was still dirt, howbeit weed whipped dirt. Dad had installed a water pump in the drainage ditch out back. There was no sprinkler system so it was my job to keep the growing grass in the incipient lawn wet with a sprayer attached to a hose. He had dug a trench and piped the water from the pump to a spigot on the western side of the house, so I didn’t have to run the hose all the way back to the pump. The fence extended across the front yard, made a ninety degree turn and went back as far as the back wall of the house. It was a cross beam affair built of twoby-fours. Dad intended to extend it as far as the property line in the back, but was too busy working down town. The house looked out on vacant lots in front and on the right, giving us a clear view of the Highway and the Alfalfa fields beyond it. In the morning, we could hear blackbirds singing in the fields with their distinctive two-tone cry that sounded like a piece of metal scraping on a concrete wall. In the far distance were the low, flat mesas of the National Cathedral, which sloped gradually West to East. On the eastern side was the salmon colored Balboni house. The Balbonis were a clan of Italian Catholics. Tony…the father… owned a septic tank cleaning service and parked his “honey dipper” in the driveway,

“He’s kind of like Ed Norton on the Jackie Gleason show,” I announced one day at breakfast. Mom’s face paled, and Dad looked up from his bacon and eggs, the normally sour expression softening in an incipient smile. “Yeah, Dan, but I think we better keep that to ourselves.” “I’ve got a feeling if you make them mad,” Mom said, “they might start a war.” She dipped her spoon into her bowl of yogurt and fruit, pulling out a cherry which probably tasted just like the rest of the canned mixed fruit she’d mixed into it. “Clannish.” Well, I didn’t need any more than that. They were nice, they were friendly, but even I, at the age of eleven, had a feeling that they could rally into something that might turn bad if you presented some kind of unintended affront. “Yeah,” Dad said, “Tony’s Honey Dipping. is his livelihood. You keep your mouth shut about it.” “Honey Dipping” was a euphemism for pumping out a sewer…or, I should say, a septic tank. We ourselves hired him to clean out our septic tank, which was in the back yard just above the drainage ditch out of which we pumped water to water the lawn. Needless to say, we kept the tank well pumped…it wasn’t a good idea to let it run over and flow into the drainage ditch, since you’d get it back on your vegetables. Mary Balboni was a devout Catholic for whom nothing existed but her family and the Roman Catholic Church, and seemed to make it clear, without ever vocalizing it, that Catholicism was a good subject to stay away from (if you were not of the same persuasion), not that my dad, especially, would ever broach the subject of religion. And I felt some kind of “mystique” about it; something there devout, deep and hard to define. Her sons Tony Junior, John and Davey seemed to have their own take on religion…they didn’t give it a lot of credence. They had their own lives and

social circles and kept to themselves. Tony Jr. was the wildest of the three, where John and Davey were quieter and more conservative. But I didn’t get involved with them like I had with the Plodds, Snitz and Grower. They lived in another world, an ethnic, Roman Catholic world I would never understand or be able to relate to. The Balboni clan, which included a lot of relatives with other surnames, mostly Italian, was pretty extensive. When they threw family get-togethers on their side of the chain link fence they filled up both the house and backyard with Catholic Italians. The odor of the cooking meat usually seemed mixed with the not-sofaint odor emanating from Mr. Balboni’s sewage pumping truck which sat in the driveway. I had little interested in crashing their barbeques. We Neisers had left every known relative behind on our trek West, and the idea of an extensive, tightly knit family of uncles, brothers and cousins was something I would have never conceived of if we hadn’t moved in next to them. Dad would occasionally cross the fence, or Tony would come over to our place to sit outside and smoke cigarettes and shoot bull, but that was the extent of our interchange with the Balbonis. I would occasionally go over there with Dad, listening to the low discussion of the performances of the Yankees, Red Sox, or Dodgers, fishing on Plateau, or national politics, only half listening, or wandering around in the Balbonis back yard until I got too bored, hopped the fence and went back to my room. Discussion of politics came to a complete halt with the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Dad was a staunch Republican and instinctively backed Richard Nixon. Kennedy, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic, brought the subject into the realms of both politics and religion. It was loaded enough to possibly ignite the feud we were all afraid of. Politics was relatively safe, but recalling my dad’s red-faced explosion when Mom took me on her venture into Catholicism, religion was a subject they both wisely stayed away from.

Part 2: The Seeker

When it came to religion, Mom, however, was very different from Dad. Even though she had brought me to a church pastored by a Nazarene minister whose theology lay within the scope of the Apostle’s Creed, she was always a ‘seeker’ and never seemed to be a ‘finder’. In her church wanderings, she had always gone to solid Protestant churches (except for her one excursion to the Arapahoe City Roman Catholic Church). Thinking about it now, it was God’s leading that she took me to churches espousing an Apostolic tradition, because her subsequent wanderings showed that she seemed to know nothing about it. Every Sunday we went out the door to church, leaving my father reading the newspaper in his recliner, working on Polywog Two, or working on some house improvement or another, studiously ignoring our venture. Harry Hardover who was as usual surrounded by his bevy of adoring irers, a kid named Percy with slicked back black hair, my age, and always dressed in a suit and tie, and another one, Ron, a big, hulking guy who liked to show other kids his switchblade knife thus keeping us in a state of low level terror, always seemed to be there. The Sunday school lessons were standard, usually involving flannel graphs which I found to be tedious and boring. I frankly didn’t like the robes the characters were wearing, and I figured if they did wear those robes they must have been awfully hot, sweaty and cumbersome. You sure couldn’t run around in one of those things. But, I suppose they did show what Bible people looked like and dressed like. But to put it in the vernacular that took hold in the fifties, in the age of television, flannelgraph’s weren’t too “cool”. I sat next to my mother for the sermons. We sat pretty much by ourselves in the pew, and didn’t get to know anybody, either because they didn’t want to get to know us or we didn’t want to get to know them. Maybe, I should say, that nobody made any effort to get to know anybody, an ongoing problem that

eventually always led to my mother taking offense and leaving. However, we stayed in that church for at least a year, and didn’t leave until I was thirteen going on fourteen. That, as I look back on it, was a mistake. At a critical time in my life, my mother chose to be offended and leave church. For her, it was just another “hop” from one church to another. For me it was departing from the path of Light and the beginning of a descent into darkness. But that day had not yet come, and summer was progressing onward to Fall and school…not only to a new school, but to Junior High, which proved to be an entirely different animal.

Part 3: The Massive Plateau

My dad finished Polywog Two, and we started lake fishing on the Massive Plateau. Disgusted with Sam who, he said, didn’t help with any of the camp chores, he decided to dump him as a fishing partner. “As soon as we get there,” he ‘groused’, “he grabs his rod and reel, wades out in the water and starts fishing. I have to do all the work…set up the camp and get dinner. Clean up, too.” I was just as glad. The odor of vomit accompanied by the moaning and groaning as we travelled to our campsite was something anybody could do without. Honest Abe was still on the ‘good’ list, however, and we took him a couple more times, although he was perpetually drunk from the time we left until the time we returned him to his ‘domicile’ (another of my dad’s expressions). After at least one more onishment from my father to “shut up or I’ll take an oar to you”, Honest Abe also disappeared. The prospect of being beaten with an oar possibly sobering him up enough to cause him to seek another fishing partner. So, it became just my father and me.

Our first trip to Big Trout Lake left an indelible impression on my memory. We hooked onto Polywog, loaded the International up with camping gear and food, and took the winding highway up to The Massive Plateau, driving by cattle ranches green with grass and Alfalfa, making the winding ascent to the top of the Mesa over the forested roads, and ing lakes on either side that sparkled like blue jewels in the rising sun. Big Trout Lake was a glorious blue surrounded by a dark forest and green meadows ablaze with yellow mountain flowers. We pitched our tent on the western side and launched our boat from the only boat ramp on the lake, on the eastern side. It wasn’t a big lake. It had been formed by building a dam across, well, a creek named “Big Trout Creek” (hence the name). The fact, however (unknown to my dad), was that we didn’t go to Big Trout Lake. We went to the fourth planet in the star system Alpha Centauri which I had been reading about in Andre Norton’s “The Stars Are Ours” and “Star Born”. Trout Lake, which may have looked like a lake to you, was actually the planet, and the trip I described past the ranches and up the side of the mountain was actually the intervening four light year journey which we had made by being frozen in cryogenic sleep until we could be reawakened on the new planet. (What I saw on the way was no doubt an induced dream). We set up our colony near a lake on the planet, and launched our small shuttlecraft to explore, incidentally attaching a Trout lure known as a “flatfish” to our swivels on the end of our fishing lines, which would attract whatever native, indigenous aliens that lived there. The flatfish were deadly for lake trout, and I soon found I could lounge back in the front seat of Polywog, doze off and catch fish in my sleep. Reading a good book always helped too…the more exciting, the better. A chapter or two into “Star Born” would put me near my limit, which was ten. Once Polywog was underway and we both had our lines in the water, my dad would begin with a prayer to “The Great Fish Spirit”, a simple prayer that went as follows:

“O Great Fish Spirit, send us a fish.” This would be followed by a call for the fish to come to the hook. This call was performed by placing one’s mouth near the line and saying, “Here fishy, fishy, fishy.” It usually worked irably, because no matter what time of the day we found ourselves on the lake, we were soon fighting fish exuberant to get off our hooks and return to their depths. More often than not, however, they found their way to our stringer and to my dad’s “Tin” foil, sizzling in the evening campfire. My dad and I had an easy camaraderie in those days. I was still his “boy”, and he was my dad…and probably my best friend. It wasn’t until later that the seeds of the weeds planted in me at an early age started to grow, and the total dependence on him that he had inadvertently fostered would soon prove to “bite me in the behind”. This would result in the recognition that my only hope to live was to seek salvation from the God he himself had, to some extent, departed from.

Junior High Chapter 75

Part 1: T-17

S ummer was ing, and in a place where you get four seasons you knew when it had reached its peak and was on the downhill side, sliding into Fall. Maybe it was the slight chill you felt in the morning. The sun rising over The Massive Plateau didn’t have quite the promise of the blast of heat to come, and the leaves on the poplars Dad had planted had a hint of gold in the green. Dew was clinging to the blades of newly risen grass in the front yard, which would soon become frost as time progressed. More importantly, however, a queasily excited feeling had been growing in the pit of my stomach – part uneasy fear, part excited expectation of going to a new school in a new town. Had I known how radically different the school was going to be, I think that feeling would have leaned more toward fear than excitement. The last Patton Drive battle was fought, the last fishing trip had been taken, the last fish had been caught, the fence had been painted (with creosote), the weeds whipped down and grass that had been planted in their place. These had sprung to life, painting the yard in green. The last phosphate had been sipped at the Dumball Drug store and the last DC Superman comic had been purchased with money earned in the blazing sun. Boys who didn’t want to it how excited they were bicycled past Deidre Laundry’s house for the last time. And I found myself at the intersection of Patton and B and 3/8 roads waiting for school bus “T-17” which would take me the ten miles or so into town for the first

day at Plateau Junior High. I made up a song about it, based on Frankie Ford’s Seventeen: “T-Seventeen “Hot Rod Queen “Coolest Bus You’ve Ever Seen “Young enough to swing that door “Rust enough right through the floor…” Not very good but I was always making things up to make myself snicker. Even though Snitz was a year older than the rest of us; he was still in the same grade, mainly the seventh. It probably had something to do with where he’d been raised before he came here. So the lot of us, Snitz, Plodd, Grower and a kid name Nick Lice all got on the bus and rode into town together. (Ok, maybe his name wasn’t really “Lice” but that was what we called him because he was always scratching something). The old girl was making its guttural bus noises consisting of a roaring and sometimes coughing engine, tires humming against the pavement, and the pneumatic door swishing open whenever it stopped to take on more kids. Not to mention the strong odor of diesel exhaust that rushed in with each stop, which, together with the jerkiness that accompanied starting and stopping, threatened the stability of even the toughest of stomachs.

Part 2: First Encounter

It let us off in front of Plateau Junior High where you knew that summer was over and a thing of the past. Once again, the building belonged to the State Penal System of Schools, the buildings of which have previously been described: dingy brick, opaque windows, stone steps and a hard concrete “playground”,

minus the barbed wire and guard towers one would expect in such a place. Again, I am compelled to mention the cheerful interiors consisting of dark wooden floors, Army green ceilings, tan lockers and pea green walls. We landed on the concrete battlefield early, at least 15 minutes before classes began, and bunched up in the bus aisle, each of us trying to be the first to exit before the exhaust had its way on our viscera. We ran up the front steps to the hallway where we hung out, waiting for the first class to open. Here I had my first encounter with a fellow student of Latino descent. “What do you think you’re doing here?” Keith Rodriguez said, crowding me back against a locker tastefully designed by a state school interior designers in close association with the architect. “Waiting for class to start,” I said. “Well, you’re in my way.” “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah.” Now my dad had spent some time teaching me the rudiments of fighting. “Lead with your left. And keep your right hand back. Turn sideways so they can’t hit you in the gut.” He had positioned my body, showing me how and where to hold my fists. “No, don’t put your thumbs inside your fists. The other guy will grab your clenched fist and squash your thumb inside it. Your left arm defends you against his swings and your right is ready to hit him. Now hold your right hand back and when you see an opening let him have it. “Don’t hold anything back: you bite, kick, gouge, do anything you have to do to win. Don’t show him any quarter, he’s not going to show you any.” It was in somewhat of a conflict with my mother’s onition “that a Christian turns the other cheek”, but it was good training. The problem was that all my

“fights” had been with Len Trefzger, and I had never actually landed a blow. The “mock” fights that I had were, for the most part, “movie” fights where your fist came short of the other guy’s jaw and never actually hit it. And last, but not least, came the issue of self-confidence. By now, my dad had gone a long way in destroying it. However, here I was confronting Keith Rodriguez who was destined to become a Lettered Wrestler when he reached High School, but at the time was the first kid I encountered on the first day of Junior High, even before the first class bell rang. I stood there, my left fist extending out and my right in reserve, turning my body away from him and looking him straight in the eye. And I was silent, saying nothing. Maybe it was the steely look in my eye or the manly set of my jaw that got to him, but more likely it was just my silence. I never took my eyes off him. He turned, still keeping his eye on me, and walked away. The bell rang, and I found myself in my first period class…

Part 3: A Good Whack.

“All right class,” the paunchy male teacher said as we each took a seat and stored our notebooks inside the prop open desks. “This is Science, and my name is…” He chalked it out on the black board. “Mr. Barley.” Mr. Barley was my first male teacher. He was a gray haired man probably in his fifties or so – a kid like me had no way of judging, and didn’t have enough life experience to recognize the ample flecks of white on his dark blue suit as dandruff. It looked like snow on dark ice.

Neither did I notice that for his age he was in good shape; his belly wasn’t all that big, only half the size of a watermelon, he was not yet half bald, and his shoulders were only moderately stooped. He appeared to still have some enthusiasm for what he was doing; the lines in his face not all that deep, or the bags under his hazel eyes not all that dark, making him look only somewhat tired and burned out. I would soon find this to be unusual for a Junior High teacher. But then again, he taught seventh grade, not eighth, and there was almost a world of difference. The main thing was that he made Science interesting. My main recollection was that he set up a sort of “Chemistry spelling bee” which, instead of spelling out words, caused us to memorize the elements of the Periodic Table and their properties. He divided the class up into two teams, and we spent days “spelling” each other down. A kid was the and would point to a kid on one team and shout out an element, such as Aluminum. The chosen kid then would have to recite the chemical and physical properties of aluminum, and if he missed anything would sit down, losing a point for his team. The team that was able to get the most elements perfectly won. Although he held our interest, for the most part, there were always kids who just had to rebel against authority. He used a paddle to keep kids…and the rest of us… in line. He kept it low key, though. I had no idea what the kid did to warrant a session with Mr. Barley’s paddle. Instrument of discipline in hand, Barley, looked down at him and the kid got slowly to his feet. From where I sat I could see that he had taken what appeared to be a defiant stance. They stared at each other for about fifteen seconds, and the kid bent over. Mr. Barley said something in a low tone and… WHACK! The sound seemed to echo off the walls.

There was only one whack, and the kid sat back down again. Mr. Barley resumed his position behind the lab bench that stretched across front of the class. “All right, class, let’s move on. Can anybody tell me about Aluminum? What is it used for?” The paddling session had a good effect, as far as I know. Mr. Barley never had any problems with that kid again. Or the rest of us, either.

Part 4: The Great Explosion

Mrs. Harriman, our portly Social Studies teacher who looked like she regularly ate a lot of donuts for breakfast…referred to the girls who sat around me as “Dan’s harem”. Girls sat to the right of me, to the left, and behind and it’s not surprising that I have absolutely no recollection of anything Mrs. Harriman taught about Social Studies. To make things worse, or maybe better, depending on your point of view, I sat directly behind Deidre Laundry, the Patton neighborhood siren. In a state of hyper excitement…I’d been working up to it throughout the hour…I stared at her creamy white neck, graced by a necklace made of delicate pearls, and I had myself more-or-less under control when the ultimate happened that pushed me over the edge. She turned around and gazed at me with jade green eyes under black lashes that curled up to heaven. Her red lips parted in a breathless Marilyn Monroe expression that, along with the sharp contrast of her creamy white skin with her luxurious black hair, rendered me brain dead and helplessly frozen to my seat. Her perfume did the final trick. It overwhelmed me with an odor that was the closest thing to heaven I had ever experienced. And, I ask you, what could I do?

I did what any red blooded seventh grade socially inept, awkward adolescent sprouting unsightly pimples would do. There was only one thing that would impress an unattainable goddess such as Deidre Laundry. I grabbed her necklace and pulled it off her neck. The string of delicate pearls exploded. Individual white spheres blew up in my face, bouncing all over the room. There followed a shout like baying hounds spotting a rabbit. Kids jumped out of their seats and dove for the pearls; pushing and shoving each other aside to grab as many possible. The raucous screech of the End-Of-Second-Period Bell drowned out the shrieks of the teacher who was waving her arms in a vain attempt to get the class back in order. Her strident cries were drowned out by the general roar of the class as the students, having thrown themselves on their hands and knees, scrabbled for the pearls, pushing each other aside and struggling like wrestlers trying to win a Saturday night tournament. Third hour was now in session, and more kids came trooping in, gaping at what was going on in the classroom as they threw their books on the desks already occupied by the second period which, by now, had managed to scoop up most of the pearls. “What’s going on here?” I heard a deep male voice shout. The third period teacher, towering over Mrs. Harriman, was yelling down at her while she, ramrod straight and looking defiant, shouted back, “They are trying to grab pearls.” Personally, I left quietly. After the initial shock of the pearl explosion I decided to leave well enough alone. Oddly, Deidre quit wearing pearl necklaces after that, and she certainly didn’t turn around to bat her eyelashes at me. I never found out if she got all her pearls back again, and as far as I know, some of them may still be rolling around in that classroom… Round little memories of a juvenile attempt at courtship gone horribly wrong.

The Hardest Kick Chapter 76

S eventh grade ed uneventfully. Kids had not yet turned into fearful teenage monsters (though the metamorphosis from happy more-or-less innocent children into raging terrors was almost complete). We were all still docile enough to create no memories whatsoever. I turned thirteen in September, and my dad decided it was time to teach me to shoot his shotgun. He took me target practicing at an informal range near the Plateau dump, you know, one of those places where shooters throw out beer bottles and cans which, once shot up, litter the landscape with glass and twisted metal. It was located off the winding Highway 340 that led to the National Cathedral. It was rather close to a residential area, but out of sight of any houses, and provided with a backstop of low bluffs that prevented stray bullets from blowing out people’s windows. Dad shot a 16 gauge Remington which had the heaviest kick of all the shotguns. It was the middle of November and cold, though no snow had fallen yet. It actually didn’t snow a lot in Plateau Valley, surrounded as it was by mesas and bluffs on three sides. It was protected from the major storms that dropped the rest of the state into an inhospitable deep freeze. We only rarely had a white Christmas, and some years it would even rain on Christmas Day. Today it was just overcast. The bluffs were about 200 yards away across a dry riverbed and flat prairie. They looked as grey and sullen as the cloud covered sky overhead. My dad pulled his shotgun out of its case and fed a shell into the chamber. “Now the first thing you need to know about a gun is that you never, ever point it

at anybody.” He pushed the forearm forward which pulled the ejector port closed with the characteristic metallic rasp of a shotgun. “The second thing is that if the ejector port is closed, like it is right now, you always assume the gun is loaded.” He brought the butt of the stock up to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. “The third thing to know is that if you have a shell in the chamber and pull the trigger, you can’t call it back.” “Call it back?” He looked down at me with serious hazel eyes. “No. The bullet is gone, and it is headed for what you aimed it at. If you aimed it at the wrong thing, the bullet will hit it. You can’t change your mind and call the bullet back…which means that if you aimed it at a living thing, you will probably kill it.” He aimed it at the other side of the wash and pulled the trigger. The deafening blast left my ears ringing and I was engulfed in the acrid smell of gun smoke. A bottle exploded that had been leaning against the bank of the wash. The rasp of the shotgun sounded and a red shell flew past me and hit the dirt about a foot away. “Look at me,” he said, leaning down and putting his face at my level. I did so. “Never, ever, point a gun at a human being. It is not a toy. Do not play with it. You’ve been playing games with toy pistols most of your life. This is not a toy. It will kill and the person it kills will never get up again and will never come back,” he said the last words slowly with undeniable emphasis. “Understand?” I nodded. He handed it to me. It was cold, heavy and metal hard. “Keep the barrel pointed at the ground or up in the air at all times until you are ready to shoot. Watch where you are pointing that barrel at all times.” I held it in both hands. It was almost as long as I was tall.

He handed me a red shotgun shell. “Now turn it over so you can see the open action and feed the shell into it.” He watched as I fumbled, finally taking the gun out my hands and doing it himself, pulling the action closed. He handed it back to me. “Now. Lift it to your shoulder; make sure the butt is tight against it.” My left hand ing the gun’s forearm, I pulled the butt as tight against my shoulder as I could. “Aim out there somewhere and pull the trigger.” The heavy gun weaving; it was too heavy for me to hold it up and steady. I held it as long as I could and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “What?” Dad grunted something that sounded vaguely like a chuckle. “The safety is on. Always put the safety on before you hand a gun to somebody else. See that button on the left side of the trigger?” The gun growing heavier by the minute, I fumbled and found it. “Push it.” A red dot appeared. “Okay, the safety is off; you are ready to shoot.” I pulled the gun to my shoulder again. This time it was weaving even more unsteadily because of my fatigue and I didn’t have the strength to hold it steady. “Pull the trigger.” I gritted my teeth, the previous blast still ringing ears… BLAAAMMM!!! …and pulled it. I was blown backward as the gun bucked against my shoulder. Happily, it didn’t knock me down. I stood there dazed, breathing the distinctive odor of gun smoke, now stronger. Unhappily, the kick left an immediate black and blue bruise on my shoulder the size of the gun butt. I had learned my first lesson the hard way; the 16-gauge had the heaviest kick of

all the shotgun gauges. Later in life I shot a ten gauge, which still didn’t seem to kick anywhere nearly as hard as Dad’s gun did that cold November afternoon.

End of the World at the City Dump Chapter 77

Part 1: Books on the Pavement

O ff to the right of the highway that wound between the dark, low bluffs that were a prelude to the spectacular scenery of the National Cathedral lay the uncharted realm of the City Dump, which held treasures beyond the ken of mortal man. Rats chased by wild cats ran between piles of treasures that might possibly hide… Well, who knew? Who knew until you went there and explored it? By now, Dad had started to enclose the carport. He’d framed the walls with “two by four” studs and nailed exterior plywood across them. Here, at the dump, he was getting rid of left over building material, which he had loaded onto the bed of the ’49 International. He pulled off the highway and onto the dirt road that climbed up a hill, bouncing over the rutted tracks. Cresting it, we were confronted by piles of cast off refuse. I climbed out of the cab and looked around at the old sinks, toilets, and bags of clothes, toys and cardboard boxes containing who knew what? “Wait!” I shouted, “Stop!” Dad pulled to a stop. Somebody had set a couple of books out on the filthy pavement in front of one of the piles of refuse. I jumped out and ran to the books, which had almost disappeared under his wheels. One of them was entitled When Worlds Collide, and the other was At the Earth’s Core.

Two Science Fiction novels. I let out a low whistle. Who would throw out books like these, I wondered? Clearly, they had had to get rid of them, but hoped and prayed if they carefully set them out on the ground somebody, like me, would rescue them. Their prayers, if they had indeed prayed any, had been answered. The trash unloaded, the return home negotiated and the truck safely tucked away back in our driveway, I jumped into my favorite place on the couch where I stretched out, leaning back against one of the armrests, and picked up When Worlds Collide by Baumer and Wylie. And I was totally unprepared to have my safe and secure view of the world completely upended.

Part 2: The End of the World

The end of the world was upon us. Two planets had been seen in astronomical telescopes entering the solar system. Astronomers calculated that they were on a direct collision course with Earth. Both of the planets rotated about each other and were approximately the size of Earth. They were too big to be diverted from their course or blown up. There was nothing that peoples of Earth could do: we were doomed. Ignoring the moderately strong odor of garbage that permeated its pages, I became horribly fascinated by the doomsday story – the first I had ever encountered. Desperately wanting to stop reading, but unable to put it down, I was not only being inexorably carried to my own death, but that of all humanity. There would be no one and nothing left. The Earth…the Earth! ...would be destroyed along with all civilization. Any memory of Man would be gone. There would be no human left and therefore no one left to …nothing left but a cold, mechanistic, unfeeling universe!

Never had I felt so alone. Page after page my fearful anxiety rose as giant earthquakes collapsed cities, and tidal waves inundated the coast. New York itself was destroyed and millions died. People ran for their lives but had nowhere to go. But there was hope, after all. The other planet, the one that was not going to collide with the Earth, had an Earthlike atmosphere that must have been frozen for the eons it had travelled through space, but had warmed up as it approached the sun. The Human Race could survive if a spaceship could be built in time to cross the narrowing gap between it and the Earth. As the planets grew in astronomer’s scopes, they soon became visible with the naked eye to everyone who was brave enough to look. The world’s governments began a frantic project to construct a “Noah’s Ark” vessel that would carry humans, animals and plant life to the second of the two planets. Then the riots began as people fought to be the ones to be rescued, but to no avail, everyone but a small, select few was doomed. The faint odor of rotting garbage now completely undetectable, I sat transfixed as some of the protagonists were selected, shot off into space and other were left behind to witness the catastrophe. After a perilous journey the space ship reached the second planet and landed, and the colonists on the new world disembarked in time to view the mighty explosion as Earth and the companion planet collided. My worldview was completely shaken. I now no longer could view my safe comfort zone as safe and comforting. Little did I know that When Worlds Collide was just the beginning, and that, while there were serious physical perils existing in the universe that could spell the end of all things, there were also spiritual perils as well… For which there was no protection.

Part 3: The Odor Draws Me On

At The Earth’s Core was also revolutionary, but less so. A novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, an author whom I had already been reading, postulated an idea (actually prevalent in Burroughs’ lifetime) that the Earth was hollow. Burroughs created an entire world on the inner side of this hollow sphere, with the molten core serving as a sun. The plot was the usual Burroughs “cliff-hanger” romance: the helpless girl is lost or kidnapped by some bad dude that she despises but who wants to marry her; the hero pursues her and encounters many perils, overcoming strange monsters and even stranger, dangerous peoples; fights and defeats the bad dude and carries the girl back to her home turf where he marries her, only to have her kidnapped or lost again for the next installment book in the series. Despite the garbage odor that also pervaded this book, my sense of security rooted in the status quo of the ‘way things were’ had been overturned by this book as well. My comfort zone had been shaken even further. The world could end. Humanity could be destroyed, leaving nothing behind but a cold, unfeeling universe. And, what’s more, the Earth might actually be hollow. There were things, possibly monsters, down there of which no one was aware. And as if I weren’t shaken up by this revelation from the city dump, I was to be delivered the coup de grace by, of all people, Ed Sullivan.

Part 4: The Really Big Shew

Ed Sullivan, who by now has all but been forgotten, hosted a tremendously popular variety show on television. Ed was a homely man, balding like most his age and kind of hunched over, not as much as, say, the hunch-back of Notre Dame fame, but enough to give him a kind of a gnome-like appearance. He presented what he called a “really big show”, ‘show’ being pronounced ‘shew’, which featured the latest talent. Ed brought Elvis Presley to the public, complete with swiveling hips sparking conservative Christian outrage and

resulting in later performances viewed by the cameras only from the waste up. Elvis soon made the pronouncement that we were nothing but hound dogs, ‘crocking all the time’. This came with the assertion that we were not his friends because we had never killed rabbits and an onition never to step on his blue suede shoes. (Having owned several dogs by this time, I had the feeling that, if we were indeed hound dogs, we might do more than just step on them. As in chew on them, or worse.) Be that as it may, Ed also brought us the Beatles who, more innocuously, just wanted to “hold our hands”. I think there may have been some suspicious conservatives who thought that hands were not the only thing they wanted to hold, but I digress. It seemed only a few weeks after I endured the collision of two worlds and monsters from within a hollow Earth that Ed featured an animation meant as a piece of anti-Atomic Bomb propaganda. It was a prophecy about the End of the World. Following an animation of a flash of light and an expanding mushroom cloud, it switched to a melting human face with eyes burning out of their sockets; gradually turning it into a skull Then came a depiction of a moth circling a flame accompanied by the narrator’s voice, “And I saw a moth circling closer and closer to a flame until it was consumed by it.” I couldn’t get the melting face out of my mind. The animation had driven home the awareness of the horror of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was being tested by the US and reported almost every day by the Daily Sentinel. Now I had something more realistic to fear than two planets coming out of nowhere to collide with the Earth. Now we had missiles aimed at us from that vague and not fully realized Commie Menace to the East of whom I knew next to nothing only that they were intrinsically evil and greatly to be feared. The improbability of “getting it” from two unknown planets suddenly appearing outside the solar system had been replaced by the much higher probability of getting it from the Bomb. The find at the city dump woke me from my secure dream-like state to the insecure realization that all things indeed could – and probably would - come to

an end.

The Fight in The Park Chapter 78

Part 1: Not The Problem

D id I say that nothing happened in the seventh grade worthy of note because everybody was so well adjusted and had not entered the teen age “monster” years? Hmmmm, well I didn’t lie, I just forgot. The whole thing happened because I missed the bus and in my naivety thought I could just simply and straightforwardly walk to my dad’s place of work and he would give me a ride home. He worked for the Belabored Lumber Company, doing what I was never told, although I surmise he was some kind of ant at the time. It lay on the other side of town from the Junior High, and was at least a five to six mile walk. However, bolstered by my experience walking home in a heavy-duty snow storm from Arapahoe City at the age of five, I figured this couldn’t be any worse. I was wrong. Carrying my books, I walked through the sedate neighborhoods surrounding Plateau Junior High into “downtown” Plateau City, with its straight main street separating false front stores on either side. It was a cold November day, and the leaves had fallen off the deciduous trees in Whiting Park. I left Lincoln Avenue and walked straight through the park, which was inhabited by the lion’s share of the “Homeless” in the community, which we in the last half of the politically incorrect Fifties insensitively called “Bums”.

However, those denizens were not the problem, not at my age. “Hey, kid, you want to fight?” The voice came from across the street as I exited the park. It came from a tall kid accompanied by a shorter one. I felt my blood freeze. The word “fight” caused me to become almost completely paralyzed, having been on the wrong end of it too many times during my early, formative years. I tried to speak, but nothing would come out of my mouth. The kid, a tousle headed blond, crossed the street diagonally toward me, the shorter kid in tow. They walked up to me, and I stood transfixed, virtually unable to move. He was an ugly kid with a thin, craggy face, narrow set mean looking eyes and a slash of a mouth looking like a wound across the lower half of his face. The other kid was shorter and plumper, a broad smile stretched across his squashed face. I just stared at the bigger kid, the challenger. “Better take off your coat,” he said. “That thing looks too tight.” I suppose I should have been grateful that he was thinking of my welfare, however the first thought that came into my mind was that the coat would protect me from his punches. “N…nnn…no,” I stammered. “I think I’ll leave it on.” I dropped my books about three feet away, hoping they’d leave them alone. He swung on me, his fist colliding with my head in a jarring blow. I swung back but I don’t know if I ever connected or not, I was so absolutely conditioned to let my swings come just short of my opponent’s face. I took several blows, and as usual, started bawling. That ended the fight and he stood glaring at me. “All right, you think you can come into this neighborhood like some hoity-toity hotshot and just waltz around.

Well you can’t. You stay out of here. His toady laughed, and together they walked off. I picked up my books and kept walking in the direction of the Lumber Company, through the neighborhood I was supposed to stay out of, but then I saw Toady, coming my way and bringing a whole bunch of other tough looking kids with him. He was pointing at me. “There he is,” shouted Toady. I broke into a run, crossed the street and kept running until I was through the Lumber Company’s gates. “What happened to you?” my dad said when he saw my bruised, tear streaked face. “I got into a fight.” “Doesn’t look like you did too well. Did you lead with your left and hit with your right, like I showed you?

Part 2: Not My Finest Hour

Now came a moment that wasn’t exactly my “finest hour”. I decided to concoct a lie in order to cover up my cowardly failure. “One kid held me while the other one beat me up.” My dad’s face paled and he muttered something under his breath. “Let’s go find them,” he said. We left the office and I climbed into the pickup truck. “What a bunch of cowards,” my dad said. “Wait ‘till I get my hands on them. I’ll fix them. Where’d the fight happen?” I took him to Whiting Park. “It was on that corner,” I said.

“Okay.” We started driving down street after street. By now the lie was jelling into reality in my brain which had already concocted an “alternate reality” in which the smaller kid had held my arms while the bigger kid had worked me over. That would have been an unlikely event, but it was growing and solidifying to the point I was actually believing it. Street after street…nothing…until I saw him, standing on a curb with a bunch of other kids, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Our eyes met, and his face suddenly paled. His mouth dropped open and the cigarette fell out. He disappeared faster than my allowance in a comic book store. “There he is…” I pointed, but it was too late. “Where?” my dad asked, taking his eyes momentarily off the street. “He was right there.” We intensified our search, hope welling in my breast for some sort of retribution for my having been beaten up and forced into this act of lying cowardice. We didn’t find him, and my dad took us home. After that, the story would resurface occasionally as my dad recounted to his friends how I had walked through Whiting Park and got beaten up by a couple of thugs, one who held me while the other worked me over. Yes, there may be no greater skill than converting cowardice into martyrdom, even if you have to lie to do it, but to this day I wish I’d taken off my coat, cut loose, and really fought that kid. I think the whole thing would have turned out… A whole lot better.

The Dark Side Arises Chapter 79

Part 1: On the Move Again

S omewhere toward the end of my seventh grade year my mom left the Caramba Community Church. This was her ‘modus operandi’, or a pattern she repeated over and over again. She would start going to a church, it, attend for a while, become offended, leave, and find another one. Which might have been all right this time around, except I was heading into my mid-teens. Seventh grade was almost over and as I said, relatively uneventful, but I was progressing into things that weren’t all that good, or all that wholesome. I had been reading the Tarzan series about a naked ape man swinging through the jungle, saving Jane and ‘boy’, fighting bad guys who were out to destroy the African jungle and kill or enslave everything in, and having encounters with Princess La who was Queen of a lost tribe of Amazons. As I mentioned before, one of his Martian books involved a strange relationship between the human head and the body, where the heads ruled the bodies like slaves. On Venus, Carson Napier was continually lost in the jungles trying to find his beloved Duare, a princess who could not seem to keep from being kidnapped. On the science fiction front, we had Ray Bradbury who wrote weird stuff with Shakespearian titles announcing something wicked coming your way. And then there was H.P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker.

Part 2: Four Books for One Dollar

As I mentioned before, Snitz was a subscriber to the Science Fiction Book Club and was usually in trouble with it, but he got a free book if he influenced a friend to become a member. “You can get four books for a dollar,” he said persuasively as he handed me the brochure he got in the mail. “Wow,” I said, “how can they afford to do this?” He shrugged and made that little screeching noise. Snitz was good at shrugging and screeching. “They’re cheaply made. Good for one reading but probably will fall apart on you after sitting on your shelf for a year.” I studied the brochure. There were a lot of fascinating books here by A E Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Mack Reynolds… “You only have to take four more books in the next year and they’re only $2.50 each for the normal ones.” “O.K. what do I do?” “Check off the ones you want and I’ll send it in.” I checked off four, one of which was the Omnibus of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin. Eagerly I awaited it and had almost given up hope when a large package landed on my doorstep about three weeks later. Even more eagerly I tore the top off and unpacked the books, each made of crisp, cheap, stock paper with non-glossy covers and smelling like new books made from inexpensive glue. I tore open the envelope that was located inside, on top of the books. It contained a brochure entitled Things To Come, and displayed the next two selections which the Club hoped you would forget about and not return the refusal notice. Then they could send them to you “automatically” and you would say to

yourself when you got the more-or-less unwanted package in the mail which was hard to return because you had to destroy the box they came in to find out what was inside. Then you would say to yourself, “Oh well, I might as well keep them since I have no tape to fix the package and send them back.” However, I looked at the brochure, decided I didn’t want them, handed the refusal notice and the bill to my mother who was capable of paying the one dollar by check, and started looking the books over. Well, they may have been cheap, but they were still cool, and the big bruiser of a book which I had signed up for was right on top: The Omnibus of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin. I had no idea what an “Omnibus” was, but the book was big, and had at least fifteen or twenty science fiction stories in it that had been published in the late 40’s extending through the 50’s.

Part 3: Color from Space

That night, the packaging thrown away, the notice of rejected selections sent off in the mail, I stretched out on the living room couch and started to read the first story, The Colour out of Space by H P Lovecraft. “West of Arkham, the hills rise wild…” In the hills was a farm of ordinary country folk. The protagonist was a kid who lived and worked on the farm. Everything was going great until a meteor flashed down out of the sky and struck the farm. Out of the crater came a shimmering something made of colors, which went into the well. Things went from bad to worse after that as the whole farm was poisoned, including his mother and father who turned into skeletal, dying creatures. Everything died except the kid, who for some reason was immune to the whole thing. The walls of the house began to glow and throb, and at the end the kid had

to run for his life as it was shaken from its foundations and “took off” into the sky, leaving behind a blasted, burned out section of ground where once his home had been.

Part 4: Scared Again

Once again I was seriously disturbed. What if something like that landed on our property? What if it possessed my dad and mom and they started wasting away and acting like lunatics? I started watching for symptoms. Were the walls starting to glow? How about the ground? Was it starting to throb? Wasn’t it starting to look a little bit greenish? My dad had dug a well which he pumped ditch water into for storage. Had the thing gotten into the well? Were we possessed? Were we taken over? Days went by, and I kept reading. Oh, no! And then there was…

Part 5: The Thing in the Attic!

The walls still weren’t glowing, the ground wasn’t throbbing, and my parents had not wasted away into twisted skeletons when I started a story about a flop house which took in transients. The house was poorly ventilated, in fact it was expressly stated that the windows had been shut up and never opened probably since it had been built, and the proprietor kept the place warm and steamy by boiling cabbage and doing laundry. Upstairs was a collection of discarded rags that had been stashed there for who

knows how long, saturated with cleaning fluids, detergents, and oil. In that dark, warm, humid environment spontaneous generation had occurred, bringing the rags to life. They crawled out of the attic and started attacking and suffocating the transient population. Every morning people woke up to find another dead, suffocated body, but nobody knew what, or why it was happening. Police couldn’t solve the murders, and soon the house was closed with the living rags inside, which might have exited to parts unknown except that somebody set fire to the place and burned it down. I finished that story with a whole new feeling of dread. If a Thing from Outer Space didn’t fall into the well and poison the house and front lawn, perhaps an old oily rag could spontaneously come to life and crawl out of its dark hidey hole with blood lust on its oily mind, ready to suffocate us all one by one! Time past, I finished the book, still alive, neither suffocated nor morphed into a desiccated corpse-like creature. The Bomb, however was still hanging over our heads, and the vision of a moth circling a flame and eyes melting out of skulls was still indelibly etched in my memory and the subject of nightmares, long after Ed Sullivan stopped prattling about his “really big shew” and the schlock amateurs who entertained on it.

Part 6: Jelly on the Floor

But then one Sunday morning when I would have been in church if my mother hadn’t quit, I picked up the copy of October Country I’d found in Snitz’ closet (and hadn’t returned). The cover depicted ancient, creaking stick figures with long red beards blowing in the wind, hobbling past old multistory houses aided by twisted walking sticks. Strange symbols were etched into the walls of the gothic houses. It was the country where it was always October, and where you didn’t want to consult an Osteopathologist even if he came with very high recommendations

from living patients who lived in October Country. This was indelibly impressed on my mind by a story about somebody who consulted one who was a bone thief. In short, the Osteopathologist stole his skeleton and left him a formless puddle on the floor. His wife discovered him and couldn’t stop screaming. End of story. Which left me acutely aware of the fact that I had a skeleton, something I hadn’t considered before. The skeleton was inside of me, and… I had always been afraid of skeletons. Now I had a new thing to worry about. What if the Colour didn’t get me, or the Rag Thing, or the Bomb, but my own skeleton attacked me, or was stolen from my body by a doctor who had failed to take the Hippocratic Oath? Sunday morning just wasn’t what it used to be.

Part 7: The Black Wing

I don’t want to blame everything on my parents, I certainly had a choice in all this, but I’ve got to say that my dad did leave whatever Christian faith he was raised in, and had followed the Free Masons for a time, as had my mother with Eastern Star. Most Christian churches agree that the Free Masons, while an organization that does good deeds, fundamentally isn’t Christian. Could there be some kind of spirit connected with it that brooded over our family? And, if so, did that have anything to do with my parent’s association with them? My mother had recounted to me the prophecy she had received concerning our family before my sister and I were born: “There would be two older and two younger under a black wing.” Was the ‘black wing’ the spirit I was thinking of? Whatever. It seemed like the black wing was starting to descend, and I knew that we were either going to reach for the Light, or be consumed by Darkness.

There was nothing in-between.

The Dark Side Part 2 Chapter 80

Part 1: Riding with My Mom

M y mom was a very short woman, and I’ll always her looking up at me with kind of an expression of surprise and pleasure (when she was pleased) or with one eyebrow lifted and a wrinkled forehead when she wasn’t, however the operative past continuous verb in both cases was “looking up”. She was five foot two with eyes of blue, and I blamed her genetic influence that kept me from attaining a height one inch short of 6 foot, and a IQ that was six points short of 140. Maybe that was unfair, but I had to have somebody to blame. Anyway, she was almost too short to drive. When she sat behind the steering wheel in the Buick, she could just barely see the road over the dashboard while at the same time reaching the accelerator or brake with her foot, and she had a hard time looking around at the other traffic, peering as she was over the window ledges of the driver’s and enger’s doors. In any event, you didn’t get a real secure feeling when you were in the car with her. “What’s over on the right, Dan?” “Uh, a car, mom.” “How far away is it?”

“Um, well it’s close and getting closer.” I had no idea how to express how ‘far away’ something was. “Well, should I go or not?” At this point, the ongoing feeling of insecurity would blossom into a definite feeling of fear. Whether or not she should “go” had once again landed in my lap. “I think you should wait, Mom.” She waited and the light changed. “Ok, Mom, I think we should go.” “Really?” “Yes, Mom, really.” That took us to the next light, just turning red. We were going to have to wait for another full cycle before I, once again, would have to assess the situation as to whether we should “go” or not. This state of affairs did not lend a great desire to riding with my mom downtown on quests for Cherry Phosphates at the Dumball Drugstore. The alternative was riding by myself on the bus, which put me downtown wandering Main Street alone. And that brought me to my next shocking revelation.

Part 2: Perturbation Number Two

I’d seen several movies on my own, one of them being the Hitchcock thriller, Psycho, which Snitz had gotten to before me and said it’d generated a few “butterflies in his stomach” when Lila Crane crept down the basement stairs and discovered Norman’s dead mother in the basement. Well, I was ready for that one, and while it was scary it didn’t creep me out too

much at the time (later in life it would begin to). The Birds scared a lot of people as well, but by that time I had become accustomed to end-of-the-world scenarios, having read novels set in multitudinous dystopian futures, most of them after an Atomic Holocaust. But today, at the age of thirteen, I was out wandering main street by myself having ridden the downtown bus. I was mid-way through summer vacation on my way to the eighth grade, when I impulsively decided to walk into the Roundworm Canyon Theater for a movie double feature: The Thing That Wouldn’t Die coupled with Horror of Dracula. The Thing happened to be a bodiless head of a medieval knight which had the power to mesmerize people. You opened the box, the thing’s eyes opened and, bang! You were mesmerized. I think the head was directing people to go out and kill other people, or bring more in to be mesmerized, or both. Anyway, it was disturbing when it opened its eyes but more-or-less forgettable. As I mentioned before, bodiless heads had become ‘old hat’ by now. Horror of Dracula, however, takes you slowly into a castle set vaguely in some European country, probably , and leads you through a squealing iron gate the hinges of which are in great need of an application of oil, down a set of stairs into an underground chamber, up to a coffin with a name engraved on it. Dracula. Then, shockingly, blood is splashed on the coffin. You immediately come into the grip of dread as you accompany a foolish young man who visits the European noble who occupies this castle. Jonathan Harker is here to get Count Dracula to sign some papers that have to do with a real estate purchase in England. He is carried through the woods in a carriage drawn by four horses and set down at the castle gates in mid-afternoon, where he observes there are no birds singing anywhere in the environs. He crosses a brook and enters through the gates, glancing briefly at the steps descending into the underground chamber where we, the terrified viewers, know

something terrible dwells, because we have seen with our own eyes blood splashing across a coffin. He waits in the reception hall, and we hear his thoughts, discovering that, yes he has come to see Count Dracula for the transactions, but that this mission is only a cover. He is here to “end the reign of terror of Dracula and destroy the monster himself.” From here on, the movie descends into an abyss of illogic, but at the age of thirteen, one is too much in the grip of a paradigm shift to perceive this. Harker is sitting in the Hall sipping a glass of wine and eating a sumptuous dinner of roast quail left for him by his host, when a woman enters. While the presence of a full grown buxom woman immediately removed the movie from the realm of a thirteen-year-old boy going on fourteen in 1958, subsequent events completely blew it into the next time zone. She looks normal, and she is in extreme distress, begging Harker to help her escape the Count who is keeping her prisoner. Harker embraces her, and that point she opens her mouth and shows a very unnatural set of fangs, which she almost buries in Harker’s throat but is seized from behind and thrown across the room by the tall, sinister Count who has entered from the top of the stairway. She lies on the floor glaring up at him and hissing, but the Count shouts at her to “begone” and she disappears by the servant’s entrance. The Count apologizes and shows Harker his quarters. From then on things get worse, until Harker discovers the underground lair, which we knew about all along and were screaming at him “not to go in there”. He ignores our warning shouts from the audience, takes the steps into the crypt, just as the sun is going down. Dracula’s coffin is empty, and Harker, with his stakes and hammer, realizes he is too late. He looks up at the top of the staircase in time to see Dracula appear, on his way to bedding down. Dracula rushes down the stairs to devour Harker, and his form engulfs our view, converting everything into basic black. On goes the story, and the horror mounts. The Count goes to Britain, and bites

Lucy. Van Helsing figures out what is going on, but people and children are being bitten right and left as he goes on a mad search for the coffin, and discovers that, horror of horrors, Dracula has been hanging out in it in the basement of the Harker’s mansion all this time. Van Helsing chases him back to , encounters him in his castle, and, unable to stake him, has a fight in the library discovering that Dracula is far stronger than he is. Crafty doctor that he is, he realizes he can only defeat Dracula by forcing him into sunlight, so he yanks the curtains off the windows and, crossing two candle holders to form a makeshift cross, forces Dracula into a stream of sunlight where he immediately is reduced to ashes. Thoroughly traumatized, I took the bus home, having learned that vampires could come into your house, suck your blood, and horror of horrors, in fact turn you into a vampire. You would still look like a human being, everything you did before you became a vampire, but were, in fact, undead and had to stay out of sunlight… While this had the beneficial effect of taking my mind off the skeleton inside my body, off the atomic blast that was going to burn my eyes out, off the dead mother in the basement, the colour out of space, and the rag-thing in the upstairs closet, it was indeed far, far worse. Vampires could fly in through the window at any time and take you to an early, undead, grave.

Through the Lens and into the Darkroom Chapter 81

Part 1: The Walking Gadget Bag

M y first camera, as I mentioned before, was a Brownie: a little black box with a small, fixed-focus lens. Somewhere along the line it disappeared and was replaced by a Cirroflex Twin Lens Reflex. As the name implied, the twin lens reflex had two lenses, one for focusing and the second, located directly below it, for taking the picture. As you adjusted the focus knob, both lenses moved back and forth together casting the image onto the focal plane of the mirror, or the film itself, which was in the same plane. To see the image, you had to look down onto its reflection in the viewfinder. A magnifying lens popped out of the light shield canopy that shielded the viewfinder from external light. Peering through it you could magnify the image on the viewfinder. It was an awkward camera to use. It took 2 ¼ inch square pictures, which were bigger than the 35 millimeter that was becoming popular. I think the 35 millimeter supplanted it just because it was easier to use, but with the 2 ¼ square you had a bigger image and therefore a greater ratio of image size to grain. In other words, a sharper picture. I carried it in a case hung around my neck by a shoulder strap – a big, cumbersome box which banged against my belly as I walked. Along with the light meter hanging by a string around my neck in its case strapped to my belt and a “gadget bag” hanging from my neck which banged against my right hip I looked like a walking photo shop.

The light meter utilized a photovoltaic cell to sense the light and, utilizing a dial which you manipulated, it calculated the exposure. The gadget bag contained extra rolls of film, the flash and light bulbs. All of this equipment was supplied by my dad and I lugged it everywhere I went that might have picture taking possibilities…like fishing and hunting trips and vacations. He had been heavily into a level of photography which approached the professional and would have been one if he had decided to do it for a living. He had used a 4 x 5 graphic, a huge camera that utilized a bellows on a track to focus the lens onto a film plate. He had numerous shots of me at the age of two, some of which showed me splashing around in the bathtub or sitting unclothed on a portable potty. He’s also photographed mountainous scenes of aspen and the rushing Jim Bridger River. The pictures of me he carried around in his wallet, showing them to all his friends whenever an occasion arose. I don’t know if his friends were embarrassed or not. They would all smile and nod, recognizing how proud he was to have a son, and especially one who knew how to laugh joyously while splashing naked in a tub or sit uninhibitedly on the pot while having his picture taken for all the world to see.

Part 2: Color in 1957

Color photos were very tricky to develop and print, due to the fact that strict temperature control was required to get the colors right. Three developers were used to develop the negatives, one for each of the primary colors which, for photography, were magenta, cyan and yellow. Magenta and cyan are not primaries, of course, but each is a mixture of red and blue in different proportions. In any event because of the strict temperature control requirments, developing color transparencies was difficult, and printing color was almost impossible. If he wanted color prints, he would take the scene in black and white, followed by a color transparency of the same scene. Then he would print the black and white

photo and “tint” it by hand, using color tints or paints designed for the purpose. We had three color photos of scenes in Jim Bridger National Park that he had created this way. By the time I took up photography at the age of fourteen, color photography had advanced to the point that several color films were available, among which were Kodak’s Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Kodacolor, but I think the first color picture I took through the twin lens reflex was in Anscochrome, which was made by a short lived company, with the name of, you guessed it, Ansco. “Okay,” Dad said. “Here’s how you use a light meter.” Standing outside in the front yard, I was about to have my first experience with the little gadget that hanged around my neck.

Part 3: Irritation and the Weston Rating

“First, you have to set it to the ‘Weston’ rating of the film. You do that here.” “What’s a Weston rating, Dad?” “It’s how ‘fast’ the film is.” I nodded, recognizing that that was clear as the mud in our unseeded backyard, which by now was growing deeper as the late Fall rains fell. “How ‘fast’ it is,” I repeated stupidly. I’m sure my lack of comprehension found its way into my voice. My dad gave me a look of irritation. I was familiar with that look. It appeared when he was running out of patience. “Different films have different sensitivities to light. Some are ‘fast’ and some are ‘slow’. Ektachrome is moderately sensitive to light…it’s got a Weston rating of 32. So, you turn the dial until the pointer lines up with the number 32.” He turned it to 32. “Now, you have to decide how fast you want your shutter to be.”

“Fast,” I repeated at the second use of the word. He gave me another irritated look. “That means how long do you want your shutter to stay open. For action shots you probably want it to be around 1/100th of a second.” He turned another dial so the pointer sat on 1/100th. Now you hold the meter up and point it at the scene you want to take.” I watched as he held the meter by its edge, pointing the flat side at what he saw ahead of him. “Now you are ready to find out what aperture your lens should have.” “Aperture,” I said again. I could hear his inward groan. “Yes, how far open the lens should be. The lens has an iris which can be opened and closed.” “Iris.” He stared at me, his mouth forming a grimace. “Yes, an opening.” “Okay.” He squinted, his mouth still in a grim line as he concentrated on the meter. “The meter says that with this film, in this light, and that shutter speed we can set the lens opening to f8.” “F8.” I repeated. His look had advanced to the next stage: exasperation. “Yes, F8. The lens openings are designated by “F stops”. F8 is medium way between fully open and almost closed. “Ok, you take the camera.” He handed me the Cirroflex. “Now set the shutter speed at 1/100th and the lens aperture at F8.” I knew how to do that. “Okay.” “Now, you are ready to take your picture.” He handed me the light meter. “Okay, let me take a picture of you.”

“Oh. If you are going to do that, then you have to get the light reading off the back of your hand instead of from the overall scene. Hand me back the meter.” I took it back out of its case, unloosed the string from my neck and handed it to him. “Hold the meter so that it points at your hand.” “How come?” I said. “Because it’s the light reflecting off the face of whoever you are taking a picture of, not the light from the scene behind them that you want. If you don’t set the light meter to what’s reflecting off their face, then it will look too dark.” He held it about two inches away from his hand. “See? At 1/100th shutter speed the aperture should be F5.6.” I changed the lens opening, and took a picture of him, wishing he was as good at teaching me woodworking as he was at photography. When it came to that, forget it. He couldn’t do anything but ‘do it’ and whatever he did in that area was magic. As far as I was concerned.

Part 4: His Secret Area

He could take a block of wood and turn it into the most amazing sculptures… animals of all kinds, ducks, eagles, fish…you name it. He could take a pile of lumber and build a house from it, kitchen cabinet, bed frame, and probably finish off by building a rocket that would send it all to the Moon. But he couldn’t tell you how to do it, and I don’t think he wanted to. That was his domain…his special, secret area…the place where he “knew what he was doing” and could out-compete and out-shine all comers. And he didn’t want to create any competition. He didn’t mind teaching me photography, because that wasn’t where he ‘lived’, so to speak. We developed the film we took in the kitchen, loading the exposed

film into a small canister about the size of a large soup can. We made the kitchen as dark as we could, and made sure Mom didn’t come in to wash dishes or something while we were doing it. To load the film into the can, I had to first turn off all the lights in the house. The only light the film could “tolerate” was red light, but I didn’t have a red lightbulb to screw into the overhead socket, so I had to learn to strip the film out of the camera, pry off the top “lid” of the canister and load the film onto the spool, placing it back in the can and putting back on the lid. All in pitch darkness. Then I poured in “developer”, started the timer, and agitated the can for the number of minutes that particular film required at that temperature. Then you poured off the developer and added the hypo “stop” solution which, as the name implied, stopped the developing process, and finally the fixer, which washed off all the unexposed silver chloride and left behind the exposed image, indelibly fixed in silver. Once the film was in the can, you could throw the lights back on, and when you were ready to wash it, you pried the lid off and ran a stream of tap water over it for a couple of minutes. I hung my strips of black-and-white negatives from strings strung between the cabinets above the sink, attaching them with metal clips. This no doubt annoyed my mother, who had to wash dishes with strips of negatives hanging down in her face, but like the Saint she was she never complained about it. Dad eventually built a small darkroom in back of the garage, complete with red light, and trays for the developer, hypo, and fixer. No plumbing though. I had to bring the finished prints into the kitchen, fill up the sink with water, and throw them into it to rinse them off. But as things were before the darkroom, I had to use a printer, which mated the negative to photo paper and exposed them for a number of minutes. With printing going on, the kitchen counter was filled with three trays… developer, hypo, and fixer and the lights were off. I don’t know how my mother endured all of this. The kitchen must have stunk to high heaven with the smell of developer, which had a pungent and slightly sickening, non-food odor. Maybe it helped to cut down on the food bill, since the odor had a definite way of reducing our appetites.

On the other hand, maybe she did finally put her foot down in some argument that I wasn’t privy to, causing Dad to suddenly decide to build the darkroom in the back of the garage that once had been a carport. My enlarger was small. It could handle 2 ¼ negatives but not the big 4 x 5’s. I seem to my dad’s bigger enlarger which he used to print 8 x 10 portrait size photos from the bigger negatives he got off his graphic; he must have had a darkroom in the Canyon. Anyway I started printing pictures under red light, and could almost hear my mother’s sigh of relief as I was now effectively confined to a small garage room, and out of the kitchen. The enlarger had a lens that pointed downward. The negatives were placed in a holder above the lens, and photographic paper was clipped securely to a horizontal easel directly under it. With developer, hypo, and fixer all ready, you placed the negative in the holder and focused the image on the white easel, with no paper in it. Then you had to decide what you were going to do. If the negative was too “contrasty”, as my dad would call it, you would have to “dodge”. This meant that you would hold your hand over the areas which would get too much light in a given exposure so that you could “burn in” the parts that wouldn’t get enough. You had to wave your hand rapidly back and forth so you wouldn’t get a hard line between the light and dark areas. You hit the enlarger “on” switch and started counting: “thousand and one, thousand and two, etc. on up to the number of seconds you wanted to expose the print. You took it out and put it in the developer, watching the picture brought forth under the red light. It was another thing my dad taught me how to do. He actually could teach… almost anything…except woodworking. At least to me, anyway.

Woodshop and the Flopped Cake Chapter 82

Part 1: The Unfortunate Duck

I don’t know who taught my seventh grade woodshop, but fortunately it wasn’t Mr. Honncase. No, he was the other woodshop teacher, the infamous one I was lucky enough not to get. Mr. Honncase was one of those teachers who should have been redirected to another line of work, far away from seventh and eighth grade students, or maybe put in a mental institution. One of the rumors connected with him was that he had at one time run up behind a kid and hit him with a ball peen hammer. Eventually he would be fired (and get his picture in the newspaper) for putting a piece of dry ice down a girl’s back, but until that happened he was the junior high student’s biggest menace. But aside from the fearful rumors, the kids in my woodshop classroom were relatively safe from his insanity since we had some nondescript and forgettable teacher of woodshop, Mr. Blah. His claim to fame was his bad breath which probably killed more students than Mr. Honncase ever did. Rumor had it that it could even knock kids off their seats at the back of the class, though I never saw that. We were each given a stool and assigned a place at the bench, where we took on projects working in both metal and wood. Or tried to. “Okay, kids, we are now going to carve a duck out of a piece of balsa wood.”

I failed to notice the three kids that turned shades of green from the blast of nauseating breath that accompanied this announcement. I was too busy staring at the block of wood that had been set at my place. It was a cube three inches on a side and almost as light as a feather. Next to it was the “blueprint” of a swimming duck, its wings demurely drawn back against its sides. I looked from the block of wood to the outline of the duck and back to the block of wood. Nothing was ing on my brain. “The first thing you do,” Mr. Blah said amidst loud classroom coughing, “is to place the blueprint over the block and trace out the figure on it. Then you start whittling until you have a duck.” Yeah, I thought, just like that. I sat and stared at it. A duck. This block of wood was supposed to turn into a duck. Looking around I saw that other kids were already starting to whittle. I had to do something. I grabbed the paper and slapped it on top of the block of wood. There! It’s on top of it! I started to trace. The pencil didn’t go through the paper but still left a mark in the soft wood. I had the trace. I took it home and started whittling. I whittled. And whittled. And whittled. The duck at first was a large thing, with a bold beak, well-shaped head, and big, firm body. I’ll try to make the feathers stand out. I whittled The body got smaller. The head is too big. I whittled some more, now the head looked smaller but the beak was too big. I whittled on the beak.

Whittle. Whittle. The beak now looked round and pointed. Do ducks’ beaks look like that? They don’t. The head was too big, and beak was too pointed. Whittle. Whittle. Now the head was smaller and the beak was sticking straight out of it. The body was too big. Whittle. Whittle. The body was smaller, now more of a size that would be fitting for a duck with a small head and a pointed beak. The tail doesn’t fit the body. Whittle. Whittle some more. Now the body looked bigger than the tail. I sat, staring at my now grotesque duck, possibly the weirdest duck that had ever hit the swamps. Oh, well, I thought, time to paint it before I ran out of wood. It was a mallard, I decided, so I painted the head green and the body brown. When it was dried I showed it to my dad who was sitting in his recliner watching a football game. “Hey, dad, look at my duck.”

He turned and squinted at it though his wire rimmed glasses. Other than the way his forehead wrinkled when he was studying something close up, his expression didn’t change as he scrutinized this twisted creature produced by his own offspring who had inherited absolutely nothing from him, at least not in the department of woodworking skills. “Uh, huh.” He eyed it for a few seconds more and grunted again, returning to the football game. Thus, lacking affirmation, I brought my balsa duck back to class the next day. Everybody had to put their ducks up on the table in front of the class. Kids had created mallards that were indistinguishable from each other, painted in natural colors that would have fooled live ducks. One kid had actually given his duck a set of wings, unfolded and ready for glorious flight. It looked more like a swan than a duck, and was suspiciously sophisticated, implying the kid might have gotten help from somewhere above. Among these exceptional birds floated my creature clearly of a species that was an evolutionary step downward from the elegant ducks swimming around it; a candidate for merciful extinction. My duck gained a “C” – the teacher having taken merciful pity on my woodworking effort (the swan got an ‘A’). A few twisted pieces of brass that were supposed to be cups and saucers later, my career in Wood and Metal Shop came to a merciful end with a solid “C-“. This went unnoticed by my father, his ego probably protecting him from the reality of a woodcraft-challenged son, and the manly art of Woodworking and Metal Fabrication was brought to a close.

Part 2: The Flopped Cake

This was replaced the following semester by…horror of horrors, Home Ec.

“Ec”, of course, stands for Economics, and had nothing to do with barter and money exchange. It had to do, for the boys at least, with the sissyfication and punishment of those who may or may not have succeeded at Wood Shop. Kitchen Stoves. Cooking lessons. Sewing machines. Sewing lessons. Welcome to Home Economics, where the boys and girls get together for a little sewing machine and cooking action. “Now, class,” Mrs. Doormouse said, “gather around this stove.” It was pink, had four burners, and the words ‘Big Chill’ written in almost indecipherable script under the oven door window. No doubt, this was an off brand name that the school purchasing department got cheap. Eager girls and groaning boys left their seats and crowded around her, a short hefty woman with an even shorter perm that probably had just ejected its curlers; a face bearing a substantial application of makeup that almost covered copious wrinkles and sags; and a visage enhanced by some kind of overpowering perfume designed to knock down a plow horse in the middle of its springtime effort in the fields. “Now this is a four burner stove,” she said, pointing to the pink monstrocity artistically peppered with brown rust spots. “Up here are the ingredients you will need to make your first white cake.” She opened the cabinet and pointed to sacks of flour, sugar and other assorted bags and sacks. “And down here,” she said, opening up the doors of the kitchen cabinets, “are the bowls and cook-wear you will need to do the mixing and baking.” “Now, here is the recipe. Each of you will have your own copy.” She handed out pieces of paper to each of us. “Read the recipe carefully and ask as many questions as you need to. We have one hour until the bell rings, so you need to work steadily and quickly. Pair off with somebody and work together.” She smiled, displaying a set of overly large and somehow disturbing teeth. “I’m sure you will all do quite well.” We, the boys, looked at each other. The girls were smiling gleefully, but the boys looked like they’d been run over by something heavy with large wheels.

“You will find aprons in the top drawer.” She indicated a wide drawer set in a kitchen cabinet next to the pink stove. “All of you need to have one on before you begin.” She opened it and began handing out aprons. They were all pink with white frills around the border. The boys groaned, but put them on as ordered, glaring as the girls giggled. Fortunately, mine only had two large red roses embroidered on it. The other guys got four or more, and one was entirely covered with daisies. The only kid in there I knew was also in my science class. He was the tall, gangly kid Mr. Barley routinely spanked with a paddle when he entered the room late for the start of the period. “Uh,” I said in a low voice. “What’s your name?” “Tim.” “Okay, you want to do this?” By that I meant, ‘did he want to be my partner’. “I guess,” he said. His eyes vacant and his mouth slack. “Okay.” I started reading the directions out loud. The girls were ready and galvanized. Cabinets banged, bowls clanked, five sets of hands reached for the sacks of ingredients, and somebody twisted the oven temperature knob to 350 degrees. Some were mixing and others were pouring. “Uh, okay.” I said. “We need a mixing bowl and a spoon. We need, uh, flour, sugar, and, uh, eggs.” Girls were chattering wildly and incoherently, their mixes stirred and cake pans greased and ready. “Yeah, I’ll go look.” Tim shuffled over to the cabinet and pushed some boys out of the way. That resulted in a brief scuffling match which alarmed Mrs. Doormouse. “You boys stop that! I won’t have any roughhousing in here.” Tim pushed some other kid, and the latter pushed him back, but Mrs. Doormouse

stopped it with a wooden spoon applied to the side of both of their heads. Tim returned with a pan, bowl and a spoon, as well as a large red mark on his right cheek. I had rummaged around the pantry and found some flour, sugar and the other ingredients we needed. “You have thirty more minutes,” Mrs. Doormouse announced. “I want all those cakes ready by the end of the period. Feeling the mounting pressure, I dumped the stuff together and added water. Tim and I started stirring together and soon we had something that looked like paste. “Okay,” I said, “now we pour it into a pan and put it into an oven preheated to 350 degrees.” The paste went into the pan. “Twenty minutes,” Mrs. Doormouse called out. I opened the oven door. There were three cakes in there already cooking. “Don’t open the door,” a girl screamed, “you’ll ruin my cake!” I ignored her and touched a pan with my fingers to move it out of the way. “AAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG,” I screamed, jumping back and sucking my finger, colliding with the girl who had rushed forward to save her cake. “You stupid pig!” Something hit me on the head, which, next to being hit in the nose, was guaranteed to make me mad. “You’re the one who’s stupid!” I shouted, pushing the girl. “Dan, stop that,” Mrs. Doormouse shrieked, jumping between us. “You know better than to hit a girl.” Well, she didn’t know who she was talking to. This was the notorious GirlStomach-Kicker from Arapahoe City Second Grade. The girl and I glared at each other. “He was trying to destroy my cake!”

“No, I wasn’t. I was just sticking mine in.” Mrs. Doormouse evidently decided to relent. “Get yours in there, Dan, the period is almost up.” Tim stuck the gooey mass into the oven and we backed off. “Clean up your utensils, class, the period is almost up.” Tim and I picked up our bowls and spoons and tried to get to the sink, but there was already a writhing mass of students crowding around it, fighting each other to achieve culinary cleanliness. The bell rang, and we were left with a dirty bowl and unclean silver wear. A girl opened the oven and the kids started dragging out their cakes, placing them on the table to cool. Everything looked cooked to perfection ready to be frosted. Except mine. I placed it with the others, watching its sagging grey visage attempt to wriggle out of the light. Mrs. Doormouse regarded it with a clear look of revulsion, reaching for her grade book. The first day of Home Ec had come to a close, portending even worse days to come.

Mr. Snooze Shows Us the Stars Chapter 83

Part 1: To Build a Fire

A s I’ve indicated, my dad was a man who usually said next to nothing about how he felt, but slight nuances in facial expression conveyed volumes of information. By the set cast of his noncommittal features and stoical silence, it was obvious that he did not greet my ing the Boy Scouts with a great deal of enthusiasm. He kind of wanted me all to himself. He was supposed to be the source of any woodcraft that I knew, and the fountain of all outdoor activity. Be that as it may, the first meeting of the Boy Scouts, Plateau City Chapter, met in the First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall on B and 9/16 Rd., was appallingly out-of-control. Boys ran riot through the church, chasing each other through the vestibule, the sanctuary, the nursery, all of the Sunday School classrooms, and even the baptistery. Around and around went the rampage which came about because Scoutmasters Bill Snooze and Jerome Scott were late for the meeting. It’s fortunate that the church was still standing when they finally arrived and started shouting at the kids to bring them back under control. “I am appalled,” Mr. Snooze said, when he finally got them quieted down and assembled in the Fellowship Hall, “you young men are now Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts do not act that way. When you assemble here you don’t run around like wild Indians. You settle down and get to work on your projects.”

His voice droned on as boys surreptitiously started to light matches and throw them on the floor. “For our first project we will learn how to light a fire,” Mr. Snooze continued. “Next week, we will have here the makings of a fire, which you will learn how to start without matches.” He eyed with distaste the burning matches with dying flames lying here and there in black puddles of singed flooring. Cool. I thought, watching the matches burn out on the floor, only half hearing him yell at the boys who had tossed them out there. The meeting which had lasted 45 minutes, 40 minutes of which had constituted advancement toward your “how to destroy a church building” merit badge, was over. I walked home, the Baptist Church being about a quarter of a mile up the highway from my house. My dad didn’t look up from Guns of Navajo Canyon, a paperback western novel he was reading as I walked in the door. “Well, did you learn anything?” He asked. “Nope. But next week we are going to learn how to start a fire without matches. He seemed pleased at the news that I had not learned anything. I went into my room to retrieve Pirates of Venus, an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Carson Napier was still wandering the jungles of Venus, a verdant planet as it was thought to be in the 1940’s, trying to rescue the love of his life, Duare, for the tenth time. Duare was chronically determined to get lost and fall into the hands of men bent on conquering the world, though why they would want it was anybody’s guess. The next week’s meeting found the Troop under a little more control. Twentyfive stations had been set up on the floor at the base of the walls of the Fellowship Hall. I must have been late because boys, two to a station, were already sitting cross legged at each one, staring at each other like Indians trying to get warm. I found a station occupied by only one kid and sat down. In front of me was a pile of stainless steel wool, a jagged piece of metal and a metal file.

Mr. Snooze cleared his throat and yelled out for silence. The chatter in the room died down. “All right, men. Supposing you get lost in the woods and you have no matches? How would you build a fire?” “Just grab a handy piece of flint and steel and some steel wool,” the kid across from me whispered. “You’ll always find this stuff in the woods.” “Yeah,” another kid behind him said. “And there are files under every rock and tree.” “Or your matches get wet,” Mr. Snooze continued. “How are you going to build a fire if you have wet matches?” This question elicited no further smart comments. “So, you carry a fire building packet in your back pack. One that will never get wet. Or, if you were an Indian or a Cave Man you would not have matches. You would only have what you could find in the woods or dig out of the ground. The Boy Scout’s motto is, “Be Prepared”, and all you men need to be prepared to make a fire anywhere you find yourself. Now…” He started unsteadily pacing back and forth and from where I sat the alcohol content of his breath could easily result in an explosion if we ever actually succeeded in lighting a fire. “…to start. Make a small pile of steel wool in front of you and start hitting the piece of flint against the rough steel file. You’ll have to hold it close to the wool so the spark doesn’t go out before it reaches it.” All chatter died and was replaced by the metallic sound of repeated strikes of flint on steel. “What’s your name?” the red headed kid said squatting across from me.” “Dan. What’s yours?” “Ted.” Ted worked feverishly, repeatedly hitting first the flint on the steel, then the steel on the flint. Nothing happened. No sparks.

We sat and stared at the fire-making tools, distinctly aware that if we were Indians or Cave Men sitting in our caves with wet matches we might be getting a bit chilly right now. I sat there feeling more helpless by the minute. “You want to try?” Ted said, handing me the flint and steel. I took them and started hitting the flint against the steel, just like he had done it. Nothing happened. Then I tried the steel against the flint. Perspiring, I stopped, looking around the room to see if any fledgling Cave Men or Indians had started their fires yet. Nope. Around the walls, boys squatted, feverishly striking their flint or steel. Some were sitting back looking tired, and others were starting to laugh and giggle together, no doubt hatching another plot for destroying the church building. Just then the door burst open and in walked my dad. I stared at him, in astonishment. He walked up to Mr. Snooze and they talked for a few minutes, then he stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette lighter and started walking around the room lighting the boys’ fires, a pleased look on his face. As our steel wool erupted in flame, I felt my bid for Cave Man/Indian selfreliance, including my fire-building Boy Scout Merit Badge, had immolated with it. Once again, my dad had appeared on the scene and everything was under control. There would be no freezing, no starving, and everything… Was safe.

Part 2: The Stars We Could Reach

The night was cold and the sky was strewn with billions of icy white diamonds – some large and glowing and others so small and faint you could only see them out of the corner of your eye when you were not looking directly at them. It was time to gain our Astronomy Merit Badge, and Scoutmaster Snooze, having

communed with spirits that were not Native American in origin, had led his troop out into the snow to point out a few salient features of the night sky. Valiantly he gathered his troop around him in the bitter cold of nocturnal high plains night in mid-January. We gathered around him, up to our ankles in snow, clad in our short pants and kerchiefs flapping in the icy breeze. We were more than ready for astronomical enlightenment. “Men,” he said, looking around blearily to see if he could actually find any, “the univershe is vast, and we are just shmall inshignificant objects in chit, I mean, ‘it’.” I think he intended to wave significantly at the sky, but his arms just kind of flailed around in different directions. “If you look up there, straight up, you’ll see the Milky Way.” We all looked straight up. “It exsthends across the heavens, from over there,” he pointed ‘over there’, “to over there.” He again pointed to a different place, ‘over there’; once again a flailing arm sweeping across the region in question. “Now, men, turn around and look North.” “Mr. Snooze,” came a small voice, “which way is North.” “That way, kid,” Scoutmaster Snooze said, pointing toward the Lookatthats, which were not too visible since the Moon had not risen. “Now look up from them, and you’ll see the Big Dipper.” Just before I did as bidden I distinctly saw Scoutmaster Snooze fortify himself with something he had tried to take surreptitiously out of his pocket. Shivering in an icy breeze that suddenly had picked up, I gazed at where I knew the Lookatthat Mountains were and then brought my gaze up to the square pattern of stars with a tail of two or three that led off to the right. “That’sh the big dipper, men. Now if you’ll follow the line of two stars at the top that extends uh, down, uh, down to the…”

Now I don’t know if I actually this or not, or if it was just something that I might have concocted in my mind, but somebody spread the rumor around that, uh…Scoutmaster Snooze fell backward and lay sprawled in the snow. Did it actually happen, or did we all imagine it? Well, the rumor that was spread took on a solidity of its own, so that for all intents and purposes it probably did happen. At least when we later got together and started to yuck it up about the Boy Scouts we all talked about it. And for that reason I think, yes, he probably shouldn’t have taken that last fortifying swig from something out of his pocket, and might have tried communing with the spirits of the early Native Americans. Instead.

Part 3: Blowing in The Wind

It was time for the regional Boy Scout Indian Pow-Wow which was regarded as “the” event of the year. Boys from all over the Western side of the Rockies gathered in Plateau City for the traditional on stage spectacular involving Indian dances on stage around fake fire pits, smoking fake peace pipes and beating tom toms. Once again, my mother, probably still smarting from the Lost Little Drummer Boy Outfit incident, went to work on her Singer fashioning the requisite loin cloth which I was to wear in order to conform to the festivities. However, this time my mother was to play a more integral and important role in one of my public performances. “Boys,” Scoutmaster Scott said to the Scouts assembled in the Hall, “the major regional event is going to be held next month – The Boy Scout Jamboree. Every boy is going to have an exciting role in this event, and our first step is to sell tickets.”

We Scouts were sitting on the floor in a circle around him, proudly wearing our uniforms after having been whipped into shape from a band of rowdies who had nearly destroyed the First Baptist Church. Scoutmaster Snooze, having recovered from a bout of pneumonia which may have had its origin in the snow bank where he had slept off a recent case of inebriation, looked sternly down at us, his thin lips affecting a smile under his massive mustache. “Your first participation in the Boy Scout Jamboree,” Scoutmaster Scott continued, “will be to sell as many tickets to it as you possibly can. We are giving each of you one hundred tickets to sell. You will probably not be able to sell them all, however the boy who sells the most tickets will win first prize which is your own cigarette lighter with which to…” (Uh, I don’t think that was first prize. Be that as it may, there were first, second and third prizes.) Still bearing his sinister smile, Scoutmaster Snooze began distributing packets of tickets. I received mine, and having no pockets in which to put them, clutched them in my lap. “Now go forth,” Scoutmaster Scott said in a stentorian voice, duplicating God who told Man “to go forth and multiply”, or maybe to Moses to confront Pharoah. “Sell tickets. Bring people to the Boy Scout Jamboree in which you will all participate.” Leaving the Scout meeting, I ran home and opened up the packet. Each ticket cost twenty-five cents, making the total value of the packet $25.00. Saturday morning dawned sunny, cold and windy; the wind blustering out of the East. “Well, I guess I’ll go sell some tickets,” I said to Mom after I had eaten breakfast. I think she saw the hesitation on my face. I did not want to have to go knock on doors and sell tickets. I was beset with chronic shyness, and as I hesitated it was

becoming increasingly more and more difficult to get out that front door with a wad of tickets in my hand. My mom must have seen it. She smiled and said, “You’ll do fine.” Not so sure, I pulled my bike out of the garage and headed out, one hand on the handle bars and the other clutching the tickets. The internal resistance I was experiencing was growing exponentially as I peddled. I ed at least two blocks without stopping at a single house. I have to do this, I thought. I had been pedaling into the wind, standing up on the bike to put more force to the pedals. I finally stopped at a small house on a corner. I have to do this. I started to get off the bike when a strong gust of wind hit me, almost knocking me over. I lost my grip on the tickets and they exploded in the wind, darting away like small bats hunting evening mosquitoes. Dropping my bike on the pavement I flailed after them, every single one eluding my grasp and vanishing into the tree tops. “How did you do?” My mom said as I came home dejectedly. “I, uh…” Well, I told her the truth, and she didn’t say anything. But, at the next Scout meeting she pressed $25.00 into my hand, which she had probably earned giving piano lessons. And I paid for it. I must have won first prize since I sold…I mean lost…them all, but I can’t what it was, so grateful I was for my mom bailing me out of my latest excursion into incompetence.

Part 4: What Made the Red Man Red?

However, it was not to end with that. We had sold tickets to the neighborhood to come to an event in which we were the chief attraction. The theme was “Indian Pow-Wow”, and we were all supposed to dress in Indian loin cloths and cavort on stage in front of hundreds of people, beating tom toms and dancing around like …uh…Indians. My mom made the loin cloth, which for once, very fortunately, I didn’t lose. Well, nothing untoward happened in this event, unless you regard as unusual two or three hundred semi naked boys humiliating themselves in front of hundreds of parents, sisters, and younger brothers. One of the songs we danced to was from Walt Disney’s animated classic Peter Pan which asked the question, “What Made the Red Man Red?” And, based on the humiliation inflicted on us by that Boy Scout Jamboree, the answer to that question wasn’t hard to figure out.

Part 5: A Good Deed Every Day

It was time to do another good deed. The Boy Scouts believed in “doing a good deed every day”, and the last time I had done a good deed was in the City of Listless at the Miserable Nite Motel. We had taken a break from fighting over who was the King of the Cowboys, and I and a few of my Cub Scout friends were walking down one of the back streets behind the motel when we came across a newspaper that a delivery boy had thrown at somebody’s yard, but had struck in the fence and landed just outside of it. “Hmmm,” I said, “we could take the newspaper up to the front door and give it to the people inside.” “Yes,” replied Bob, one of my fellow Cub Scouts also eager to do a good deed

for the day. “Why don’t you do it?” We stood there looking at the newspaper for a moment or two and I picked it up, opened up the fence gate and trotted up the front walk. A screen door protected the denizens inside from mountain flies and mosquitoes which probably would have consumed them alive had it not been there. Now, I will swear on a stack of Bibles that I did not knock on the screen itself, rather the screen door, that is, the wooden frame which contained the screen and bore the handle which opened the door. Having received no response, I knocked again, a bit more forcefully this time. The door finally opened and a dark figure appeared behind it. “What do you want?” came a scratchy Old Lady’s voice.” “I picked up your newspaper and brought it to you,” I said with the most helpful and ingratiating look I could muster, eager to make a good impression for the Boy Scouts while doing my requisite ‘good deed’. I hoped my halo would illuminate the newspaper in my hand. “Don’t you know any better than to knock on a screen?” She said, her voice sounding like an old, ill tuned violin. She paused and examined the screen. “Well, you could have punched a hole in it.” Still trying to do a good deed, I offered her the newspaper. “Do you want your newspaper?” “Get off my property!” She turned around and stalked back into the house, slamming the door behind her, leaving me with an extended hand bearing her newspaper and a fading smile. I returned to Bob, who had stood outside the fence gate safely watching the miserable proceedings. “What should we do now?” I asked Bob. “Throw it up on her roof.” I hurled it up there with unaccustomed accuracy. It sailed out of my hand and

landed squarely on her roof, about midway down from the peak. “Well so much for today’s good deed,” Bob said. “Yes,” I said, “better luck tomorrow.” There were a lot of Cub Scouts in that neighborhood, and I expect that that old lady was going to have quite a few newspapers on her roof before the week was out. Every Scout wanted to do a good deed, every day, and she was a prime candidate.

Part 6: Get Out in The Snowstorm and Vote

It was in the spirit of good deeds such as the newspaper fiasco that we pressed on, always ready to do good deeds in the present. And when November 5th approached, it was again time for the officially planned Boy Scout election good deed which was to distribute “Get Out and Vote” posters. It had been freezing the night before because the sky was clear. The stars were like hard diamonds on jet black velvet, and about three inches of snow lay on the ground. But a storm rolled in overnight and it was snowing at blizzard proportions Saturday, November 1. I climbed out of bed at my usual Saturday morning time, around eight a.m., and ate some cornflakes my mom set before me. “What are you going to do today?” she said, knowing that the answer was probably going to be, ‘nothing.’ There wasn’t a whole lot to do on snowy days except stay indoors and read. However, today the Boy Scouts had other ideas. “We’re going to distribute ‘Get Out and Vote’ posters, Mom.”

Yes, today was the day for another good deed, and by distributing “Get Out and Vote” posters we would be encouraging people to do their civic duty in spite of rain, snow, sleet, or hail. “Where are they?” I looked at the clock. It was 8:30 a.m. “Oh, I’ve got to get over to headquarters. They’re handing out the posters in a half hour. I finished my Frosted Flakes. The box displayed Tony the Tiger stating that “They’rrrrreeeee Greattttttttttt!”. I struggled to put on my rubber boots. I donned my coat, put on gloves and headed out the door. Scoutmaster Snooze was distributing the posters to the boys who were there when I arrived, and it was a good thing I left home when I did because they were almost out. I took a sheaf of about thirty or so, some tacks and a small hammer. “Now you can tack the posters to telephone poles, on fences, and bulletin boards in places like Laundromats. But you can’t tack them to anything owned by somebody.” A kid raised his hand. “Like what?” “Well, like the walls of somebody’s house.” “How about putting them on windshields?” Mr. Snooze nodded. “Yes, you can put them under windshield wipers on cars. “Any other questions?” He looked around. “I want you to team up, two men per team. I expect you to distribute all the posters, and to put them in good places, not just throw them around. Don’t bring any of them back…they all need to be out there, somewhere.” “Let’s go!” shouted some kid. There was pandemonium getting to the door. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around to face a kid I barely knew.

“Wanna team up?” I shrugged. “Sure, why not? What’s your name?” “George.” “I’m Dan. Let’s go.” I struggled with my coat and got it back on along with the gloves and rubber boots and picked up the posters. We threw ourselves into the knot of kids trying to get through the Fellowship Hall door and forced ourselves into a blast of frigid wind. The storm had picked up, hammering us with hard driven ice crystals. “Where are we going?” George yelled as we staggered out into the shrieking gale. I stared ahead. Visibility had dropped to about five feet. I clutched the posters and forced myself into it. “Over to my neighborhood,” I shouted into the wind. His “okay” came faintly from behind me, and I drove myself onward, putting one foot in front of the other. As I stumbled forward, dark shadows would pop out of the white-out with a disconcerting suddenness…things like telephone poles and street signs. Indistinguishable lights shown ahead which resolved themselves into the shops along the highway, and finally the Patton Drive street sign popped out of nowhere. “Where?” George’s voice was so faint I almost couldn’t hear him. He was nothing but a dark shape behind me. I waited for him to catch up and pointed at the sign. “That’s my neighborhood! We can post them there.” Down Patton Drive we crept. I had the posters and George had the tacks and hammer. The vacant shack on the left was probably a good candidate, I thought. We could tack one to the door. I pointed to it. “Let’s do that one.”

The wind was picking up, if that were possible, and the snow was getting heavier. This was a blizzard to end all blizzards. We managed to get to the door, and I held a poster against it. George opened the box of tacks and fumbled for one in his heavy mittens. Somehow he managed to hammer a tack into the poster. It flapped violently in the storm so he drove in another one. “Ok!” I yelled. “Only 29 more to go.” We struggled through the drifts in the street, stumbling down Patton until we reached a telephone pole. “Here!” I shouted. “Where?” George yelled. “Here!” I couldn’t see him at all until he appeared suddenly out of the blinding whiteness. I held up another poster, and he tacked it again. We turned onto Myriad, tacking posters to whatever we found we could tack them to, around the bend heading to the end. Only 20 posters to go. I stopped at a picket fence and held one against the fence, and George started tacking it, when the wind changed direction and “upped the ante” with about two more knots. The posters were ripped out of my hands and vanished in the blinding storm. “Uh…” I said through frozen lips. “Uh…” said George. Well, I was close to home and George wasn’t. He probably found his way back to the First Baptist Church. Either that or he fell into a snowdrift and was never heard from again.

I made my way back to my house, which was only a block away. It took about fifteen minutes to warm up after I got my boots and coat off, but I finally sat down on the couch wrapped up in a blanket and downing a hot cup of cocoa my mother gave me when she saw how cold I was. I think she was grateful that at least this time she didn’t need to fork over money to cover the lost posters, since indeed they were free. And, after all, I had distributed most of the posters. I imagine the residents of Patton and Myriad did indeed “get out and vote” when they discovered twenty posters flying around in a blizzard urging them to do so. I nodded off to sleep, secure in the knowledge that nothing was more satisfying than once again, “doing a good deed every day”.

Epilogue

T he young man was bent over an open fire in the middle of the clearing when the kid pushed through the sagebrush. He looked up from the slab of beef he was frying in the pan and smiled. “You’re just in time. My uncle and his friend will be here any minute.” The brush shook, and the Masked Man burst through on a white horse and dismounted in a fluid movement. Behind him came his faithful Indian companion. They squatted down beside the fire and looked the kid over. “Unnnh,” said the Indian. “Him getting older.” “Yes, Tonto,” the Masked Man said, “but he’ll be with us for a little while longer.” “That good, good, Kemo Sabe. We have much to teach him.” “He’ll take off that mask,” the Masked Man said. “Uhnnn, and put on others.” “Yes, but he knows the Source, now, and the day will come when he no longer needs a mask.” The Indian nodded, “but until that day, him ride with us.” “Yes, Tonto. He rides with us.”

Here ends Book One of The Adventures of the Masked Kid, but DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL! Stay tuned, boys and girls for the next thrilling installment:

The Return of the Masked Kid

The End