EVERYTHING CHANGES

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.

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!

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act, without benefit of experience.

______________________________Henry Miller

Transition is one of the many costs of growing up. No matter how much you might prefer to stay where and how you are, change demands your full attention.

The Elementary school I attended was just a block from my home and a familiar place for me. I was totally comfortable going there and playing on the swings and old rickety rusted merry go round, even on weekends. It was across the street from the Mrs. Mount’s Kindergarten which I went to before the first grade. Every day at eleven o'clock I walked the one block home for lunch where Vera, our maid was always in the kitchen preparing the noon meal. After lunch at home I returned to school and would sit on the dilapidated old merry go round that sat out in the play yard rusting away. When the sixth period bell rang I would reluctantly return to the building. The merry go round served as the first place I ever experimented with a girl. Her name was Rose, she was cute and more importantly she was available. We only kissed and rolled around groping each other beneath the Merry go Round on the ground late one evening but it was fun and exciting. She was far more experienced in those matters that I but that wouldn't have taken much. Puberty had not yet called my name, so there was a lot I just didn’t get. Certainly that night it was the case. I got nothing but dirty. Upon arriving home my mother asked me, “What have you been doing, rolling around in the dirt? I responded, “Uhhh, nooooooo!”

Going to the Junior Hi School didn’t appeal to me at all, partly because it was across town and in an unfamiliar area. Ultimately I went anyway because it was the only one.

The Junior high school was, even then an ancient structure that I assumed had been there since the beginning of time. It was a yellowish tan building with white elaborate concrete trim, identical to many others constructed during that same time period. An interior walkway went around three sides of the inner part of the building open to a courtyard and served as a passageway connecting the classrooms. In the winter it was a frigid trip between classes and perilous as there was no guard rail to prevent someone from falling five or more feet into the bushes and the dirt. This junior high building was a strange, unfamiliar and threatening place. The teachers were abrupt and frightening as well. Many of them were men which was a concept that I had never even considered, having never had or seen a male teacher before. It was not a pleasant experience having to abandon the comfort of the old elementary situation and go to this strange new school where there were, what could only be described as thugs. The thugs, whose names I never learned had “duck Tails”! They hung around together and smoked cigarettes behind the gym when no teachers were in sight. They came from the far side of our town. The girls too, were like nothing I had ever seen before. They had large hair and walked with a swagger. Many of them smoked too. There was only one Junior high school in our town at that point and all the other schools fed into this single middle school. It was a mix of classes and backgrounds. The children from the wealthiest and the poorest families all converged on this one place in the seventh grade, no matter how unprepared they were.

Lush vegetation grew out in the play yard of the Junior High near the baseball diamond. There at P.E. you could find four, five and occasionally even eight leafed Clovers. Sue, who was a contemporary of mine in the seventh grade, would follow me out to the Clover area and we would hunt through the plants for the exotic multiple leafed clovers during the little free time we had. Junior High School was a time of radical change. Most of them were unexpected by the children experiencing them and came as shocking revelations. At least for me they did. Hair began to grow in unexpected places and things grew, that I had assumed would stay the same size. It was like being run over by an eighteen wheeled Semi. There was no clue what was happening to me. Although I had three older brothers and two fairly intelligent parents, no one had given me even a hint as to what to expect. It was as though I had been possessed by some nether world devil. Being a good boy was something I just gave up. Not that I was ever that good at it but at this precarious age I quit pretending.

Entering Junior High School I had lived a fairly protected and privileged life. I had never heard either one of my parents or anyone else in the family use a dirty word. Not that I had experienced only simple, innocent things. When I was ten or perhaps younger there was a boy, the son of my Mother’s best friend, some years older than me who came to spend the night with us on occasion, at our beach cabin with his parents. One night I woke up from a sound sleep and realized he was in the bed with me and had his hand down the front of my underwear. I said, “What are you doing?” He replied, “Be quiet you are going to really like this!”He was manipulating my small immature hairless penis. I tried to make him quit but he only quickened his actions. At first I was shocked, embarrassed, and ashamed. This feeling soon disappeared as he continued to massage my small member. After some minutes the sensation became so intense I felt as though I would die if he quit moving the skin on my stiff cock. Then suddenly this amazing eruption of heat and almost electrical pleasure swept over me as I pushed against his hand. My hips pumped involuntarily and a couple of audible auggrugs escaped my lips. He whispered, “Sushhhh, not so loud, you’ll wake everybody up!” When the feeling suddenly subsided I felt a great sense of loss that I couldn't explain even to myself. He said, “You liked it didn’t you?” I said, “Yes!” He got up from my bed and went to the bathroom. Laying there in the darkness I felt sure the end of my penis had just exploded and I couldn't even get into the bathroom to see. Everyone else in the house was asleep and all the lights were out. It was the first time I had ever experienced such intense pleasure. Although I really liked it I didn't understand any part of it. Who knew what this thing meant? The experience emboldened me to take matters into my own hands, (so to speak) and try to recreate this amazing feeling for myself, again and again, and again! The boy had told me that I would really like this “thing” he was doing to me and I did! One Sunday morning I was upstairs in the process of trying to attain “that feeling”. Shortly after reaching that point my little penis began to swell at an alarming rate. The sudden change frightened me so badly that I ran downstairs and showed it to my Mother. She said, “Have you been playing with it?” I of course replied emphatically “Nooooooo!” All this, long before time, maturity and word of mouth made me realize what all of this was about.

You might think that what happened to me was traumatic but you would be only partly right. I was perhaps a victim in the beginning but later a willing victim. The pleasure to me was so immense that nothing about it, no matter how it came about could have been bad. Once started there was no way not to continue doing that “thing” that I had no words for. It ruled me and do it, I did! This cousin and I continued this somewhat one sided relationship for some time, until years, puberty and other more interesting things came along. I knew nothing about sex, except for the “feeling thing” and in no way knew that it had anything to do with reproduction or even what sex was, or its consequences. Since I was far too young for ejaculation, the intense pleasure was all it was about as far as I was concerned. I knew nothing else. There was a great amount of guilt involved in the pursuit and accomplishment of this immense mystery but I managed to deal with it in a number of different ways. At the age of thirteen I experienced my first ejaculation and my first thought was, oh my God, I broke it! Everything changed in Junior High School.

Dreams for me have always been very realistic and were at times more compelling than reality. In those dreams I experienced many things that were far beyond the possibilities of my daily existence. Many of them were horrific and scary. Still today I have these Technicolor stereophonic sound dream experiences while asleep. One particular dream at that time expressed the anxiety and guilt over the masturbation thing, (not that I knew what it was called at the time.) In my dream, I woke up to a heavy feeling and could not really move in my bed. Turning over was impossible and as hard as I struggled I could not even sit up. I thought someone had gotten into the bed with me and was lying very close. That wasn't it! Flinging the covers away I looked down in horror to discover that my penis had grown so large that it filled up the entire bed and weighed so much that I could not even move it when I tried. It was huge, purple, swollen and leaden. The dream scared the Hell out of me. How was I going to explain this to Mother? I could just hear her saying, “You've been playing with it again, haven’t you!” I would respond with, ”Uhhh nooooooo!”

There were young people far worldlier than me at the Junior High School. I had never heard a dirty joke. The first one I ever heard was in the study hall in the library. Two boys I did not know sat next to each other and one said to the other, “Did you hear that Liberace’s mother died? “ The other boy said, “No, what happened?” The response was, “His mother told him to go back where he came from and he took his piano with him!” At first I didn't get it. When it finally dawned on me I snorted so loud that the teacher in the study hall stood up to see what the disturbance was. He said, “Is there some problem, Mr. Daughtry?” I replied, “No sir “, but I had snorted a stream of clear viscous liquid that ran from my nose to the pocket on my shirt. The older girl in front of me turned around in her desk, looked at me, then at my pocket and said," Oh my gosh, how gross." During this same time the First Methodist Church had organized trips on large Greyhound Busses for the youth that took us to Pensacola and nearby cities for plays and other points of interest. Planned most likely, to give the parents a little breathing space and some small moments when we were someplace else. The most interesting thing that ever happened to me on one of those trips was a girl named Meredith. She was beautiful and willing to "make out" with me the entire way from Dothan, Alabama to Pensacola, Florida and back again. When we got back home I was in such a state I couldn't even walk. She didn't think I was all that gross I suppose. I had an immense crush on her for years after but we never even spoke to each other again that I remember.

During the junior high years there was a group of the students that met each other at the Saturday morning cinema every weekend. It was a time to pair off with a member of the opposite sex and engage in some moderate to heavy petting. My usual partner was a Jewish girl, tall with deliciously soft lips, her name was Beth. She and I kissed and tenderly touched, neither very sure what was expected. Our tongues eagerly explored each other in the flickering lights of the movie, while Buster Crabbe chased bad guys across the screen. Not much could have been better that those mornings in the Martin Theater. There was a balcony in the top back of the theater and it was divided into white and colored sections. There was no entrance to the other side from either direction. There was a friend, James who lived on the other side of town that became one of my better friends, at least on Saturday mornings. Some times on those mornings when neither of us could find a partner of the opposite sex we would steal up into the balcony and sit on the front row. There we would unzip our pants and masturbate till one or both of us ejaculated. The point was to see if the fluid could be made to fly up into the air and sail over the short wall, beyond which was thin air all the way down to the lower seating area. He was as baffled as I was as to what all this was about but we were very sure it had to be kept a secret.There was almost never anybody up in the balcony so it was pretty easy to get away with something so crazy. I do not remember whether it was his idea or mine. The place always smelled of popcorn and grime.

The poorest people in our town were the black ones, although many white families were close to the poverty level too. Since the schools were all segregated in Alabama and all of the rest of the south there was little chance of meeting a Negro in a social situation, like school. The maids who were ever present in our home were more like family than servants and some of them I loved very much. There were several swimming pools in our small town. Some like the Country Club were frequented by those whose parents were affluent enough to be members. The folk from the other side of town did not come to the Club. They went to Kelly Springs or Porters Fairyland or did not go at all. The colored people had their own swimming pool. There were times, much later after we had a driver’s license, when we would drive past that Negro recreational pool and find ourselves fascinated by their dark skinned bodies bobbing around in the Aquamarine water. I cannot for the world think now why we thought it was so interesting.

Something about Porter’s Fairyland was foreign, dangerous and forbidding. There was a great swimming pool, large slides to go down and two lakes out back where Bream and Bass swam in large numbers. These were just a few of the attractions. Fishing was not allowed but you could feed the fish bread if you supplied it yourself. The students from Junior High that wore duck tails and smoked cigarettes were there in the shadows of the trees. Cigarettes were rolled up in the sleeves of their t-Shirts. They talked and looked at you in a menacing way. I frequently heard rumors about fights and strange happenings at the fairyland. Once someone even got killed there, or so they said. Almost none of my acquaintances went there even though it was an exciting place. A deafening jukebox blared away nonstop the entire time you were on or near the premises. The Country Club was far more civilized and had no such thing.

Porter’s was the place where the Junior High’s annual swimming party was held. Among the boys of that age a certain amount of status came with wearing a jock strap under your bathing suit. The bathing suits that required jock straps were reversible, thus the reason for the jock straps. It was indicative that you were packing some serious weaponry underneath that had to be firmly controlled. There was no mesh lining in the reversible suits to support and control the genitalia. All of my older brothers wore a jock strap even though it was euphemistically called, a “nose guard” in our house. I never knew why! In junior high I naturally assumed it was time for me to wear one too since many changes had begun to happen in that department. On the eve of the swimming party I asked mother to buy me a reversible bathing suit and bring it with her when she picked my friends and me up at the end of the school day to transport us to Porter’s. I knew she would also have to buy a jockstrap to go with it because that was the way they were worn. Thinking things out ever so carefully was my stock and trade even though it rarely went as intended. This effort was no exception.

Mother showed up on time to pick us up at school with a bag from Blumberg’s, a department store where she had gone to buy my new bathing suit. Opening it I realized it was one of the old type suits with the mesh lining, no jock strap. I was so crushed. “Mother”, I yelled, “This is not the bathing suit I wanted”! She calmly looked over her shoulder in the back seat where I sat with my friends and said,” I didn't buy you one of those reversible bathing suits because you have to have a nose guard to wear under them and you certainly don't need one of those ”. One of my friends said, “What the heck is a nose guard?” My mother turned ever so slowly around and said, “I think you might call it an athletic supporter.” The friend replied, “No, he really doesn't need one of those!” By that point he was laughing hysterically. I was destroyed! My friends laughed as I melted into the floorboard of the car. The day was a total disaster after suffering such a direct hit on the ego, which was not doing so hot in the first place.

One of the girls I found interesting at school was sitting on the edge of the pool. She had one long leg in the water and the other one sexily crossed over it. When I approached, she smiled but quickly got up and dove into the water. When her legs uncrossed I caught a glimpse up the gap of her bathing suit and saw hair. Oh my god! I never knew girls had pubic hair! Our house was filled with art books that showed lots of naked women but not even one had hair, down there. Believe me; I knew because I poured over those books until mother began to think I was very interested in art, for god’s sake. She even offered to give me drawing lessons, which I took rather than admit to looking at the books with prurient interest, not artistic. The sparse beginnings of pubic hair I already had but this girl was truly endowed! I was impressed and repulsed at the same time. Following the girl all over the pool that afternoon I really did not know what to think. Trying so hard to get a better look I went home with a severe case of eye strain. It could have actually been the chlorine. She must have thought I had a terrible crush on her and was more than a little crazy. She was, of course right!

The following Monday brought a torrential downpour, everything was flooded. School went about as it always did and nothing much was happening until break time, some talk about the swim party. Nothing was said about me not really needing a nose guard, thank God! Since the rain was so heavy all the kids were standing on the covered walk way that faced the open court yard, no access to the play ground was available during rain. Down in the sunken area there was water beginning to pool at an alarming rate and mud welling up in orange swirls. A small group of students gathered around Sue my friend from the clover hunts, talking. Standing behind several people I saw an arm reach from my rear and hit Sue in the center of her chest with the palm of a flat hand. She careened backwards; her arms began to simultaneously spin in the opposite direction of the drop behind her. In a desperate effort to regain balance her hands grappled for something to hold onto, wide questioning eyes, and a mouth forming a perfectly round zero. No support was there. She was going to fall backwards the five or more feet into the ankle deep water and mud there in the court yard. I reached for her but my fingers grasped only air and never touched her. She fell in slow motion from what was a considerable height and landed with a huge splat on the upper part of her back, hair completely drenched and mud everywhere. Again, I never touched her. Poor Sue was fished out of the muddy water with wet pine straw, dried boxwood leaves and orange mud all in her hair and face. She  was sent home for a change of clothes and the investigation began. All of us standing around her were called to the principal’s office and interrogated as to what happened. Almost all of the students said that the last person that touched her was me. Even Sue thought I had done it! One teacher said that since she was on hall duty and happened to be looking in that direction and had seen me intentionally push poor Sue backwards off the elevated walkway into the bushes, mud and rain.She said I stiff armed her in the chest and was responsible for her fall. The more I declared my innocence the tighter the noose of guilt, circumstantial as it might have been ensnared me. I declared I had not touched her and was totally innocent. The principal didn't buy it. He said,” Come on Mister Daughtry, you did it, everybody saw you and if you go ahead and admit it you will feel better and I will not be so hard on you. You did it didn’t you?” I said, “Nooooooo!” Since I was obviously guilty he would give me the option of staying in after school in his office for a week or getting five licks with his notorious paddle. I opted for the staying in part, not being into physical pain. All of us had heard about the ferocious licks he gave with his paddle and I wanted no part of it. The licks from principals were usually exaggerated in schools during those days when corporal punishment was still legal but let me tell you, his were not! After staying in for two days I could not think up anymore lies to my parents about why I was staying late at school. I took the three licks from the principal in trade for the next three days I would miss. The blows from his paddle were memorable. He said, “Mr. Daughtry, bend over and grab your ankles.” I did. and offered my small skinny ass up for destruction. After the first lick I would have declined the next two but could not catch my breath. The second and third came fast and diminished none whatsoever in ferocity and rapidity of delivery. He said to me when it was over, "I hope you have learned your lesson here today, Mr. Daughtry.” I said to him, “I didn’t do anything to her!” The principal’s name was Mr. Turk. I carried around bruises for a week or more after his assault on my posterior. Even though totally innocent I learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Even though a person may look guilty and everyone agrees on his culpability he may actually be innocent. A lick once delivered cannot be taken back. This goes for capital punishment also.

The only other licks I got in the Junior High School were not long after the first and delivered by the P.E. coach, Mr. Gilstrap. His was an appropriate name to say the least. I was talking to an acquaintance in the bathroom and said, “I hate Mr. Turk he is a real bastard for paddling me, because I didn't push that bitch Sue off the walkway. I never did it!” The door to one of the stalls opened and coach Gilstrap walked out. He said, “Mr. Daughtry, I will need to see you in my office at your P.E. period for a little attitude adjustment concerning your trashy mouth and lack of respect for the principal. Be in my office as soon as the next bell rings.” Two more licks, one for each curse word, more bruises on my buttocks. At least there was no staying in after school time. That was too hard to explain to the parents. He said, “Make sure your privates are out of the way, bend over and grab your ankles, Mister Daughtry.

Fuck!