Twice Drowning

Water, water, everywhere........ and nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Drowning is a dangerous business.

The first time

My first experience with drowning was when I was just a little boy maybe seven or eight. It happened in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico at our cabin on Panama City Beach, Laguna Beach to be exact in the panhandle of Florida. It was a quiet afternoon and my older brother David and I were playing on the sugar sand beach in the edge of the surf just below the cabin. Up at the cabin our parents and a number of adult relatives were busily playing Canasta or Rook or some other card game and probably having a cocktail or two. Mother and daddy were not big drinkers but if the guests were drinking so did my parents, especially my dad. Card games usually entertained us because at that time there was no television there. Actually television was not really available anywhere because it was still in its infancy in 1949 and 1950. Few places in south Alabama much less in that area of the Florida gulf coast had much in the way of entertainment outside of the sandy beach, a few carnivals and miniature golf courses. Mostly we played in the water, skied, snorkeled or participated in water activities of some sort. We also went fishing in the gulf and in two fresh water ponds across the street from our cabin.

 My parents let me spend time on the beach with my brother but there were rules imposed that you were suppose to adhere to.  We rarely did. Smiling David asked, “Tommy do you want to swim out to the second sand bar with me?” I said, “No it’s too far, too deep and besides there are sharks out there.” He replied, “Don’t be a sissy, come on, I’ll show you where to step. “ Reluctantly I followed. He knew how to tread water; I had not as yet learned. When we got over our heads he began treading the salty water raising his entire chest out of the liquid surrounding him. He said, “Come on out here, there is a sandbar just under my feet; you can reach it if you try.” Swimming even further out frantically jabbing my feet towards his, I found no bottom. He back pedaled deeper into the gulf. “Come on little baby. Surely you can make it if I can, “he called, laughing. Again I moved through the cool briny water into even deeper regions. My arms and legs began to weaken. I inhaled a mouthful of water. With considerable spluttering and coughing from the intake, I paddled after him. He glided further away, effortlessly treading his way into deeper areas still. He laughed and said, “Come on, come on, I am going to leave you out here where a shark will get you, if you don't come on.” Finally exhausted, I slipped beneath the small waves moving across the surface of the water, breathing in more of the gulf. David watched, smiling. Hysterical at this point, I pushed myself back up and broke the surface with a panicked cry and sucked in a mouthful of air and more water just before I went down again. My arms and legs were burning from the exertion. Below the waves I realized I was crying, sucking salt water into my lungs, more coughing and spluttering. Once more I weakly surfaced; within arm’s reach he was still looking at me curiously. Then I went down again! Running through my head was the thought that this was it; you go down three times before you finally drown. Everybody knows that! Just as I went down for the last time sucking more salty water into my body strange floating things crossed my vision. I felt David grab me by the arm. He pulled me back to the surface. Paddling through the water he dragged me towards shore. I was gagging and sobbing hysterically. On my hands and knees in the sand, I cried uncontrollably, coughed, gagged and puked the salty gulf out through my nose and mouth. It spewed into the sand along with some small remains of my yet undigested lunch. Walking away David arrogantly said, “I’m going to tell everyone in the house that I saved your life today." I replied sobbing, “If you do I'll tell them you tried to kill me! And by the way I hate your guts!”

He had saved me from drowning as surely as he had almost intentionally drowned me. I was left sobbing, coughing up salt water through my nose and mouth. He walked back towards the cabin. I noticed that he was not laughing anymore. I was never sure whether David saved me from drowning because he cared about me, whether he was afraid of what might happen when he got back to the cabin or whether he was afraid someone on the beach might have been watching us and seen him intentionally drown his little brother. Probably it was a little bit of all those things. Perhaps he intended to drown me but changed his mind at the last moment. Maybe instead he was just the cat and I was just the mouse. He toyed with me thinking it over; should I let him die or should I pull him out. Being the third child he rarely had any power over anyone and this maybe was one of those illusive moments for him. Strange, neither of us ever mentioned that afternoon again.

The second time

In late September of 1958, I went to live in St. Petersburg, Florida for a year, at a military school at my parent’s insistence.

Driving down the two lane road that left southern Alabama and pushed itself into the northernmost panhandle of Florida; the landscape changed. Familiar pines and flora were gradually replaced by broadleaved evergreens and Palms. The soil became sandy and everything about the landscape was unfamiliar. We drove for hours until we finally came to the city of St. Petersburg. Meandering our way through the suburbs, we eventually found the school. It was a very busy place with young boys of High School and Junior High age being dropped off by their parents from very nice cars. Cadillac cars, Lincolns and other upscale vehicles were cluttering the entrance to the campus. Royal Palms waved their finger like leaves at us seductively as a soft breeze filtered through them. Boys with their parents and younger siblings milled about registering and moving large trunks into the ancient looking tan building. Looking at all this, made my stomach turn cold. It was true! They were going to leave me in this strange and unfamiliar place. Months ago I started stealing myself up so that I would not care what they did but underneath I was anxious and scared. Being fifteen, the youngest of four sons I had been far from an ideal child. Certainly no scholar and lacking any self control I established a reputation in the neighborhood and in the family as an unpredictable hellion who would do anything at all. As a wits end effort they final decided to send me to this military school in south Florida. They thought it would, “Make a man of him”, so Daddy said. At fifteen I had no intention of doing anything he wanted me to do. Amazingly I managed to do that for a very long time.

After moving into a very small room with no air-conditioned in the dorm I realized that there were three other boys my age that were all going to share this less that roomy space, with one bathroom. All three of these boys were from South America, fluent in Spanish and very worldly. They seemed nice enough and were old hands at being away from their home and parents. I decided I would be the same. I would never be homesick! The school was full of boys from the north and from families that had moved to Florida for one reason or another. They had a fascination with the way I pronounced my words, my accent. Many of them would invite me home for the weekend with them just so their parents could hear me speak. I was a celebrity, of sorts, for a while. Who knew I had an accent? South Alabama had plenty of people who spoke the same way I did. In fact, all of them did.

There were many Hispanic boys from South America and Spanish was spoken much of the time. After a shocking week or two, I became acclimated to the military routine, marching, saluting, spit shining shoes and all the other routines that take place in the manly military environment. Inspections were a big deal and it took hours to get ready for them. Spit shining your shoes, polishing your belt buckle, cleaning your school issued rifle and so many other things that to me were of no importance. At one major inspection I was standing in rank in the boiling south Florida sun, anxious and worried that I might not pass the serious inspection. The company captain stepped in front of me doing the preliminary inspection before the “Big Dog” that was following him did his. The captain looked down at me and whispered, “Your fly is undone!” At first I did not understand what he said. I whispered back, “What?” He whispered again, “Your fly is down.” Again I offered, “What, I don't know what you mean.” In desperation he again whispered, “Your pants are unzipped, stupid!” That was the first time in my life I had heard that expression. Calling your zipper a “fly” was totally unknown to me. Frantically I reached to the front of my pants just as the Commander stepped in front of me. Being in such a panic I had inadvertently released my hold on the rifle in order to grip and zip up my pants. It takes two hands to zip up pants. The rifle careened forward and struck the Commander directly in the crotch of his pants. He instantly bent over and grunted, "Aruggg," and simultaneously stumbled backwards! All I could think was,” SHIT, I'm dead! “I had failed the inspection and assaulted the Company Commander all in the same instant. The guys behind me snickered uncontrollably.

Weekly inspections of the rooms we lived in were held most Saturday mornings. Everything had to be perfect. The shoes shined, the floors spotless, the garments on the clothes hangers in the small closets had to be exact, two finger widths apart on the rail. All towels had to be folded and neatly stacked in the foot lockers. The walls washed, the windows spotless, everything had to be extraordinarily clean and shiny. There was even a small wash cloth that had to be perfectly folded and displayed on the head board of every boy's bed. This I never understood until

one night in a dream that took me underwater in a crystal clear pool. A beautiful girl was there swimming in a one piece bathing suit, doing large lazy backwards circles, submerged in the blue liquid. Her long blond hair flowed down her back and shimmered beneath the water. I swam over to her, arched my back, mimicking her in those very erotic circular maneuvers. Following her closely she and I became equal parts of one circle, going slowly around and around underneath the water, like hands of a clock, her head at my feet, my head at her feet. I moved up her legs, while ever so slowly my face turned and slid up to her knees. She did not seem to notice or care. There was a distinct smell of Coppertone even though we were under the water. My face slid ever so slowly, further up her thighs. Finally I got to a point where my nose perfectly fit into the perfect little triangular juncture of her two legs and her torso. It was like a puzzle piece that had been waiting to fit only into this exact space. I convulsed, in my sleep, with my head between her legs, under the blue water, in my little military school bed. It then became clear to me what the wash cloth was doing hanging within a few inches of my head. This was the first time I had ever had a wet dream and for a long time afterwards I tried to recreate the same experience. It rarely happened again much to my frustration.

Actually I adapted quite well to military school, all things considered. It took me a while to realize that becoming invisible was the best option for me, another average face in a long line of ordinary faces. My mantra was, make no waves. The fewer people who know your name, the better off you are. Do not walk funny, do not look funny and most of all, do not talk funny. Well, two out of three was not bad. Many of the boys, especially the younger ones were sent to the president's office by the upper-class men to ask his secretary for a masturbation license. They were told that it was required by the end of that same day, most went. Some days the poor lady would have twelve or fifteen young boys come in requesting this particular document. There were others that were sent a half a mile to the boat docks to get forty feet of shore line, or the keys to the oar locks. Usually they were sent by an officer or an older more experienced student. These green boys had no idea what any of these things meant. It was sort of like me and the "fly" fiasco. Luckily I had heard about hazing and those kinds of things shortly after I got to the school.

In the back area of the campus there was a swimming pool surrounded by a chain link fence bordered by beautifully colored Crotons and twining Mandevilla vines covered with huge lemon colored flowers. Surprisingly it was accessible any time, by students when they felt like going in for a swim. I found this ironic for a place that had so many rules that applied to every aspect of your life. There were no life guards to control the boys who swam and played as they liked. Frequently the upper class men were in the pool having raucous water fights that were border line violent. Their large bodies thrashed and pushed each other under water with strength and ferocity that was surprising. My body, at fifteen was not quite up to competing with these boys who had two to three years on me. They were sixteen, seventeen and eighteen and large for their age. What I lacked in stature I made up for in a bad temper and attitude, or so everyone said. The particular afternoon my second near drowning occurred, was sunny and beautiful. A swim, I thought was just what I needed. There was no place to change into bathing suits at the pool so I had already put mine on in the dorm room. I approached the pool with my towel loosely hanging around my neck and barefooted. As usual the bigger boys were attacking each other in the water. Sitting on the edge of the pool I watched closely the struggle between these big guys. I was not small for my age but my growth spurt had only just begun and I had not yet adjusted to my new found strength and coordination. At five foot ten and weighing one hundred and thirty pounds I was not small, but not large, tallish and skinny.

One of the giants called me from the middle of the pool, “Hey you, come on in, we need you to be on our team, we’re one short”. I was not sure what to do so I got into the water and swam out to where the confrontation was taking place. At first the wrestling overwhelmed me but I discovered that I could compete with them if I really put forth the effort. The water fight escalated into a frenzied struggle between the two so called teams. A point came when I was pushed deep into the water and several large, immovable bodies were on top of me. I was pushed deeper and deeper still, to the bottom of the pool. I needed air and I needed it desperately. Still they kept me trapped in the many hairy legs and torsos thrashing above me. I panicked but the panic only made me struggle harder to reach the surface and air. Again my efforts were thwarted. I thought they were keeping me down so that they could actually drown me. Maybe they had planned this and it was not just an accident. They were actually trying to kill me! My panic became critical. I hit the bottom of the pool again and felt my burning lungs suck in a stream of water. It filled them and shocked my body and mind. I was going to drown, just like the time David lured me out into the deep water eight or ten years ago at the beach. The floating things reappeared in my vision just like the first time I almost drowned. As one final effort I swung my arm upward and tried to extricate myself from the tangle of legs and arms holding me beneath the water. Apparently my fingers were so positioned that the fingernails were extended like a cat. I made contact with someone above me and my fingernails tore across the skin on the chest of one of the boys. Again I struck upwards with frantic effort hitting someone or something else! My lungs constricted and expelled the water they had taken in. Again I inhaled a second rush of water. I was feeling intoxicated by the inhalation of the chlorinated water.

Suddenly the body traffic above me diminished and after a couple of weak pushes I reached the surface, almost drowned. My lungs were vomiting water. It spewed out of my mouth and nose like a garden hose, a cloudy slimy chlorine gush. The pool was still when I surfaced, coughing and spluttering. The largest boy in the water stood looking down at his chest, water draining from his hair and ears. There were four long vermilion stripes that stretched across his chest from his clavicle across one nipple down to the bottom of his rib cage. There were bloody tributaries running down to the hair around his navel. The other boys in the circle stared at him. One Hispanic boy had the same stripes from his left eye to the bottom of his chin. Blood leaked at an alarming rate from the lines on his face. Both boys were bleeding profusely and it tinted the water in the pool around them a pinkish color. He screamed, “You fucking ass hole, what’s wrong with you?” The second boy erupted, “Culo cago!” I responded with yet another stream of projectile chlorine water vomit erupting from my mouth and nose with an involuntary “uggruhh?” The pool cleared as they quickly moved away from the liquid my body had rejected. Standing on the wet concrete surrounding the pool they watched me. “Stupid red neck fuck”, they all agreed and turned and walked through the gate in the chain link fence. The dark Hispanic boy with the scratches on his face, looked at me over his shoulder as he left the pool and said,”Maricon, cabron, ay mio tu eres un pendeho!” I did not say anything back to him but I was pretty sure it was not a complement. As he passed through the gate the boy snatched a handful of the Mandvilla's leaves and threw them aside in disgust.

After a few minutes I climbed out of the pool and walked back towards the dorm. On the concrete walkway I noticed an irregular trail of small bloody spots the two boys had left behind.

Of course, I didn't actually drown at the times I have written about but the experiences truly could have gone either way.

 tbd

Drunkenness is simply voluntary insanity.
_______Seneca

Better sleep with a sober cannibal that a drunken Christian.
_______Herman Melville

The liquid in the glass is ice cold, moving on its own around the frozen cubes, threatening, promising, seducing. It is amber or clear and when you swallow, it takes your breath away. It is Vodka, Gin, Rum, Scotch, Irish whiskey, Tequila, Brandy and, Bourbon. It makes brothers of strangers and strangers of brothers.

I was initiated early.

My first experience with alcohol was when I was three of four years old. Standing in the small kitchen in my parent’s home I watched intently as my mother made one of her delicious fruit cakes. If the idea of fruit cakes turns you off it is because you have never had one like my mother made. Baked early in the holidays it was filled with the freshest candied fruits including red and green cherries, currants and Pineapple. It contained Brazil nuts, Pecans, Walnuts and all this packed in and surrounded by the most delicious amber colored sweet cake, moist and aromatic. The cake, if a word like “cake” can describe what the incredible concoction really is, was put away wrapped in foil after baking and daily splashed with Bourbon, succulent and melting. It was a treasure, coveted, thinly sliced and parceled out only to special guests with steamy hot coffee and heavy cream. It was not a simple thing to be shared with children and those who could not appreciate the exotic flavors. It was for the connoisseur’s pallet and was not wasted on the uninitiated. The white porcelain topped table in the middle of the small kitchen was covered with sacks of flour, bowls of nuts, beautiful candied fruit, assorted bottles of amber colored liquid, half filled bowls and vials of exotic herbs and spices. It was December and the room was steamy and warm, smelling of oranges, apples, cloves, Anise, cinnamon, vanilla and other aromatic cooking things. It swept over you like a tsunami. Mother was a wonderful cook, having learned most of her skills at the hip of my grandmother who was phenomenal in the kitchen. She must have been pretty Phenomenal in the bed room as well, since she and grandpa had ten children. Of course, to be fair there was no television at the time. The wonderful odors thickening the kitchen air made my mouth fill with saliva and run over. It all seemed so incredibly enticing I could not resist helping myself to the food scraps, raisins and sugar leavings around the edges of the table that I could reach. It all fell prey to my sticky grasping fingers especially the dusting of granulated sugar. I got it by first sticking my finger into the saliva adhesive in my mouth and pressing it into the sugar, then back on to my tongue. It was delicious! Standing on my tip toes I then reached up onto the small table and grabbed one bottle by the neck and turned it up to my lips, much as a seasoned alcoholic might do. The warm fluid streamed down my throat and hit my stomach with a small explosion. The stomach did not cooperate and promptly sent the explosive liquid back up to the point it had entered into my small body. There in its rush to evacuate, it shot out of my mouth and split between my nostrils and spewed out with unexpected force. Ninety proof Bourbon racing through the nasal passage way was less than pleasant. There was no mirror in the kitchen but had there been I am sure I would have seen a small mushroom shaped cloud forming directly above and attached to the top of my head. The screams that came out of my mouth were scary in pitch and volume and although I was a child who screamed frequently, it alerted the entire house that something was terribly wrong. Having expelled the alcohol with such force I had surely dirtied my pants in the process. My screams were punctuated with coughing, gagging, spluttering and more screams. The family members that were home, mainly my older brothers raced into the kitchen to see what had happened. After the crisis passed they all bent double laughing and slapping their knees. They thought the whole scenario was very funny and talked about it for many days. My first experience with this volatile liquid left me determined to avoid it at all costs, forever.

Forever however, is a long time.

As a child I experimented with alcohol extensively whenever I got the chance. Fortunately the fascinating liquid was usually unavailable; otherwise I might have become a serious drinker early on. Years later when we had visitors come to our beach cabin there would always be a fair amount of drinking by some of the adults. Frequently a pint bottle of Bourbon or Vodka would be left out on the chest near the card table, accidentally. When the adults had finished all their talking, drinking and card games and had gone to their respective bed rooms I would turn their bottles up and drink what I could stand from them. It was always painful at first but eventually the pleasure would outweigh the pain. That feeling of well being would set in and everything would seem better. Usually I remembered to fill the bottle back up with water to the level it had been before I drank from it. The parents and guests never suspected anything.

They couldn't imagine such a thing.

Across the street from our home lived a boy with whom I was very close. He was a year or two younger than me but we were still great friends. His mother was a serious alcoholic and one of the sweetest women I have ever met. The father drank as well but never developed the addictive problems that the mother had. Bob and I always did what we could get away with and that was plenty. Since there was always liquor in their house that no one kept track of, we had a constant supply of alcohol. Behind their large two story Dutch Colonial house was a garage apartment where we had a sort of club house. More things went on there than anyone could imagine or want to know about. The drinking was formidable and Bob was always way ahead of anyone else participating. I never thought there was anything much wrong with what we were doing until one night Bob went over the edge, even for me. It involved a speeding ticket he had gotten from a local police officer. Early one afternoon Bob and I started drinking and he became obsessed with the policeman that had given him a speeding ticket. He wanted revenge. Since we, in no way could do anything to the actual policeman we kidnapped one of those metal figures that was painted to resemble a traffic guard used at intersections and school crossings. The standing faux policeman (about five or six feet tall) had a white painted sash across his chest and held an hexagonal sign that said, slow. He had an obnoxious smile with very white painted teeth. There was something about the teeth Bob could not tolerate. He had decided that when he got drunk enough, later that night he was going to knock the crossing guard’s teeth out. It seemed to make sense to me at the time. At one point during the evening Bob had drunk so much he threw up into a large brandy snifter he was drinking from. Very nonchalantly he took his finger and pushed the vomit to one side in the glass and proceeded to drink more from the liquid beneath. I said, "Bob, you are so sick, that's the grossest thing I have ever seen!" Bob replied, "Fuck you!" In fact it was the grossest thing I had ever seen. I got up and stumbled out of the garage apartment. Bob was too far gone to know or care. This was when I realized he was a world class drinker. I was an amateur. I did not see Bob for a few days and when I did his right hand was in a cast from the elbow down to his finger tips. He had indeed knocked the teeth out of the policeman's face but in doing so had fractured almost all the bones in his right hand and wrist.


Bob was not the kind of person who would lie to or betray a friend, even an unworthy one.

Much later Bob was married and had two children but like his mother, was plagued by a serious drinking problem all his life. After his divorce his life spiraled downwards with many pointless jobs and relationships. He even spent time in the local jail for writing bad checks. While he was incarcerated he volunteered to work on the sides of the road, as a way to get out of jail for a few hours each day. On one of his outings he caught a large corn stake on the side of the road, secreted it into a paper bag and smuggled it back to his jail cell. That evening as one of the guards brought him his dinner he threw the snake into the man's face. The guard beat him with a night stick until he had to be hospitalized. The details of what actually happened were sketchy and never fully explained. If all this were even true or not, I never discovered. Bob and I had lost touch and everything about the incident was passed around through many mouths and ears. Years later I learned that Bob had been killed while riding a motorcycle out on the four lane when he pulled out in front of an oncoming truck. There is no doubt I was partially responsible for Bob's death. Why did any of it have to happen in that way? Why did we head down that destructive path at such an early age? What were we trying to prove? Why did I turn away to save myself and abandon him for the rest of his life, to alcoholism and eventual destruction?

Could anyone have saved him and did he want to be saved?

During my stint at military school access to alcohol was impossible until my final year. I had become an officer in the cadet corps and consequently had more freedom that most of the other students. My room was located in the junior barracks and was a block or so from the actual campus. Out in the woods behind the barracks where I stayed was a ravine of sorts and deep woods. There I secreted alcohol, smuggled back from rare trips away from campus. One of my roommates would go out back at the break following the three hours long study period. We would swill down enough of the forbidden liquid to get a good buzz going and then return to our room, extremely jubilant. Having alcohol in any form was an honor council offence and expulsion was the penalty. No one ever suspected anything and we continued our dangerous exploits for the rest of the academic year. I now attribute our foolish ways to total boredom. Frequently on the Saturday nights we were allowed to go to town we obtained beer from an elderly black man who worked at the local service station and was more than willing to buy us alcohol for a small tip. We drank the beer as fast as we could to promote a quick high and then went to the movie theater and watched whatever movie was playing. We laughed hysterically at the movie no matter what it was, a brief respite from the military routine that bored most of us to tears.

My first year at the University of Alabama, alcohol was surprisingly available and since I rarely went to class (being totally lost and unprepared for the pre-Med classes I was enrolled in) much of my time was spent in the search for fun. Living away from campus in a rented room in with other guys, there was little to focus on except unhealthy pursuits. I sought them out as though it were a virtue. The second year at the University I started taking art classes and loved it. The students in these classes were very interesting as were the professors. It was in the first art class I met the girl I would eventually marry. Getting to know these truly interesting people was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. I attended class with great anticipation, worked hard, made excellent grades and became close to many of the students and faculty in that department.

Frequently there were parties.

The first I heard about one particular party was on Thursday. It was the middle of August and an acquaintance from art class announced a Halloween party at his apartment for the upcoming Saturday night. At first I thought it was a pretty stupid idea to have a Halloween party in the middle of August, but the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. It kind of went along with the “Dadaist” art movement that I had recently learned about in art history class. Found objects, weird performances and nonsensical kinds of artistic efforts, typified the Dada movement. Doing something that did not really make any sense appealed to me on several different levels, so why not a Halloween party in the middle of August? The problem was that it was going to be a costume party. Having spent all my high school years in a military school, that sort of frivolity had escaped me almost all together. The only party that ever happened at the Military school was a formal dance which was little to no fun. A lot of beautiful girls came with their cadet dates but all were totally untouchable. They wore large pastel colored ball gowns with hair piled high and frozen with hair spray. They moved about the dance floor like upturned camellia blossoms floating in water. These girls were breath taking and exotic beyond description to all of us cadets in the military school. Like wonderful soft, delicious aliens that could be gazed upon, smelled and desired after but only at a distance. There was a girl that frequented our lunch hall on Sundays and other rare occasions, daughter of a faculty member. She was incredibly beautiful, blond, olive skin, poised and when she walked into that basement lunch hall the whole place became as silent as a tomb. It was as though she had stolen our breath. The cadets couldn't talk until she was seated and even then they craned their necks just to get a brief glimpse of her. We looked intently as if memorizing what we could of her in those brief moments she was in site. When she moved I could imagine her body parts moving against her silent, silken under garments, what she smelled like and above all what she must have felt like, the goose bumps on her thighs, the indentation where her bra strap cut into her shoulder and back. Every Sunday night at lights out the entire cadet corps was registering a seven on the Richter scale, vibrating under the covers of our beds from the masturbating, most I am sure thinking about the tan, sensuous, voluptuous, beautiful Gail. It took forever to get used to having girls sitting next to me in class when I finally went to a coed school. Sitting next to a one was a whole different experience. Like being seated next to something radioactive!

And many of them certainly were!

Having decided to go to the costume party there was one big problem, the costume. Absolutely nothing came to mind. I had always been fascinated by the old horror movies I watched as a little boy in the flickering darkness at the Ritz Theater in Dothan Alabama. Boris Karloff made up as Frankenstein staring malevolently into the camera saying, “Arugggg!” and scaring the living crap out of me. James Arness as “The Thing” was one of the all time scary movies, or so it seemed at that age. In the arctic a group of scientists inadvertently thaw a creature from outer space and all hell breaks loose. When the creature broke through the greenhouse door my friend Charles and I actually leaped from our seats, raced up the aisles and exited the theater at a full run. The movie was released in 1951 and I was seven or eight years old. To this day I cannot imagine what my parents were thinking by letting me go to a horror movie that was so intense when I was in the second grade, if they even knew. It was, by the way the first movie that had featured a space monster on film and was directed by Howard Hawks. I totally bought it! The old monster magazines fascinated me when I was a small child and I had quite a collection of them. David, my brother always said that it was because I had so much in common with them. There was a coat hanger that I had with the face and head of the mummy on it. The shoulders of the creature were where the article of clothing hung, the head loomed menacingly above. It stayed in my closet with a robe hanging on it. Every time I opened the closet door there was the mummy standing there staring out. It always gave me a terrible start upon seeing this apparition no matter how often I opened the door. One of our maids claimed that particular coat hanger caused her to have an attack of delirium tremens. This was the same maid, cook and house keeper that drank up all of mother's vanilla extract. She fell out in the kitchen one Saturday morning screaming about spiders and hurled herself under the table kicking chairs away, frantically trying to escape the hairy nasty black things she claimed were all over the ceiling.

Now, being in college, most of my ideas seemed a little too farfetched and immature to actually implement, however….

The Saturday afternoon of the party I still had not figured out what my costume would be. John, a friend from class dropped by and brought two cold six packs of beer. We sat, watched my little black and white television set (that the volume didn't even work on anymore), drank the cold beer and discussed whether or not we would go and what we would wear to the party if we did go. This went on for much of the afternoon. John never decided on anything definite and consequently wore only jeans and a t-shirt with paint on it. After a number of his beers I had what seemed like a fantastic idea. I would walk across the street and buy gauze at the drug store and wrap myself up as the mummy. Having long ago seen Boris Karloff in “The Mummy” and knowing that it had scared the bejesus out of me, I thought, “This would be a perfect costume for a Halloween party in the middle of July.” I walked over and bought the rolls of gauze. Returning to my apartment I removed all my clothes except my underwear, tighty whities they were. John watched through an alcohol haze as I proceeded to wrap myself in the flimsy gauze. Occasionally he would observe, “You’re crazy as Hell, Tommy! I hope you know that.” To insure that I would not lose my costume during the party I used small safety pins every few inches to pin the gauze to itself and to my underwear. This was pretty ingenious considering by this time I had had more than a few beers. The wrapping was extensive and included my entire body and head, with enough of a peep hole left that I could see to drive. When I went into the bathroom to see what my efforts looked like I was amazed at how authentic I looked. As a final touch I rubbed an assortment of green and brown acrylic paint stains into the gauze covering me. Before the party John and I drove to the house of a friend in my little 65 Mustang, where we continued to drink. Everyone there agreed that my costume was awesome.

What a fool I was, especially on alcohol.

The three of us arrived at the party just as it was beginning to get cranked up. There was loud music, available liquor; many snacks and several of the people were actually in costumes. None were quite as unusual as mine. The night wore on with a lot of drinking and dancing, as best I remember. At some point during the party as I was dancing and noticed that the bulk of my gauzy costume was down around my wrists and ankles. Luckily my tighty whities had remained in place so that I was not totally exposed to the crowd there. That was about the time that one of the art professors from the college came up to me and said “We’re seeing a whole lot more of you than we are used to tonight, Tommy!” I took that as a complement. After imbibing way too much alcohol for one evening I went to the bathroom, threw up into the host’s toilet and staggered out to my car. Several friends tried to drive me home insisting that I was way too drunk to drive myself. Like I would let a bunch of alcoholics drive my car! They had no idea how often I drove myself around totally inebriated and that night would be no different. I headed for my apartment. When I was almost half way home I noticed in the rear view mirror that there were red lights flashing from the top of a police car. Lucky for me, it was the campus police. They made me get out of the car and after a couple of minutes determined that although I was totally blasted I was only a block or two from my apartment. They said, “Go straight home and not get back out tonight. If you do we will be watching and take you directly to jail.” I promised that I would do exactly as they said. When they turned to get back into their police car I heard one of them say, “Goddamn if I have ever saw anything like that before!” Returning home I began the ritualistic post party, over drinking, throwing up thing in earnest. I was as sick as I have ever been. My swearing off of alcohol in any form actually lasted for almost two weeks. The night consisted of more puking, some fitful sleep, noises, confusion and the damnable bed spinning around like a runaway carousel. Being so intoxicated I fell directly in to bed, which was only a foot or two from the front door and never even locked the door to my apartment or pulled the strips of tangled gauze from around my body. This turned out to be a lucky thing, depending on how you looked at it. The usual trick of putting one foot on the floor did not work to slow the insane spinning bed down. The night was punctuated with my staggering from the bed to the toilet, where I held on for dear life evacuating the contents of my stomach, over and over even when there was nothing left inside.

What an exceptionally miserable night it was.

Later, I know not how much time passed; I was roused to semi conscientiousness by someone pulling at my wrists and feet. There were two people, both tugging the now rope like gauze and cutting it away from my neck, wrists and ankles. At first it scared me and I did not understand what was happening although I still could not and did not resist. After a couple of minutes I recognized the voice of one of the girls cutting away the detritus that was entangling me. It was someone from school I had dated earlier in the semester. She and a friend who were at the party were cutting the circuitous gauze strips from my alcohol sodden body. They finally left and I never asked them later in the semester why they had come or if indeed it was actually them. Being so out of it, the only way I knew this had actually happened was that the next morning when I awoke, completely naked with a tumor size, pounding headache, still dry heaving I saw the shredded pieces of gauze and my cut up underwear (safety pins still attached) on the floor around my bed.
Did this bother me? Modesty was never one of my virtues after military school, where you bathed daily in a communal shower. It was open, no walls, no privacy, with from twenty to thirty naked boys all at the same time.
Someone woke me up again later that same night and was gently sucking my penis. I could not figure how anybody could do that, considering the state I was in. The smell of regurgitation must have been awful not to mention all the dancing, and sweating. Feeling so miserable and sick it seemed totally unreasonable and ironic that my penis would even respond to stimuli at all. Although I could not even move to see who it was in the darkness and was not sure I even wanted to know, or if indeed this was actually happening or if it was it just a bizarre, particularly realistic dream. And, why in the Hell didn't this happen when I was sober! At that point however, I really did not give a shit one way or another. All I could do was lay there passing in and out of consciousness, swearing off alcohol forever and desperately try not to puke anymore.

I never learned who it was that assaulted me that night and it matters even less now even that it did then.

When I woke up around four o'clock the next day I took two of three hundred aspirin and then walked out to my car. Someone had thrown up all across the dashboard and in the front seat. What sort of idiot would do something like that?


The End

A memoir from Panama City City Beach

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

________________Charles Caleb Colton

In the panhandle of Florida was a place where I went almost every weekend during twenty four summers of my life. I thought it was Paradise.

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 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. 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 wonder if his ashes became a part of the water, the fish, or maybe they just added to the vast amounts of sand at the bottom of the gulf, constantly moving and shifting. Did the substances that made up his body instead all just explode, riding up on the smoke into the air? I wondered about him 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 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 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 and 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 warier 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?” Then 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 would fly into the back window, shatter and send fiery ash in to the air. It would cause a small riot 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 country. 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 from the road side stands, 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 him 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 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 timebut 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 and so 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 leg 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.

tbd

Photograph from the Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee

Between Madrid and Barcelona

Yesterday I started another Painting of the little town we went through going from Madrid to Barcelona. There is just something about that small town that fascinates me. The photos were taken from the train as we passed through but still is was a compelling landscape to witness.

Painting, Entering the Placa, 2009

One Saturday Morning

Death is a distant rumor to the young.

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

One Saturday morning when I was ten, I awoke to my Mother screaming, “Oh my God, oh my God!” She was running from window to window on the front side of our house. She was rattling and shaking the Venetian blinds as she looked across the front yard into the street where there had been a terrible accident at the intersection in front of the house. On this early, already steamy morning in small town 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 Pontiac with her infant child on the front seat speeding from the other direction raced through the red light and smashed into the 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 had been such a problem site that it caused the city to install a traffic light earlier in the summer. After several more accidents at this perilous site they put in a four way stop, later another traffic light replaced the stop signs. It went back and fourth over the years and the intersection continued to claim lives and cause horrible accidents. The last time I went through the intersection (fifty eight years later) it was a traffic light again.

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 skirt 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 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 and stare 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 continued to look. 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 old grey haired man who had been driving the Pepsi Cola truck walked among the wreckage in the street rubbing his hands together as though he was trying to remove the skin from them. He would stop every few steps and pick up one of the unbroken bottles and put it into the pocket of his blue overalls. 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 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 it's yard. I never knew if this was true or not but for a long time I was very careful where I stepped.

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?” He replied. 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 replied. He was fifteen years old and seemed much older, very tall for a child his age and handsome with black hair and very straight teeth. I always respected 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 the star scholar. Several years later when Jimmy was a senior in High School he was riding home after school on his red Eagle motorcycle and was hit and killed by a drunk driver at the same intersection 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 and his skull was crushed. I saw Jimmy’s body and heard his mother screaming. They raced him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead later that night.

Everyone I suppose, has demons that haunt them in the night and ghosts that circle around in their heads when they cannot sleep, this is one of mine.

The End