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.

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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.

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“And the Moon be Still as Bright”*

“And the Moon be Still as Bright”*.

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The Year of Shooting Santa

Best Cap Pistol in the World!

Like most of us, in the weeks before Christmas, I used to sneak around trying to discover hidden presents from Mom and Dad before they were wrapped. Each year they were hidden in a different place. One year I found a small stash in an attic trunk. There, neatly tucked in a doll-covered corner, was a shiny Mattel Fanner-50 — simply the coolest cap gun in the whole wide world. And beside it, a blue plastic Wham-O boomerang.

Oh, boy, ohboyohboy!

Christmas Eve crept and crawled closer ever so slowly, but eventually it arrived — the night our family tradition dictated opening presents underneath the tree. I tore open present after present, and with each crinkling of wrapping paper, with each snipping of a Christmas-colored ribbon:

NO Fanner-50 cap pistol!

Who could Mom and Dad have given it to? Had I really seen it in the attic trunk after all? I pouted for the rest of the evening. Even snicker doodles and milk didn’t help.

Christmas Morning.

I rushed downstairs to see what Santa had brought, and — by golly — there was the Fanner-50 glinting under the tree, already loaded with caps and tucked inside a quick-draw leather holster, right beside the blue Wham-O boomerang!

But how could that be? Did Santa know about the attic, too?

That was the year I killed Santa, shot him dead with a Mattel Fanner-50. And unlike that boomerang, he would never return.

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If I Just Listen

If I Just Listen.

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The 5 O’Clock Whistle

The 5 O’Clock Whistle.

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The Fly (Part 3)

It was late afternoon and the sun was setting along a distant tree line; it looked like an iridescent ping pong ball on fire. Below it, dancing in squiggly lines on the surface of the lake, orange reflections intersected in a tirelessly changing pattern as same and as different as each rippling of the molten waves.

This was my favorite time of day — one to be shared with a glass of wine and light jazz drifting through the deck’s screened patio doors. As I leaned against the rail and breathed in the gauze-like serenity of twilight, the buzz of the renegade deer fly replaced the meandering lacework from an intricate Hank Jones piano solo.

Ah, HA! My pulse quickened.

As the fly drew nearer, I carefully set down the glass of Pinot Noir and turned my head slightly, zeroing in on the approaching flight path. Just as the greedy fly circled for the kill, I slipped a tennis racket from behind my back and instigated a 100 mile-per-hour practice swing along a perfectly intersecting arc. There came an infinitely pleasing “PING” as the racket made brief but solid contact with a fuzzy, foreign object.

Two separate fly-pieces spiraled all the way out to deep water.

I sipped my wine and wiped the gritty residue from the tennis racket’s webbing, replacing the racket in its neat, zippered case. As the sun dipped into the still water, somewhere in the distance a bass jumped.

Twice.

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The Eight-Foot Wind

The pin on the 150 yard par three gently fluttered in the breeze, half hidden behind an intimidating sand bunker. Beyond the hole sat a brand new Lincoln Towne Car — the prize for a hole-in-one. Closest to the hole would pay about $500. Not a bad closing hole for last week’s Captain’s Choice Best-Ball golf tournament.

I stood on the tee and gazed out over the taunting lake that protected the front of the green. I pointed the hand-drawn line on my golf ball directly at the pin and carefully placed it on the tee. I would only have one shot at the glimmering luxury car, but deep down I already knew that car was mine. As I addressed the ball I noticed the pin’s flag stiffen to the right. A hefty breeze had sprung out of nowhere. I waited for a few seconds. The wind intensified. I stooped and re-targeted my golf ball exactly eight feet to the left of the hole.

SWACK!

The ball sailed on a perfect arc. Up, up it went. Over the lake, over the bunker — WAY up. Then, as if kissed by an angel, it dropped straight toward the cup. It was a thing of beauty. Behind me, my foursome buddies gasped out loud.

THWOP!

The ball landed perfectly pin high, stopping dead, exactly eight feet to the left of the hole.

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The Flying Circus

One of my favorite 1950s childhood toys was a shiny blue record player that had a huge round arm with a stylus as thick as a pencil lead. For hours every day, I sat on the floor in a pool of sunlight listening to the 78 rpm “The Flying Circus” album over and over again. Although I can’t be sure this is the correct title (I’ve searched for hours and it is not the Monty Python version!), I recall a particular opening scene in which a pin is dropped from a high trapeze. Down, down the pin hypnotically plunges into the center of a three ring circus, where a sinister ringmaster whispers: “It’s so quiet you can hear a pin drop!”

With eyes tightly shut, listening, listening, listening, I would drift away. A rustle of movement, a gray hulk of elephant the size of a mountain, the scent of popcorn and fresh manure. Sunlight tries to pry past my eyelids, where grease-painted clowns chase themselves in figure 8′s until they catch up with their own shadows. In a swirling cloud of sawdust, the circus tent is sucked into a diminishing spotlight like a black hole until the tent vanishes completely with me inside. A little boy frog materializes and discovers an ox grazing in a field. Awestruck by the size of the ox, the little frog hops home to tell his bullfrog father what he saw.

“Was he bigger than… THIS?” asks Daddy Bullfrog, inflating his balloon-like throat sac.

“Oh, MUCH bigger, Daddy, but—be CAREFUL!”

“Bigger than T  H  I  S ?” puffs up Daddy Bullfrog, even larger.

“POP!” goes the terrifying sound of Daddy Bullfrog exploding! Then, a kid’s song while the little boy frog happily patches Daddy Bullfrog up with a Band-Aid. There was an important “be who you are” lesson about life in those lyrics:

“Who wants to look like an ox anyway?
Hippity, Dippity, Dox.”

Although The Flying Circus allure — like most childish things — eventually wore off and the little blue record player was tossed away, the scratchy sounds and crisp images still swirl upon occasion inside my merry-go-round mind. And sometimes, very late at night, as I lie awake and secretly replay scenes from my childhood — imagining those grooves spiraling towards the center hole of that far away phonograph record galaxy — the darkness becomes so deathly still I can almost hear a pin drop.

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Tim says: the above lyrics are what I recall. When I searched on the Who wants to look like an ox lyrics, I discovered several references to the bullfrog analogy, none of which, unfortunately, pertained to my forgotten childhood album.

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Keep Forever Box

Several times through the years Mom has asked me to venture into the attic or some other dark place to retrieve what she calls her “Keep Forever Box” — an unassuming carton containing dreams and precious memories acquired throughout her lifetime. From time to time she even lets me take a peek. By golly, there’s a tiny handprint of mine, set in plaster of Paris with “1952″ carefully etched into the stark white surface. I recall that day when my Yokohama, Japan kindergarten teacher splayed my fingers apart and pressed my hand evenly into the shallow, plaster-filled dish. Like most kids, I was more interested in making a mess than I was storing the significance of the moment away in my bubbling and growing gray matter. Over there in a different corner of Mom’s Keep Forever Box is a frayed, crayon-construction paper drawing of a stick-Mom standing next to a stick-tree underneath a stick-sun that says “I love you, Mom” in squiggly and sometimes backwards handwriting.

Like most folks, I didn’t realize I had my own Keep Forever Box until the other day when I was cleaning out a section of basement and came across a tattered cardboard box filled with filing cabinet-drawer contents accumulated through decades of moves and casual house cleaning efforts. By golly, there’s a blue folder filled with poetry written way back in my high school days when that same bubbling and still-growing gray matter was filled with notions of girls and ideologies and change rather than common sense. And — suddenly, right there in my hand — I discover a torn scrap of paper on which is written in pencil so faintly visible I almost toss it away, a  note that says: “See ya, Timbo. Take care. Rich.”

Instantaneously I am whisked back to the day my friend, Rich left for Viet Nam without fanfare. I was not home when Rich stopped by, but I can plainly see him tearing off a piece of scrap paper from a pocket notebook he always carried with him, scribbling the note in his half-printing, childish sort of way, slipping it under my door before walking away from youthful dreams and into a future that was no more certain then than it is now.

Funny how gray matter works.

Thanks for making it back safely, Rich.

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Boomerang

The best toy I ever owned was a blue and white-striped plastic Wham-O boomerang. My dad gave me one when I was maybe ten years old, living inside the fortress walls of Watertown Arsenal, outside of Boston. For months every day, in-between the apple tree-lined parade grounds and the foundries where Honest John missiles were assembled (and where there was more than enough room for the boomerang to safely complete its one hundred-yard dizzying sweep), I practiced throwing the sleek toy weapon. One Sunday morning, while waiting to go to Sunday school and dressed in a plaid suit and tie, a group of pigeons flapped overhead. In an instant, without thinking, I whipped the boomerang in a deadly arc that eventually intersected the center mass of the flock.

Feathers flew, tiny bursts of fluttering pink and white clouds. Three pigeons plummeted in bits and pieces, bouncing when they hit the ground close enough for me to hear the soft poofing sounds the larger parts made on impact. The still-twirling boomerang landed nearby, an obedient beast whose leading edge was covered in blood. I was amazed, elated, horrified and ashamed all at the same moment, my heart racing with an explosive, intoxicating rhythm known only to primordial hunters.

I buried the greatest toy I ever owned on that bright, sunny church morning alongside the three pigeons I had killed, changed forever in some way, but neither for the better or worst; and like that boomerang, the Honest John missiles soon became obsolete.

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Tim says: I suppose nowadays “toy weapon” is somewhat of an oxymoron, but — back in the 50s — there were many of them. Wham-O eventually went on to produce the ever-popular Frisbee, Super-Ball, and Hula Hoop, as well as a slew of other toys that bore the children of today in the same way their toys will bore the children of tomorrow.

By the way, the ancient Greeks used wooden hoops (conspicuously similar to the modern Hula Hoop) for — exercise. Some things are never boring enough.

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