Childhood is a most queer flame-lit and shadow-chilled time. Think once more how the world wavers and intones above us then. Parents behave down toward us as if they are tribal gods, as old and unarguable and almighty as thunder. Other figures loom in from next door and the schoolyard and a thousand lanes of encounter, count coup on us with whatever lessons of life they brandish, then ghost off.
So says Ivan Doig in his memoir "This House of Sky."
One day, a father appeared in my life, and I was he. Not until I became that person did I recognize some of the effects of a father's absence. Robbi the cognitive-behavioral therapist asked me before I had a child if I was prepared. She later reminded me of that as I recited a litany of anxiety-inducing issues associated with having had a child. That question, though, defies an adequate response. How could I have known whether I was prepared? Had I known then what I know now, I would have said that I lacked sufficient preparation, as everyone does.
Had a father accompanied me throughout my tortuous, and torturous, journey, perhaps such a characterization would prove unjustified. The catch being that a bad father who sticks around might be worse than no father at all. Or perhaps a bad father could provide an example of what not to do. My mother helped in that regard, by serving as an example of the kind of parent to avoid. The converse being that a halfway-decent father might help prepare a son for becoming a father himself.
I take into account my own childhood confusion, and the general challenges associated with a child's attempt to process experiences, when I attempt to look at situations from my children's perspective. I like to think I don't act like a tribal god, in the words of Mr. Doig. But when you have your kids' best interests at heart and the conviction that you know better, behaving in a manner that accommodates their sensitivities can be difficult. The great weight of responsibility deriving from having sired children can stand in the way of gentility.
Rather, I would like to come across as someone who has more experience and cognitive capabilities, though I often feel unqualified to provide guidance. I can, however, provide reassurance that someone will be there who will listen and wants the best for them. They'll probably resent the intrusion eventually but would never be the same people had they not had that kind of guidance in the first place.
Exclusive of reading, writing, coaching, etc., I'm present. One of my priest friends once gave a sermon about being there, after he had called me earlier in the week and swung by when his father was dying of cancer. He didn't want to be alone. I'm at least a presence, and not a malevolent one, though surely not always perceived as benevolent.
Unwittingly to them and for a while to me, my kids have provided a mirror in which I not only see myself but in which I also search for a glimpse of my father. Sometimes I don't like what I see, but I don't turn away; I have to fill the the void that I never knew existed.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Our Lady of Sorrows
This subject http://againlucky.blogspot.com/2010/03/holy-trinity.html offers a window through which to view a certain stage of life, as adolescence began to bloom and usher in an age of downhill slopes strewn with sinkholes.
After completing 5th grade in public school, my mother decided Catholic school would offer a better alternative than the public institution I would have had to attend, about which she had heard horror stories from a teacher. So, off I went, book bag in hand, blue corduroys, lighter-shade-of-blue polo shirt, desert boots and a Dutch-boy haircut. My neighbors attended that school, as did some of the kids with whom I had played basketball in the parish, so I knew some people.
Sr. Mary of the Rosary embraced me in sixth grade as the model student, despite her censure for my failure to turn in a Science Fair project, while she pulled Donald Wagner around by the sideburns. I hauled the extra crates full of school-size milk cartons from the cafeteria over to the convent each day, though I don't know why. Didn't they have refrigeration in the cafeteria? She generally compensated me with Clark bars.
We recited prayers dutifully, said the Act of Contrition and stumbled through confession ("Forgive me father...I swore and I fought with my brother and I robbed the deli blind and I drank half the Scotch from the cabinet and I might have smoked weed since my last confession, but I can't be sure because it fucks up my memory) and attended the Stations of the Cross. During class, especially religion class, I adorned my book covers with band logos, with The Who and Yes and Kiss occupying particularly prominent spots, although I didn't consider myself above throwing Rush or ELO in there if I needed to fill space.
I played the good-boy role, for I couldn't let down my mother and then the nuns and then the priests. I needed permission to fail, or at least to adjust or to be allowed to express how I felt or to change my mind, though instead I encountered relentless pressure.
Another side existed. I had a thing for knives, and I brought them to school. I once repeatedly plunged a knife through a classmate's binder, in class, the kind of stuff for which a current-day student would face arrest. I destroyed another classmate's book bag more than once, though I don't know how his parents failed to notice or intervene. Another friend stalked this kid down on the playground one day, grabbed him and spat in his face. We had taken up a collection as an incentive for this expectoration escapade.
Our sixth-grade class trip to the Six Flags amusement park provided an opportunity for us to spread our wings a bit more. As we ascended in the cable cars, we smoked marijuana and glided above the pedestrians in the park below. Sixth-graders being who they are, Dennis the priest got wind of our antics--I actually told him that, yes, I had smoked weed when he asked me a few days later. He threatened to tell my mother but, as far as I know, never did. Gave me a few days of angst but didn't interrupt the long-term trend, for my roguish behavior proceeded unabated for the next one, two, three, four, five years. But my good grades and above-average athletic performance must have masked the self-destructive aspects. Never mind that I slept a disproportionate number of hours. What if Dennis had told my mother that I was high on the sixth-grade class trip? Would she have recognized that a constructive change might have been in order? He probably thought he was being cool by not ratting me out, but a better outcome might have resulted had he informed. Not likely, though, that it would have effected long-term change, for my mother wouldn't have surrendered the way of life to which she had become accustomed nor acknowledged that something dark plagued her great white hope.
I tended to beautiful Ria while I was in eighth grade, after her family's car accident left her a paraplegic. A classmate and I met the van that brought her to school at the side door and transported her in her wheelchair to the electric chair that would slide her down the stairs. She pushed with her arms and slid herself along a board to transfer from the wheelchair to the electric chair, and from our vantage point at the top of the stairs we watched her descend toward her fifth-grade classroom as the noise from the chair's motor echoed throughout the stairwell. We carried the wheelchair down the stairs and met her at the bottom so she could slip back in. Her family gave us silver Cross pens at the end of the year. I still have them.
I still know some of these people. Others have died. Little Billy Thorne, who used to run toward me screaming my name for protection from an enemy real or perceived, succumbed to a congenital kidney ailment. Sean died, too, and I still don't know how. I cross paths with others from time to time. With some, long-festering animosities create current tension, while with others the interactions are familiar. Back then some of these people perceived me as having the world by the balls, when in fact a maelstrom swirled in my mind. I wonder how they perceive me now, with the family and the two kids playing little league and the job and the dog. I suspect they think the same as they did. So do I.
A friend and I drove by that school, Our Lady of Sorrows, one day, and he said something about Catholics always dwelling on negativity and defeatism, with names like that. The name, though, suited the place and times.
After completing 5th grade in public school, my mother decided Catholic school would offer a better alternative than the public institution I would have had to attend, about which she had heard horror stories from a teacher. So, off I went, book bag in hand, blue corduroys, lighter-shade-of-blue polo shirt, desert boots and a Dutch-boy haircut. My neighbors attended that school, as did some of the kids with whom I had played basketball in the parish, so I knew some people.
Sr. Mary of the Rosary embraced me in sixth grade as the model student, despite her censure for my failure to turn in a Science Fair project, while she pulled Donald Wagner around by the sideburns. I hauled the extra crates full of school-size milk cartons from the cafeteria over to the convent each day, though I don't know why. Didn't they have refrigeration in the cafeteria? She generally compensated me with Clark bars.
We recited prayers dutifully, said the Act of Contrition and stumbled through confession ("Forgive me father...I swore and I fought with my brother and I robbed the deli blind and I drank half the Scotch from the cabinet and I might have smoked weed since my last confession, but I can't be sure because it fucks up my memory) and attended the Stations of the Cross. During class, especially religion class, I adorned my book covers with band logos, with The Who and Yes and Kiss occupying particularly prominent spots, although I didn't consider myself above throwing Rush or ELO in there if I needed to fill space.
I played the good-boy role, for I couldn't let down my mother and then the nuns and then the priests. I needed permission to fail, or at least to adjust or to be allowed to express how I felt or to change my mind, though instead I encountered relentless pressure.
Another side existed. I had a thing for knives, and I brought them to school. I once repeatedly plunged a knife through a classmate's binder, in class, the kind of stuff for which a current-day student would face arrest. I destroyed another classmate's book bag more than once, though I don't know how his parents failed to notice or intervene. Another friend stalked this kid down on the playground one day, grabbed him and spat in his face. We had taken up a collection as an incentive for this expectoration escapade.
Our sixth-grade class trip to the Six Flags amusement park provided an opportunity for us to spread our wings a bit more. As we ascended in the cable cars, we smoked marijuana and glided above the pedestrians in the park below. Sixth-graders being who they are, Dennis the priest got wind of our antics--I actually told him that, yes, I had smoked weed when he asked me a few days later. He threatened to tell my mother but, as far as I know, never did. Gave me a few days of angst but didn't interrupt the long-term trend, for my roguish behavior proceeded unabated for the next one, two, three, four, five years. But my good grades and above-average athletic performance must have masked the self-destructive aspects. Never mind that I slept a disproportionate number of hours. What if Dennis had told my mother that I was high on the sixth-grade class trip? Would she have recognized that a constructive change might have been in order? He probably thought he was being cool by not ratting me out, but a better outcome might have resulted had he informed. Not likely, though, that it would have effected long-term change, for my mother wouldn't have surrendered the way of life to which she had become accustomed nor acknowledged that something dark plagued her great white hope.
I tended to beautiful Ria while I was in eighth grade, after her family's car accident left her a paraplegic. A classmate and I met the van that brought her to school at the side door and transported her in her wheelchair to the electric chair that would slide her down the stairs. She pushed with her arms and slid herself along a board to transfer from the wheelchair to the electric chair, and from our vantage point at the top of the stairs we watched her descend toward her fifth-grade classroom as the noise from the chair's motor echoed throughout the stairwell. We carried the wheelchair down the stairs and met her at the bottom so she could slip back in. Her family gave us silver Cross pens at the end of the year. I still have them.
I still know some of these people. Others have died. Little Billy Thorne, who used to run toward me screaming my name for protection from an enemy real or perceived, succumbed to a congenital kidney ailment. Sean died, too, and I still don't know how. I cross paths with others from time to time. With some, long-festering animosities create current tension, while with others the interactions are familiar. Back then some of these people perceived me as having the world by the balls, when in fact a maelstrom swirled in my mind. I wonder how they perceive me now, with the family and the two kids playing little league and the job and the dog. I suspect they think the same as they did. So do I.
A friend and I drove by that school, Our Lady of Sorrows, one day, and he said something about Catholics always dwelling on negativity and defeatism, with names like that. The name, though, suited the place and times.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Holy Trinity
Recently I learned that a onetime priest with whom I was acquainted as a youth had been afflicted with either Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. The person telling me wasn't sure. After some digging, I discovered that he had died and that his last few years proved difficult because of the Alzheimer's.
As a 6th, 7th and 8th grader, and into high school, he alternated between being an antagonist and an ostensible friend. He once told me that if he had a son, he would want that son to be like me and that the greatest gift he could give me would be for me to recognize my own potential. He eventually had two daughters after leaving the priesthood, and a divorce, and I doubt the girls are much like me. As for recognizing my own potential, I think he went 0-for-2.
Had my father not created a vacuum by his departure, perhaps the opportunity would not have existed for this man to step into the void. He also had God in his corner. To people of a certain mind-set, God can open a lot of doors, therefore he had a level of access conferred upon him by virtue of his being a priest.
This priest took me to see the Knicks and drank a bunch of beer and yelled at their coach. "Hubie, you bum." Hubie Brown didn't appear rattled, but who knows? Alternatively, he excluded me from a 76ers game at which two of my friends got to meet Julius Erving. Why he excluded me I'm not sure, but I thought then that he did it to hurt me. It worked. Manipulation and passive aggression and retaliation. The extent to which that stung still resonates. Alas, he helped to cement the notion that adults lacked trustworthiness. But boys being who they are, or were, I retained the capacity to resurrect at least some of my faith in him.
Since he was an Army chaplain, he took us to the local base, where I had the opportunity to fire rifles at the range. Had I turned the rifle on him, or myself, life's course would have been altered for us both. I might have been able to spare us subsequent distress, especially him, apparently, in his waning years. He plied me with beer one night at the base and allowed me to articulate my perspective on the high school in which I was matriculated.
"I don't want to be there," I explained. "It's a pre-college. I want high school."
And so it followed that I pulled out of that high school after only a few weeks and enrolled in one of the local Catholic high schools. All was well on that front. Except my mother shunned me. So, I had no father at home and the priest pulled me in his preferred direction, while my mother sulked and withheld affection and wore on me with her own passive aggression. At that point, I think she perceived a tug of war between her and him, with my 13-year-old emotions as the rope.
During this stretch, thoughts of suicide intensified. I couldn't live with my mother under those circumstances, so I asked the other school if I could come back. Yes, as it turned out. I told the priest, who, clearly distracted, cut short his sermon at mass later that afternoon. My mother took note and seemed pleased. I had worked my way back into my mother's good graces but alienated the priest. Our interaction subsequently dwindled.
He shouldn't have become a priest. I suspect family pressure influenced his decision; his sister the nun was principal of our school. Before the fallout, he and I regularly took my dog swimming. He used to step on the clutch and have me shift the manual transmission in his burgundy Datsun B210. We once rode nearly the length of the Garden State Parkway in that car, and at each toll booth I would hook a shot from the passenger seat over the roof and into the basket.
At least he eventually rectified his decision to become a priest, but not before inflicting damage. While still a member of the clergy, he would intimate that someone from our crowd of hormone-driven lads should become a priest, probably because he wanted to spread the misery. Like all things Catholic, it would have been perfectly reasonable to have committed to the priesthood while in 7th grade, despite having to conceal erections several times daily with textbooks, or even Bibles, when we had to stand in class. The Adidas logo on our book bags stood for All Day I Dream About Sex, and we all wanted to end up in the bushes behind the church with a companion during the Friday-night basketball games.
This priest did recruit us as altar boys. We ate the host and drank the wine, and not just at mass. Levels existed within the altar boys and I eventually reached the pinnacle, the altar-boy captain, so to speak, only to quit in protest of his behavior.
My universe revolved around sports then, and he once summoned me to the rectory and seated me in front of the desk behind which he sat.
"Before I throw you off the team...." he began.
I don't recall my perceived offense. Probably just general attitude and obstinacy. But those traits had gotten me that far, so I saw no need to change. Panic and betrayal descended upon me rapidly, but I got recovered enough over the course of this meeting to basically tell him to go fuck himself. I left there thinking I no longer would be on the basketball team, the fallen captain, but it never came to pass. At the very least, I would end up in Hell for telling God's representative here on Earth to fuck off.
He comforted me when I arrived at a Sunday-afternoon basketball game, fresh with the knowledge that an assailant had attacked my mother in the Bahamas. I couldn't hold it together, and as we sat on steps in a part of the school separate from the gym, my tears poured forth and my back heaved with each sob. I always had feared that I would lose my mother, and the world seemed as if it might make it happen. Then the trauma transformed into anger, and I played the game with a certain vigor, and we beat our archrivals. What a triumph.
Part of his frustration with me derived from the strained relationship he had with a younger priest who had come to our parish. The younger priest and I became friends, and Priest No. 1 went to the school psychologist and complained that Priest No. 2 was stealing his friends. Or at least that's what Priest No. 2 told me. Once when I was particularly exasperated with Priest No. 1 (let's call him Bill, since that was his name), Priest No. 2 (Dennis) said to me: "The difference between him and me is that he jerks off and I go out and get fucked." We suspected he was doing Miss Williams, and we marveled at her breasts. While we considered becoming priests. Two priests and a boy, not to be confused with "Three Men and a Baby" or "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place." I think Dennis, who eventually became jaded and with whom I drank while I was in high school, had my interests at heart, as opposed to my mother and Priest No. 1.
So unfolded the saga of Bill and Tom. He left an impression.
As a 6th, 7th and 8th grader, and into high school, he alternated between being an antagonist and an ostensible friend. He once told me that if he had a son, he would want that son to be like me and that the greatest gift he could give me would be for me to recognize my own potential. He eventually had two daughters after leaving the priesthood, and a divorce, and I doubt the girls are much like me. As for recognizing my own potential, I think he went 0-for-2.
Had my father not created a vacuum by his departure, perhaps the opportunity would not have existed for this man to step into the void. He also had God in his corner. To people of a certain mind-set, God can open a lot of doors, therefore he had a level of access conferred upon him by virtue of his being a priest.
This priest took me to see the Knicks and drank a bunch of beer and yelled at their coach. "Hubie, you bum." Hubie Brown didn't appear rattled, but who knows? Alternatively, he excluded me from a 76ers game at which two of my friends got to meet Julius Erving. Why he excluded me I'm not sure, but I thought then that he did it to hurt me. It worked. Manipulation and passive aggression and retaliation. The extent to which that stung still resonates. Alas, he helped to cement the notion that adults lacked trustworthiness. But boys being who they are, or were, I retained the capacity to resurrect at least some of my faith in him.
Since he was an Army chaplain, he took us to the local base, where I had the opportunity to fire rifles at the range. Had I turned the rifle on him, or myself, life's course would have been altered for us both. I might have been able to spare us subsequent distress, especially him, apparently, in his waning years. He plied me with beer one night at the base and allowed me to articulate my perspective on the high school in which I was matriculated.
"I don't want to be there," I explained. "It's a pre-college. I want high school."
And so it followed that I pulled out of that high school after only a few weeks and enrolled in one of the local Catholic high schools. All was well on that front. Except my mother shunned me. So, I had no father at home and the priest pulled me in his preferred direction, while my mother sulked and withheld affection and wore on me with her own passive aggression. At that point, I think she perceived a tug of war between her and him, with my 13-year-old emotions as the rope.
During this stretch, thoughts of suicide intensified. I couldn't live with my mother under those circumstances, so I asked the other school if I could come back. Yes, as it turned out. I told the priest, who, clearly distracted, cut short his sermon at mass later that afternoon. My mother took note and seemed pleased. I had worked my way back into my mother's good graces but alienated the priest. Our interaction subsequently dwindled.
He shouldn't have become a priest. I suspect family pressure influenced his decision; his sister the nun was principal of our school. Before the fallout, he and I regularly took my dog swimming. He used to step on the clutch and have me shift the manual transmission in his burgundy Datsun B210. We once rode nearly the length of the Garden State Parkway in that car, and at each toll booth I would hook a shot from the passenger seat over the roof and into the basket.
At least he eventually rectified his decision to become a priest, but not before inflicting damage. While still a member of the clergy, he would intimate that someone from our crowd of hormone-driven lads should become a priest, probably because he wanted to spread the misery. Like all things Catholic, it would have been perfectly reasonable to have committed to the priesthood while in 7th grade, despite having to conceal erections several times daily with textbooks, or even Bibles, when we had to stand in class. The Adidas logo on our book bags stood for All Day I Dream About Sex, and we all wanted to end up in the bushes behind the church with a companion during the Friday-night basketball games.
This priest did recruit us as altar boys. We ate the host and drank the wine, and not just at mass. Levels existed within the altar boys and I eventually reached the pinnacle, the altar-boy captain, so to speak, only to quit in protest of his behavior.
My universe revolved around sports then, and he once summoned me to the rectory and seated me in front of the desk behind which he sat.
"Before I throw you off the team...." he began.
I don't recall my perceived offense. Probably just general attitude and obstinacy. But those traits had gotten me that far, so I saw no need to change. Panic and betrayal descended upon me rapidly, but I got recovered enough over the course of this meeting to basically tell him to go fuck himself. I left there thinking I no longer would be on the basketball team, the fallen captain, but it never came to pass. At the very least, I would end up in Hell for telling God's representative here on Earth to fuck off.
He comforted me when I arrived at a Sunday-afternoon basketball game, fresh with the knowledge that an assailant had attacked my mother in the Bahamas. I couldn't hold it together, and as we sat on steps in a part of the school separate from the gym, my tears poured forth and my back heaved with each sob. I always had feared that I would lose my mother, and the world seemed as if it might make it happen. Then the trauma transformed into anger, and I played the game with a certain vigor, and we beat our archrivals. What a triumph.
Part of his frustration with me derived from the strained relationship he had with a younger priest who had come to our parish. The younger priest and I became friends, and Priest No. 1 went to the school psychologist and complained that Priest No. 2 was stealing his friends. Or at least that's what Priest No. 2 told me. Once when I was particularly exasperated with Priest No. 1 (let's call him Bill, since that was his name), Priest No. 2 (Dennis) said to me: "The difference between him and me is that he jerks off and I go out and get fucked." We suspected he was doing Miss Williams, and we marveled at her breasts. While we considered becoming priests. Two priests and a boy, not to be confused with "Three Men and a Baby" or "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place." I think Dennis, who eventually became jaded and with whom I drank while I was in high school, had my interests at heart, as opposed to my mother and Priest No. 1.
So unfolded the saga of Bill and Tom. He left an impression.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Penis
In Evan S. Connell's book "Son of the Morning Star/Custer and the Little Bighorn," he makes reference to Indian calendars and the custom of some of those calendars to highlight an event from a particular year. Subsequently, that is how they remember the year.
Connell cites Bruce Nelson for this nugget: In the Miniconjou year of 1796, the great event involved a game of hoops-and-sticks in which a player named Penis was killed. The calendar doesn't indicate how he came by the name, but Penis apparently attacked two players during the game, and they killed him. The game continued, and they used his body as a backstop. The year 1796 henceforth became known to the Miniconjou as The-Year-When-the-Hoop-Rolled-against-Penis.
This particular Penis, apparently, led less than a charmed existence.
Connell cites Bruce Nelson for this nugget: In the Miniconjou year of 1796, the great event involved a game of hoops-and-sticks in which a player named Penis was killed. The calendar doesn't indicate how he came by the name, but Penis apparently attacked two players during the game, and they killed him. The game continued, and they used his body as a backstop. The year 1796 henceforth became known to the Miniconjou as The-Year-When-the-Hoop-Rolled-against-Penis.
This particular Penis, apparently, led less than a charmed existence.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Creek
A creek coursed through the woods of my youth, and my friends and I negotiated on our bikes the dirt paths that snaked their way to the water like tributaries.
We dug up worms and sat on the banks, our fishing poles either extensions of our hands or resting in the Y of a upright sticks, and caught catfish and sunfish and pike there. We waded through the tunnels over which the interstate eventually would pass and shot crayfish and birds and frogs with BB guns. We floated for what seemed like miles in flimsy inflatable boats acquired from the toy store and netted fish that we eventually allowed to fade and dry to a crisp in the summer sun. My friend Rick once hooked an eel that he swore he needed my help with, and perhaps it has grown through the prism of time, but we wrangled what I still consider to be a three-foot creature about six inches in circumference to the bank. We foraged there for snakes, too, that we sometimes vivisected with shovels. A state trooper on the highway once spotted me shooting my BB gun and stopped and yelled; I took off. He didn't stand a chance. Those were my woods.
The woods and the water offered us danger and refuge, from parental oppression if nothing else, especially the water, concealing its mysteries under opaque surfaces and vegetation and carrying us to points unknown. When we waded those waters, we sank to mid-shin in the soft bottom, the eventual extrication of our feet bringing rise to the fetid muck. A flood once buried the trails under three feet of water, and we forded our customary bike paths in hip boots and waders, acquiring a fresh perspective.
We hid pilfered cigarettes near drainage pipes and smoked after fourth grade let out. We pulled those cigarettes to our lips as smoke-induced tears formed in our eyes. Newports, Kools, Lucky Strikes, whatever we could get. I can still taste the Newports, enhanced by the allure of the forbidden, though sometimes the rains dampened our stash and rendered the matches unusable. Ditto the Playboys we discovered, the process of separating the soggy-then-dry, soggy-then-dry pages distorting the bodies of the partially clad women. Later we drank and smoked mind-altering substances in those woods.
A fence rose up at some point, blocking access to the paths down which we used to travel, long after I had left them behind. I could circumvent those barricades, but perhaps they're better left in place. I drive frequently down the long-since-opened interstate, and I point out the creek to my kids and tell them I grew up fishing there, and we look down at the creek as the water passes under the bridge.
We dug up worms and sat on the banks, our fishing poles either extensions of our hands or resting in the Y of a upright sticks, and caught catfish and sunfish and pike there. We waded through the tunnels over which the interstate eventually would pass and shot crayfish and birds and frogs with BB guns. We floated for what seemed like miles in flimsy inflatable boats acquired from the toy store and netted fish that we eventually allowed to fade and dry to a crisp in the summer sun. My friend Rick once hooked an eel that he swore he needed my help with, and perhaps it has grown through the prism of time, but we wrangled what I still consider to be a three-foot creature about six inches in circumference to the bank. We foraged there for snakes, too, that we sometimes vivisected with shovels. A state trooper on the highway once spotted me shooting my BB gun and stopped and yelled; I took off. He didn't stand a chance. Those were my woods.
The woods and the water offered us danger and refuge, from parental oppression if nothing else, especially the water, concealing its mysteries under opaque surfaces and vegetation and carrying us to points unknown. When we waded those waters, we sank to mid-shin in the soft bottom, the eventual extrication of our feet bringing rise to the fetid muck. A flood once buried the trails under three feet of water, and we forded our customary bike paths in hip boots and waders, acquiring a fresh perspective.
We hid pilfered cigarettes near drainage pipes and smoked after fourth grade let out. We pulled those cigarettes to our lips as smoke-induced tears formed in our eyes. Newports, Kools, Lucky Strikes, whatever we could get. I can still taste the Newports, enhanced by the allure of the forbidden, though sometimes the rains dampened our stash and rendered the matches unusable. Ditto the Playboys we discovered, the process of separating the soggy-then-dry, soggy-then-dry pages distorting the bodies of the partially clad women. Later we drank and smoked mind-altering substances in those woods.
A fence rose up at some point, blocking access to the paths down which we used to travel, long after I had left them behind. I could circumvent those barricades, but perhaps they're better left in place. I drive frequently down the long-since-opened interstate, and I point out the creek to my kids and tell them I grew up fishing there, and we look down at the creek as the water passes under the bridge.
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