What They're missing

They have built a new park in town. It’s pretty slick. Shiny bright plastic structures with slides, and ramps, and all sorts of cool things to crawl on and through and over. Everything is smooth, and soft, and rounded; there isn’t a sharp edge to be found.

Things were different when I was a kid. The slides were metal and under the summer sun they reached a temperature that could grill a steak. The areas were separated by splintering wood held in place with spikes and pipes. Swings were always attached with what may have been meat hooks. The “merry go round” was simply a spinning instrument of nausea and injury. Its main purpose was to teach children about Newton’s first law of physics: that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. It also gave the bigger kids a lot of good exercise trying to see if they could get us sick enough to throw up. The teeter totter was another tool for teaching physics, and a little bit of social dynamics. Larger kids liked to play with us on that toy. A few "gently" teasing minutes hoisted in the air, a little begging and tears, and then the drop of death.

There was a thick rope hanging from a tree 3/4 of the way up a high hill. One would grip the knot and race down the hill and then arc out into space, swinging gently over a 60 foot drop, spinning slowly to glide gently into the hillside backward where a rock or tree root would leave the bruise of courage upon one's back. Good times.

Parents saw nothing wrong with these playgrounds. In fact, as long as we stayed out of the house, they were fine with whatever we did as long as the cops didn’t show up.

My dad encouraged a little rough fun. He made his living in demolition and earth moving. So we were around a lot of buildings that were ground up and hauled to the dump.

We liked going with the truckers to the dump. Sometimes we would stay there and catch the next trip back to the job site so we could explore the detritus of modern life. Most of the demo trucks my dad used were end dumps. These were long trailers pulled by a semi. A hydraulic ram would tilt up one end of the trailer and all the debris tumbled down and out the 60 foot long slide. Sometimes, if the truck was parked on an unleveled spot, the trailer would fall over. Pretty exciting to see that six story trailer lean, waver, and then crash to the ground. The look on the driver was always memorable and we got to learn new words as well.

Our favorite load to watch dump was concrete slabs. The big pieces of concrete would slide down, striking the sides of the trailer making the top sway as much as six feet from side to side. It was cool. The best view was from the front/top. We lay on our bellies and "ooohed" and "aaaahed" high above the shifting debris. The idea of the trailer tipping over gave the experience the element of risk, making it a real adventure.

Sometimes we snuck into the load headed to the dump without the trucker knowing it. That was fun. Standing atop of the debris, arms wide, wind in hair, flying down a freeway. (I'm the king of the world!) Once a driver was ticked off enough to pull over and chew us out. He didn't like the cool clanging sound dirt clods make when they hit the signs we were passing.

Once my dad had told us three brothers to make sure no one was in the six story hotel that was being demolished. It was a little after 6:00 a.m. and the start up time was 7:00. So we explored that old hotel on Skid Row in L. A. Mike found a set of false teeth, and David a fake leg (with the straps and everything!).

We were up on the fourth floor, horsing around. We ran from room to room, knocking holes in walls, stuff like that. I was removing the vials of mercury from old light switches to add to my collection. We opened a door and was just entering a room when it disappeared.

One moment there was an old room with a smelly rug on the floor and a dresser, and the next there was dust, blue sky, and a wrecking ball swinging away, dragging bits of walls and floors with it. Old Red had started the job a little early.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. . .” We went screaming down the stairs, laughing and jumping three or four steps at a time. Lots of fun.

One of our favorite games was “Riding the Roof." Dad would move around a two or three story building with the loader, breaking the walls with the machine, leaving just the interior walls to support the structure. Then he would drop the bucket to the ground and we all jumped in. Up we’d go to the edge of the roof and scramble out onto the shingles. We’d race to the top and give him a thumb’s up.

He’d hit the eaves with the loader and snap the interior walls in one blow. We braced ourselves as the roof jerked and crushed everything underneath. It would settle down the twenty or thirty feet with a grinding, crushing growl as dust and debris squirted out the edges all around us. We’d yell and jump and laugh. Especially if a board or something suddenly speared through the roofing.

Good times. Kids today just don’t know what they are missing.

Courtyard

This is something I wrote quite a while ago. So, just to keep things fresh here, I thought I'd drop it into this blog.


Lucky. Happy. Love. Rights.

What rights have we to love? The world is unhappy. Death, sorrow, true suffering: the common state of humankind.

So, what rights do we have to love?

Isn’t love selfish?

Not at first. There is that time when love, in love we say, it is so giving. Giving, receiving, self sacrificing.

And the love ages, some say matures. We turn that giving into expecting, and demanding, and hurting, and being hurt. Love becomes the “right” to bend another to our will. The glorious courtyard becomes a battlefield. What was once ours in sharing becomes ours in confrontation.

The courtyard is divided along contested lines. Each seeking to stretch their own boundaries, to claim new territory, in admonitions, “helpful suggestions,” sarcasm, and even direct confrontations. The questioning look, the patronizing smile, the subtle edge to the voice. We create a no man’s land in the space between two sleeping backs, maintaining a distance as intractable as the noxious, smoky, torn land between the lines in The Great War. And sensing the futility in the space between us, we seek the courtyard once again. It moves from courtyard to battlefield, and back again.

When we open our eyes to the changing terrain, we see the wreckage, and sometimes we strike a truce. We search separately. We search together. And together we find new ground, a new courtyard. Usually it is far smaller than the courtyard we first walked together. Usually we furnish it with what is familiar.

And so we circle, moving around the furnishings as the moods for battle or for love dictate. We make a game of staking out the lines for battle, and we make grand gestures of erasing those lines.

Perhaps the desire we have for that courtyard is more love than anything we felt before. We want a place where we can touch each other. A place that is peaceful, safe, and larger and grander than our first impetuous courtyard that was filled with wild things.

Let's Vote On It!

We were a team. And it worked like this: We did everything together. If one of us had an idea, we voted, us three boys. If it was a matter of who should try it first, we voted.

So if we were in a tree and the power line to the garage ran through the branches, we would vote on whether or not to touch it. Then we would vote on who would touch it first.

I’m the eldest, most cautious of the trio. Mike, a year younger, was the most agile and adventurous. David, the youngest, was the follower.

Usually Mike had the idea, and I often opposed it. David was the tie breaker. So I was the first to get the shock. I was the first to fly through the air on some rope we had tied to a cliff-clutching tree. I was the first to light the cannon made of cans and gasoline.

I was six and my dad was on his motorcycle climbing the hills by the lake with his friends.

It was 1962 and motorcycles weren’t designed for off road yet. The men would race toward the hill and see how far they could go. Some of them dumped the bike part way up and then slid back down. There was a growing group of men tinkering on the repairs off to one side. The grass was turning to brown streaks up the side of the hill, creating a triangular path that ended in a point about fifty feet from the top.

When the noise of the motorcycles died down and was replaced replaced with the loud talk of young men drinking beers and eating sandwiches Mike had an idea.

“Hey, let’s take this old tire and push it up the hill!”

A quick vote, a unanimous tally.

So a first grader, a kindergartner, and a preschooler were soon pushing and shoving the old tire up the dirt while laughing men watched by the road. It wasn’t a quick task, but once our trio decided to do something we could stick to it. This job took us almost a half hour.

We were in the grass way up the hill. None of the motorcycle tracks had reached this far. Below us were various cars and pickups from the forties and fifties lined up haphazardly along the paved road. A few motorcycles were scattered here and there, one or two of them surrounded by men making repairs.

That didn’t hold our attention. It was time to roll the tire!

“Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Mike said. “Somebody could ride in it!”

“I dunno,” I said cautiously. I knew I would get in trouble if one of us got hurt. (“You’re the oldest. You should be watching out for your brothers,” Mom would say.)

“Let’s vote! Should somebody roll down the hill?”

Two hands go up.

“OK, who should go? I think Will should go since he’s the oldest.”

Two hands go up.

I look at the tire. I look at the slope. I look at my dad, a distant figure that I know is going to be unhappy with me. I look at the tire. Mike is holding it up, sideways to the slope so it won’t start rolling too soon. I look back at the slope.

“Get in! It’ll be fun!”

I reluctantly squeeze in, my butt sliding into place, the edges gripping my waist.

Mike is full of advice.

“Hey David! Help me hold it! Now put your feet up higher Will so you fit tighter. Remember to keep your hands in!”

He seems to be rushing this a little.

“Ready?”

Before I can answer he turns the tire and it begins to roll.

My head goes up and over my feet. The dry grass is framed by my brothers’ feet. My head goes down, my brothers are grinning, upside down, their heads against the blue sky. My head goes up, I’m looking at the dirt. My head goes down, I see sky. My head goes up: brown, my head goes down: blue. Up/brown, down/blue. Brown, blue, brown, blue, brown. . . it all smears together, like the finger paintings I did in kindergarten.

Vaguely I hear some shouting.

The spinning is all there is. Around and around and around and around until even that is just a smeared sensation of movement. Suddenly I don’t feel the ground at all. I’ve hit the ditch at the road’s edge and I'm air borne.

Though I’m scared, I do think this is a little cool. I’m FLYING!

WHAM! I hit the ground again, I’ve cleared the road!

The tire wobbles and falls over. I sit up and rub my elbow while I wait for everything to stop spinning.

But before they do I feel hands grip my upper arms and I’m lifted into the air. I’m turned around and I’m looking into my dad’s face. Various emotions are playing across it: fear, relief, anger, amusement, a touch of pride. Over his shoulder I can see my brothers coming down the hill.

I’m carried to the car, sideways like a sack of flour, and the rest of the afternoon I watch my dad and his friends attempting to climb that hill from my personal jail house while Mike and David go off to catch lizards.

Red

We were all peering down the concrete lined hole. It's dark down there, and a little unsettling. I kick a rock in.

“One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand thr. . .”

Golly.

We are looking inside a nuclear missile silo. The cap has been removed (it’s lying off a little ways in the desert), and so was the missile. All that is left is this concrete slab and a deep hole. Around the upper edge is a huge spring, coiled just inside the lip. The wire must be 18 inches thick. There are huge clamps holding it in place.

My dad looks at Red.

“I dunno, Red. That spring is under a lot of pressure. I don’t think we can just cut it out with the torch.”

“Ah, you’re a pussy,” Red growls. “Just cut the damn thing.”

The spring was designed to throw the steel reinforced concrete cap clear of the silo in the event of a launch. And that cap is huge. It was designed to survive anything except a direct hit from a Russian ICBM. Our job is to remove everything within twenty feet of the surface, then fill it in. The first step is to remove this huge spring.

Dad looks around for support. No one says anything.

My brothers and I are just kids and we don’t know what to say. We’re just glad to be hanging with these tough grown ups who make their living removing anything. From orange groves to towering buildings, my dad and his friends can take it apart and haul it off.

Dad runs his hand over a clamp. It reaches down around the spring with a mighty grip. It is perhaps two feet wide and ten feet long. I guess the thickness to be about six inches.

“What do you think is going to happen when those clamps come off?” Dad asks Red.

“Nuthin’! Aw, it might pop up a bit, but it ain’t gonna hurt nuthin’. Stop bein’ such a pansy and cut the G*d damn thing.”

We all shuffle our feet. I’m only 13 and it makes me uncomfortable, this tough guy telling us that we are just scared. But I trust my dad. He knows what we should do.

After a little cursing and grumbling Red makes a decision.

“Get the hell out of the way you bunch of weenies. I’ll cut the damn thing.”

He grabs the handcart with the cutting torch and drags it over to the lip of the pit. He flicks the striker over the cutting tip and squats down beside a clamp.

It takes a while, but finally he shifts his body, stands up, and kicks the clamp. It goes spinning off into the dark. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand th. . .

"Clang”

He drags the torch to the next clamp.

“Bunch of G*d damn pussies, afraid of a little work. . .”

He kneels down and goes back to cutting. The smell of hot steel and burning dust floats in the air.

Soon the next clamps falls away, the giant wire quivers.

Red goes to work on the third clamp. The metal glows and drips into the pit designed to handle a greater inferno than these little red drops of steel. When there is just a couple of inches of the clamp left something amazing happens. That thick piece of steel twists. It lets out a groan and bends upward from the pressure of the giant spring. I see the wire quiver and jump a couple of inches.

The overweight grouch with the salt and paprika beard stretches and looks condescendingly at my dad.

“No big deal. If ya got balls.”

He moves to the next spring.

We watch as he begins cutting. We look at that huge coil running around that shaft in the desert. And as he gets about half way through that clamp my dad shifts uneasily. He glances at my brothers and me and jerks his head slightly toward the desert. We all step back a few feet.

Red is crouched over the clamp, puffs of smoke curling up from his work. And then everything changed.

There was some sort of grinding, twisting, metallic groaning and then a flash of movement. We look up and framed against the bright blue sky is Red. His arms and legs are spread out and he is slowly turning around and over. The tanks of gas for the cutting torch are up there too. And everywhere are huge pieces of concrete, streaking upward into the sky.

I stand there, my mouth open, watching the bits and pieces of the concrete slab recede.

I hear someone yell.

“RUN!”

Oh. Right. This stuff is going to be coming back!

We scatter, running as fast as we can into the desert.

“Whoomp!”

“Thud!”

Big pieces of concrete start landing here and there.

“Wham. Thump! Crash!”

Finally it is just a pitter patter sound, like hail, which quickly stops.

We go back, pick up Red and haul him to the hospital in the back of the truck where he spends the next few months.

Sometimes I don’t mind being a little bit of a wussy.

The Best We Have Done (fiction)

The gods have a museum. It is off an alley on the east side of the river next to an industrial complex.

I was looking for pop cans along the freeway and noticed the door ajar. Squeezing past the dumpster I went in.

There was an old man sitting at a desk littered with the remains of weeks of BBQ spare ribs and empty bottles of cola. His oily hair hung over his face, but failed to hide his missing eye. There was a name plate beside the empty fried chicken bucket and a dusty framed tin type of Stonehenge:

Odin, son of Bor
proprietor

“Welcome! Feel free to look around. Let me know if you have any questions.”

It had been years since I was in a museum, but since my schedule was not so pressing, I began to stroll past the exhibits.

The first display case was filled with little figurines with featureless faces, curly hair, triangular legs, and huge breasts. A label was taped to the inside of the glass:

Fertility goddesses
Kish, Mesopotamia
ca 4,800 bce

On the next table lay a glowing sword with geometric designs in its hilt and cryptic runes along its blade labeled as forged by the Roman god Vulcan.

There was a huge model of the Gardens of Babylon. I hefted the ebony oar of Charon and tried to bend the bow of Odysseus. I gazed long at terra-cotta figures of warriors sworn to the service of Emperor Chi’n Shih. An intricate calendar of the Aztecs was propped between ivory figures from Kush and a monolith of Uruk.

I wandered through the halls, gazing at treasures of cities long faded to dust, wonders of cultures now unknown, but found nothing from our own age.

“Pardon me,” I stammered to the immortal who was flipping through a trendy mail order catalogue. “Is there nothing from our age?”

“Oh certainly there is. We pride ourselves in obtaining the most important artifacts of each culture and every age. Here I’ll show you.”

He led me past crowded shelves to a small space inset into the wall.

A box stood on a shelf, an advertising poster behind it. A cartoonish man with an implausibly long mustache and dressed as a pastry chef was proudly displaying a heaping plate of pancakes.

Everlite Pancake Mix!
Always light and fluffy. Always a deee-light!

I raised an eyebrow.

Odin shrugged.

“It’s the best you have done.”