More Than Human

 

I remember seeing a book by Theodore Sturgeon when I was young and in the throes of reading weird Science Fiction tales: “More Than Human”.  I read the blurb, possibly on a paperback at a used book store or at the town library considering there were no personal computers or internet at the time.  

I loved stories about misfits and outcasts because somewhere deep inside I identified with them.  I didn’t really have a “best friend” growing up until my junior year of high school when I somehow acquired two.  I am exceedingly grateful for them, but so many formative years of feeling alone and overlooked was… ugh.

Until I found those two friends I wondered if there was something that made me undesirable or annoying.  It took moving to another town to discover them.  They were uber smart, creatively inclined, and mostly open to my spontaneity and impulsiveness, even when it sometimes landed us           in trouble.

It was the difference between feeling less than human over and against feeling more than human, or at the very least just meeting the bar of feeling simply human.  Maybe I could write a quirky Science Fiction short story: “Simply Human”.  It would feature the three of us becoming more than the sum of our parts.

*** 

2000 Souls in a Fishbowl

 

“2000 Souls” is a reminiscence written in the depths of that first year of the pandemic about my childhood spent in a small town in Southern Indiana.  Reading it now even just five years later I’ve picked up on some interesting nuances.

For example, I realize now why I have been mostly immune to the whole “Make American Great Again” phenomenon.  As a curious and sensitive kid I felt the cultural vibrations of America in the 70’s in my bones as a dreadful dissonance.  I wasn’t a woman or a minority, yet I could sense something was profoundly wrong with the world around me.  

To deal with that I became steeped in denial as a way to try and avoid what was most unpleasant about growing up here.  It was during the 80’s when I learned how to ignore those things that revealed my complicity with evil in and around me, showed my lack of integrity, or frustrated my position of entitlement.   

And then in the 90’s some major life changes and circumstances opened my eyes to the person I was becoming and I started to regain some of that sensitivity and perceptiveness of my childhood.  I learned to battle those insecurities that wanted to keep me hoodwinked and justifying the unjustifiable.  

So, I was one of those “2000 Souls” in a fishbowl with colorful rocks, a mysterious castle, and a treasure chest that provided some distraction and enjoyment to a little boy, but the water I swam in was brackish and polluted, and I knew it.

***

TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO

 

I bought this book at our local library’s used book sale in a state of pure nostalgia for my childhood in the 70’s and early 80’s.  Comic books and SciFi/Fantasy paperbacks were my primary source of entertainment as a kid.  They telescoped me out to the far reaches of the universe and then microscoped me in to the equally wondrous innerverse as I stood between the two in a kind of nexus of awe and wonder.

In was an active process of the imagination and required some work on the front end when I first started reading and I had to have a dictionary at my elbow to learn new words I’d never heard spoken or seen written on a page before.  I was exercising my brain muscle in the most thrilling of ways, eventually becoming all gain and no pain.

In this regard I do feel a bit sorry for kids these days who have had these stories heaped upon them but in a passive mode of taking in an image that is already created for them and spoon fed through a TV, laptop, iPad, or smart phone.  It appears the phones have been the ones to become “smarter” in this context.

But here is “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” by Philip Jose Farmer.  What a title!  I’d read some of his books as a kid but not this particular one or any of them in his Riverworld series for that matter, though that series was definitely on my TBR list before my interests began to change in my late teens.  This copy was $1.25!  That was money a kid could get his hands on by scouring ditches and dumpsters for empty coke bottles the grocery store would give you a dime a piece for.  And that back page with books listed for sale as low as 75 cents!  It even gives you the publisher’s address at the bottom in case you can’t find it locally and they will mail you a copy from New York City if you add 25 extra cents.  

Yes, that odd underutilized institution known as “The Post Office”.  Nothing electronic about it.  Just pen, paper, and stamps to buy these things along with pranks, gag gifts, and magic tricks that I loved (like fake doggy doo, X-ray glasses, the fly in an ice cube, a dog whistle, “snappy” gum that actually snaps unsuspecting fingers, etc).  As I made more money going into my early to mid-teen years I had to become familiar with where to get money orders and how to fill them out.  The days of sending cash had passed and I was growing up with more expensive interests, even if that mostly just meant buying hardback books instead of paperback books or comics.

A legacy of all of this is that even now when I visit a website I am not interested in playing the video to see what information is being conveyed.  I prefer to read it in the article itself or as the transcription.  My brain wants to see the words and actively work out the meaning at its own pace and leisure.  It shows my age perhaps but I am at an age where that doesn’t matter to me anymore.

***

Kindergarten in Knightstown

 

My younger sister’s kindergarten teacher sent me a Facebook friend request today.  Funny thing is, we moved to Orleans, Indiana in the summer before my first grade year so she was never my kindergarten teacher.  That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, but it does kind of violate my loose and unspoken rule to not friend anyone I do not know directly or have not known long enough to feel some connection to.

***

I went to kindergarten in Knightstown, Indiana.  My teacher’s name was Mrs. Stroop.  She had  medium-length brown hair pulled back in some fashion with a part down the center of her head and large glasses.  I don’t remember her being either mean or particularly nice.

Our tables were close to the ground and rectangular shaped.  I would guess there were about six of them with six kids each, three to a side, though that is likely an overestimation.  They were color coded via a round construction paper circle taped at one end.  I sat at the purple table with a kid who had a reputation for being the smartest kid in the class.

I remembered his name well into adulthood but now in my 50’s I can no longer recall it.  He looked like a little man with his hair neatly parted on the side and a kind of quiet gravitas.  I had not yet become acquainted with Mr. Rogers, but in retrospect this boy looked like the child version.  His presence at my table was somehow reassuring, like having our own teacher’s aid if the assignment proved too difficult or inscrutable.  

***

Memories at this point are random.  I built a cool extended drag racer with some pieces from a tube-shaped can and then put the finished product back in carefully and put the lid on it thinking I could preserve it indefinitely that way.  Another kid tried to open the can and I prevented him from doing so by saying “No!” in no uncertain terms which got me in trouble with the teacher.  I was preserving my artistic creation for future use but she reframed it as a problem with “sharing”.  It was very un-Mr. Rogers-like of me and simply the beginning of a long and illustrious career of mischievousness in school that put me at odds with many of my teachers.

***

That particular school had an old gymnasium attached to it.  On rainy days during recess we ran around pell-mell on the basketball floor and scurried up on the stage with teachers constantly imploring us to get off the stage, slow down, and not shove each other.  There was a Christmas program there that year and I sat in the dark on a chair facing the stage with a few hundred other people.  There was a huge calendar of December on the back wall of the stage.  It was decorated like a winter wonderland that I found strangely comforting and being there at night with my parents only intensified the feeling.  My older sister was in the program wearing an outfit that matched everyone else's that I seem to recollect was a white top and black skirt for the girls and black slacks for the boys.

Sitting a few seats over in the dark was a neighbor of ours.  She was what I would refer to as “rough around the edges”.  She was poor and talked in a way that was full of slang and bad grammar that I found disquieting coming from an adult.  Once when I was at her house her young son was eating peanut butter from the jar and began choking on something.  She became loud and panicky and when the obstruction in his throat was dislodged he vomited.  It might have been a marble.  I did not return to that house and I have not liked peanut butter since.  At the Christmas program her daughter was prancing out on stage behind my sister when suddenly her mother’s voice rang out in the darkness, “Pull up your skirt, Boo Boo!”

***

Twelve years later that small gym would become famous.  It was preserved so well over the years without any significant updates that they used it in the movie “Hoosiers” which is set in the 50’s.  I don’t have to tell you how surreal it was to watch that movie as a high school senior and see the gym that I hadn’t been in since kindergarten in 1974.  It continues to this day to be preserved for its historical significance and can be visited if you are ever in Knightstown.  

Interestingly enough my wife went to Butler University and we’ve been to Hinkle Fieldhouse for a basketball game.  That gym was also featured in “Hoosiers” because it was used for years as the venue for the Indiana high school basketball championship game.

***

So, Mrs. E, you may have never been my kindergarten teacher but your friend request sent me running down memory lane.  I now anticipate waking up in the middle of the night in the near future with that kid’s name from the purple table made evident to my conscious mind.  I imagine these days he is probably a NASA scientist or CEO of a company… and I am still mischievous.  

Charlie’s Angels vs. King Kong

 

Yes, that’s me in the photograph, probably around 12 years of age.  I was one of the shortest kids in my class and that didn’t change until high school.  The thing that sticks out to me in this photo posted by a childhood friend on Facebook is not the copper-rimmed glasses with miraculous PhotoGray lenses tinted brown or the the red-and-white striped sweatband, but that “Charlie’s Angels” t-shirt.  It’s the original trio from the popular TV show that ran through the late 70’s and early 80’s: Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith.  

My favorite was Jaclyn Smith who in the opening credits would make a swirly-turn in a white bathing suit with one of those floppy 70’s style beach hats that she coquettishly plops onto her head.  It was an accelerant to my tween hormonal changes, like gas on a fire (an appropriate metaphor considering my propensity for pyromania at that time).  

I liked the other two as well, don’t get me wrong.  Kate reminded me of the teen girl who lived across the street and Farrah, well, Farrah was Farrah-of-the-Hair.  I ran into her at Santa Claus Land so to speak.  We were there with my church youth group.  I’d just gotten beat at tic-tac-toe by a chicken when I spied the ring toss booth with posters as prizes.  There was a King Kong movie poster where he is standing astride the two buildings of the World Trade Center (very cool, but sad in retrospect) and right next to that one was the iconic Farrah Fawcett poster in her red one-piece bathing suit and the aforementioned hair.

I confidently slung the rings and won a poster, but the question was: which one?  It was a battle between my upper parts and my lower parts.  King Kong was huge, ferocious, and the perfect embodiment of suppressed tween rage.  But there were those hormones circulating through my body and having an undue influence on my developing brain.  It was unfair, really, and I made the fated choice of the Farrah poster.  

When it was time to leave I found my mother and tried to hold the rolled up poster as unobtrusively as possible.  She must have sensed something odd in my behavior and asked to see the poster.  I reluctantly unrolled it and her eyes got bigger and bigger as the full image came into view.  Even then, on some level, I thought I had run an endgame around her because I had the poster and there was no undoing that.  That illusion was quickly dispelled when she marched me back to the ring toss booth and demanded they exchange the poster and how dare they give such a thing to a child!  It was not the first nor would it be the last time my mother would force me into a mortifying situation (maybe stories for another time).

So King Kong came home with me on a poster and somehow at some point I came into the possession of the Charlie’s Angels shirt seen in the photo above, though I have absolutely no recollection of where or how I got it.  And as I’m now writing this I remember I have a photo of me holding my pet rat and wearing a white t-shirt also with green trim around the collar and sleeves that bears the exact same King Kong movie image that was on that poster.  I believe it was a hand-me-down from my cousin (some odd juxtapositions are pinging around in my head right now).

And while I am swimming in these particular waters I have to dive just a bit deeper to when I was in elementary school.  We had a small barn in our backyard that had a playhouse under the roof accessed by a trap door.  My sister was two years older than me and in junior high.  She had two friends in the neighborhood who liked to play “Charlie’s Angels”.  They somehow roped me  into playing the role of both Bosley and “Charlie”.  In the TV show Charlie is never seen.  He communicates with his “angels” to give them their mission through a speaker which is supposed to add an element of intrigue.  So, I would come up with missions for them and climb up into the playhouse where we had a cassette recorder.  I tried to sound like Charlie as I recorded the message, “Hello Angels…” and then rewind it so they could return and push *play* in order to hear Charlie tell them what to do next while I stood by as Bosley.

Over the years I lost track of all three women until about 20 years ago when I saw a news story about Farrah.  She was gaining some notoriety by making paintings created from spreading paint all over her body and then rolling around on white canvas.  And then about 10 years after that I learned of her developing anal cancer and making a documentary about it with the hope of being able to film herself beating it.  It was a fight that she was unable to win.

Rocket to the Moon

 

It was the first time I realized I could create something beautiful.  

In elementary school the world was full of mystery and there was nothing more mysterious to me than the ability of people to create something beautiful.  I was thinking mostly about music and the visual arts at the time as I was not yet able to read well enough to grasp what might be beautiful in literature.  This stirring inside was new to my growing awareness of the world.

To hear someone play something beautifully or create a piece of art with their very hands was nothing short of miraculous to me.  My immature brain could not comprehend the time and effort that lay behind those abilities, only that I saw them fully formed and naively believed it must simply be something innate to that person.  The possibility of sustained attention and self-discipline was a black box to me.  My failings at both in a classroom setting was a perennial problem and oftentimes the focus of parent-teacher meetings.

Until that day in art class when I made something I couldn’t explain.  

We were working with clay to fashion sculptures that would be painted and then fired in a kiln.  I chose to make a disk shaped moonscape with a rocket ship.  I was sitting at a table with another boy who was known to be a bit of a pill and was always looking to turn everything into a competition.  He decided to make his version of the same thing which may or may not have been his attempt to annoy me.

I flattened out the clay and formed it into a thick disk about four inches across that looked like a pancake but was tapered at the edges.  Pushing my thumb into it I made a few deep impressions and formed up low thin walls around their edges to create craters.  Next I rolled some clay into a boulder or two to disperse amongst the three craters.  Unsurprisingly the boy at my table was following suit.

Next was the rocket ship which I made by rolling the clay into a fine spire pointing skyward which bulged out in the middle as it descended and then tapered again at the bottom.  Then I fashioned three curving fins that came out from the rocket’s body and formed a tripod where they met the moon’s surface.  I placed the ship off-center next to the biggest crater.  It was a kind of rule-of-thirds placement that was more intuition than any knowledge of aesthetics.

The next step was to paint it.  

I looked over to check on my neighbor’s progress and his rocket was thicker than mine with a cylindrical shape which had a nubby point, like a fat crayon.  The fins were not curved but thick triangles.  He quickly painted his with a dark muddy gray for the moon’s surface, blue for the rocket’s body, and red for the fins.

I was more deliberate in my thought process and came to the conclusion if I only clear-glazed the moon’s surface and didn’t use a color the firing process would give me a more accurate lunar-like shading and texture.  The rocket itself was painted a uniform silver-gray in the classic Bradbury style.  I carefully transferred the slender rocket-on-moonscape into the kiln and enquired of the teacher how long it would take to fire it and get it back.  She said it wouldn’t be that day and class didn’t meet again for another few days besides.

I thought about that sculpture in the meantime and how it might turn out.  I was excited because I was really pleased with how it had all come together regardless of my neighbor’s boorish attempts to copy it.

When the day finally came and my art teacher placed the sculpture on the table in front of me I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.  The fired glaze gave the rocket ship a rich shiny glow and the unpainted moon color was spot on.  It was beautiful!  The art teacher gave me a little grin and said it was “pretty good”.  I couldn’t quite grasp the fact that I’d made it with my very hands and had sustained such laser-like focus throughout the process.  I guess you could say I was “over the moon”.

***

The Demon Haunted World (aka The 70’s)

 

Purely out of a sense of nostalgia I watched the first Ghost Rider movie starring Nicholas Cage on Netflix this week.  In elementary school I was fascinated with this dark and mysterious “superhero” who wore leather and had a flaming skull for a head.  He apparently had made some kind of deal with the devil and become his champion of sorts, imbued with powers that included wielding hell fire and riding a magical motorcycle, except he double-crossed the devil and became a punisher of evil-doers.  This somehow made him a good guy, or not-a-bad guy maybe?  Like “the enemy of your enemy is your friend” perhaps?  Regardless, it was not a comic my parents would have approved of so I kept my Ghost Rider fandom very much on the down low.

***

In the mid-90’s Carl Sagan wrote a book called THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD: SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK.  I’m not sure the significance of the ALL CAPS but its aim was to explain the scientific method to laypeople and encourage them to learn critical and skeptical thinking.  I did not read it but I don’t imagine it was talking about demons per se and seems to have set up a false dichotomy between spirituality and science in the title, but I digress.

The first half of that title takes me back to the 70’s growing up in a fundamentalist Protestant home where my Dad was a preacher and the Second Coming of Christ was going to happen at any moment whisking believers up into heaven “in the twinkling of an eye”.  This was in the wider context of a world seemingly split between freedom loving peoples and the soul-destroying Communists.  From this Manichaean perspective flowed a great river of paranoia and manipulation justifying any number of egregious actions on our behalf at home and abroad, but also had its manifestations in individual hearts and minds. 

And in the midst of this potentially terrifying portent of apocalyptic prophecy and mutually assured destruction was the existence of demons.  They were everywhere!  They were in Sunday sermons, my Christian comic books, movies shown at churches, and books written by charlatans like Mike Warnke who lied about being a satanic priest who converted to Christ (the latter assertion being even more preposterous than the former).  

There were nights as a kid when trying to go to sleep I was convinced a demon was at the foot of my bed reaching out to grab me.  I’d read about it in a Christian publication where someone had dabbled in the occult and suffered the consequences.  At these moments I felt an abject terror which was proof enough that I was in the presence of something diabolic.  I had a comic entitled “Somebody Goofed!” in which an older man befriends a younger man and convinces him to ignore God and simply enjoy himself in life.  When that younger man dies unexpectedly he confronts the older man who he finds in Hell only to have that man pull his face off to reveal he is a horned demon who cackles “You goofed!”  

Another time in my elementary school years we were at a gathering with church members at someone’s house for “food and fellowship”.  I remember them filling the room with conversation and laughter while I sat in the corner of a couch bored and tired from running around and playing outside with the other kids.  Knowing my younger self I’d probably done something to get into trouble and was in a time out.   I nodded off to sleep and when I awoke an indeterminate amount of time later the room was completely empty.  In a growing panic I realized the Rapture had come and I had been left behind.  It was the only feasible explanation to my young mind.  I wandered around inside the house looking out the windows and sobbing.  I went outside and called for my parents without reply.  My mischievous behavior and disobedience had caught up with me.  I sat back down on the couch where my father had just been seated seemingly only moments before and “listened” for him to talk to me from that other world and I asked him to come back and get me... that I was sorry... that I would change.

And then in high school I wrote a short story about someone who gets hit by a car and is knocked out but awakens to find he can see demons attached to people.  He eventually stumbles into a mega-church looking for a respite from this terrifying new ability only to find the biggest demon of all sitting on the shoulders of the preacher at the podium.  I submitted it to Christianity Today magazine for a C.S. Lewis writing contest for young writers.  I did not win the prize money or get published but I did get a letter saying my story was a runner-up.  For all I know everyone who submitted a story got a similar letter (it was not very good) but it signaled a change in my thoughts that looked to be a little less concrete and a bit more nuanced.  It was the 80’s by that time after all.  

***

Coming full circle back to the Ghost Rider I have another distinct memory from when I was 10 years old and we were visiting my Grandparents in northern Indiana.  Grandpa Haney had a large farm with barns full of animals, tractors, and hay surrounded by hundreds of acres of corn.  He was a quiet person and I never really talked with him as a kid, but on this one occasion I was with him at a grocery store.  We stood in the checkout line and there was a comic book rack where I found a Ghost Rider comic and guiltily flipped through it while trying to be small and invisible.  My Grandpa turned in my direction at which point I thought I was totally busted.  Instead of chastising me he asked if I wanted that comic and I said “yes?” and he had me throw it up on the counter (face down of course).  He had absolutely no idea what he’d just agreed to and I now owned my first and only Ghost Rider comic book.  

In that particular comic Ghost Rider is racing Death himself who, strangely enough, is a fellow motorcycle rider with a flaming skull-head that is green.  It was yet another deal or wager he’d agreed to (had he not learned his lesson with the devil?).  At the end of the story they are racing up a mountainside road and as they ascend Ghost Rider kicks Death’s front tire sending him careening off a cliff and he goes on to win the race.  I feel like I am in that very race even now and I have a strong suspicion I am not going to win no matter who or what I kick.  But hopefully I can make a good showing of it without fear... or cheating.

***

The Thrills and Spills of Kenpo Karate

It was a glimmer of light in the darkness of my middle school misery.  A neighbor boy was taking karate and somehow I got invited to come along and see what it was all about.  It was in the basement of a church in Paoli, Indiana which was one town south of ours.  The Sensei was the owner of a local radio station and the epitome of manliness with his black belt and black 70’s ‘stache.  My first impression was seeing him stand in front of the class in the classic horse stance yelling out commands as rows of fellow middle-schoolers punched the air with a loud synchronous “KEE-YA!”

I was duly impressed with the spectacle and told my Dad I wanted to join this group of warriors-in-training.  I ordered my gi and went shopping for an athletic cup with jock strap holder.  To be honest, it was the cup that had me most stoked.  When your boy-bits need full protection it’s about to get real.  So the neighbor boy’s Mom picked me up and drove us to my first official class.  It was winter time and the tile floor of the church basement was cold on our bare feet after changing into our gi’s in the bathroom.  The cup was tested for proper placement with a firm rap from my knuckles.  

That first class ended with a Simon Says-type  competition to execute the move yelled out by the Sensei without delay or error.  There were about 15 kids there and they were falling like flies.  The winner of this game would get a cool iron-on for the back of his gi that included two large Chinese characters that denoted we were practicing “Kenpo Karate”.  It was down to just me and another kid when I punched instead of kicked.  I was disappointed but not deterred.  A week later I was ultra-focussed and able to win my iron-on badge of excellent obedience.

This was the era of the late 70’s/early 80’s when safety was not foremost in anyone’s mind, especially when it came to male children.  At times the Sensei, or his adult brown-belted assistant, would have us put our backs against the wall in a seated position and keep us hanging there until our stomach muscles and legs started to burn and spasm.  But wait, that’s not all!  They would then come around with a wooden club and hit us in the stomach with it to further toughen us up.  KEE-OUCH!

Another example of this was when he would have us all stand in a large circle with our arms held out to our sides parallel with the ground.  When he stood in front of you you had to stand perfectly still and accept getting punched in the stomach with a loud KEE-YA to try and dissipate the blow.  Some of us flinched and fell backwards when he appeared to begin his strike, so he would wait for us to recover in order to receive the full benefit of his punch.

And then there was poor sweet Benjy.  He was a skinny freckled blonde boy with a disarming smile that made everyone love him.  He stood bravely before the Sensei with a closed wooden door about 3 feet behind him.  The Sensei did not even wait for Benjy to mentally prepare himself but immediately launched into a skip with side kick that lifted Benjy up off the ground and carried him through the air, body hitting the door, and slumping to the floor like a rag doll, dazed.  Our eyes were the size of ping pong balls.  He killed Benjy!  But then Benjy let out a good natured groan and slowly got back up on his spindly legs while holding his stomach, a sheepish grin on his face.

My turn was coming.  It was another night and we were sparring against each other when I found myself in the middle of the circle with the Sensei as my opponent.  I did not think it was going to be a particularly fair fight, but when my name was called there was no walking away or leaving for that matter.  It was winter after all and I was barefoot in only a loose fitting white uniform with jock strap.  So, we stood facing each other and he gave the command to bow.  He bowed, I bowed, and that’s when it hit me.  

What hit me?  Well, his foot to be exact.  Apparently it is an unspoken rule in karate that you must never take your eye off of your opponent.  When I was at the depth of my bow looking down at the floor he snap kicked his foot straight into my abdomen.  I immediately collapsed to the floor unable to breathe.  I was making some kind of gasping gargly noise with all the breath knocked out of me.  I thought I was going to die because no matter what I did my lungs would not fill up with air.  The Sensei took a knee beside me and kept telling me to “breathe out” which seemed counter-intuitive, but I tried and after what seemed an eternity I found I could breathe again.

Another activity that had the potential to end badly was the “leaping over all your fellow students” exercise which I loved.  It started with a piano bench sitting next to a mat which you jumped over head first, landed on your hands, tucked your head, and rolled.  After everyone finished jumping the bench a student was instructed to get on all fours next to the bench and you would jump over him and the bench.  This was repeated by adding another kid, etc.

There was a tall and lanky boy who I’ll never forget.  He did not look particularly coordinated walking around the church basement-cum-dojo, but when he took to the air to jump over the obstacle his legs would fan out into a Y-shape as his body made a high arcing curve.  When he landed he could execute a perfect tuck and roll up to a standing position in one fluid motion.  It was a thing of beauty and grace that I never tired of watching.  

As each student added himself to the line of bodies to jump over the excitement in the room grew.  At about 5 bodies the number of volunteers quickly dwindled until at 7 bodies the beautiful swan diving student gave up and there was only me left to attempt it.  I backed up almost to the entrance at the far end of the room and took off running as fast as I could across the basement floor.  When I reached the bench I launched myself nearly vertical over the students, aiming for just past that last kid.  It was not pretty but I cleared them with nothing to spare and my “roll” was more like a land, head tuck, body slam and bounce at the far end.  I was willing to attempt 8 kids but I believe the Sensei sensed disaster and ended the exercise.

Returning to the subject of sparring, after several weeks of classes we got to put on boxing gloves and were paired up to fight.  I was facing the neighbor boy whose Mom was giving us rides to the classes and when Sensei said “fight!” I fought!  I pummeled the poor kid, releasing all my pent up anger and frustrations on him (there was no lack of that in middle school).  He had this frightened look in his eye that seemed to be asking me to let up or show mercy, but Sensei wasn’t having it.  “Get your hands up!  Fight back!” he yelled.  But then the neighbor boy started crying and the match was stopped.  

That may have been my last class because I lost my ride soon thereafter and there would be no transition for me from white belt to yellow belt that a few others had recently made.  Now as an adult and parent I can only surmise that my beat down of the neighbor boy was directly responsible for him quitting and/or his mother no longer giving me rides, though at the time that thought did not even cross my mind.

***

There are a few other loose ends of memory that need to be tied up before I finish.

The adult assistant (who was a brown belt in Kenpo as I mentioned earlier) was highly skilled in the martial arts, even more so than the Sensei it would seem, and had likely studied other martial arts as he had an old faded black gi.  During classes he would sometimes walk around working his nunchucks at a high rate of speed which was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.  

When we did an exhibition at the halftime of a Paoli High School basketball game he further wowed us with a crazy flying kick.  He had two men stand on chairs and hold a piece of wood between them at their head level.  It was well above his own head and nearly level with the basketball rim.  He was rather short but he ran and leapt into the air and extended his leg with a high kicking motion busting the board in two sending the pieces flying!  

It was a few years later when I was in high school that I learned he had been shot and killed in a bar.  Apparently he had gotten into a fight with someone and they knew they were outmatched and so pulled a gun and shot him.  As the song says, “for all those born beneath an angry star, lest we forget how fragile we are.”

And not too long after that I learned that poor sweet Benjy had prematurely passed as well, riding his dirt bike in the country, body thrown one last time and killed at the age of 16.

2000 Souls

Orleans, Indiana is a town of 2000 souls and from 1975 to 1985 I was one of those souls, albeit a small one.  There were pockets of darkness hidden in neighborhoods that I mostly avoided but sometimes brushed up against for the briefest of moments.  

My Dad was a pastor and it was expected I would not hang out with the “bad” kids, but that was OK because I was mostly a loner anyway.  I had friends, but none that wouldn’t turn on me in a heartbeat if expedient to do so.  Maybe it was something about me?  

I spent much of my time roaming the streets of this town on my bike.  There were no helmets, no cell phones, and no sense that something could go terribly wrong.  And if it did, it passed me over and found some other kid or family to haunt for years to come.

There was the town square with the drug store and its comic book rack, the movie theater showing “First Blood”, a ceramics store where my Mom painted things to decorate our house, and the variety store with three levels of secondhand treasures.

There was the high school with its palatial basketball gym but primitive cinder track, the elementary school with Patton Field for Little League games, and the nearby airstrip with ultralights waiting to take to the sky like giant mechanical dragonflies.  

There was melancholy by the rick load though I didn’t really know what that was back then.  It was the air I breathed and a persistent heaviness in my chest.  It drew me at times to the massive cemetery to brood, the quietest of quiet places.

And it is the town that most thoroughly put its stamp on me, a decade of growth and development from 1st to 10th grade in the heart of Southern Indiana.  I love it in the way someone would love a good-enough parent because that’s who raised you.

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“a land called Honalee”

It was the closest body of water to my childhood home at the southern edge of a small town in Indiana.  It could be seen from the highway that split the town in two if you were paying attention and didn’t blink, just north of the sewage treatment facility.  In retrospect, it was likely created from runoff from this facility, but to a kid it was a magical place we dubbed “Honalee” after the land of Puff the Magic Dragon.

And when I say “we” I mean myself and Ricky.  We lived two houses apart on the same road that constituted the southernmost border of Orleans, Indiana.  There were arguments about who saw it first and what it would be called.  There were always arguments between us which were mostly just attempts to shore up our insecurities or to try and assert some kind of dominance over the other.  Ricky won the naming war with “Honalee” and I had to admit I liked it.

The thing to do was create a seaworthy craft to explore the pond of Honalee even though it couldn’t have been more than twenty foot across and about thirty or forty foot long.  The idea came from finding a wooden pallet in the weeds that could serve as a raft.  The next step was to find an inner tube from a car or truck that we could inflate, the bigger the better.  When this was found and transported across the highway we lashed it to the bottom of the pallet with rope and found a long branch to navigate with, a la Huckleberry Finn.

I don’t remember who attempted to shove off first, but there was only room for one.  I am sure there was an argument about it.  I was short and skinny, Ricky less so by a good bit, so it was probably me who attempted the maiden voyage.  It was exceedingly wobbly and not a very practical craft.  I remember shoes and partial legs getting submerged from slips and missteps which, considering the source of the water, is pretty gross.  

We must have lost interest pretty soon thereafter because I do not remember any more adventures on Honalee after that.  And now that I think about it I seem to recall that Ricky’s Mom found out what was going on and explained the sewage connection, forbidding any further visits.  But for a few days there in my childhood it was something new, exciting, and full of possibilities.  For a brief moment we had created a magical place from the communal muck of our little town.

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The Last Day of School

It was the last day of school and he figured he wouldn’t waste his time sleeping for the rest of the summer.  Even as his parents dropped off to their slumbers and the sisters fell into dreams, he was out on the back second story deck pondering the universe, suspended several feet above the earth.  By starlight and moonglow he surveyed the endless cornfields and patches of forest stretching southward from his perch on the edge of the small town.

A groundhog trundled through some high grass along the fence line, but stopped and stood on its hind legs when it sensed the thin upright shadow floating above the field.  It was the boy who sometimes called out to him on sunny days.  He fled from other upright walkers, but this boy was different.  They would sometimes make eye contact and with his homey hole so near at hand he tolerated the uncertainty and strangeness of the situation.

The deer was less certain as it stood stalk still amongst the corn rows waiting for the boy to disappear back into his home.  It was also aware of the groundhog who took chances by standing man-like above the grass.  The deer thought it foolish and was certain the small creature would pay for it some day.  Better to stay hidden, keeping one’s ears upright and eyes sharp, sniffing the air.  The boy, like others of his kind, could kill from a distance.    

But the boy’s mind was not preoccupied with thoughts of vigilance or the need for survival.  He was imagining the possibility of tornadoes raging in the distance and whether there was life on other planets.  He wanted collapsible wings and a jet pack to launch himself from that deck into the radiant darkness.  He wondered if angels exist and if they knew he was looking to emulate them with fanciful contraptions.  Was flying synonymous with freedom?

***

The Flying Man

From above it is the bright yellow backboard that stands out, nailed to the back of a small green barn, a boy dribbling a basketball awkwardly in the grass underneath it.  The edges are painted red which match the centered rectangle.  There are also red letters on it, but I no longer remember what the word is, only that I painted it with a spray can and stencil when I was a kid.

The barn is not tall enough for the goal to sit at its full height of ten feet which is fine with the boy.  He already has a regulation-sized goal on the driveway in front of the barn.  This one is something he has made with his own hands and affixed to the barn with the help of a ladder and a neighborhood friend.  If he charges straight at it and plants his foot on the wall to spring upwards he can just brush the rim with his fingertips even though he is too short to even touch the bottom of the net on a real goal.  

It is a lazy summer day at the edge of a small town in southern Indiana.  From my vantage point above the scene I can see the cornfields stretching off into the distance behind the house.  I have taken the form of a crow in my mind’s eye to ride the winds of memory back to my boyhood; to this particular place, day, and time.  I caw loudly in greeting but the boy only glances in my general direction before fixing his attention back on the goal.    

The wind is really whipping today snapping the sheets hanging on the clothesline and threatening to whip them up into the sky.  I have to land on the top of the post closest to the barn where the boy is attempting a hook shot.  The ball careens off the side of the rim and rolls between the bushes and into the grassy expanse that separates the house from the cornfield.  He runs to retrieve it, but when he bends to pick it up he hears a peculiar noise that makes him forget the ball and look skyward.

It is a kind of buzzing sound that is faint, but growing louder.  Looking westward I see what it is he has already discovered.  It is an ultralight aircraft flying over the cornfield, the pilot perched below its wing in front of a small motor-driven propeller.  The boy has seen these before in the summertime headed for the small airstrip to the east of town.  He waves vigorously at the man to try and get his attention.  Then it happens... the motor sputters and coughs a time or two before going completely silent. 

The boy feels his heart starting to pound in his chest as he realizes the airstrip is too far away for the man to reach it without power.  He cups his hands around his mouth and yells at the man to see if he needs help but either he cannot hear him or he is too preoccupied with his situation to respond.  The boy abandons the basketball and runs to pull his bike out of the barn.  He pumps the pedals to catch the road heading eastward hoping to follow the contraption that is quietly gliding through the sky to an uncertain landing.  His imagination comes up with possible scenarios for the pilot’s fate.  Will he hit a tree?  Electrical lines?  Will he land on Highway 37 and get hit by a semi?  Will his plane burst into flames when it hits the ground?

Whatever the outcome, the boy is determined to follow the descent.  He has to keep visual contact because there is no sound to help identify its location.  I fly in his wake as he splits the wind for me.  We pass down streets and through neighborhoods that he has never been in before but it is necessary to parallel the plane’s path.  After a few minutes of pedaling at a furious pace he finally sees the ultralight disappear over a rise and he ditches his bike in the grass to track it down.  Climbing a small hill he feels his insides quivering.  Will the man be injured or even dead?  

As he crests the hill he sees the man extricating himself from what appears to be an intact aircraft that has nose planted into the shallow rise of a hillside.  He appears frustrated which turns to irritation at the appearance of the boy.  The boy asks if he is OK as I sweep up into a tree to observe their interaction.  He offers to ride his bike somewhere to get help, but the man waves it off and says he is fine and doesn’t need any help.  The boy did not expect him to be so gruff.  His thoughts of saving the day quickly fade as the man turns away and ignores him.  In a moment of insight and with a shrug of his shoulders the boy thinks that maybe the man is embarrassed and wonders to himself, “what’s up with grown-ups anyway?”  It is a good question and not one this crow can answer for him.

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