The Beautiful Thing, 1960

Things are beautiful if you love them.

_____ Jean Anouilh



Beautiful things have always been important to me. That is I suppose, why I became an artist.

The Beautiful Thing

                I can say without a doubt that the most beautiful things I have ever seen were my two sons. Not that there haven’t been times when the frustrations and tribulations of parenting led me to believe that maybe they were somewhat less that beautiful, because there have been.  The first time I saw their little red wrinkled faces I fell in love, forever, unquestioning, irrevocably and unconditionally. Slimy and bloody, I saw them as miracles and that has not changed even after all these years. Whenever I lost patience with them all it took was moment of stillness or a night’s sleep and everything clarified itself, came full circle and they were again beautiful to me in every way. They are men now and some people may not, for whatever reason thinks that they are beautiful but they certainly are to me and all ways will be, no matter what.

            When I was seventeen and in military school I took Spanish classes. Although I was not gifted in languages, (not even English), I was fascinated by the study of Spanish and actually got reasonably competent at speaking it. Part of the reason my grades were as good as they were was because I dated the Spanish teacher’s Daughter and went over to her house several times a week. From my dorm room to her house was less than a quarter of a mile and was considered on campus, which meant I could walk to her house and never leave campus.  Leaving campus was against the rules for all cadets except on certain days and in certain circumstances. The Spanish teacher’s daughter and I would sit in their living room with the gauzy lace sheer curtains blowing against the window to kiss and cautiously fondle each other for hours on end. She was a beautiful girl with eyes as black as the darkest night and skin as brown and warm as a summer’s afternoon. Like all good things our little romance eventually came to an end. Military School ended and I went home for the summer where I immediately started a campaign for my parents to take me to Mexico where I could practice my newly establish Spanish language skills, such as they were. They reluctantly agreed after I explained the positive educational benefits it would afford me. My brother David, just three years older than me was twenty or twenty-one and far too mature and independent to be traveling with his parents and little brother. “There is no way I would go off on a trip with you and that’s for sure!” He often declared. He somehow got caught up in the excitement during the planning stages of the trip and ultimately agreed to make the trip with us, despite his serious reservations. No one pressured him in any way to go but I think he was afraid that he might miss something if he didn’t go. So he went along and complained, moaned and groaned the entire time. He hated the food, the plane trip and most all being with me for such a long uninterrupted amount of time. Clearly he should have stayed home. Because he was so unhappy he virtually ruined the entire trip for the rest of us. We left south Alabama near the first of July. A hot and sultry, dusty month that time of year there and we flew away to Mexico City where I expected more hot and dry weather. When we arrived there was a torrential rainstorm where wind, thunder and lightning greeted us on our arrival. We almost froze to death getting off the plane because at that point in time you walked from the airplane to the terminal in whatever weather was prevailing. This first introduction to Mexico City was anything but what I had expected, cold and wet. Brother David thought everything was terrible, “I hate this place!” He stated on the way to the terminal in the rain for the first of many times and how sorry he was that he came.

            We toured Mexico City and the surrounding areas for several days seeing points of interest, the large University of Mexico complex with Diego Rivera murals adorning the exterior walls, Maximilian’s palace, deserted monasteries and assorted museums. Bougainville vines hung twinning from many upright structures blooming in profusion in brilliant shades of almost garish brilliant colors. On an excursion outside the city one day we stopped at a cock fighting farm. Here a man in a large colorful hat placed two iridescent beautifully colored roosters in a small circular pen where they began to attack each other with unrestrained fury. They lunged feverishly at each other with razor sharp spurs attached to their ankles, sharpened metal devices making the deadly birds even more lethal. They fought till blood was dripping from their bodies and collected on the sandy floor of the pit. Finally one of the chickens fell over onto his side mortally wounded as the other combatant mounted him and crowed a victorious winner’s cackle, spurring him one more time for good measure. This experience was a preamble to the next day when we went to the Bull Fights. The whole experience was most impressive even though it was far bloodier that the now seemingly insignificant cock fights. The brilliantly attired matadors and picadors along with their horses and the rest of the spectacle were extraordinary despite being almost overwhelming in its intensity and cruelty. It impressed me immensely despite the obviously brutal and malicious treatment of the bulls. One night in the city my father hired a taxi which toured us through numerous interesting spots including a park where dozens of Mariachi bands all played at once, for tips. After the mariachi park the taxi driver drove us to one of the most horrendous slum area in the city. It was appalling how the people there had to endure. They had nothing, not even clothing for their brown skinned children who stood naked in the doorways and loitered hungrily everywhere staring with vacant eyes. It was exceedingly disturbing and at the same time enthralling and you could not look away despite the awful situation they were in. We looked at them in almost total silence as though they were animals in a zoo, a little frightened and a little thankful. They looked unflinchingly back.

            Returning to the hotel we walked through the extravagant lobby where I noticed a slick, full color brochure on one of the side tables next to the sofa where a massive brass chandelier with prisms of crystal hung reflecting a rainbow of colors above.  Picking up the brochure I saw an advertisement for a hotel in another city on the west coast of Mexico. The city was called Acapulco and it looked like a paradise of tropical plants, crystal blue water and striking women in bathing suits. One photo depicted an attractive dark eyed beauty swimming through a swimming pool of the bluest water imaginable. On the surface of the water floated thousands of Gardenia blossoms which she paddled through. The girl’s black hair trailed behind her in the photograph like a shadow of the blackest silk. It contrasted with the snow white gardenias and took my breath away. The next morning after having a fairly erotic dream about this infatuating stranger I woke to insist over breakfast to my parents that we make a side trip to this new arresting destination. This place I had to visit. David said, “No, no I want to go home and I want to go today!” I mentioned that in the brochure it said that Acapulco was world famous for their sail fishing and people from all over the world came there to catch the fish. Perhaps it might be fun to go out fishing for them. This ameliorated David somewhat as he, like my father was an avid fisherman. Mother and daddy were reluctant to say yes but ultimately they agreed. We flew to Acapulco from Mexico City and were dazzled by all the natural beauty we encountered. The hotel from the brochure was a little less than impressive once we got there but we checked in anyway. The many individual little bungalows were separated from each other and perched on a hillside that careened steeply down into the incredibly vast Pacific Ocean. The whole place was more than a little shabby but clearly had been awesome in its day, many years previous. Huge malevolent looking iguanas lay sunning on the tops of enormous rocks surrounded by vivid multicolored Crotons and other exotic plants adjacent to the walking paths. These monster’s eyes seemed animated and oddly clicked as they followed you as you passed. Some were huge and quite scary if you happened upon them unexpectedly. It would not have surprised me at all if they had scrambled off the rocks and charged directly towards me taking large bites of flesh from my legs. Having no experience with reptilian creatures almost as large as myself I didn’t want anything to do with them but the only way to go from one part of the complex to another was to pass by these monsters lounging in and around the paths and on the rocks that abutted the trails.

            Breakfast was served on the boat docks next to the beautiful crystalline sapphire water of the Pacific Ocean where boats rocked in pulsing unison with the surging ocean. Lunch was offered in a fresh air pavilion overlooking the ocean atop a windswept cliff. Dinner was served at an enclosed more formal area in the middle of the complex. For lunch one day we went to a different restaurant perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean closer into town. Here brown skinned Mexican boys dove from dizzying heights into a turquoise water filled horseshoe shaped lagoon. The divers were extraordinarily impressive. They leaped from rocks jutting out from the steep hill sides of the mountain. When the waves were out the youths dove but they timed is in such a way that when they landed at the bottom of this precipice the waves had refilled the small inlet completely. They hit just at the moment when the waves rushed back in.  If the boy’s timing had been off they would clearly dive disastrously into nothing but a sandy rock littered beach. None of them did this of course. When the diving episode was over, the Mexican boys came up to the dining area dripping wet smelling of sea water and passed through the people seated at the tables in the restaurant to collect coins for their diving efforts.

            After breakfast one morning we went down to one of the many boat docks circling the cove area of the city where numerous partially dilapidated fishing boats rocked uncertainly adjacent to the wooden docks. Everything smelled of briny water and fish. It was not an objectionable odor and not uncommon to us as we had a cabin in the panhandle of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico and fished and frolicked there in the summers. Daddy had chartered one of the Mexican fishing boats through the concierge at the hotel for a day’s soirée fishing. Many boats sloshed about in the briny water one of which we boarded and went out in pursuit of the exotic Sail Fish which was of great interest to all of us. On the swaying boat we rode for what seemed like hours to get far enough out into the Pacific where the Sailfish were found. We started fishing dragging silver cigar minnows through the water behind the boat elaborately rigged with hooks leaders and line by the Mexican men and boys working on the boat. After trolling for hours I finally fell asleep in the trolling seat with the butt of the rod firmly jammed down between my legs, oblivious to any further happenings. In some time one of the Mexican men awoke me crying “Ola, ola”. I sat up quickly, just in time to see the sail of a huge fish attacking my bait far behind the boat. This woke me up instantly and adrenaline began to race through my veins. One of the Mexican men helping on the boat ran up behind me and flipped the drag off my reel and let the line race away into the hypnotic deep blue water. This was like no fishing I had ever experienced and seemed counterproductive. Apparently sail fish need the release time to run swallow the hook and get prepared for the show they ultimately put on. The reel screamed as the line shot further and further away. The assortment of Mexicans seemed to race about the boat in fast forward all readying things for the struggle with the huge sailfish. I was just about to panic when the Mexican flipped the drag back on. That’s when it happened. My reel jerked, bent over double and the fish rose from the depths of the ocean and shot up into the air to an alarming height, throwing salt water in a huge half circular spray. The butt of the rod lunged upwards from the tension the fish exerted on the line and pounded me in the testicles. I made an awful sound and bent over double without losing the end of the rod. The sailfish was enormous and a shade of blue I had only seen in the tail of a peacock, like no other color. He danced and rocked on the tip of his tail flipping and skittering across the water doing what appeared to be some other worldly feverish dance on the top of the water. It flipped, spun and twirled in ways I would have thought impossible had I not seen it with my own two eyes. Water spewed and foamed as he shook his massive head and jerked his bill back and forth in the dance he preformed. We all lost our breath. It was amazing! My Dad excitedly said, “That’s the God damnedest thing I ever saw!” He almost never used profanity and I knew this was indeed an extraordinary moment in time!

            The fish fought valiantly for what must have been fifteen or twenty minutes. When it was over he was completely exhausted and only once as I reeled him in and he neared to stern of the boat did he muster enough energy to race briefly away. Finally he succumbed to the insistent pull of my line and rolled onto his side as he gave up his escape attempt. The two Mexicans at the stern of the boat pulled the huge fish onto the gunwale of the boat. I absolutely could not believe my eyes. The colors on the sailfish fish flashed like a strobe light displaying different shades of blue, aqua, turquoise, flecked with flickering purple spots and a green patina all over his body, sail and tail. It was though in his final minutes of life his beauty was beyond anything conceivable to a human eye. Stringy crimson blood poured from his gills in a prodigious stream and leaked off the side of the boat into the water turning it a temporary shade of pink as it effaced out into the salty water. It almost made me cry it was so amazing and I knew this he was in his final moment of life as his rib cage and gills shuddered and slowed in the afternoon light. The thing was so incredibly stunning that I knew it was a sin to kill it. The matter was however out of my hands, Daddy said, “No! Of course we’re not going to release it we’re going to have him stuffed to hang on the wall at the office of the mill.” The fish weighed right at a hundred twenty seven pounds and I will never get over the experience of catching it. Watching it dance, seeing its colors as it laid dying on the deck of the boat and finally knowing that I was responsible for killing such a magnificent living thing. The fishing continued and in a short while we hooked another sail that performed much as the first one had and was equally as incredible. We killed this fish as well. Later in the afternoon after we returned to the docks and were waiting for a taxi to come and return us to the hotel I saw it. A truck drove by. A dump truck passed that was filled to the brim and rounded over on top overflowing with the dismembered bodies of hundreds of sailfish. I was thunderstruck. All of them long dead with their beautiful colors faded and gone. All caught in the space of this one single day. They were, at that point nothing very impressive, just a truck load of dead fish. The image remained with me for the rest of my life.

            Months and months later a large box arrived in Dothan Alabama from Mexico. It was opened and the remains of the magnificent fish were unpacked and hung with great pride and ceremony on the wall of my father’s small office. It was absolutely nothing to look at. Dull, lifeless, color all wrong, sad and almost obscene. The bill of the fish stuck out into the space where it impeded any passerby and invariably poked them in the arm or neck. I rarely went into my father’s dusty, saw dust sprinkled office and saw the fish that I didn’t feel a deep sense of shame, regret and embarrassment. Eventually the remains of the fish were relegated to the dirty crawl space underneath the small building that served to house my father’s office where it slowly decomposed and eventually disappeared there in the dark.

tbd

Death is a distant rumor to the young. 

..........Andy Rooney

One Saturday morning when I was ten, I awoke to my Mother screaming and running through my room, her hands knotting the front of her flowered house coat exclaiming, “Oh my God, oh my God!” Having never seen her frantic and so out of control before, it frightened me. She was, if nothing else a measured person. Running from window to window on the front side of our house, rattling and shaking the Venetian blinds she looked out across the front yard into the street where there had been a terrible accident at the intersection in front of our house. On this early, already steamy morning in small town south Alabama an ancient and fully loaded Pepsi Cola truck was passing under the green light just in front of our residence. A young woman in an old green Pontiac with her infant child on the front seat speeding from the other direction raced through the red light and smashed into the side of truck! The resulting crash was enough to wake the dead or so I was told. I slept through the worst accident that had ever happened in front of our house and there had been a number of them. This intersection clearly visible from the front windows of our home had been such a problem site that it caused the city to install a traffic light earlier in the summer. After several more accidents they put in a four way stop, later another traffic light replaced the stop signs. It went back and forth over the years as city managers searcher for a solution while the dangerous intersection continued to claim lives and cause horrible accidents. Eventually large speed bumps were installed which helped slow the speeders more than anything else that had been tried. The last time I went through the intersection (fifty eight years after my story) it was a traffic light again and the speed bumps were still there.

Getting out of bed I ran to the window and looked out. There in the middle of the intersection was the body of an obviously dead woman with her print dress thrown up around her waist. There was also a piece of the woman’s head about four feet from her body, blood everywhere. At first I could not make out what it was I was seeing. The woman was very still and looked as though she had been carelessly thrown aside, like a rag doll tossed in the corner by a child, like she had suddenly fallen asleep. Mother continued frantically scurrying through the house making small whimpering noises. There was an unbelievable amount of blood splattered across the pavement under the red light. People were already beginning to gather from the neighborhood homes. The cross town traffic slowed and stopped as the intersection was impassable. They gaped at the horror of the accident and stared at the carnage. Blood mixed with Pepsi Cola! Hundreds of bottles were scattered randomly across the scene, some broken, some whole. This surrealistic scene just beyond our tall Magnolia trees in the front yard left me breathless and yet I continued to peer out the front window, either unable or unwilling to stop. It was gruesome and repellent and yet I could not look away. The woman’s baby was in the front yard across the street having been thrown from the car, still wrapped in its blanket. It had survived the crash and was crying, as I was. The grey haired man who had been driving the Pepsi Cola truck walked among the wreckage in the street rubbing his knobby red hands together as though he was trying to remove the skin from them. He would stop every few steps and pick up the unbroken bottles and put them into the pockets of his worn Pepsi labeled coveralls. Later when I walked out to the scene, after the body had been removed, a policeman standing near the curb said, “This is the worst God damned thing I have ever seen in my life.” Even though I was embarrassed by his language (remember, I was ten at the time) I thought he was right. Someone said later that one of the neighborhood dogs had carried a piece of the woman's head back to its yard. I never knew if this was true or not but for a long time I was very careful when I walked in the area.

 Later that same day after the wreckage had been removed, the street sprayed down with water from a fire truck and most of the debris cleared away I saw Jimmy, the boy who lived across the street on the other side of the road from us and spoke to him to see if he had seen the accident. “Did you see all the blood in the street before they cleaned it up?” I questioned. “Yeah I saw it” he said, “what’s it to you?” I wanted to appear grown up and knowing something that I really should not have known, maybe to impress him. “Nothing “I said. “Go home, “he insisted. Jimmy was sixteen but seemed much older, very tall for a boy his age and handsome with black hair and very straight white teeth. I always admired him, mainly because he had the ability to throw a football further than anyone else in our neighborhood. He ultimately became the captain of the High School football team and a star scholar. Years later when Jimmy was a senior in High School he was riding home after school on his red Eagle motorcycle and was hit by a drunk driver at the same intersection directly in front of his house where the woman in the old Pontiac hit the Pepsi Cola truck. They said that when Jimmy was knocked from his scooter his head hit the cement curb, his skull crushed. I saw Jimmy’s body and heard his mother screaming. They raced him to the hospital where, after many desperate hours and many desperate acts he was pronounced dead around midnight that same evening.

Later that week I walked out to the street where the accident had occurred and there was nothing there to indicate anything had ever happened. It seemed strange that something so horrible and disastrous had not left a mark of some kind, a tear in the landscape of the scene, something. Fragments of broken glass scattered about glistened in the summer sun but they could have been there forever, not necessarily from this most recent accident.

There was a large silent black crow sitting high in an adjacent pecan tree, otherwise nothing.

End

A First Grade Memoir

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

.........................................Albert Camus

The year was 1949; I was five years old, and the youngest in a family that had four sons, no daughters. Mother had always wanted a girl, which is understandable with three boys (hard tails as we were referred to) already present. In anticipation of my birth she had picked out several names she liked, being so sure that I would be a girl. Rosemary was the one she most favored. Had I been a girl I would have surely gone through life with that name. Daddy however had other ideas. He was a staunch republican and wanted to honor Thomas E. Dewey and John W. Bricker, who were to run as the republican nominees for president and vice-president in the 1944 Presidential Election. He was going to name me John Dewey Daughtry. Lucky for me Mother knew that the local town idiot was also named John Dewey, so she vetoed that name. Determined, daddy chose my moniker from this same pair of losers and had it on my birth certificate before Mother got out of the delivery room. I have often wondered if Daddy had been a Democrat, would my name have been, Franklin Truman Daughtry, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman as they were the nominees from the Democratic Party, who won the election. Coincidentally, Thomas Dewey always wore a moustache and I too have always worn one. What can this mean? You are probably right, nothing at all!


The First Day

So there I was in the fifth year of my life and in the first grade. My birthday was in November but I was allowed to enter school, even though I didn’t turn six till the 22 of November. This turned out not to be such a great thing as Mother and Daddy had neglected to teach me very many things, such as how to spell my last name, where I lived, what my phone number was, or even how to wipe my own ass, which I put off till the first grade because I had a maid that did everything for me including the wiping stuff. All of that seemed a somewhat nasty business and I wanted no part of it. When the first grade teacher realized I didn’t have any of those essential skills and those vital pieces of information she assumed, (rightly so) that I was mildly to severely retarded. There was really nothing much I could do when she said “Write your first and last name on your paper”. I frantically looked around at the other children quietly doing what they were told and hoped to see one of them writing down their last name thinking that perhaps I could just copy what they wrote. Who knew you had to know how to do anything before you went to first grade, certainly not me. To be fair about my lack of education when I entered the first grade I would have to admit that I was a wild child. Few would have the nerve or tenacity to try and teach me anything. Mother was the one to whom the fault would have to fall on but you must remember I was the fourth boy of four boys. She must have felt like she had been there and done that over and over. She was born the second child in a family of ten children in what was then deep country where time was short and needs were long. Much of her youth was spent trying to tame her younger siblings. She learned early that I was an accomplished liar and measured everything I did by that fact. I must tell you that I loved her desperately and wanted to make her proud of me. I never quite did. She was always a little suspicious of me and usually expected the worst. In that respect I rarely dissapointed her.

There in the first grade in my little wooden desk it became apparent that none of the children sitting close enough for me to copy were going to write my last name. This was the first time I realized how much education was going to compromise my life style and dedication to just having fun. Later this would become more and more evident. Being the shrewd little boy that I was, I simply copied down onto my paper what the neighboring student had written on hers. The teacher then said,”Write your phone number and your address too”; which I suppose is common knowledge for most first graders. I knew nothing! The last name I copied from my neighbor’s paper and the address from the little boy on the other side, as though it were mine. Yipes! I didn’t know shit! Later that day the teacher asked why it was that I lived with Rosalind when we had different last names. Not knowing what to say I told her that my parents were dead. She said that she thought my last name was Daughtry, I said it was before my parents died. This little piece of deception went along quite well until later that day when my mother came by to pick me up for lunch. You might say that the shit finally hit the proverbial fan, right then and there. Mother was embarrassed because of what all I didn’t know (there was a whole lot) and, I am positive, not quite sure how to cover up the fact that she had not taught me anything. Later that day when I got home after school, mother sat me down determined to teach, in one afternoon what she hadn’t bothered to teach me in the first five years of my life.

The Second Day

The second day of the first grade I decided that I would just not go back to school any more. Early in the morning before everyone in  the house woke up I rolled myself in the blanket at the end of my bed and went sound asleep. Somewhere around 11:00 the maid found me when she came to make up the bed. More shit! Mother took me back to school after a pretty good thrashing, apologizing to the teacher who, at this point was a pretty confused woman. Things did not improve in the coming days.

The Third Day

The third day of school I brought what we called a “log Roller” marble to school. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever owned. To clean it and it always needed cleaning, I put it into my mouth and swished it around in my saliva and then dried it off on my shirt. This third day of the first grade however the marble, for some reason escaped the sucking grip of my tongue and slipped just down into my wind pipe. What followed was even more embarrassing that than anything that preceded it. My face, being deprived of oxygen began to turn blue and I had a desperate and panicked look on my face. The teacher leaped up from her desk and raced down the aisle towards me. As you might imagine this caused me even more distress and I swallowed really hard. The Marble was lodged down in my windpipe and all air ceased to pass. It was inaccessible for retrieval, well beyond the reach of fingers! I began to make strange little involuntary sounds when I tried to explain what was wrong, it sounded like "eerhrg" and "geeeakh!" The teacher seemed to be even more distressed that I was and that was considerable! Thank goodness she had the presence of mind to whack me in the middle of my back. The marble was dislodged and went, I knew not where but I think I swallowed it. At first I thought the prized marble had shot from my mouth, sailed across the room and vanished through the open window into the play yard just outside the window. The emergency was over. She wanted me to explain what had happened so I thought about telling her that I was recently orphaned but you know that can only be used once or twice before they quit believing you no matter how sincerely you say it. She, of course had fallen for that once already and sent me to the principal’s office. This was the first of a long line of visits I made to the Principal’s in the elementary grades. For years I continued to look for my crystal log Roller but it never showed up. Can’t tell you how many times I tried to cough it up. I really wanted it back bad!

The Fourth Day

The fourth day I awoke after my near death experience the previous day, determined to do better at school. Wrong! The next day just after lunch a little girl named Camille threw up her lunch right in the middle of class. I was in clear line of site when it happened and I had an up close and personal view of the entire mess. There were whole little pieces of Tangerine in with the rest of the mostly unrecognizable conglomeration. My stomach started to churn and feel very strange and I thought I was going to throw up too. I didn’t, but the little girl who sat just next to the spot where to puddle occurred began to heave and she too emptied her stomach contents on the floor beside the other. More Tangerines! The teacher seemed to have lost her composure to say the least and took the rest of the class out on to the playground for an unscheduled recess. Arriving back to the room the janitor had carefully removed the mess, we began again. One of the children in the class raised her hand and said that she had to go to the restroom, then another and then another. The teacher had about had it at this point (this was not one of her better days) and loudly exclaimed,"The next one of you who ask to go to the bathroom, I am sending to the principle's office!." Well, that let me out of asking even though it felt as though my bladder would explode. My penis had gotten so hard that the front of my pants looked really weird! I began to panic! In a foolish act of desperation I pulled my wooden color crayon box out of my desk and pretended to be looking for something therein. Luckily I had on shorts and I placed the crayon box between my legs. I twisted my penis down to where I had a pretty good shot at hitting the box with the urine. It worked and my bladder was slightly better, how ever crayon boxes really do not hold a lot of urine and who knew they would leak. Well, the urine began to leak out of the box, pool under my desk and lo and behold began to migrate ever so slowly up the aisle towards the teacher’s desk. I craftily looked up at the ceiling and began to softly whistle. Crap! Then it happened. I got tickled and try as I might I was unable to hold the remaining urine I just let it go. And go it did! My pants were soaked and the urine trail began to travel at what looked to be a North Easterly direction about thirty miles an hour directly up towards the teacher’s desk centered between the two rows of student desks. Everyone in the class realized what was going on except the teacher. As unbelievable as it now seems not one child said a word. The teacher finally noticed and emitted an audible gasp. She took everyone out for another recess, except me. I got to go home for the afternoon. Upon arriving home I stuffed the soiled pants and underwear into the bottom of my closet where it would not be discovered for many years, I hoped. The next morning with a fresh set of clothes and some small recovery of my dignity I returned to school, hopeful that the new day would be better and that all the children would have magically forgotten my tragic accident. No one said a thing, not even one of the students, not even the teacher. As certain as I was that there would be some sort of terrible retribution for what I had done, nothing happened. luckily this was the first grade and things that happen in the first grade, apparently stay in the first grade. As surprised as I was, they did not call the police nor was I arrested, as I was almost positive I would be.

The End

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

________________Charles Caleb Colton

Twenty Four Summers

In the panhandle of Florida there was a place where I went almost every weekend during twenty four summers of my life. I thought it was Paradise. The place was Panama City Beach, Florida, Laguna Beach to be specific. This was, at the time a place where parental rules were relaxed and behaviors were tolerated there that would have been frowned upon in other places. Strange how many of my favorite memories are housed in the vicinity of that particular stretch of salt water washed beach.

The lazy surf ran its transparent tongue along the white sugar sand beach as noisy gulls circled above in an azure sky. Across the shimmering water to the distant horizon three almost motionless ships sailed just on the edge of the world, tiny grey rectangles. It was as though they would sprout wings and fly off into the brilliant blue sky at any moment. A woman with a beach towel, smoking a cigarette, followed by two children walked past headed for the surf. Her head was pushed up into a large brimmed hat, feet squeaking in flip flops and large sunglasses. Her bathing was too small for her and excess middle aged fat spilled from the back between the straps and pushed out at the bottom of her suit. As she passed by I caught the faint whiff of the party she and her friends had had the previous night while we were trying to sleep: mostly stale beer and the sour smell of regurgitation. The cabin next door was frequently rented by tourists that were there for weekends of sunning, drinking and partying. They inevitably got too much sun, drank too much alcohol and partied too loud. We did not like all these strangers that often occupied the house next door to us but come they did, no matter what we thought. They came from places like Albany, Bainbridge, Moultrie, Enterprise, Montgomery and other cities and towns in the southern parts of Georgia and Alabama and they were all very much alike. An elderly gentleman called mister Bramblett owned the house and kept it rented most of the summer to those weekend tourists. He died not long after we bought our cabin and his family had him cremated. His ashes were strewn in the brilliant green stripe of the second sand bar out from Laguna beach. For years after thoughts of him came to me when I ventured out that far into the water, his white hair and blue eyes. I often wondered if his ashes became a part of the water, the fish, or maybe they just added to the vast amounts of shifting sand at the bottom of the gulf, constantly moving and changing. Did the substances that made up his body instead all just explode, riding up on the smoke into the air? I wondered about him, his soul and what death meant in general. I still do.

On the beach a few people wandered in and out of the small waves while others lazed about, seals baking in the sun. Two very dark skinned men walked up the beach in what we today call, thongs. The people on Laguna Beach had never seen anything quite like that before. Everyone including the ones in the cabins furtively looked at the naked buttocks of the two men. I heard my mother call to her friend who was there with us for the weekend. “Mary Lou, come here quick, you've got to see this!" Mother called. We learned later that they were Italians, visitors from far away. The July sun beat down like a hammer, as it usually did in this, the steamiest month for the panhandle of Florida. Lying on my back, marinating in Coppertone on an old beach towel, broiling in the sun, and drifting in and out of consciousness, I glanced over at a familiar face. Chip, my best friend who came to spend the week with me. We had a great time fishing, swimming, playing Canasta and Rook, bumming a ride up to the hangout, playing Goofy Golf, sun bathing and just hanging around. The night before he and I had gone down to play a round of Goofy Golf. While we were playing I heard two middle aged women following us talking. The older woman was staring intently at Chip and said to her friend, “Now that is a beautiful boy right there. If I could have had a son or even adopted one that looked like him I would have done it in a minute!” Looking at chip, I realized that she was right, even though I hated her for saying it. I even hated him a little for being so admired by a stranger. He never heard her comments and she and her friend continued to talk as though we were not even there. A sand crab skittered across the sand between us. Chip said," Let’s go surf fishing. Do we have any of the frozen shrimp left?" I said, "No, but we can always go get some, or catch some sand fleas and use them." Intoxicated by the heat, neither of us moved. We remained perfectly still soaking up the rays.

Across the asphalt road from the beach house were two dark tannin stained fresh water lakes covered by yellow water lilies that bloomed all summer. Water Moccasins existed there and it was common to see and almost step on them when moving through the thick grasses surrounding the ponds. Chip and I spent much of our time there fishing for the largemouth bass and bream. Quick sand surrounded the marginal areas of the ponds and more than once I was trapped by it. On one occasion when I was very young it sucked me down to just below my clavicle as I screamed and frantically struggled to free myself. Nobody heard my hysterical screams for help and only at the last minute did the slippery sand turn me loose. Wet, scared, shaking, covered with wet debris and crying I hid out in the bushes till composure returned and my fear had subsided. I never mentioned this experience to anyone and eventually returned to the treacherous edges of the ponds with my fishing rods much more cautious than ever before.

Chip had been my friend for a long time and came to the beach with my family and me frequently. He was all things that I was not but wanted to be, handsome with blond hair and a pleasant, fun personality. Everyone seemed to be drawn into his gravitational pull. He was even tempered with a winning disposition, unlike me. Even my older brothers liked him and they did not like anyone. Despite his positive attributes, Daddy had the infuriating habit of calling him, “Chit,” instead of Chip. He was the only one who thought it was knee slapping funny. Needless to say, Daddy’s use of “Chit” embarrassed me immensely. The more embarrassed I got the bigger kick Daddy got out of it. My parents frequently allowed me to have friends come to the beach. It kept me occupied and out of their hair most of the time. Every so often just trying to be funny Chip would say to me, “Did your Dad just call me shit?” We would both laugh.

The sun radiated down on me, planting the seeds of numerous skin cancers for later life discovery. Nobody, including my 13 year old self, knew the risks and I absolutely loved lounging on the beach in the middle of the day, sweating and burning in the sun. Being of Irish/Dutch descent, I had little chance of getting a decent tan but I would not go down without a fight. I patiently waited for my freckles to unite and become a glorious tan. I kept my faith in the sun and pursued my tan with reckless abandon.

Growing up in south Alabama had certain advantages. This beach, Panama City or the Redneck Rivera as it would later be known, was one of them. As far as I was concerned, the best place on Earth beckoned me from my home, ninety miles to the north. This paradise on the Gulf of Mexico was a state of mind as much as a destination. It had its own sound, smell, taste, and feel like no other place in the world. Small paved roads traversed the most remote tail end of Alabama and the top most part of the Florida pan handle between home and the beach. We wore those roads out traveling between my home, Dothan, Alabama and our vacation home on Laguna Beach, Florida in the steamy heat of midsummer every year. Daddy usually drove, with mother in the passenger seat, four boys and at least one dog in the back seat. There was always a fight going on between at least two of us in the back seat. We played cow poker; steal the shoe and many other games that ultimately led to a confrontation of some kind. Daddy always threatening, "You boys better behave back there or I'll pull my belt off and wear you out"! I for one knew he meant it. He was a heavy smoker and always had a handkerchief in his pocket in the event he had to spit out the phlegm he always seemed to be in his chest. If you were in the seat directly behind him, it was just a matter of time till you got it in the face. When he spit out the front window it would blow directly into the back, no air conditioning you know. Your only option was to duck but you still got it in the face regardless. All of us in the back seat would hit the floor when we heard the front window being rolled down because we knew what was coming. Occasionally a lit cigarette Daddy had just thrown out of the front window would fly into the back window, disintegrate into a fiery windblown fireball and send burning ash in to the air in the back seat. It would cause a small riot between the four boys in the back seat. We ducked and dodged the burning embers leaping almost crushing each other with malicious intent. Rarely did any permanent damage occur.

In the late summer, watermelons attached to lush green vines grew, on both sides of the road. You could smell their almost erotic sweetness while driving through that desolate sandy countryside. We traveled through vast expanses of farm land with small communities like Campbelton, Graceville, Chipley, Vernon and others, breaking up the monotony. Long stretches of road disappeared into nothingness aside from the occasional Scrub Oak or Slash Pine abutting the road, arising from the endless expanse of Palmettos. Occasionally we saw wild turkey, feral pigs, deer and other animals. West Bay, the last small town before we reached the beach, brought the first hints of our arrival; the briny smell and the cries of the sea birds alerted me to our proximity to the beach. West Bay had a large rusting bridge that went out across the water and seemed to reach up into the sky. As we passed this landmark we frequently stopped at the far end of the bridge to buy fresh fish and shrimp from a man whose shack perched on the edge of the bay. Displayed in his tiny market were rows of salted Mullet, fresh Shrimp, Oysters, Crab and every other edible fruit of the sea imaginable, all at reasonable prices. The fresh seafood, along with the butter beans and fresh corn bought from the road side stands along the back roads of Alabama would complete our meal that night at the cabin.

Prepared for dinner, we would arrive at our grey cabin home on the beach. My parents bought the Laguna Beach cabin at Panama City in 1947. The year I turned four years old. Nothing separated our cabin from the Gulf of Mexico but a white sugar sand beach. I rarely went to Church in those summer months because any worshiping I did was in the foaming mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. It was where I wanted to be, especially on a quiet Sunday morning. Sunday being the single morning of the week that Daddy did not go fishing. On those days, we usually left for home in the early afternoon. There was simply not enough time to go fishing and return home at a reasonable hour. Sunday mornings also relieved me from the continuous fishing and endless chores exacted by Daddy. As he was an avid fisherman, and because I was the youngest of four boys, Daddy demanded my presence practically every time the boat left the docks. Frequently in the early morning, well before the sun had even thought about coming up Daddy would come by my bed and snatch all the sheets from me and say, "Get your lazy butt out of that bed and get dressed. We're going fishing and I want to be on the boat before the sun is up." Grumbling I would get up and prepare to go with him. Unlike my older brothers, I had not yet learned to defy him. Mother would chime in from the other room, "Ralph, be quiet, you’re going to wake up the whole house." My chore list contained every nasty, dirty task he could think of, or so I felt at the time. After a really good fishing day, we would pass near the shore and our cabin. Daddy would insist that I get off the boat into the twenty foot deep water with a string of dead fish. I would then swim, pulling the fish through the crystal blue green water to shore. After catching my breath, I would drag the fish up the beach to the cabin, scale, gut and prepare them for my mother to fry for lunch. As an invincible 13 year old, I never considered my lure-like appearance to the sharks. Fortunately, they never took a chance on the clumsy lure dragging chum approaching the shore. Daddy and the other adults would ride the boat back to the St. Andrews Marina and store the boat for the next weekend's repeat. Returning home they would find a succulent meal of fresh fried fish, hush puppies, slaw, Butter Beans, corn on the cob and fries waiting on them as soon as they got in. After the meal Daddy would take a shower and then go to the bedroom and take a long nap, during which time you had better make very sure you didn't wake him up.

Through the years, our family owned numerous small boats for chasing the salt water fish of the gulf; Grouper, Snapper, Mackerel and others. We caught many fish only to return then to the sea due to our specific taste buds. Red Snapper remained while Trigger fish returned. Our boats varied in size and quality over the years, ranging from a sixteen foot Chris Craft to a thirty-five foot, teak decked, Twin Chrysler engine, yacht of a boat. The thirty-five foot boat was the same one my college roommate and I would beach in St. Andrews Bay after consuming large amounts of Budweiser and assorted other beer. I was in graduate school at the University of Alabama and smarter than my actions but the beer and two beautiful young girls were encouraging bad decisions. I abandoned the boat in the bay but that is a story for another day.

My reverie and half sleep on the beach with Chip were interrupted by Daddy calling for me to get up to the house, “right now!” He had discovered a strange and nauseating smell coming from his boat. He wanted me to get in it and find the source of the toxic odor. Chip reluctantly followed me toward the boat. The particularly rancid odor coming from the boat exceeded the normal rotten squid and fish smell. This particular Chris Craft contained a hollow space from beneath the front seat to the back splash well at the rear of the boat. Chip and I did our best to ascertain what the source of the smell was but we simply could not find it. Finally I noticed the odor was stronger under the front seat and stronger still if you slithered further back in the claustrophobic black hollow. The smell was horrible and my dry heaving drove me back to the front of the boat desperate for fresh air more than once.

At this point I suggested Chip go down under the floor to see if he could find the offending carcass or whatever it was. He declined, and noted my failure to help him earlier in the week in the pursuit of his contact. I thought back to when he accidentally swallowed one of his contact lenses. He was right, no help from me. After he lost it, he called his mother. She raised Hell and told him to “find it or not come home", (I have always thought she was kidding). Chip last remembered walking on the beach when airborne sand had gotten in his eye. As was his practice, he had taken his contact lens out and placed it into his mouth to clean it with his saliva. That was the last time he or I had seen his contact lens. After receiving some questionable advice from the adults, he drank a huge amount of saltwater. He hoped it would induce vomiting and he could recover his contact lens by filtering the vomit through a strainer, as per Mother's suggestion. This solution worked, partially. He threw-up and threw-up and threw-up but found no contact lens. The next logical step was, since the contact had gone further down the intestinal tract, to come up with a new solution, no more vomiting, something even worse. My mother suggested, “Just wait till you have a bowel movement and instead of flushing it, dip it out, and filter it with the same spoon and strainer you used on the vomit." Everything will be fine." It seemed to me at the time that I had never heard a more outrageous suggestion. "Blasted contact," he muttered. Chip looked at me expectantly and said, “Are you going to help me with this?" I said, “No way, I'm going fishing across the street. Come over when you're finished, and make sure you wash your hands." The strainer and the spoon of course, were discarded after the deed. This was the only way his mother would let him come back home. Life, which we all knew was good, could continue, provided he found it. Thank God, he found the contact unscathed after its thirty foot dark trip through his upper and lower intestines. His point, of course was that since I had not been a true friend and had gone fishing instead of helping him sort through his feces to locate the offending contact, he felt no compelling reason to crawl under the seat of the boat. My immediate thought was, “Holy Shit, it’s going to have to be me!”

After a great deal of procrastination, I crawled under the seat with a flashlight And a flat lipped shovel, determined to remove the offending item, whatever it was and get it over with. After slithering on my stomach through the dark bowels of the boat, I found a large ten day old Red Snapper in an advanced stage of decomposition at the far end in the crawl space. I scooped it up on the flat lipped shovel and pulled it out, with a fair amount of retching, spluttering and gagging. The dry heaving became so insistent that I thought my stomach might actually explode. The smell was beyond horrible. The fish had baked under deck for a week and some days in July! Chip suggested, "Let's carry it across the street to one of the fresh water ponds and throw it in." The problem was solved! The turtles, frogs, and fish in the pond had an unexpected meal of partially decomposed fish and maggots. Daddy got a story, funnier than “Chit,” and told it as often as conversation permitted. The story always began with, “Remember the day Tommy turned so green when he and Chit were cleaning out the boat.” Needless to say his humor always escaped me. Anyway, Chip had his contact lens back and could actually go home. For years afterwards I kidded him by saying, “Wow, Chip, Your left eye is not blue anymore, it's brown."

Another week ended at Laguna Beach and after an hour and a half trip north, we arrived back home in Dothan, Alabama, tired and sunburned. Sand still in my ears, my shoes, between my toes and in what Daddy laughingly referred to as my crack! I was, at the time, not so interested in baths at the beach house. It always seemed so redundant after being in the salt water so much during the day.

Chip and I were friends for a long time after this particular week at the beach and probably still would be if I had not done a very stupid thing. It involved a girl that at the time belonged to him. There was a night when he came to my house and with his index finger pushed my door bell. At first I thought he wanted to fight. I should have known; he was a far better person than me. He questioned me as though he were a policeman. He did not seem to believe or understand what I had done or why and was trying to figure it out. Each part of my deed had a place it would fit, much like diagramming a sentence; breaking it apart and putting it back together in a different way so it would become clear and understandable. His look made me feel as though I was standing in front of him naked or had been caught stealing something important. The girl really did not matter; she didn’t really want me, at least not for long. That was a night I will never forget and have rarely felt so badly. I lost the best friend I have ever had, bar none. Occasionally I wonder if he even remembers any of this and if it mattered to him as much as it mattered to me or if it mattered to him at all.

Although I really liked that girl, I honestly cared more for Chip. As it turned out I didn't miss her at all but I missed him for a very long time. He and I were at the University of Alabama at the same time but almost never saw each other. He was a fraternity man and did very well there. I on the other hand became an art major and found a place where I perfectly fit in. The bohemian attitudes and life style suited me just fine. My hair grew long and I painted giant colorful canvasses. I even had some notoriety in those circles. I met the girl I would eventually marry there. After college Chip married as did I. On one of our trips back to my childhood home I called him and asked if my wife and I could drop by and see his new baby. He said yes and we went. He had not changed very much and seemed glad to see us. Later I learned that he and his beautiful wife had divorced. She too had lost him and I felt very sorry for her.

Many years after my father died Chip came by the house on Park and Powell to pay his respects to me and my family. He was the same as he had always been. We walked out to my car and sat down. He gently patted me on the knee and said how sorry he was and how well he remembered my father and all the fun we had at the beach. Years later when his mother passed away I tried to get in touch with him but only reached his father. I told him how very sorry I was that his wife had died, how beautiful I always thought she was and how much I had liked her. He was very nice and assured me that he would tell Chip that I had called. I don't know if he ever did.

Writing about family, friends and growing up is much like kneading bread dough that has a piece of broken glass somewhere inside. Sooner or later you are going to hit something that will make you bleed.