Time Machine: $80

2 Clicks. There it is.

Last night I rediscovered my 1968 high school yearbook on a closet shelf. Seems like every ten years or so I drag it over to a reading lamp and slowly turn the pages while being sucked back to what seems like yesterday. Within the yearbook’s clear plastic cover and yellowing pages are my first few girlfriends, acquaintances with whom I’ve lost contact, and faces whose names I will never remember. Rich and Walt are in there, too, looking both incredibly young and wise. And, of course, there’s me. If I had the power to step back through time and draw these three youths together again in a crowded, locker-lined hallway in-between classes, what would I tell them about the future in three sentences or less?

I was not a very popular guy. Being a military brat I had learned how to blend in. Not make waves. Be an observer, because friendships — when one’s family was transferred from country to country every 2 or three years — were … difficult.

“To Tim: a sweet, funny guy”, “a nice guy”, “a strange guy”. Myriad salutations all the same, with signatures scribbled in blue fountain pen ink.

What happened to all these forgotten people who once seemed to play such an important part in my life? And what happened to their fountain pens? Do these forgotten people perhaps read THEIR yearbooks, too, from time to time and wonder about me, that strange, nice, sweet guy?

I eventually return this book of mixed memories to its shadowy hiding place, and sigh once or twice to myself, grateful for something so fleeting I can’t quite put my finger on it.

+ + + + +

Tim says: just for fun, I Googled “Norview High School 1968 Yearbook“. And, by golly,  there it was, on sale at Amazon for $80 dollars. What an amazing world of technology we live in. What a racket.

Read Full Post »

The Stare

I don’t remember much about my kindergarten year in Yokohama, Japan, but I do recall I enjoyed every minute of it. That’s where I played hooky for the first time (I went fishing), and that’s where I was served my first fish that still had its head on it.  Minutes before the meal, I was lead to the restaurant’s indoor trout pond and waterfall, where I was given a bamboo pole with a dough ball neatly wrapped around a tiny hook. Three seconds after dipping the line in, I yanked a pan-sized trout out of the water. Zip, zang! The trout – - MY trout – - was clipped with a double, V-shaped identifying tail-notch. Flipping and flapping, the trout was quickly carried off into the restaurant’s steamy kitchen.

Thanks, kid -- I see you!

After a while, a waiter delivered the very same fish to our dining table. He pointed at the double, V-shaped tail-notch and grinned, but I was more interested in the fish’s head end, where a single, crispy-fried eyeball stared up at me from a bed of fluffy, white rice and lettuce.

I fiddled with my chopsticks.

“What’s the matter, young man?” asked my father. “You love fish.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “But this one’s LOOKING at me!”

Mom reached across the table and sliced off the fish’s head with a knife. She wrapped the head in her napkin and placed it beside her plate. “There,” she said. “Just like the way Grandpa cooks them.”

Wink, Wink!

I ate the fish, but had a difficult time keeping my eyes from wandering to Mom’s folded napkin. The trout’s nose was sticking out of a corner, and I knew the rest of the head was waiting for the napkin to slip just so it could sneak another peek at me.

Soon, the meal was finished, the table cleared, and Mom’s napkin forgotten. Later that night I laid awake and thought about the trout.

I think that was the first time I realized there was a difference between the fish I caught back home — the headless and anonymous kind that Grandpa cleaned when nobody was looking — and the more personal one I had yanked out of that Japanese Restaurant’s trout pond. No doubt, if I had been that fish, I, too, would want to stare at whomever was eating me.

Read Full Post »

Sweet Dreams, David Corey

Whenever I was having trouble sleeping as a child, my father would sit on the edge of my bed and recite the following poem:

“I’ll tell you a story
About David Corey,
Now my story’s begun…
I’ll tell you another
About his brother
Now my story’s done.”

After Dad left the bedroom, I would usually drift off to sleep quickly, my mind anesthetized inside a soft, protective cloud of circular logic.

Read Full Post »

Bow & Arrow

Tim says: I received a request the other day to rerun this past Simply Tim. Since the event mentioned here does not represent one of my finer moments, I’ve been rather hesitant. However, through the years, I have come to greatly appreciate Dad’s parenting abilities while under fire…

+ + + + +

Toy Bow & Arrow

One day Dad bought me a toy bow and arrow. It was the kind that had a blue and white pinstriped bowstring and several “safety” arrows capped with pink rubber suction cups. Yeah, right. It took me all of five minutes to remove the tips and sharpen the arrows on a rough patch of concrete. For hours I played with my new toy. By the end of the day there wasn’t a target in sight that didn’t have a hole or two punched in it.

The following morning, Dad was standing on our quarter’s back door fire escape, talking to a fellow Army officer. “Hey, Dad!” I pestered, over and over again. “Lookit ME!”

Well, Dad ignored me. To this day I don’t know why, but I shot my dad in the leg with my tiny, toy bow and arrow.

Hey, Dad -- lookit ME!

Dad looked down at his leg. “Excuse me,” he said to his friend, politely, pausing in mid conversation. “I have to go discipline my son.” Then, with the toy arrow sticking out of his calf, he walked down the iron steps, grabbed me by the nape of the neck, and snapped my bow in two. “Now, Tim, pull out the arrow!“

The arrow made a sickening squishing sound that I will NEVER forget.

“Now, Tim, break the arrow in half!“

Needless to say my bow and arrow days were over.

Read Full Post »

The Measuring Door

Visit any household that has kids and chances are there’s a measuring door somewhere near the kitchen. Measuring doors can be identified easily by the progression of fingerprints and pencil marks measuring the growth rate of sprouting children. For me, seeing the miniscule gradations from week to week, month to month, year to year was probably my first realization that change happens, that — despite the seeming sameness of day-to-day comings and goings — we do in fact move through time and space towards a terrible and undefined vanishing point.

UN-philosophically speaking, however, what REALLY mattered to me about the Lee family measuring door was the steadily diminishing distance between my sister, Pat’s growth rate and my own. And in particular, that very special day when MY pencil mark finally nestled one-sixteenth of an inch further from the kitchen baseboard than hers did.

I knocked on Pat’s bedroom door politely because she had her mocking DO NOT DISTURB sign displayed.

“Can’t you READ?“ she howled. The “Rubber Soul” Beatles album played in the background, its groves worn nearly smooth from continuous use.

“Yeah. . . BUT this is really IMPORTANT!“

The door flew open. “What do you WANT?“

“Nah, nah-na, NAH-na!” I hooted. “I’M taller than YOU are!”

“Big, deal!” She slammed the door.

So much for diminishing vanishing points.

Read Full Post »

Thing in a Can

One of my Grandfather’s favorite places to find fishing worms was behind the old Freelandville, Indiana Mill, where tons of spent grain husks and chaff had piled up for decades. The resulting heap of decomposition produced layer upon layer of truly bizarre habitat, and one that to a small boy was downright frightening. Although “Papa” did most of the digging, he always brought along an extra small shovel and encouraged me to find my own worms. “Bigger fish will bite on worms you dig yourself,” he explained.

So, off I’d wander into the rank, steaming mounds of the old Freelandville, Indiana Mill, with coffee can, toy shovel, and teddy-bear in tow.

Whoa!

One day I had just uncovered a particularly nasty patch of compost. Underneath, was the biggest worm I’d ever seen. Even with small, kid’s fingers, the worm was twice as big around as my thumb. “Papa!” I shouted, grabbing hold of it. “There’s a great HUGE worm over here!”

Papa rushed over, thinking I had found a garden snake. He stared down at the worm. “Let’s see what you’ve got there,” he said, stooping as I let go of my discovery. The worm-thing began to pull itself deeper into the compost, its slimy coat glowing faintly as it contracted and expanded its body segments in an attempt at getting away. Papa grabbed it and began pulling on it. The worm tightened, giving up a foot or two, then broke in half, the severed ends exuding an awful smelling pea-green fluid. In his hand was a three feet section of— what?

The front end disappeared down the 3/4-inch diameter hole.

Papa examined the elongated tail section for several minutes. “I’ll be dog-gone if I know what this is!” he exclaimed, dropping the still squirming THING into my can, wiping his hands on his coveralls. (Meme wasn’t going to like that!) Then, we packed up our shovels, hopped in Papa’s 1950s  Ford, nicknamed “the Green Hornet” (based on the radio show series), and went fishing. Later that day I learned something very important to a fisherman’s way of thinking: not only do bigger fish bite on worms you dig yourself, even bigger fish will bite on BIGGER worms you dig yourself!

Thing in a Can Planet

Papa never mentioned the thing in a can again, and to this day, when I lie in bed, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, I sometimes think about the bygone Freelandville, Indiana Mill and wonder…

Read Full Post »

FFT: Essense of Fish

FRIDAY FOOD THING

I’m probably one of the few kids who actually LIKED taking cod liver oil. I remember in the 1950s Mom lining up my sister, Pat, and me at the refrigerator door every morning while she spooned out our daily dose of the smelly liquid. Every once in a while Pat would manage  to “sneak” her spoon to me when Mom wasn’t watching. I’d lick off her cod liver oil and “slip” her my clean spoon and collect a whole penny(!) for the favor. (Nowadays, I look at this arrangement as having been more of a symbiotic brother and sister agreement than it was — blackmail.)

This is probably why I think of those good ol’ cod liver oil days every time I open a can of sardines, or find a penny on the sidewalk.

Read Full Post »

The 5 O’Clock Whistle

The 5 O’Clock Whistle.

Read Full Post »

HO Trains

Fleischmann makes the best.

While my family was stationed near Athens Greece in 1960, I convinced Dad that I was serious about collecting “HO” trains. HO trains are tiny, scaled down versions of the more familiar “Lionel” trains. Within a week Dad was hard at work constructing a train “layout” in one our spare rooms. I knew I was in for a treat—  Dad never did ANYTHING half way.

Realism at its finest.

Over the span of a few months, the layout grew to astronomical proportions. Tunnels, round-house switching tables, push button roadway switches, whistles, tiny towns complete with people, street lights, trees, ponds, cows— you name it. The control panel looked like a nuclear reactor’s control room. Six different engines could be operated at the same time. An engineering degree was required just to turn the power on. Great stuff!

Issue # 1

But eventually we had to move back to the States. By then the train table was so large it couldn’t fit through the door. And FORGET shipping! Dad convinced me the best approach was to SELL the whole setup. One of his Greek coworkers agreed to buy the contents of the room. With tears in my eyes I watched a reciprocating saw slice “ANYTOWN USA” into four separate pieces.

A couple of years ago I picked up a model train magazine, and nearly ALL of my six German “Fleischmann” HO trains (circa 1959-1960) had become collector’$  items. But that’s okay. During that same move back to the United States, I lost my entire comic book collection, including the “Fantastic Four” Issue #1 (1961).

Flame ON!

Read Full Post »

Watch It

Alarm set for 9 o'clock

I always admired my father’s Benrus alarm watch. He used the alarm to remind himself of everything. It was the neatest watch in the whole wide world.

“BUZZZ!” I can still hear that sound and see Dad glancing at that Benrus, remembering an important meeting or something he needed to do. How cool was that?

Dad and I lost our watches somewhere next to a lifeboat in-between those two stacks, while learning an important life lesson.

On our way back to the States after assignment in Greece, our ship — the SS United States — docked briefly in Naples, Italy, where we were accosted by a young urchin selling watches on a street corner. Dad ended up falling in love with a gold-gilded beauty, and bought it on the spot. Later, as the ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, he said, “I want you to have this.” He gave me the Benrus alarm watch. “Don’t wear it until we get a chance to shorten the band.”

For two days I was in ecstasy secretly wearing that watch. It eventually slipped off my arm and fell overboard. Dad found me crying on the top deck that night, staring out at the cold Atlantic and our ship’s churning, phosphorescent wake. I explained what had happened. He removed his new watch and tossed it over the side.

His wrist had already begun to turn green from wearing it. “We both learned a lesson,” he said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

Read Full Post »