Train Time: a Tribute

(original story circa 2002)

Each week Mom used to pack me up in the front seat of an old Packard and drive through the Indiana countryside to a spot not far away, where a train track cut through miles and miles of cornfields. I stood patiently counting crows that congregated on twin vanishing strips of telephone wires, narrowing towards each corn tipped horizon. After a while the tracks began to vibrate softly, loosening tiny grains of sand that danced where they touched the magic steel rails. With each passing second my little boy’s brain filled with the thrill of an as-yet unseen locomotive, soon to be overwhelmed by the slow, steady rumble of an approaching train.

“Train time!” shouted Mom.

Where the tracks curved out of view, hidden by corn stalks and refracted sunlight, a wondrous engine appeared. A single headlamp — brighter than the sun — flashed momentarily; then, a piercing shriek from a  whistle that scattered crows in all directions. Just to be sure, Mom held my hand in hers, and together we felt the rush and massive displacement as the engine pounded past; a wave from the friendly engineer, another screech from the whistle just for me. The wheels growled with a steel-on-steel voice so deep and regular and resonating it made my insides ache. The pavement all around shook and shook and shook. Unimaginably huge cars thundered past — each one with a different sound — and in-between each tonal shift, stroboscopic shadows flickered rhythmically where sunlight was interrupted.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. . .

All too soon the caboose rattled past, cartoon-like, chasing the diminishing train back into the cornfields. The dancing grains of sand and sound subsided along with my pounding heartbeat.

(present day)

Tim says: this is one of my all-time favorite Simply Tims, ever.

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copyright© 2015 by Simply Tim’s Blog Spot

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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 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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Give Me Those Bouncing Balls

Simply Tim Classic (circa 2001)

Back in the days, it used to be watching television was fun and easy and took little effort. The only brain-work required was when an occasional bouncing ball guided us through a slowly moving string of words while a musical theme song prompted us to sing along with a 100% transparent TV commercial’s message.

“Okay people … Here we go … Let’s all buy … some IVORY SNOW!”

Nowadays, there’s so much happening on screen that I need to record almost everything for playback to make sure I don’t miss anything. Just the other day I was watching the evening news, where I counted three distinct bars of information scrolling by at different speeds near the bottom of the screen. Above that — just underneath the rectangular space that had  been begrudgingly set aside for actual news footage — yet ANOTHER caption bar displayed a taped interview that was being translated on-the-fly into English off-camera. All of this while a live human newscaster read from a teleprompter script, rambling on and on about such-and-such or something-or-another happening to somebody with an unpronounceable foreign name. My vision raced to establish a center of equilibrium among all the dancing TV screen clutter;  just as my eyes were beginning to learn how to simultaneously conjoin four distinct areas of my brain stem with multiple data stream synaptic feeds, the television image snapped to black and teleported me into a commercial.

Gone in a nanosecond were the three separate levels of right to left scrolling messages. Gone were the caption bars and thickly-accented translation. Gone were the flashing backgrounds, the talking heads; gone the glittering news-desk logo, the twinkling star-filtered studio lights, the upbeat jingle.

Gone. Poof — just like that!

I was instantaneously reassembled, dead center, into a dreamy setting depicting a little girl swimming effortlessly underwater, alongside a majestic humpback whale. Soft music floated in the gentle current. More kids gurgled by in a slow motion aquatic ballet. The humpback’s giant eye moved right up against the television screen and stared at me…

ZZZzssst!

My brain cross-circuited, disconnecting with an explosion something like the sound a gallon bottle of vinegar makes when dropped onto a tile floor. And when I tried to adjust my eyes to the pastorally hypnotic, eco-perfect scene, I darn near fell out of my chair in an attack of left to right vertigo caused by the afterimage of all those previously right to left scrolling lines of text.

“Okay people … Don’t run from it … Grab your TUMS … and pat your STOMACH.”

I’ll take those bouncing balls anytime.

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The 5 o’Clock Whistle

“Watertown Arsenal, building -71 (Watertown, MA)” by Jack E. Boucher

I lived in the Watertown Army Arsenal — just outside Boston, Massachusetts — during the mid fifties. The arsenal employed thousands of civilian workers who fabricated Honest John missiles. Every day at 5 o’clock a shift change whistle shrieked from the tops of the foundries. A few minutes later the sidewalks swarmed with an assortment of folks heading for one of the several gates that led to the worker parking lots, and… home.

Most of these sidewalks were steam-vented, lined with a vast network of mature hedges containing secret forts and passageways known only to us kids. I remember hiding in the bushes beside the apple-tree-orchard parade ground, watching the adults rushing by. As they passed, I made up stories about the secret lives they led outside the arsenal gates. The short man smoking a cigar is a first base umpire for the Boston Red Sox. The guy scurrying like a weasel behind him is a jockey. The fat man with the shiny lunch box plays the cello for the Boston Symphony. The guy mopping his brow with a handkerchief sells hot dogs at the hockey rink. The woman in the red scarf teaches ballet lessons at night.

You get the idea.

Nowhere in my make-believe world did I realize the guy with the cigar is worried about how to pay for his son’s second semester college tuition due in a week; that the rushing weasel is a Boy Scout leader who needs to get across town in less than an hour; that the cello player’s mother is dying in a hospital he can’t afford; that the hot dog man is about to get fired; that the woman in red just had the car she’s heading for repossessed: that ALL of these scurrying people are just trying to GET BY as best they can.

After the sidewalks cleared, I would crawl from the security of the hedge rows and forget about the stories I had just made up. Instead, I dusted off my clothes and headed for my house at the top of the hill, knowing that Mom was cooking something great for dinner, and that Ozzie and Harriet would be on TV later that night, showing us that all problems everywhere could be solved at a dinner table piled high with mashed potatoes and roast beef.

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A Midnight Feast

(edited from 1999)

Tonight I walked around my neighborhood just before midnight. In the crisp air, Christmas tree lights sparkled through loosely shaded windows, surrounded by more glimmerings carefully arranged on outdoor shrubbery and perimeters of shadowy houses. Inside, families slept — tossing and turning — awaiting the promise of Christmas morning.

This year it seems more neighbors have taken the time to decorate their already extraordinary landscapes, paying more attention to detail than they did last season. Some homes are draped in strands of lights so delicate they shimmer like neon spider webs; others are shaped into Christmas menageries, each as unique as the crystalline patterns of snowflakes. In vacant lots, treetops gracefully arch their skeletal fingertips against the winking background of stars, not to be outdone by the twinkling mechanical lights below.

It was a fanciful midnight feast.

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