Don't You Dare Laugh

Remember how when you were a kid the funniest place on earth was church? Where you could not laugh under pain of mortal sin so you just had to laugh, even though nothing was funny except that you couldn’t stop laughing?

That held true for me too, until Grandpa Robinson's funeral when my new laff record was set, that stands unequaled to this day. Grandpa himself was a funny guy, full of stories and riddles that went way back. Descended from a New York harbor tugboat captain, he lived in Rensselaer and worked his whole life as a conductor on the busy New York Central Railroad, so he had an eclectic take on things. He was always closer to us kids in mood than he was to the grownups around us anyway, and given his quirky sense of humor, there's no doubt in my mind that he was behind what happened on the day of his funeral.

As this local history (being recorded for the first time here) would have it, Grandpa passed away peacefully in his sleep one night, aged somewhere in his eighties, and I and five other grandsons had been chosen to be Grandpa's pallbearers. The oldest of us, and focus of this little tale, was Billy, an Elvis type macho ladies man, aged 17 or so, muscular and very cool; then there was I, about 15, and the other key member of the cast, my cousin Jimmy, then about 14.

The side-splitting aspect of this sad day had its seeds in the funeral service held right around the corner from Grandpa's house, in St. John's church, where we were all formally edgy anyway, having been plunged thus from our adolescent separateness and utter coolness into a proto-adult unit that at once not only had to function unusually in church, but to perform complex religious tasks as a cool sort of god squad. I can hear Grandpa chuckling now.

After we'd gotten through the long service without a hitch and had carried the casket to the hearse in all seriousness, the long procession of cars wound slowly through the streets to the gravesite in the cemetery atop the highest hill in Rensselaer. It must have been in February or March, because it was a crisp blue and very windy day, with especially strong gusts where we were high up beside the Hudson River, whose valley forms the great wind tunnel of the northeast that with a mere flick of a breezy whisper could carry a man down State Street hill, dangling from his umbrella.

The six of us had borne the casket to the grave, and were then assigned the task of go-getting the many floral wreaths from all the funeral vehicles that had followed the hearse (Grandpa had a lot of buddies). One by one we'd traverse the windy distance to one of the vehicles, reach up to receive a wreath that was handed down to us by a tuxedoed funeral parlor worker atop the vehicle, wrestle the bundle of flowers back through the stiff and frisky gusts to the graveside, then return for another differently shaped arrangement, all in the utmost of somber formality, as the relatives gathered and waited by the graveside... well... gravely.

On one of our latter trips, Billy was just ahead of Jimmy and I, and as he reached up in all macho readiness to manhandle one of the biggest wreaths on his own, arms wide to receive it, a very large wreath indeed – with a lot of varicolored daisies on it, as I recall most vividly - the Grandpa-driven wind ripped the wreath right out of the worker's hands and flung it full-force against Billy's entire body, enveloping him and his pompadour in flailing flowers, only his legs sticking out at the bottom, his arms still reaching out on either side, ready to receive the wreath...

Before our eyes, cool Billy had been transformed into a silly walking flower arrangement. Staggering rather, for he was blinded by blossoms and generally under the control of the wind, which was so devilish in pressing the wreath against him that he instantly didn't know where anything was and his arms couldn't find the wreath edge in all that flower softness that was wrapping itself more and more snugly around him, so he became a sort of self-contained event beneath the stark sky of that Fellini morning, a wreath of daisies dancing there before us in all formality, on legs of Billy.

From within the flowers came a petal-muffled plea that was hard to hear in all the wind, especially when doubled over, as Jimmy and I were. Tears flowing, we at last managed to turn the wreath around against the the wind and extract Billy, who then just stood there pawing at his eyes, ghastly eyes with long white, pink and purple lashes that flapped in the wind like a Mae West nightmare: from each lid hung a floppy fringe of daisy petals.

Billy had been hit by the cloud of flowers with his eyes wide open, and had no idea what was blinding him... he groped at his tearing orbs. From the depths of our own eye-rivers, Jimmy and I reached up and, one by one, gingerly plucked the daisy petals from Billy's eyelids...' he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me...' it was all very formal, apart from the breaks for bentover hysteria. Then we grabbed the last wreaths and headed back to where everyone and the priest was waiting in somber graveside silence, to begin the final service...

If you've ever been shot out of a cannon 60 times a minute you have some small idea of what was happening to our innards as we stood there, ramrod straight, new young men beside our grandfather's grave. Tears running down our cheeks, Jimmy and I pressed hankies to our eyes, bodies shuddering, snorting with deep emotion. And as if Grandpa hadn't done enough already, across the open grave from us stood Billy, daisies in his shattered hair, his eyes red and teary, still redolent of flower petals. Our feelings knew no limits, really.

I remember Aunt Mary looking at us kind of funny, with a puzzled 'they really loved their grandfather...' look on her face, but what can you say at such a sorrowful time... Most of the folks assumed, since we cried more than anybody there, that Jimmy and I were devastated. And we were. To the core. But not with grief or loss; we were moved to a higher level.

We were appreciating Grandpa.

The Parcheesi Plot

Ah, the hours whiled away on the Parcheesi board as a youth. I haven't played the game in years, but I can still remember the sound and feel of the dice rattling in the leather cup, the chok-chok of the pieces hitting the board, the heated arguments over who moved and who didn't, the utter disappointment when a rival won, and the sheer elation when one of my pieces roared down the red carpet leading to the inner chamber.

Parcheesi, also known as the Royal Game of India, is descended from the game of Pachisi, which originated in India around 500 BC. When played by Indian royalty on a specially prepared lawn on the palace grounds back in the day, slave girls were actually used as pawns and moved about the board by royal command. Though not quite as colorful, the red, blue, green and yellow plastic pieces used in the modern game are a little more practical, though not as much fun to lift.

Parcheesi is also a descendant of the ancient Cross and Circle games, whose boards were designed with mystical symbols in mind; in this case the layout includes a mandala showing Heaven and Earth, or the self surrounded by the four directions of the Universe. Could the hypnotic effect of staring for hours at a mandala have been used to initiate unsuspecting children into mysticism in the 1950s, bearing fruit only a decade later when we all became hippies and began painting similar mandalas on our VW busses? Mere coincidence? I think not. Someone should look into this.

Wild Strawberries

There are moments in every life that stand as treasures in the heart, riches that are savored throughout the life to its end. When I was 8 or 9 years old, we set out one late 1940s summer afternoon on one of our exploratory tangents off of the Yellow Brick Road and across the pastures of the Norman's Kill Dairy Farm. The Olander twins were with us, I remember. We used to start out on those cross-country expeditions with no plan, just bring some fingerfood and water and head in a new direction to discover what was there in the world. What an ancient drive that is...

As the sun rose toward noon and the day got hotter while we traveled back and forth all over the landscape the way kids do in their rummaging progress, we ran out of food and out of water, but we didn't care; this was the time of life when the thrill of the new could defeat hunger and thirst for quite a while, so we went on, and late that afternoon made our great discovery: a broad pond filled with frogs, turtles, fish and frogs' eggs! And it was all ours! Right there in a dell amidst rolling meadows arched by a blue sky, we could take off our shoes and wade, and be in heaven.

Then one of us made an even more welcome discovery: one whole hillside was blanketed in ripe wild strawberries! For the next long time we crawled around on all fours, hungry and thirsty animals gathering and eating those beautiful, puckery-sweet (and best of all, free) little juicy rubies. When we'd eaten enough to have the patience, we'd save up the tiny red nuggets of sensual magic until we had a good handful, then shove them all in at once and lie down to gaze at the sky while chewing into a deliciousness that rose beyond reach as it became us...

Later on, that berry-fueled walk took us to other new places, a further bend in the Norman's Kill river we'd never visited, the railroad tracks that followed the river in those parts; and at one point beside them, while walking along the tracks back toward home we saw, as in a different world, below the railbed beside the river - and seemingly isolated thereby from all else - a shanty town for workers from the bottom of the railroad hierarchy. It was a drab village of tarpaper shacks clustered together on a bare dusty tract of land in the searing sun, so as to be close to whatever job the residents did, not all that long after the depression. It was a dismal sight; I stood looking for a long time, as though at things not meant to be seen. Even though I hadn't much of a past of my own yet, I was very saddened that people lived like this in the modern world.

Little did I know how untested yet was my sadness, or the depths of my own future, soon to be just as starkly contrasted with the highlight of wild strawberries we enjoyed that day. I hope the ragged children I saw there so long ago found wild strawberries in their own way, as I had...

I've never been back to that pond or its strawberry hillside, though in one way or another I've visited there every day of my life since then...

Football In the Side Pocket

Mr. McGuire: "I just want to say one word to you -just one word."
Ben: "Yes sir."
Mr. McGuire: "Are you listening?"
Ben: "Yes I am."
Mr. McGuire: "'Plastics.'"
xxxxxxxxxxxxx- From The Graduate, 1967

The Albany Billiard Ball Company, founded in 1868 by John Wesley, the American inventor of celluloid, is possibly the earliest successful plastics firm and certainly one of the oldest plastics companies in the world. Celluloid became a substitute for ivory in the manufacturing of billiard balls, and the Hyatt "composition" ball, with a celluloid base, dominated the sport until the 1960s. The company is the only major billiard ball firm in the United States.
................

Mick: Bob, remember all the times, good and bad, we had around the old Albany Billiard Ball Company on Delaware Avenue? It had to be one of the best places a boy could ever dream of having in his neighborhood: a huge, manicured lawn (looking way too much like a football field), an oval driveway ringed with bushes (looking way too much like a race track), and out back, barrels filled with the most interesting stuff you could ever imagine (we were budding explorers who happened to stumble upon the site where modern plastic was born; we just didn't know it at the time). I have no recollection of anyone ever coming out and telling us to stop playing football on the lawn, or to stop racing our bicycles in the driveway. Did they recognize our potential as future chroniclers of those times, and decide, somewhere in the top offices, to give us carte blanche?

Bob: Yes, that was the finest of lawns, cared for with a fine-toothed mower. I remember seeing that lawn from the car window one sunny day after Dad came back from the war and we were going somewhere, probably out to Thatcher Park; to me at 4 it was mesmerizingly green, smooth and vast. I can still summon up that vision and all the formless post-infancy feelings of portent that went with it...














Many the sunny day indeed we played there, me you, the Olander twins and whoever else we could gather in a bunch for a day, we'd play tackle, touch and slow-motion football, and "chicken" as we called it, plus there were celluloid scrap piles galore out back to whet our inventive appetites. There was also a very interesting chain hoist at the side loading gate, with which we would take turns slowly lifting each other up by the belt. We left Eddie dangling there for a while one afternoon.

As for being chased away, Mick, you were young then, and as the older brother I generally kept an eye out, sounded the alarm and took the heat, which is perhaps why you don't recall the elderly groundskeeper and general factotum who used to come shuffling out the front door shaking his fist at us on a key fourth down and saying inaudible things to chase us away when we played there on summer workdays. (On weekends the lawn was ours and we sampled heaven.) Being an elderly gent however, he could never catch us, since the lawn was so big and we generally played at the furthest distance from him, on the lawn's far corner next to Jerry Romano's house, so we'd just race off and wait until the fistshaker went back in again, then resume our play. Never saw a single billiard ball come out of the place, though...

Mick: I can still recall the smell and sound of those long hours in the summer twilight, charging the enemy lines like we were Johnny Unitas, muscling on until either someone actually won the game or it was too dark to see the ball. In the chicken fights (perhaps universal to young boys everywhere, perhaps not) big guys would carry little guys on their shoulders, and, staggering around as a group of makeshift giants, fight the Battle of Armageddon. The last pair standing won. I was always on top, being a shrimp, but considered it one of the few perks of smallhood, since after all, I was the Gladiator, and the guy I rode in on, my trusted steed.

By the way, wasn't it on the very same lawn that we fought our arch-enemies, the dreaded R Twins, to near death? Or, well, sort of?

Bob: You got me there, Mick, you'll have to fill in the details of that battle. I'd won my battle with the R twins years before that, back on Mountain Street, so they weren't a dread of mine; whatever came after in that regard was for me foregone. As to the Billiard Ball Lawn, in that part of my mind where I spend my past I still now and then lie down on that soft cool fragrant surface. As perfect as an Augusta fairway it was, no doubt a source of great pride to the community, but especially to that Michaelangelo of a groundskeeper who could never catch us, yet kept the lawn pristine on our behalf, a spotless green playground just waiting there ready for play whenever we were.

No doubt that lawn was inviting to all, but no adult would ever think of walking on it, or of spreading out a cloth for an ideal picnic, but for us kids with summer play coming out of our ears it wasn't a matter of choice, the park up behind PS 23 was ragged and full of kids, but here was our Eden. We recognized that perfection and knew what it was: it was a cosmic directive, and we obeyed. Golden times on that green, that Elsyian Field, conspicuously consumed. Wonder if it's a WalMart parking lot yet.

Mick: Golden times, indeed, and no Wal-Mart yet, that I know of. As for the dreaded R twins, all I remember is a battle in which I was being whipped mercilessly with the buckled strap of a leather cap; perhaps it was all a bad dream... a dream that would disappear instantly I'm sure, if I could just stretch out on that Elysian Field once more.