My Winchester '73 - Part II

[Spoilers herein: Read Part I first]

There are moments in a boy's life - generally summer or autumn evening moments -when he is walking home alone, worn to his essence at the end of a day of all-out play, his heart overflowing with all the possibilities vouchsafed by the universe, that give his life the extra lift that causes him to reach instinctively for his slingshot as he looks around for exciting targets in the endless quest that is the reason for such moments...

That was the kind of evening it was: cool, prussian-blue sky, whispers of night air through crisping tree leaves, when all is silent, folks are at dinner and the streets are empty, leaving a young boy to nothing but his own devices at a time when the world is his de facto oyster; he looks upward...

It had also been at evening, a few weeks before, that I'd first shot out the naked streetlight bulb above that dark corner by our hangout woods behind PS 23, the corner didn’t even merit a streetlight cover, just a big open light bulb up there on a pole like a giant great idea, that called to me like a Buffalo to Bill, that made such a satisfying POP! when struck dead on in the night with a slung marble, plunging the whole corner into true darkness of my own making... through which I then walked - much larger for the one-shot achievement, Annie Oakley's little brother - home to dinner on time, all in a boy's day's work.

As I headed home past the house on the corner, the only house on that corner, hidden away in a now (thanks to my slingwork) even darker grove of trees, someone called to me from the darkness there. It was a woman's voice, calling me, little boy. I went through the hedge into the darkness. On the low house porch a woman stood in the light from the half-closed doorway; all I could see was a silhouette. She said she'd seen me shoot out the light. The time before too. I was nailed. She invited me in to talk about it. I followed her inside. She was older than my mother but younger than my grandmother.

When she opened the door my jaw fell. From out of the darkness I had never seen an inside of a house like that inside of a house. Flowers were everywhere, bright flowers of every color: on the walls, hanging from the ceilings, on the floors, in other rooms, on the table; there were bits of flowers all over the chairs, scraps of flowers on the floors, flowers in vases, tall flowers and bouquets and... I stood there dazed with guilt amidst all these flowers, I stood there speechless, staring, waiting for the scolding.

But it didn't come. Instead she asked me why I had shot out the streetlight. I explained the idea of it, the Buffalo Billness of it, the need for a guy to keep his aim and so on, all that I'd understood to be true thus far, which at that moment somehow didn't seem to be enough. I understood nothing of housefuls of flowers. She seemed to understand, she didn't look angry. She explained to me that she lived alone - no, she wasn't married, no, she had no children - and she made flowers for a living. And living up here on the edge of the woods alone like this, she liked to have that street corner light on so she felt better.

Then at my question she smiled and showed me how she made flowers out of crepe paper, silk, all sorts of materials I'd never seen before, that in her hands changed from whatever they were to what flowers are. She made roses, petunias, poppies, lilies, irises, they were there all around her, filling that house on the corner behind the trees, and all this time I'd had no idea.

Looking back on it now, I can see that I was indeed awed at her being a sort of goddess who could make flowers, but at the time I was mostly grateful to her for not turning me in. I never shot out that streetlight again; in fact I once stopped a slinger friend from shooting it out. We moved away as our fortunes declined not long after, so I never saw or spoke with the lady again, but I always remembered her. It wasn't until many years of growth later that I finally realized what she had really given me that night: an entire house full of flowers, forever.

The Night I Saw Santa

Ah yes, the night I saw Santa. Each Christmas eve, I remember, Mom and Dad would set out coffee and donuts for Santa to scarf down complacently after unloading everything except my Red Ryder BB gun. I remember I gave him a hard time about that when I saw him, mouth full of coffee, powdered donut sugar on his nose and all in his beard, I gave him what for but he fudged, wouldn't go against our parent's wishes even if I gave him my slingshot. So much for Santa; I knew then that Mom and Dad were really in charge.

I recall that spirited exchange every year at about this time, though I get to bed early these days so I no longer see the old gent. I do leave him some plain green tea and a Japanese dessert that's rather neutral-tasting (by Western standards; you can't get genuine old-fashioned donuts here), but he never touches it and I don't blame him, when he can still get traditional donuts and coffee somewhere else on earth. I'm almost as old as he is now, so I suppose anyhow he's cut way back on the desserts.

From over here across the Pacific, on this snowy-mountain Christmas eve I have to say how wonderful it is even at this age to have a little brother with whom to share the magic of knowing that there really is a Santa Claus. Sorry I couldn't wake you up that night, Mick. But maybe if you stay awake tonight...

Santa Says Hello

Every year at about this time, we get out the boxes of Christmas decorations, and every year at about this time I receive a gift from the ghost of Christmas past. For some reason I am always surprised, even though it is the same gift every year. The story begins on Christmas eve, 1945.

You may recall, Bob, that we had taken a solemn vow that night to stay up and wait for Santa, due in around midnight, no matter how difficult that might be. We would somehow keep each other awake until the magic moment, then go out and say our hellos; we were sure he wouldn't mind, in fact he'd be downright glad to see us, regardless of what Mom might think.

The next thing I knew, you were shaking me and whispering, "Mick, Mick, wake up! Santa was here; he came at midnight, but you were sound asleep and I couldn't wake you up so I had to go out and help him and then we sat in the kitchen for hours having milk and cookies and talking and then he left and I got to watch the sleigh and reindeer fly off into the sky and he waved goodbye and yelled Merry Christmas and I tried to wake you up but you wouldn't wake up!"

To say I was crushed would be an understatement. Through my tears I said, "No, no, no it's not true, you're lying, you never saw Santa, you're lying!". You responded, "I can prove he was here. He lost one of his boots going up the chimney, and I found it. See, it proves he was here." Then you pulled out the most magical object I had ever seen in my tiny little life. Santa's boot.

Years later I realized that it wasn't his boot at all, of course. It was a red plastic boot which probably had contained candy or some such goodies. At that moment, though, it had an aura of inestimable magic; and every year, when I open one of the boxes, I am caught off guard by that aura, still lingering after all these years. I'm sure that if you saw me at one of those moments, you'd still see the wide-eyed wonder of a little boy.

Thanks, Bob, for my never-ending Christmas present.

Life on the Hudson

From 1863 to 1948, the Hudson River Day Line transported passengers along the Hudson River to points between New York City and Albany. Known for the elegance and speed of its steamboats, the Day Line was a popular way to travel, whether you were off on a day's outing, embarking on a summer retreat, or just needed to reach a destination downriver. I can remember boarding the steamship Robert Fulton, which plied the waters between Albany and New York and closely resembled its sister ship, the Alexander Hamilton (seen above), which carried tourists from New York City to Bear Mountain in its day.

Bob, I have a few fragmented memories of the Day Line, and I'm sure, as a big brother, you can embellish on those memories. Feel free to fill in the blanks. I remember standing in the bustling ticket office (which later became L'Auberge des Fouges restaurant, where Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York State, would someday be dining on your salads), and staring down at the beautiful marble mosaic of the Half Moon, the ship that brought Henry Hudson himself to the mythical city-to-be. I also remember standing on one of the rear decks when we were finally underway, watching passengers toss pennies into a then-crystalline river, where as many as a dozen young boys dove to retrieve them. I had to be only three or four years old at the time. I sit here marveling over the fact that as children born into the twentieth century, we had the opportunity to taste the nineteenth, and then write about it in the twenty-first. Mark Twain must be watching over us, smiling.

Being Software

As navigator and colleague in those autumnal sorties, I should add to the aforegoing a key technological discovery on our part that enabled the clean getaways whence we could safely turn and watch our flamework: we somehow discovered that we could delay ignition for crucial extra seconds by wetting the matchhead with saliva. I can still taste the excitement of those matches. It is through such research and development, and intrepid application of the results, that society advances into a future where the streets are still full of leaves but the kids are all indoors and I haven't seen a spool in decades.

Yeah, we kids were forced by circumstances to create our own means of having fun in the daytime and the nighttime, entertainment not yet being handed on a liquid crystal platter to everyone within mindshot… Minds weren’t yet plugins; we were our own software.

But it seems to me, Mick, that it was just you and I who did (or instigated) these things; I don’t recall ever ‘walking into’ any such events already under way; maybe you do? The Case of the Flaming Thruway comes to mind as a possible exception, though I’m not sure the statute of limitation has expired on that one, so I'll say no more...

We were mad kid scientists and the world was our laboratory. We climbed, we dug, we exploded, we explored, we built, we created, we mixed, we tore down, we carved, we sped, we sharpened, we dove, we plunged, we tested everything. And everything met our requirements. We certified the world as a worthy app.

The Firebombing of Mapleridge Avenue

Yes, Bob, your slingshot legacy stands unchallenged, near as I can tell. Had we been born into an Indian village as we so often dreamed, you would have had an honored seat in the sweat lodge, right up there alongside the elders. Many a marble found its mark, but then so did many a rock, punch, kick, and well-chosen word, in both directions. We were boys through and through, and pretty damn creative and obstreperous ones at that. If I'm not mistaken, Mark Twain found much of his material for Huckleberry Finn in such goings on.

Born into a world war as we were, though, we were naturally immersed in its zeitgeist; we simply absorbed it and reinvented it to suit our needs. Books, newsreels, movies, radio, comics, even a father who had gone off to war and come back a hero (and remained in close communion with his fellow heroes at the VFW Post): there was a great deal of material to work with in those days. We fought cattle rustlers and injuns on the plains, germans and japs on the hills and in the trenches, survived by our wits alone in the jungles of the Normanskill (mostly summers and weekends), and even found time to attend school at St. James Institute now and then. The Delaware Avenue Era was a boy's dream, and though we little suspected it at the time, the best part of it would be ending soon enough.

Among the many memorable events of that era for me were the bombing raids that we conducted during at least one of those autumns back in the early fifties. We had actually conceived of a way to emulate the great raids of World War II right in our own neighborhood, with simple materials that we found around the house. And though I believe we invented this technique ourselves, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there were little Japanese and German boys bombing London and New York in their neighborhoods as well at the time.

We began with a wooden thread spool, a large one, about three inches long, without the thread. Then we took a thick, heavy rubber band, cut it into a single strand and attached each of the ends to either side of one of the holes in the spool with a carpet tack, so that it wrapped tightly around the other end, covering the hole. Slide a wooden kitchen match into the other end, head facing out, and pull it back in the rubber band, and you have a long range bombing device. Don't try this at home, kids.

Every autumn, leaves would begin falling from the maple trees lining Mapleridge Avenue, and as those leaves were raked and swept into the street (for collection?), our reconnaisance team would monitor conditions while we would patiently wait for the perfect moment to launch our mission. The leaves had to be dry, the piles had to be large, and there could be no cars. It should also be noted that Mapleridge Ave was only one block long.

When the moment arrived, we would gear up, roll out the red Schwinn bike, and, with me in bombing position astride the bars and you, Bob, in the pilot's seat, we would launch our raid. Heading west from Delaware, cruising low and slow near the center of the street, we began to strike our targets. Pulling back on the first match as far as it would go in the spool, and aiming just in front of the pile, I'd release. The match would hit the rough surface of the asphalt and ignite, bouncing fully aflame into the mountain of dry leaves, and do its work. Then on to the next pile.

When we reached the end of the street, we'd stop and look back for one last look at a street ablaze, and, enemy bases destroyed, fly home down by way of Simpson and Albion before the enemy fire engines arrived. Now, looking back, I am willing to admit it was probably more Little Rascals than Jimmy Doolittle, but we did the best we could with limited resources, and no one else seemed to be stepping forward to defend us against our foes. We had to go in there and do the work with whatever means was at hand. It seems to me that kids today are at a real disadvantage compared to us, though; behavior such as this would not even be considered, and they are forced to carry out all of their missions in digital format. I feel sorry for them, but perhaps it's better that way.

Hey, Wild Bob, wait for me!

My Winchester '73

For a kid with no Red Ryder B-B gun, defenseless in the world, there was only one recourse. I don't remember specifically who my hero was , that nameless elder gentleman somewhere one summer (I salute him now, where he is in heaven) who kindly took the time and pains to show me step by step how to make the finest slingshot a boy could make with his own hands, the Winchester '73 of slingshots, which I painted green because that was the only paint in the cellar.

From selecting the finest wood (cherry, in this case, from a big backyard tree I knew well of) in the ideally forked shape and then incising the bark to receive the slings, using only genuine rubber (bicycle inner tubes) - not synthetic (car inner tubes) - and a soft but stout leather tongue from a good workboot (the local dumps, as they so often did, came in handy here), all tied together with strong cord, ultimately to propel the finest of ammunition: pocketfuls of pristine catseyes I'd won playing marbles with Paul G who lived on Mapleridge and had the finest marble collection around, housed in a big, beautiful red pipe-tobacco can with a handled lid.

My Winchester went with me everywhere, slung just right in my back pocket for the quick draw that was key to a shotslinger's survival. Maybe I'm not proud of all the things I did with my sidearm; I'll be the first to admit that there are times in a boy's life when issues of morality take a back seat, for whatever reason: maybe you're in love, maybe you're angry, hungry or tired, maybe it's growing pains and there's always the social struggle... maybe if time could be reversed for a moment I'd take back some of those things, done out of childhood emotion, curiosity or ignorance - which are pretty much aspects of the same thing - but I'll keep the pride I took in my accuracy. And I'll keep the notches in the handle.

One thing I wouldn't take back (and that I can admit to now, the statute of limitations having expired about 50 years ago), even though it involved twice breaking the solitary streetlight on a corner that darkened with one shot from the concealment of the woods not far from Mary Myer's candy store, was the second time I broke the light, and the life-changing moments that transpired afterward.

It's getting dark now; maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.

[Part II here.]

Injun-uity

The Adventure of the Flying Deer took place, as I recall, in the woods behind Graceland Cemetery, not far from Bowley's [sp?] Hill, (another child-famous place, then soon to be under the Thruway), site of the Snow Crust Incident and the Gold Ring Mystery, among others hopefully to be chronicled here.

Eddie and Joey Olander and I had been tramping around in the woods that morning searching for bear tracks and beating the woods, hopefully driving the bear toward you while you guarded against any escape. (We older guys always got the good jobs.) We drove out the buck instead, which you let get away, for crying out loud.

I can still feel the edgeless awe with which you shared the flying deer experience. A lot more awe than we'd ever felt in church. From our very early days indian lore and the magic of the wild had been a complete way of being for us, a way influenced around then by the Straight Arrow 'Injun-uity' cards we used to collect from Nabisco Shredded Wheat cereal boxes. We used to do indian stuff every chance we got: sneak silently through the woods, run long distances breathing just through the nose, making hatchets and bows and arrows, chipping flint etc. Survival stuff. And we did manage to survive.

It wasn't till about 50 years later that Aunt Madeleine [my mother's older sister] finally confided to me that our grandmother's mother had been a "squaw," as she put it. When I asked her why in the world, given Mick's and my passion for things indian all those years (a lot of our escapades were headquartered at her house), she had never told me this. "It was always an embarrassing family secret," she said.

Crossing Delaware

We were such brave warriors back then, prepared at the first hint of danger to strap on a six-gun, slap on some war paint, dust off the sling shot, and march into battle. We never knew where the next deadly challenge might take place, but we would know the call when it came: a low whistle outside the bedroom window, or an insistent, solitary crow cawing in the backyard, and we were gone, like thieves in the night.

One summer morning we awoke to the news that a black bear had been seen wandering along Delaware Avenue, and, glancing quickly at each other across the breakfast table, we knew that this was a moment when we had to spring into action. We had to save not only our own family, but the entire neighborhood, from this menace. Perhaps the entire city.

Excusing ourselves with as little fuss as possible, we wandered casually into our bedroom, closed the door and began to gather everything we would need to track down and eliminate one very large black bear. Combat boots, hunting knives, knapsacks, a compass, a magnifying glass (to study bear tracks, of course), and canteens to be filled with ice cold water.

After making several sandwiches and stuffing them in our knapsacks, we said our farewells and headed out to round up the Olander twins and a few others to complete the expedition. Soon we were marching into the woods, brothers in buckskin, savages to the bone.

We had trekked for about an hour when we sat down starved and exhausted on a tree that had fallen across the trail, to eat pemmican and wild berries (or was it peanut butter and jelly?). After discussing our new strategy to spread out in the woods and surround the bear, thus guaranteeing his annihilation, everyone began heading further down the trail, leaving me behind to close up the rear to prevent any chance of escape.

I hadn't waited very long when I heard shouts coming from somewhere downtrail, and, reaching for my hunting knife, I turned in time to see a full-grown buck deer, probably an eight-pointer, galloping straight at me. I was frozen, transfixed, not knowing what to do, and, not having the time to do it anyway, I just sat there. Just before he reached me, he lifted off and soared over my head like one of Santa's reindeer, landing gracefully on the other side, running full tilt down the trail and into the woods.

In the clamoring excitement of your return, I remember thinking that a young Indian brave would have received his adult name from an event such as this, and Flying Deer, I decided, would suit me just fine. And though we never did see the bear, we returned home as triumphant hunters, for we had experienced a supernatural event in that forest, and the spirit of the deer would be with us forever.

Ghost in the Glass

Under that bridge across the Normanskill was where I first heard the word "television," at the same time as I saw my very first television, which looked something like the one at left, a 1949 model. Must have been around then that I saw it. I remember the cabinet as being longer and narrower though...

Strictly a radio/movie kid, on that occasion I was playing with kids whose father I guess belonged briefly to Sheehy-Palmer VFW Post #6776, of which Dad was one of the founders and the first Commander (as per the photo below). I probably met the kids at a Post event and went down to their house to play, the only time I ever went there, I guess they must have moved away not long after. They lived under (or very nearly under) the bridge in a very ramshackle house, but there right at the front of their living room was what they called a "television." It had a round screen, with a magnifying lens in front.

They turned it on to show me, and ve-e-r-r-r-y slowly there appeared a ghost in the glass, a blurry movement of light I couldn't make out in the day, especially up close. It seemed to work, though, and to be different from movies, but it wasn't entertaining, whatever it was. I was not impressed. We went outside to play. Within just a few years, though, I'd be hanging around other kids houses that had TVs, in hopes of getting even a single glimmer of Howdy Doody.

Our Own Private Oz

The Yellow Brick Road, the old Delaware Turnpike, runs south from the hamlet of Normansville to Elsmere, and was abandoned in 1863. We took it over in 1951. The two bridges over the Normanskill Creek can be seen below, where many a boyish adventure was had.

Not the Yellow Brick Road, the Other One

I think it might have been Speed Harris. His mother would have killed me if she'd known, but I think he survived pretty much unscathed since he somehow landed on me and eventually became a lawyer, so she never found out. Good thing, too; she was mad enough at me when I finally succeeded in making gunpowder in her basement.

This was all brought back to me by the primally evocative photo you posted earlier, Mick, of the Normanskill Bridge, not the big new upper one, but the old original lower one, that passers-through never saw but that we local kids knew like the yards that had apple trees. (And more tales we have yet to tell, in these hallowed chronicles, of all that transpired down there along the river...[cue theremin])

Our favorite road down to the river, the Yellow Brick Road that went down on the right, we took because it made such a great motor noise against our bike tires. But it was long and curvy and slow. When we weren't just meandering and wanted to get down to the river urgently - to fish or something - we'd use the old road, that went straight down to the left, and was pretty much unmaintained.

I guess Speed and I must have been in a hurry to get down to the river; that was probably about the time I'd discovered rock crystals in the shale cliffs on the north bank: that was like finding diamonds in the rough, and time was a wastin'!

Anyway, there we were on my bike, Speed on the crossbar, streaking down that steep-grade hill at top speed when my purple jacket, which I'd lain across the front fender to protect it from Speed sitting on it, suddenly caught in the spokes and Speed and I were early astronauts, together leaving vapor trails as we continued down the hill toward re-entry, landing and coming to rest at last in a tangle of arms and legs amid the rough gravel and chunky potholes.

It was a painful experience for me, especially for my right forearm; but from here, now that I know I survived, I'm glad it happened. If it hadn't, I'd never have remembered that day. Thanks for the bridge, Mick.

The Gun that Won the Imagination

Mick you did it again, you did it again, you always do that: you stick one magic phrase somewhere innocuously in the middle of your post somewhere for me to find and it evokes a rush back to wells of emotion I haven’t slaked that particular ancient thirst from in 50 or 60 years, and this time the phrase was “Red Ryder BB Gun.”

Upon reading it I vortexed back to when my entire 10-year-old being was devoted to getting a Red Ryder BB Gun, that strong, sleek, repeating-action rawhide-thonged beauty that would save anything in peril; that New York prairie equalizer that would carry me safely into the future, intrepid boy…

The ads were in or on the back of every comic, to meditate on in that post-comic reverie of all the adventures awaiting a boy who owned one of these beauties and I begged Dad to get me one, pestered him, I was saving my pennies but dollars were beyond heaven and Dad had dollars I’d seen them in his hands so I became a mosquito in the shape of a boy, focused on that one and only forever desire of mine (this being prepuberty): I showed him the ads, I pointed out the low price, the beauty the sleekness, the way in which it all led perfectly to the future…

But he would have none of it. Wouldn’t entertain it for even a moment. He was just back from the World War, where he’d spent three years and all his innocence, beheld to the soul what guns can do; he’d survived the Battle of the Bulge and beyond into the heart of horror, had all those photos of frozen German soldiers with the luger and the Nazi officer’s bayonet and the multi-signatured Nazi flag in the cardboard box in the attic that he never opened, that indeed when he left, he left behind…

So I never did get a Red Ryder BB Gun, which from this perspective was, I think, a wise decision on Dad’s part…

All the more magical, therefore, were my trips to the country house of our cousins Jackie and Teddy, down on the Hudson River above Schodack (across from the long island where we used to steal corn), right in the middle of timeless indian hunting grounds. Every kid in that region had a bb gun, there was always an extra to be had for me to use and off we'd go, hunting intensely, never getting anything but what fun it was, what adventures, and then came puberty.

Graceland

Yeah, I remember Graceland Cemetery. Elvis' ghost still hovers at the gate, I hear. You may also remember Paul, the caretaker's son, who one Christmas morning sat and shot out every one of the ornaments on their Christmas tree with his new Red Ryder bb gun. It must have been tough to grow up in a cemetery.

There is one other story about the place that has been around for years, often called The Bride of Graceland Cemetery, authenticity unverified.

One evening a man was driving past the cemetery in the rain and spotted a young woman standing by the gates wearing a wedding dress. He stopped and asked her if she was alright and offered her a ride. Once she was in the car, he gave her his coat to help keep her warm, but when they arrived at the house where she said she lived, she left without returning his coat.

The next day he returned to the house to get the coat and an older woman answered the door. When he told her the story and asked for his coat, she said that was impossible, for her daughter had been dead for years. He didn't believe her, thinking that she may have been too embarrassed about the previous day's strange events, and that there must be more to the story. Eventually the woman gave him detailed directions to her daughter's grave and told him to go and see for himself.

When he got to the grave, his coat was draped over the gravestone.

I love stories with a happy ending.

The Newspaper of the Living Dead

You forgot to mention one other place on that route, Mick:

At last we've got some weather I can call cold, I who grew up in upstate New York just south of the north pole where winter weather meant daggery January winds racing howling down from the north with ice in their teeth as we teens stood thin-clad on the thickly rimed streetcorners at night bein cool, hangin out, it just doesn't seem to get that cold any more, a situation that frequently prompts my intro: "Why when I was a boy...," begetting that roll of the teenage eyes in the vicinity "Oh no, not that story again, about the weather..."

Yeah, and when I was 9 years old my brother and I used to take turns going out at 5 a.m. in NY winter blizzards to deliver the morning newspaper before going off to school, and those were blizzards like you don't see anymore. One place we used to deliver the papers to, in the heart of wintry darkness, was the big old cemetery out beyond the edge of town.

None of the dead subscribed, but the cemetery caretaker did, and he lived in the big old Addams family type caretaker's mansion with its pointy spires and tall narrow windows, right in the middle of the very big graveyard beyond the high, creaking, speartipped, slowly opening cast iron gate, through which you went alone down the long wide deep-snow walk in the dark beneath the high arching bare-limbed, howling and arm-waving elm trees, toward the big plate-glass-windowed doors that glowed with a sinister nightlight there in the distance through the screaming wind that spit snowflakes in your face; and right from the first screech of that heavy gate there began to sound from the lower depths of the house an infernal howling, a devilish moaning, long and lowing, yearning for the flesh of a young paperboy...

What ghosts must live here after all these years would race unbidden through my 9-year-old mind surrounded by graves, the keepers of the air brushing my face with the whispering touch of the dead...

That soul-chilling yowl was the eccentric caretaker's herd of Great Dane hellhounds, each twice my height on its hind legs, yearning pent up all night in the silent house until there was my sound...

Then as I approached their home the hounds arose from the cellar depths and began their clacking, howling gallop along the long wood-floored corridor from the back of the house to the front door, timing their journey perfectly in the dim light of winter dawn so that just as I reached the doorway and was about to place the newspaper on the doormat safely out of reach of the drifting snow, all those massive front paws would strike the giant plate glass windows of the doors like bearclawed catcher's mitts and send a whang of a bonging gong shuddering thoughout the dead-air house and me and the immediate universe and the dogs would commence to boom their deep bass roar-bellows over and over, slavering the glass, embodying the ice-toothed morning air as I turned and hastened toward the gate, thankful that again the glass had held, that once more I was beyond the monsters' reach, at least until another wintry dawn...

Those were interesting times... And that was cold that was cold... You don't get weather like that anymore...

Why, when I was a boy...

[posted an earlier version of this on PureLandMountain.com]

The Prince and the Papers

I remember those long, delicious evenings buried in piles of comic books, then loading them into the wagon for the trek home, where the marathon would soon begin. After reading Captain Midnight, Plastic Man and Batman late into the night, one of us would be up early the next morning, filling the same wagon with newspapers to start the paper route. I remember many a cold, snowy morning that you would take on that task when I was too sick (or tired) to get out of bed.

We delivered the Times-Union to most of the houses on Delaware Avenue from the VFW Post all the way out to the Normanskill Creek (inset), and side streets connecting. It was a long haul made easier by the reward at the end of that journey: the Schermerhorn Nursing Home, where for many of the ancient residents we were the only children in the world, and were thus received like heirs to the throne of England. (It was the same nursing home, by the way, where we would visit our great grandmother on her 103rd birthday.)

Though it was great fun to be the center of such attention, I must confess that my little capitalist heart was often focused on the money that was showered upon us (we were so cute!), and how I would spend it next door at DeRossi's grocery store, home of the most delectable treats a little prince could imagine. Whichever of us had the route, according to my phonographic memory, the other always got some of the loot. Ahh, those banana nut cakes.

Comic Frames

Oh the magic of comics - hard-bought with pennies gathered from little tasks and errands - how those bright pages could fill a kidmind... and then the delight on later rainy days of phoning other comic-laden kids to find somebody who wanted to trade comics (Billy Cullen and Davie Nolan had great collections), then gathering your whole own collection together to bring to the other kid's house (the trade instigator always did the traveling), when he'd go through your stack and set aside the definites and the maybes while you did the same with his stack.

Then you'd both go through it all again to be sure, while maybe his kid sister or brother hung around being a pain in the proceedings, then you'd both count your final tally of definites for trading and he'd have say 15 definites with 6 maybes, you'd have 17 definites with 9 maybes, when would come the delicate part of the negotiations and considerations (do I really want this one, these are new comics, these are beatup, this is a double issue), carefully balancing the trade right down to rips and dogears.

Sometimes things would reach an impasse, you'd implacably want only 12 of his, while he definitely wanted more of yours, so he'd drag out his toybox and offer you a boat or a car or something.

Then back home on the bike with the comics safe in the basket and soon after in your mind.

Things were clearly framed in those days.

Captain Marvel Eyebrows

As a kid I would always hear from a certain person, slightly older than me, that I had eyebrows just like Captain Marvel, and though it made me feel a bit self-conscious, I secretly turned it into a link with my invincible hero and it thenceforth provided me with an extra measure of mystical protection.

Not long after, feeling those invisible oats, I started chasing two pretty little girls down Second Avenue with an earthworm in my hand. I figured my job was nearly done when they cut down Hampton Street toward their house; little did I know that they were about to unleash a life form that was further up the food chain than mine.

Just as they reached their front porch, the door flew open and a German Shepherd the size of a race horse came flying out, fangs all a-gleamin'. "Sic 'em, Sinbad!", one of them ordered, and I was off like a rocket, just a few steps ahead of the beast as I shot out into the street. I never saw the car coming.

In the next instant I was sitting in a magical flying chair, soaring into the sky as if in a dream. I hit the ground running, all the way home and up the stairs, doors tightly locked and covers over my head. I had escaped the jaws of death. Hadn't even thought about the car.

Finally screwing up the courage to look out the living room window, I couldn't believe what I saw. A crowd had gathered, and among the crowd were police cars, an ambulance, and various officials who were busy talking to a woman (the driver of the car, as it turns out). They were all looking up at me.

I don't remember letting them in, but soon the living room was filled with people, and the medical folks were doing all sorts of tests on me to see what kind of damage the car had done. They found none. Captain Marvel's sidekick would live to see another day.

While all of this was going on, you, Bob, walked into the living room, utterly amazed, holding three brand new comic books. It was a moment of such gravity that you held them out to me and said, "Here, you read them first." This had never happened before, and perhaps not since. But you had provided the perfect medicine, for I was soon lost in other, more important adventures; the dog, the worm, the car, were all suddenly things of the past.

Iceberg Looming

Funny, I remember the Fellini scene as well, with the ice looming up before me. I may have been on a tricycle but don't remember. My head had a way of finding hard objects, though, so I may have been propelled by some invisible force. The work of sorcerers, most likely.

I thought they were still delivering ice to homes which still had iceboxes, it still being the Great Ice Age, just before the Great Age of Refrigeration. My daughters think I grew up in the Little House on the Prairie when they hear stories such as this, or the one you mentioned about Freihofer's bread wagon. But do tell it anyway.

By the way, I never knew that was Mom in background. Sue would have been about a year old.

Sometimes Never

I was 7, you were right around 6. So much, so much to bounce off of in these photos I haven't seen in sometimes 50 years, sometimes never. I remember your constant double black eyes, how all the grownups used to comment on them first thing; gained you quite a rep, as I recall. I remember thinking that you might have them forever. I also remember the block of ice onto which I pushed you, as if in a scene byFellini; were you on a tricycle? Probably my tricycle, thus the push! I believe you already had eyes of blackness at the time (from the plunge off of Villani's porch?) and this sort of made them a regular feature.

But questions loom: What was a block of ice doing out on the sidewalk in front of Einstein's? Was this before or after I launched you down the long hall stairs in the baby carriage? Whence, really, the push? We knew so little of each other then...

Still, dig that jaunty, inyerface, hands-stylishly-in-pockets pose in your previous post, at the age of 5 or so. Already you were the way you are, me already the way I am here in Japan (pointlessly). You smilingly in the party mood at Pat Villani's birthday party. I remember having suddenly to wear these weird hats out of nowhere among full-grownly female women (the men were always at work); birthday parties always were (and still are) baffling to me, as you can tell by the concentration of attention on my face, in childhood quest of some underlying element of truth to all this dubious ceremony with only caloric reward...

Is that Mom in the background, holding Sue?

That might well have been the summer you stampeded the Freihofer's bread wagon horse with a fully chewed piece of Dubble-Bubble and got away clean.

What curious tykes we are still...

Improbable Wizards

The Blog Brothers at Pat Villani's birthday party, 1948.