Jun. 04, 2002 - 20:21 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Let 'er Roll

My mind is like a roulette wheel, it spins a while and then the ball drops into an unexpected number. One good thing about peaceful thoughts though, I always come out a winner.

Our Oregon family is gone and Heather and I have been in the decompress mode today. Nice big afternoon nap and a bit of refueling the car along with a cash withdrawal for expenses needing hard money. Not too many of that kind each month now.

Memories like colored oils, floating on swirled water tonight. The taste of Juicy Fruit gum, the taste of Beeman's Pepsin Gum, later on Clove Gum. Going to the drugstore as a kid and buying my favorite kind of licorice. It was called Smoker's licorice, it had a little of the sweet and a lot of the licorice, black and cylindrical in shape with an oval shape pressed into it at one end. Eggs pickled in beet juice at picnics.

Bobby my friend from the next block south who hung with me, and ran by my side fleeing from the kids that were after me. I ponder now about those days in the depression and whether he ever got anything to eat other than what I could scare up at my house. I still wonder what happened to him. Mom thought I had an unhealthy appetite, by the time she would get home from work there would be a peanut butter jar almost empty, the longhorn cheese almost gone, maybe a heel of bread left and the supply of butter depleted. Didn't interfere with my preparations for supper, other than me being sent for a loaf of bread.

Mike, the kid I went to school with from first grade until high school and we moved to east Denver. The Unholy Two, seems as if we could get ourselves in trouble without even trying. We did the Orange Slice Caper together, however he spent his take on something other than Orange Slices. He was a kid who went with me when I ran away, or maybe I went with him . . . . . well we went together. After our move though I lost track of him. Only to meet him in 1986 when I was seeing a therapist at a clinic while I was in alcoholic recovery. We met at the main counter and he heard the clerk say my name. He asked me if I had attended X school, I answered in the affirmative. He told me his name, it was Mike. He had lived a rougher life than I had, stayed unmarried. He blew his jobs due to his alcoholism, so we had traveled similar paths. Now I can't find him or any of his folks here in town.

Many of my friends and acquaintances went with their folks back to the farm or where ever the main family group was and didn't return. I guess most of the rest of my friends were killed in the war or returned from war to live in another town. Can't locate any of them. Some have died since probably. The girls are mostly impossible to track as their adult names are different than the names I knew them by.

I am remembering the afternoon 'socials' in the Junior High School, first in the cafeteria, tables pushed aside, later in the gym, music playing and myself trying to dance with the girls. Criminy it didn't work for me, I was willing but my feet stuttered. I still had a lot of fun there though and the music was current. Remembered now is the silly song about, I think a tuba. "The music goes down and around, below, below and it comes out here," very popular then. A few months later I was sick of it and I guess everybody else was too -- it disappeared.

Can't remember now but think it was on Saturday evening that I would be sent to get the new Lucky Strike "Hit Parade," record of the week. It was made of flimsy pressed cardboard stuff with enough waxy, polished material that would hold grooves. Those records would last for about as long as the song was popular. I don't think anyone collected them.

I remember the streets and gutters of that time. Cigarette and cigar butts littering like crazy along with candy bar and gum wrappers and the occasional condom. Seems that once a month the street sweepers would clean out the gutters. Didn't last long though, were refilled like magic. Then there were the street sprinklers that emerged in the summer time. I think they were used in an effort to lay the dust, but they were fun to be around and once in a while we got close enough to get our pants cuffs wet.

Memories of marching in parades downtown while I was in ROTC, we were sharper than the average clodhoppers, in fact we stayed in line and in step quite well. Later when we moved to East Denver and I went to East High School our ROTC group would March in the grassy area on the south side of City Park. That was pretty neat, in the Spring when the trees and bushes were in full, fresh leaf and the smell of growing things around, the grass soft underfoot.

There was a girl there at East High. We almost eloped but we were found out and her Momma bought her off with a new car. Man they were way out of my class. I didn't even get a booby prize though I qualified.

My memory doesn't want to deal with very serious stuff and not anything about when I was out of High School and beyond. It just wants to stay and play in the days of way back, far away yore. And there is more.

I was in De Molay and learned how to associate with males of my age or thereabouts. There was a self imposed discipline because we wanted to be part of the big thing and later on become Masons, so we were on our best behaviour, learned manners, ritual and ethics probably better there than if we had been taught in boring classes.

Riding the Tramway around town. Those old wooden streetcars that would sway back and forth as they went forward, the back would twist one way while the front was twisting the opposite way. The Motor man would call out the streets and avenues enough ahead of time that one could ring the buzzer to get off at that street. Some of the Motormen were so sunk in the monotony of their job and with a touch of apathy that their street calls were growling mumbles and not very often understandable.

Street cars, the amusement for pre-teens and teens after dark. Co-operating groups of us, one on each side of the street, hiding in the bushes and between houses, one group sending a boy out to pull the trolley when the streetcar was stopped to let a passenger off. He would pull the trolley and quickly run in between houses, jump the back fence and get away. About the time the Motorman would get the trolley back on the wire and get in the streetcar, one of the group from the other side would pull the trolley and run. What a bunch of hooligans we were.

We learned a trick from the big guys that was more fun than flattening pennies or scaffolding nails by laying them on the rail to be run over. We were told what to do and how to do it and were on our own. The method was to take cartridges. the biggest we could afford from the hardware store and go at night to lay them on the track with the lead end toward the direction the streetcar would be coming from. Thus the wheel would run over the lead first and only cause a loud pop when the powder would light off. We did that for a time, until a renegade among us decided it would be fun to lay the cartridges the other way on the track. A few store windows, etc were holed, cops were cruising, neighbors were on the look out so we found found something else to do.

The arc-lights at each intersection were the gathering places for the youth of the neighborhoods. Many different games were played from there in the summer nights, even a smooch or two was stolen in the dark beyond the light. I can remember the kids being called home when it was time to go in for the night. We knew who was calling by the sound of their Mama's voice without having to hear the name called. We had been hearing those calls since we were tykes I don't think I ever heard a father call a boy home, if the boy didn't respond to Mama's call, soon Dad would appear, take his son by the arm or ear and away home they would go.

The loose cannon of my mind can go further. So let's spin the wheel, drop the ball and Let 'er Roll . . . . . . . .

Blog