2001-07-21 - 23:45 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Colorado Moonlight

Mom and Dad had a 1925 Studebaker coupe. A lumbering elephant of a car, yet roomy enough compared to cars of today. Behind the seat was a storage space, topped with a padded, hinged lid. I fit on that lid comfortably with room at head and foot.

Up there I was captain of my ship, steering my vessel on a course to Make Believe Land. I could see out on three sides and was able to take a hindsight by flipping over. I got a different look at things because my head was higher than Dad's but when sitting on the seat I had trouble peering over the bottom of the windshield.

Once in awhile on a warm summer night my Dad would step out into the yard to see if a storm threatened. If the prospects were fortuitous he would stick his head inside and ask, "Should we go take a ride ?" There was never a negative answer from either me or my Mom.

From previous attempts I knew better than to ask Dad, "Where we going Pa ?" Because his answer would be, "For a ride, that's why we are in the car."

Back then, out in the residential area of town other than lit windows of a few houses, there were arc lights at each intersection with a group of dark in between.

From where we lived in town to the countryside was just a short ride. And from where we lived on the edge, five minutes would put us on a gravel road in the country.

With our back to the town it seemed to me that we had plunged into the black uncharted void of space that was featured in the science fiction magazine I read. I think the first issue of Astounding was read by me (now called Analog) and I had read a story here and there dealing with implausible travels in space. I remember an Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a gravely wounded soldier in the trenches of France being magically transported to the surface of Mars (Vad Varo to Barsoom) and his adventures there. Jules Vern's books also let me wander the world and I think even he wrote about a trip to the Moon. In my mind Mom and Dad were inconsequential crew members on my space ship and were like the inanimate pictures on a wall that the eye slides over. It was just me and Big Bill. A companion of my imagination who was with me until he disappeared, just faded away, when one day I spoke to him, he wasn't there anymore.

Anyway, out from town it was before the day of yard lights, lighted barns etc. it was dark out there. An occasional dim light in a farmhouse window was about it. Our headlights would show the fences on each side and illuminate an occasional cow and a small patch of gravel road ahead.

It was there away from city lights that the immensity of the sky became visible bounded on the west by shadowy mountains down low. Occupied by clouds which I could dreamily see shapes in them that resembled things in everyday life. The stars were there, quite visible, but the main feature of the show was Luna who lit the clouds fantastically and gave an idea of the surrounding landscape when my eyes had adjusted to the dark. I would only last about so long up on the shelf and then come down on the seat between Mom and Dad because I could see the majesty of the night sky looking up from the seat better than from up on the shelf.

We never seemed to go on a set course, going down country roads and seemingly turning at random while my mind tried to understand why the moon seemed to be going in our direction at the same speed as we were on either side, but from the front or back it seemed stationary up there. I was very happy those times, never realizing just how happy I truly was. Safe, secure between beloved and loving people cruising idly out in the moonlit country, with a cool breeze coming through the open windows carrying farm smells for me to puzzle about.

We would usually start out soon after dark and would wander until way past my bedtime on an unmapped course (to me that was) and after a long time we would be back in the city a bit before I recognized something familiar, realizing that our ride was about over. Stumbling into a dark room suddenly brightly lit when Dad flipped the switch was a return to life in the city. A drink and a pee whichever was needed first, shedding clothes and putting on the required pajamas I would crawl between the sheets, pushing my removed pajamas down to the bottom of my bed and shortly drift off to where my adventurous field of dreams lay, among the clouds in the moonlight.

When I was older the experience of a moonlit town came to me when I had a morning paper route. Delivering papers in a darkened world, houses mostly shadowy hulks, arc lights fighting the darkness couldn't prevent bright moonlight from conquering even the city. I think what love I gained of poetry came from A Childs Garden Of Verses and the poesy of Colorado Moonlight . . . . .

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