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If the stars came out only once a year, everyone would stay up all night to behold them.

.............................................................Ralph Waldo Emerson

The year was 1947, although it was many years ago at times it seems like yesterday.

My parents moved into a two story asbestos siding covered house on the corner of Park and Powell.* It had large Magnolia trees in the front yard. The first four years of my life were spent in the town of Midland City, Alabama, ten miles north of this new home. My maternal Grand-parents lived on a small hill in this same little town and raised ten children there. Grand-pa was a farmer and managed to feed all ten of those children on what he grew in the fields and orchards surrounding their home. He had two huge mules and plowed the vast expanse of cultivated fields with them. There was a perfectly maintained black Model T Ford in one of the barns that he drove to town once or twice a week with Grand-ma proudly sitting next to him. Mother met and fell in love with my father on this small farm. After a brief stint of living in Kentucky where he sold Singer sewing machines, they moved back to Midland City and set up housekeeping to be closer to her family. After a number of years I was born, the final son of four. Next door to us lived a girl three years older than me. She had blond hair and a beautiful smile, Diane. Although she was older we spent a lot of time together during those formative years. The two of us played in the hay loft of the old barn in their back yard that smelled of grass, old straw and cows. Barn Swallows swept in and out of the structure as though they owned the place and we were the interlopers. I was in love with Diane, as only a child of two, three and four can be. Ultimately we moved away, left her, the small town and the Barn Swallows behind. We moved to a new town, larger and better, where my father had a real chance of making a living in the lumber business. All this to explain why I was primed to fall for another little girl, living next door with blond hair and a beautiful smile. Her name was Starr.

My first memory of Starr was one afternoon in the early summer. Playing with little multicolored toy cars that I pushed into the crevices and holes in the rocks surrounding the small fish pond in our back yard; I was startled by someone silently standing next to me. It was the little girl from next door. At first I did not like her because she was not Diane. She did have beautiful long blond hair that the sun illuminated in the most amazing way. She did not however, seem to smile very much. This was soon to change as Starr and I became fast friends and pretty much inseparable in the summer months. She was a year younger that me and talented in ways that I found unfathomable. She could read a book or story and no matter what you said or did, could not break her concentration. For me if a squirrel farted a mile away I was totally distracted and could almost not regain the train of thought I was formerly involved in. I haven’t changed a bit. Starr's little pinky fingers had a strange twist to them. The last joint pointed at almost right angles to other fingers. She was quite the accomplished piano player later in life. If I had been born with seven fingers on each hand I still could not have played. Piano playing was something that I wanted to do but found that being tone deaf was somewhat of a stumbling block.

Starr and I shared an old discarded tire that we used as a toilet that happened to be under a bush beneath the window of my parent’s bedroom. I will not get into specifics on that issue and only hope that Starr’s memory is as poor as mine. This illustrates how close we were. Really, how many people can you think of that you would be willing to sit on a spare tire with and use the potty? Soon after this, for some reason Starr out grew the fresh air bathroom thing. I never quite did.

loving horses beyond all reason Star doted on them. She had an extensive ceramic horse collection and many books about horses. The ceramic horse collection that I had, rivaled her collection for quality and beauty. The only thing was that since I could not resist playing with them, all the legs, tails and ears were broken off. Actually I had a great collection of horse torsos. Eventually she owned a number of real horses, their foals and all the other amazing things that went along with horse ownership. I would not know of course because I never had a real horse. There were a few stuffed horses and a broom thing that I was given that was decorated like a horse but these all proved to be less than satisfactory. Each and every Christmas I asked for a pony, hoping against hope that mother and daddy would not find out that Santa was being asked for such an outlandish gift and that he might be bringing me a pony. The pony, needless to say, never came. Every time I saw a Santa Clause at Christmas in department stores and ringing bells on the street I would desperately want to ask him, “Where’s the freaking pony, Santa?” Starr never had this problem. I know what you’re thinking, she was after all, an only child practically, (there were two step brothers that really didn't count). That explains that! I on the other hand being the last son in a family of four sons, oh but I repeat myself. That’s probably enough said.


Many of our exploits went unnoticed but one tragically stands out. On a Saturday morning when Mother was gone off with a friend, Starr and I discovered that the Winter Jasmine growing eight or ten feet tall and which separated our two houses would actually support our weight. Neither Starr nor I intended any harm to the plant. It was in a perfect place serving both houses, offering itself as a wind break and a privacy screen. It was little more than thousands of tiny weeping branches supported by thousands more beneath, covered in soft leaves. The shrub was beautiful in spring when it sported bright yellow flowers. We used it as a trampoline! The experience in the shrub was even more fun if you threw yourself through the air and landed in the middle of it with a soft whoosh! Wow, What fun! We jumped, leaped and swan dove into that gigantic bush all afternoon. Amazing! The only thing was, while we were so busy having fun neither of us realized that the bush was now compressed to maybe fourteen inches tall. It was practically gone! There was an enormous empty hole between her house and mine, hummm. Eventually mother came home and was totally aghast at the missing shrubbery. With her purse clutched firmly against her bosom she kept looking at the empty space, as though she could not believe her eyes! When Daddy got home he gave me a thorough thrashing at mother’s insistence.

It was not unusual for me to get a “whipping”, I got many and most were probably well deserved. Daddy would quickly whip off his long belt, faster that one would think a chubby man could, grab you by one wrist and begin to lash you with the belt with lightening speed. Luckily, he would quit soon because, running as fast as I could, to escape the many blows resulted in me running in a circular motion taking him with me. As he spun round and round he became dizzy. This lessened my torture but it seemed to further piss him off. For the rest of the day I became very scarce. The next day I asked Starr if she had gotten into trouble and she said, “Not yet.” We were in her bedroom and her mother came in and seemed quite upset. She rushed over to Starr and grabbed her left hand and lightly slapped the back of it three times. Then she said, “Next time you destroy someone’s property you’ll get even more of that.” After she left the room, I said, “crap Starr that was it?” She said with a bit if a whimper, obviously upset, “yes.” I thought to myself, I hate her!

Of course, I did not hate her at all. She was my closest companion. Having three older brothers, a stand up fight with any one of them was totally out of the question. I consequently wouldn't and couldn't stand up to anyone. Starr was very smart and strong willed and figured this out quickly. Her favorite game was, “horses”, in which we would make weird whinnying noises and chase each other around the back yard. Ultimately a fight would break out between us (the horses) and more often that not I would be the one injured and go home crying. The other game was one in which we stripped all the leaves off a long tendril of English Ivy and proceeded to whip each other, until someone cried and ran home. Again, usually it was me. Mother saw Starr get the better of me in one of our typical horse fights and was embarrassed by me, letting “a girl” practically beat me up. She said, “The next time you let Starr win a fight and you come running home crying I am going to wear you out and have your Daddy whip you too, when he gets home!” Later the same day Starr still sweating with her long hair sticking to the sides of her head, thrilled with her recent victory over me in the horse fight didn’t anticipate what was finally coming her way. Initiating another ivy fight I absolutely (for the first time) got the better of her(whipped her ass). She went home crying for the first time. When I returned home mother was mad as Hell and said that Starr’s mother had called and said that I had beaten her with an Ivy vine. I got yet another spanking because I had beaten up a girl. Mother said that she was ashamed disappointed and embarrassed at my doing such a thing, “What were you thinking? Just wait till your father gets home”, she said! Fuck!

One weekday afternoon Starr and a friend,(Sherry I think) came over to get me. We were in Junior High School at the time. They had decided to organize a dance club. Of course I was thrilled to be included, never thinking that I would actually have to learn to dance. Very patiently the two of them did their best to show me the moves for the "Bop". This took the better part of the afternoon. I learned! Not that I was any good at it but that didn't stop me. I twisted my little ass, spun around and did all the things that they showed me with some improvisations of my own. Most people who saw me practicing my newly accomplished skill thought I was had been caught up in an epileptic seizure, or possessed by some ancient demon. This was not far from the truth! At first my parents and relatives laughed when I demonstrated my technique but when I was through they had very worried looks on their faces and furtively looked at each other as though they had caught me masturbating. A look that was equal parts, disbelief, astonishment and disgust. This craze lasted a lot longer than it should have. My dance career never got off the ground, since there are not a lot of opportunities for a thirteen year old male dancer in a small town in south Alabama. Things settled back down to where most of my time was spent watching the very snowy television set trying to decipher what was going on through the static and figuring out ways I could get out of doing my homework.

In Starr's back yard was the tallest TV antennae I had ever seen. It had dozens of guy wires that held the fragile contraption straight in the air. Her dad and mom had one of the first television sets in the town and reception was a real problem. The nearest television station was in Montgomery, easily a hundred miles away.
One afternoon I decided to climb to the top of that antennae edifice. It was amazing! I could see all across the town we lived in. The sway from the wind at the top of that antennae was one of the more frightening feelings I have ever experienced. Most of the boys in the neighborhood claimed that they had climbed it but I actually did. It scared the Hell out of me and that was the only time I ever tried it. Only recently have I admitted this to Starr. The only other time I had been so high and so scared was the night two friends and I climbed to the top of the water tower down the street near the elementary school. We waited till late and sneaked through the area and climbed all the was to the top. It was way higher that the TV antennae and much more frightening. It was more frightening still when we saw the police cruiser drive up and park just below the tower. When we finally came down they asked if we had painted anything up there on the tower, we swore not, even though our hands and T-shirts were covered with red paint. I never understood why they let us get by with it.

The years passed and we grew ever so slowly up. At fifteen years old I went away to a military school in St. Petersburg, Florida. This was not my idea! Not being the ideal child, my parents and my brothers all agreed that Military school would be the very thing to straighten me out. There had been a couple of scrapes with the local police involving fire crackers, wanton destruction of public property, sneaking the parents cars out without their permission and driving without a license, the underage drinking with the boy across the street and some hint of involvement in some Halloween pranks and that sort of thing. Not even to mention the water tower thing. I got away with much more that I was ever caught for. Nothing terribly serious was ever suggested or discovered, thank God!

When my parents took me to St. Petersburg for the first day of military school, Starr and her Mom came along for the ride. It was five hundred miles to the school from our home in South Alabama. They wanted to be sure I could not escape and find my way back home, I guess. The school itself was OK, although I was, of course too busy figuring how to have a little fun than to study and do anything responsible. I did miss Starr not being around but I slowly adjusted to the military school lifestyle. St.Petersburg was actually fun. A large town filled with strangers that did not know my parents. It was great! On the rare occasion when I came home Starr was always one of the first people I went to see. She was happy to see me and we always managed to have a bit of fun when we got together.  If Star was not at home her mother ,Virginia was always willing to visit with me. Virginia was always so sweet and patient with me and always seemed glad to see me. I loved her very much.

The years that passed from the time Starr got married and the time I did the same, were many. We actually lost touch through all that period but I never quit caring about her. Only at weddings and funerals did we see each other. At her daddy's funeral, I was one of the pallbearers. I think she still cared about me she was just somewhere else, living her life as I was somewhere else living mine. Recently we got together and believe it or not, it was as though we had never been apart. We ate good food, drank some really good wine and visited several of the local wineries and had a blast catching up on every thing and all we had been up to in the years passed.

There are many other stories that I could tell about Starr which involved alcohol, speeding tickets, Marijuana, reckless driving, men, women, beach parties, her trying to run over some guy at the city dump and many other things. However she is now a well respected real-estate agent in a large town in Alabama I will not divulge any further details concerning our time together. That is not until the novel comes out!

Just kidding Starr! He he he he he he he!

* The addresses in Dothan, Alabama changed after I moved away and what once was 400 North Park Avenue became 418 North Park Avenue. why the numbers changed, I have no Idea???

tbd

There are ancient banshees from long past, circling around my head, screaming in a language that I do not understand. There is a whisper in all their noise that, although just beyond my range of hearing I recognize, as the truth.


Starr, if you read this you must understand that every thing in this so called memoir below is filtered through a small child's thoughts and then recollected through a precariously balanced 66 year old brain. Consequently it's kind of like making chicken soup out of chicken shit. Difficult to say the least, if not impossible! Being the kind of person I am, fabrication, exaggeration, entitlement and manipulation is always OK with me. Damn the truth, full speed ahead!