Shells and Wonders

Last weekend, my wife Pat and I left town for an overnight getaway in Pacific Grove, escaping the frenzy of Super Bowl Sunday. Our first destination was to witness the annual migration of monarch butterflies cavorting in a quiet grove of eucalyptus and pine trees. We timed it just right and got to see them flitting silently in the suddenly warm February air and performing their spiraling mating dance. I had never seen that before, nor had I witnessed the struggle on the ground as the male demonstrates his strength by overpowering his chosen female. Once she is convinced that he has the Right Stuff, she suddenly submits and is carried limply into the highest branches for their honeymoon. Lest you think I am making this up, all these details are courtesy of the excellent docent who was versed in the love-making antics of Lepidoptera.

Our next visit was to Monastery Beach, where we had seen whales and dolphins on our last trip. As we emerged from another eucalyptus grove onto the shore, I caught the scent of seaweed and salt. I closed my eyes and traveled back to one of my first recollections. In that memory, which I have revisited countless times in my dreams, I am playing in the sand as gentle waves lap the crowded beach and children laugh. Then I go for a ride in a glass-bottomed boat with my parents, where I gaze down upon kelp and catch fleeting glimpses of mysterious sea creatures below. I am four years old. How do I know that? Because it was also the first time I had ever seen a play in a theatre and I somehow managed to keep the playbill from that event, over 50 years ago.

Of the melodrama at California’s First Theatre, I remember little, except sitting on wooden benches, eating popcorn and booing the mustachioed villain of the show. But of the beach, I remember everything: the cool summer breeze, the tiered sea wall, the pier, the gentle curve of the shoreline, the wet sand, the excitement of finding tiny shells, and the fading afternoon light. Most of all, I remember the sense of wonder.

Thinking about all that as we walked along the shore helped me understand my melancholy over the fact that my daughter is in her final semester of high school and will soon to be off to college. It is the realization that one of the best things about having a child is that it allows you to relive your childhood. She finds a special shell, sees a butterfly for the first time, voyages across the sea in a glass-bottomed boat—and you get to experience that moment again, seemingly for the first time. Yes, I know that there are countless wonders left for her, but I won’t be around for most of them, and that makes me sad.

Lover's Cove - the stuff of dreams

The next morning, Pat wanted to leave town by driving along the waterfront in Pacific Grove. Suddenly, she stoppped the car at a beach called Lover’s Cove and suggested a short walk. At first, I was reluctant to submit myself to the drizzly morning air, but I soon realized that her request was a rhetorical one (I am getting better at picking up on those), and we got out.

As we crossed the road and stepped onto the promenade, I felt a rare sense of déjà vu. In all the times I have visited the Monterey Peninsula over the years, how could this be the first time I ever noticed this particular beach? Yet the view is unmistakable—I have been here before.

I close my eyes and, for the second time in as many days, I am transported back to my youth. But the sensation of sand running through my fingers mingles troublingly with the thoughts of my daughter’s childhood years slipping away, and the inexorable erosion of five decades of my own life. I redouble my efforts to hold onto the dream and slowly the sadness washes away. I am only four and all the world is contained in the wonder of a tiny shell left by a receding wave.

A replica of the glass-bottomed boats in Lover's Cove

Cars and Kisses

There’s a car commercial playing on TV now that shows a man running into one of his ex-girlfriends at a party and experiencing a romantic flashback. At first, he seems to be mentally cheating on his wife, but we soon see that he is recalling the good times spent with his first Subaru. I hate to admit it, but I know how he feels. Not that I ever run into my girlfriend from senior year, but I do remember fondly the car in which we first made out.

In my mind, it is always The Car and its improbable adoption into our family amazes me to this day. Back in 1968, when I was 13, my mother was in the market for a vehicle to replace her aging and non-descript sedan. Fortunately, a family friend, Don Fraser, Sr., was in auto sales, so she met him at the dealership to find something suitable for the twice-weekly five-mile drive to her medical office and other errands around town. You can only imagine our astonishment when my mother returned a couple of hours later with a brand-new Chevrolet Camaro. I don’t think we would have been any more surprised if she had appeared in our driveway at the wheel of a Formula One racer with Mario Andretti riding shotgun.

First of all, this was no family car. It was a sporty blue two-door coupe with bucket seats and a black vinyl roof. A fully-automatic transmission (a first for our family) controlled a throaty 327 cubic-inch Chevy V-8 engine. In short, it was a bombshell of a car that simply begged to cruise the boulevards looking for trouble.

That carnal desire was borne out quickly as, within a month, my sister introduced the shiny new Camaro to one of the local telephone poles down on the Redwood Highway frontage road. The mating did not turn out well. Fortunately, the car was fixable and quickly returned to the fold, with only a few new rattles to give voice to a troubled past. But it wasn’t through driving on the Wild Side. A couple of years later, it was almost totaled with my brother at the wheel and me in the passenger seat (see Love Songs and Glass, December 2010). Again, it was repaired (although it probably should have been a write-off) and was once again in our driveway, having made the “drive of shame” home from the body shop.

The Car may now have been a bit worse for wear--with more nagging noises, persistent leaks and the vinyl roof showing its age--but it was finally My Turn. I got my driver’s license in 1971 and, with it, the occasional use of the Camaro, my sister having moved on to a second-hand Ford Mustang of her own and my brother to an ill-fated love affair with Alfa Romeos.

Now you have to understand that I learned how to drive in the family station wagon, a car so decrepit that the only way my father could explain the vagaries of its stalk-mounted shifter was to “imagine you’re scooping up a large spoonful of bolts and then shove it into gear.” Compared to the Ford Falcon, the Camaro, with its power brakes and power steering, was nothing short of erotic. Not only that, it had an FM radio, an extravagant option my father refused to order for our other cars. We could finally listen to something other than the local news station and delved willingly into the steamy realms of (gasp) Contemporary Music.

To say that the Camaro was zippy around town would be an understatement. Not that I was macho enough to engage in anything like drag racing, but I did occasionally leave a stoplight with a certain youthful eagerness. But it was on the open road that The Car excelled. By this time, winter weekend trips to Tahoe were a regular thing as I pursued my ski racing hobby. Apparently, my parents’ concern over trusting me on icy roads with a souped-up pony car was trumped only by their not having to be my chauffeur. US 80 was both my weekly commute and my chosen speed for the drive from the Bay Area to Truckee and back. The ride was seductive and the lure of the blacktop hypnotizing. And, in the spring, with the windows rolled down, the radio blaring, and my skis and a bundle of bamboo slalom poles strapped to the roof; well that’s my nostalgic Subaru ad right there.

Yes, I do remember parking with Trudy P. in my mom’s Camaro for the first time on graduation night, but I’d be less than honest if I told you that I recall the taste of her lipstick and the smell of her hair more than the feel of the black bucket seats and the sounds of Crocodile Rock playing on the softly-glowing FM radio. But, like the guy in the commercial concludes, I’m okay with that.

Philately and Larceny

Last night, as I watched the Iowa caucuses in this year’s presidential election unfold, I had the melancholy thought that I will never be elected to the nation’s highest office. Not that I don’t have many sterling qualities and Great Ideas on how to improve the country. It’s just that – though perhaps a few of my friends may be shocked to hear it – I have a criminal record. One that goes back nearly fifty years.

What inspired me to break the law? Philately. Simply put, I was a stamp collector and at the tender age of 7 or 8 (I can’t recall) I decided to cut out the middle-man and start obtaining stamps from their source – the U.S. Mail.

Walking home from school one day with a classmate (nameless here, for obvious reasons) who was also a fellow philatelist (now legal in most states), we embarked on our cross-country spree.

I’m not sure whose idea it was, but halfway up Belvedere Drive from Strawberry Point Elementary School, we started investigating the contents of several residential mailboxes. Unfortunately, the stamps we found were not very interesting, since they were neither particularly old nor terribly foreign. Of course, it never occurred to us that the contents of the letters could have any other value.

Unimpeded, we continued on our search until a shout rang out from a nearby house. A man opened his front window and ordered us to Stop right there! Caught red-handed, we turned away from him and quickly stuffed the purloined letters under our shirts before he could reach the door. Naturally, neither one of us had the sense to just run for it, thus confirming my belief that most criminals are simply not that smart to begin with.

The man confronted us on the sidewalk and had us turn out our pockets. Whew!, I thought, we might just get away with it… Then his wife leaned out the window and yelled for him to Check under their shirts! (Darn you, Miss Marple!) After inquiring of our names and addresses, to which we gave honest answers (see observation on criminal intelligence in preceding paragraph), my partner-in-crime was taken to his house nearby and I was driven home to mine, nearly a mile away. The details are sketchy at this point, but I do remember crying non-stop, so I must have had a prodigious amount of tears at my disposal.

Back home, I was given an old-fashioned Talking-To and sent sobbing to my room. During dinner, there came a knock on the front door. My father answered it and I was Summoned. Behind him loomed a County Sheriff. Now I had never ever been this close to a policeman before and, at first, did not comprehend why on Earth he should be coming to our house (ah, the innocence of youth). Then, I suddenly connected the dots and the bottom dropped out of my world. I could practically feel the cold steel of his handcuffs snapping around my tiny wrists. (Did they make really handcuffs that small?) The three of us went into the back bedroom where I was to be Interrogated.

Astoundingly, all the sheriff wanted was to make sure that I understood how wrong my actions were (well, I did now, I replied in a tiny voice), that I was never to do anything like that again (no problem there, sniff) and whether my friend and I had destroyed or hidden any other mail prior to being caught (not that I could recall, suddenly being very cooperative), though I vaguely remembered stuffing an envelope or two into one of those drains that run from under the lawn into the gutter. Then he left, as unexpectedly as he had arrived.

I watched his sheriff car drive away down the street and slowly took in the fact that I was not going to “juvey” (a word spoken only in hushed and awed tones in school). Beyond my father having used the sheriff’s visit to scare me straight, I was more-or-less off the hook.

I suppose I could have used my easy escape from the arms of the law to propel myself into a Life of Crime, taking advantage of judges’ alleged reluctance to send first-time youthful offenders to prison. But I didn’t. I spent the rest of the evening in my room, alternately lamenting whatever mysterious forces had led to my astonishingly poor judgment and taking in the fact that I would not be going to the Big House.

I never did find out what punishment befell my companion, as the subject never came up again. We both appeared back at school the next day and went on with our lives, as if nothing had happened. None of our classmates ever knew, until now.

Not once did I imagine the shame my father must have felt that afternoon. Looking back, though, I can appreciate his wisdom in not flying off the handle and knowing how best to deal with his youngest child’s indiscretion. I’ll just have to add that to the growing list of things my father got right.

Gardens and Gifts

In the film, 50 First Dates, Drew Barrymore’s character wakes up each and every morning to find that her short- and medium-term memories have been wiped clean. With the help of her new husband, played by Adam Sandler, she starts from scratch building new ones that will be sadly be forgotten by the next day, only to be retrieved with the help of others.

Last week, while visiting the Palace of Versailles on a family vacation, I confess to having had a very similar feeling. As we stood atop the terrace that overlooks the dramatic gardens designed by Andre le Notre, gazing at the reflecting ponds and well-manicured lawns that stretch all the way to the horizon, I tried to recall having been there before. The occasion was another family trip, this one taken with my parents when I was barely 16 years old; exactly 40 years ago. I remembered that we did go to Versailles, I recalled the Hall of Mirrors vaguely, as well as the ornate furniture and painted ceilings of the king's private chambers, but of this view, absolutely nothing. The thought troubled me.

My daughter, Jessica, and I bought a picnic lunch from one of the outdoor cafes politely hidden from view in the maze of hedges and then sat on a bench in the brisk December air and ate our dejeuner. As we sat and talked, my eyes kept going to the vista before me and my memory strained, but to no avail.

We took our time and then walked on to view the Grand Trianon Palace, the Petit Trianon and, finally, the quaint peasant village built for Marie Antoinette so she could play at living a simpler life while chaos raged back in Paris. I let Jessica take the lead, hoping that by following her own desires, she might retain more memories of this remarkable place.

As we made the long walk back up to the main palace and our train ride home, I took one last, long look at the gardens and thought of that trip four decades ago, when my parents introduced me to Europe. Now, I was doing the same thing for my own child, so I had the satisfaction of “paying it forward.” But then it occurred to me that we were only taking this trip because of a recent inheritance from my father, so the gift was really from him. Then again, most of our family money has its origins in an inheritance from my mother’s father, so, in fact, both trips had been handed down over multiple generations.

I shared these thoughts with Jessica and then had the insight that this wondrous creation in the woods of Versailles, which we were currently enjoying, had also been handed down. Not only from the vision of Louis IV and his team of talented architects and artists, but from the backs of the peasants and merchants whose labor and taxes provided for its construction.

So, here’s hoping that 40 years from now, as my daughter stands on that very spot with her own children – perhaps on a trip paid for by an inheritance from her dear departed father – she will remember, at that moment, our conversation from long, long ago and share with her offspring an awareness of upon whose shoulders all future generations must stand. If she is able to do all that, the view will be all the better for it.

Arrowheads and Ghosts

This Christmas, it seems that there are more productions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol than ever. However, my new holiday tradition is the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus “Home for the Holidays” concert, now in its 11th year at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa. A hundred and eighty strong, they practically overflowed the stage. And right in front, with the tenors, was Steven Gallagher, one of my very first childhood friends.

The show was brilliant. During The First Noel, I found my eyes tearing up as the chorus hit one particularly sublime chord. Then we practically fell out of our seats during their version of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, performed as a plea for acceptance of the LGBTR (R, for Reindeer, of course) culture. The show was packed with gorgeous music, polished voices, sharply dressed men of all stripes, outrageous humor, audience participation and the true spirit of the season. To close, they performed the carol du jour, Silent Night, sung as a round with Peace, Peace. As lovely as this mash-up may be, it has become an instant cliché. But their version soared. Really. They added sign language movements to Silent Night and, once the round was completed, they did one final verse without music or voice, just expressive hand movements accented with the soft rustle of 360 coat and shirt sleeves moving in unison. A truly Silent Night that still gives me chills.

As I said, Steve and I go back a long ways, back before attending UC Davis together, before Tam High, before Boy Scouts, all the way back to Cub Scouts. In fact, Mrs. Gallagher was our Den Mother in Strawberry Pack 33. She guided our feeble efforts to be productive, upstanding citizens and kept us fortified during weekly after-school meetings with her homemade cookies. In my memory, she was a genuine slice of Norman Rockwell.

Not that it was all fun and games. No. We were expected to earn “Arrowheads” on our steady rise from Bobcat rank to Wolf, Bear, Lion, and the loftiest of lofties, Webelo. These Arrowheads weren’t terribly difficult to attain, unless you are only 8 or 9 and have the attention span of a 6-week old cocker spaniel.

Anyway, one November back in the early 1960’s I embarked on earning my Cooking Arrowhead. This involved planning a meal, shopping for ingredients, and preparing it—with parental supervision, of course. Usually, one did this for one’s own family, to avoid bringing shame upon the household should things go understandably awry in the kitchen. But as my brother and father were off on a Boy Scout camping trip, we invited Mrs. Gallagher and the twins, Steven and Scott over for my five-star dinner, which coincided with my birthday.

What I cooked for an entrée is lost in memory, though I suspect it was something chicken-y. What does stick in my mind was the dessert, a layer cake made from a mix. But ever the avant-garde-ist, I decided that the white frosting just wouldn’t do. So I got the food dye from my mother’s spice drawer and, with a little experimentation, achieved a rather startling shade of blue. We turned out most of the lights and wished me a happy birthday as I blew (blue?) out the candles. That’s when we heard The Ghost for the first time.

As we sat there in the semi-darkness, we suddenly heard the tread of muffled steps. It sounded for all the world like old Jacob Marley dragging one foot across the floor of Ebenezer Scrooge’s bed chamber. It went something like this: shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Softly, it haunted the living room and kitchen. We listened and giggled nervously, but it wouldn’t go away. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. It was too regular to be a noise from the storm outside; or a branch scraping the side of the house. Perhaps it was a leftover ghost from Halloween two days previous.

Intrigued, Steven, Scott and I fanned out, like so many Hardy Boys, to locate its source. We were certainly “not afraid of no ghosts.” We looked under the couch, behind the chairs and up the chimney. We opened closets and slowly crept down the stairs to the basement. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Just as we were about to go completely insane (okay, that may be an overstatement), I climbed up to the living room soffit, where the sound seemed to be loudest. That was when I discovered the noise coming from our stereo speakers. Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. Then, I remembered I had been playing a record to set the mood for the arrival of our guests and the mysterious sound was the phonograph needle still tracking around the final grooves, over and over, 33 1/3 times per minute: Shhhhh-thunk…shhhh-thunk. That was our Ghost.

Back to the concert. All the proceeds went to benefit Face to Face, a program of the Sonoma AIDS Network, with the goal of encouraging more people to get tested. At one point, the emcee pointed out that nearly everyone in the audience had been touched by HIV/AIDS and asked us to think of someone we knew who was no longer with us. For some reason, my thoughts went back to The Ghost on that dark November night and when the emcee asked us to say the name aloud, I said, “Scott Gallagher.” Sadly, he had been infected with AIDS in the early 1980’s, back when it was still shrouded in mystery, and had passed away shortly thereafter.

Over the years, I have come, more and more, to believe in ghosts. Whether they are real, imagined, or simply echoes in the memory, they reach to us across the ether and across the years to touch our being, especially at this time of year. And especially if we listen with our hearts.

Hills and Flats

I just got back from one of my favorite bike rides, known locally as the Lucas Valley Loop. It includes a five-mile stretch of country road that climbs gently from the tiny West Marin town of Nicasio up to Big Rock, where the pavement plummets down into Lucas Valley on its way toward Highway 101. On any day, this section of Lucas Valley Road is an ideal place to ride – not too much traffic, a rolling ascent, and beautiful scenery, too. On a hot summer day, the redwood tree-shaded lower part of the climb usually has a mini-climate that is many degrees cooler than almost anywhere else in Marin. I like to imagine the roads in Heaven will be like this.

Today, as the miles passed beneath my skinny tires , I thought about how many of life’s lessons I’ve learned while on my bike, but two stand out in my memory. Coincidentally, they both occurred while ascending this same gentle climb.

My first Lucas Valley lesson was during high school, back in 1973. Instead of regular gym class, a handful of us lucky cyclists would earn our P.E. credits by simply signing in at the beginning of seventh period and then going for a long afternoon jaunt. On this particular day, we headed north from Mill Valley up to Fairfax and west out to Nicasio, being led by Marc Horowitz.

Now, as far as we were concerned, Marc was the Real Deal. He rode a British Ron Cooper racing bike with a full Campy Record group (the best stuff at the time) and his hands seemed to be permanently tattooed with chain oil from fine-tuning his steed. He held the national junior record for the 10-mile time trial, I believe, and had even won a stage of the Tour of Mexico in a solo breakaway. Like I said, the Real Deal.

As our group rode along, Marc would impart wisdom, encourage us and provide a helping push if one was needed. That afternoon, as we approached the crest at Big Rock and sat up in anticipation of the swooping downhill, he chided us. This, he said, was the perfect time to attack in a race. Just as your opponents are catching their breath and grabbing for their water bottles, you have a real chance to open a gap. It was an opportunity not to be wasted. Then he suddenly sprinted out of his saddle and bombed the twisty downhill, with the rest of us trying desperately to catch up to his fast-disappearing Ron Cooper.

I learned the second lesson by myself, lower down on the same road and several years later. Riding solo one afternoon, I punctured and pulled off to change my tire. In those days, we all rode “sew-ups” or tubular tires. These enclosed the fragile rubber inner tube completely, thus requiring an entire new tire to be mounted on the rim after flatting. After a few minutes, my spare tire was installed and inflated, and I was back on my way. Unfortunately, I suffered a second puncture not more than a half-mile further up the road. Now, this was embarrassing, since I never carried a second spare. There was nothing left to do but get off and hitch a ride.

I tried to flag down passing motorists, but they were few and far between. And the ones that did pass never even slowed down. After half an hour of this, I had a flash of insight: Maybe they just thought I was a lazy cyclist, hoping for a free ride up the hill? To test my theory, I took the front wheel out of my forks and held it up in one hand as I raised my other thumb in the universal signal of the hitch-hiker. The very next driver stopped and gave me a ride back into town.

So there you have it. Nothing earth-shattering, but then, most of life’s teachings can be fairly subtle. The first lesson taught me that when you are just about tapped out is the ideal time to reach deep and find that hidden extra gear. It was a much better illustration of than the old saw of “giving 110 percent.”

The second one was at the opposite end of the spectrum, a lesson in humility. Simply said, when you need help, make it clear to those who might be inclined to step in. So many times, we suffer in silence, yet are incensed that no one hears our unvoiced cries. In my experience, there is a surprising amount of compassion in the world, waiting to be tapped.

I've lost count of the number of times I’ve climbed up to Big Rock, but I’m always aware that the next lesson may be just around the bend.

Peaches and Towelettes

Getting my teenage daughter to eat fruit can sometimes be a chore. For a vegetarian, she is a particularly picky fruitivore. But, yesterday, as we drove home from school, she resurrected a "pluot" (a plum-apricot hybrid) from her lunch bag and bit in. The smell of ripe fruit and the warm afternoon brought back memories of fruit stands and long family car trips.

The following narrative is not contemporary. In fact, I wrote it during my college years at UC Davis. But it certainly fits the theme of Bourbon and Bitters, since it does describe an actual event from my early childhood. I have transcribed it verbatim, even though the punctuation is somewhat haphazard. For me, it is fascinating to peer into my young adult mind from 35 years ago.

Incidentally, at the end I wanted to describe the image of a shaft of light squeezing between two objects, like the summer solstice shining between the enormous blocks of Stonehenge, in England. So, I just made up a word, "stonehenged." I was marked down for that. Oh, well. I still like it.

Down the San Joaquin: A Descriptive
Narrative of a Non-event Remembered

Great orchards - peaches, oranges, walnuts - swept by the highway. Rows of trees spun like helicopter rotors past his car window, flickering. As each row came into view, he saw something past it. Something; then it was gone. A tractor, a car, a man walking (or was it a woman? too quick to tell), or maybe nothing. Just another ordered mass of trees beyond, rotating in unison with the nearest, yet slower (why always slower?).

Sitting, melting on the hot vinyl bench seat, the family station-wagon, forest green. The plastic sweated a greasy-feeling substance (why?) that refused to be wet. He folded his arms in his lap, rested his head upon them, and tried to doze. Whether he succeeded he didn't know. Be he woke up soaked in perspiration, a womb-like wetness that was, at the same time, both stagnant and comforting. Vaguely, he remembered the others talking of road signs, orange-juice stands, and blackbirds, all this while in a sleep-like stupor. They played Highway Bingo on little cards with sliding glass windows that were red. He lost, unable to find an s-curve sign.

The highway rose slightly, skirting some hills. They were naked except for the golden grasses on which herds of dairy cows grazed (didn't they get tired of standing like that all day?). Pavement mirages mouldered ahead of the car, always out of reach. He looked down at the roadway where the mirages had been (where had the puddles gone to?). His mother was doing a crossword from the Sunday paper. Her glasses were tipped down on her nose and every so often she would stare off into the distance, resting her eyes. He tried to read some of the words (m-a-n-d-a-t-e, man-date, man date, mand ate?). She gave him a scolding look, so he sat back and gazed out the window. At least the window seat was his for this portion of the ride. It lacked support on the ends yet it was better than sitting in the middle. He hated being there, his legs astride the center bump, the hard seat torturing his butt and, worse, nothing to lean on (why were car seats always like that?). But the window was his and the telephone lines sped by rhythmically. Wires crossing and recrossing, rising and falling, crossing-recrossing. They abruptly veered away from the highway and rushed off towards the horizon along an irrigation ditch between two fields. He slept.

The sign said "Freshest Peaches in the Valley - 500 ft. on right." To his surprise, the car was slowing down, pulling off the road onto the shoulder, stopping. He opened the car door and got out, pulling on his shirt-tail to unglue his back from the dampness. A zephyr spun through the parking lot, cooling the perspiration on his back like a refrigerator. He ran the back of his hand down his spine and looked at it: dripping. His shirt had a peculiar feel to it, cool, wet, dirty. He took a pre-moistened towelette from his back pocket and tore open the metal foil. It smelled good, clean and moist. He stood there and just held it unfolded over his face, enjoying. Then he cleaned his hands, his forehead, his mouth with it, and looked again. It was soiled and didn't have any more of that perfumey scent that he savoured. He folded it and put it back in its wrapper.

The fruit stand stood beneath two large oaks, the ground around it was littered with spoiled fruit, but its cement floor had just been hosed down and looked cleaner than any he had seen in the past (hadn't they cared?). A No-Pest Strip hung in either corner of the building, apparently doing nothing to get rid of the countless flies that were present. The fruit stand was a strange place: in addition to the produce there was Mexican papier-mache pottery for sale (did anyone ever buy it?). His father handed him a washed peach; it was bigger than his outstretched hand. A chill went through his body when he tried licking the fuzz. He rubbed it on his shirt and bit in. The juice trickled down his chin, into his palm, and down his forearms. He sucked up what juice he could, bit at the yellow flesh, sucked, bit again, till he came to the pit, wrinkled and red. Bits of peach clung tenaciously to it and he nibbled free each strand, that is, until his mother took it from him and gave him another towelette. He held it over his face again and walked back to the car, peering through the paper. His sister held the car door open and he got in, luxuriating in his perfumed world, imagining himself in an all-white room, air-conditioned and faintly feminine. The motor started and his sister got in, nudging him into the center. He feinted fastening his seat belt and lounged backward on the seat, face covered, imagining. After they got under way he washed himself and stuffed the used towelette into the litter bag. His ear hurt.

DIP (that was a silly sign!). The dip make his stomach feel funny, like turning somersaults. He and his sister giggled. Billboards flickered by, advertising hotels, motels, restaurants: forty miles, thirty miles, fifteen minutes, five minutes, just ahead, turn left here, a blaze of light, clusters of buildings and then, You just missed... There was a Travelodge sign with a sleeping bear in a nightshirt, holding a candle with one hand and yawning with the other. He yawned; dusk fell.

The pain woke him up. It seemed to come from inside his head, like in the television commercial (why does it hurt so much?). He whimpered, and his mother turned around. Just a little farther, dear. It's his ear, I think, said his sister. We'll give you something to make you feel better when we get to Grandma's, she said, frowning sympathetically at him and turning back around. Streetlights, neon signs and brightly lit billboards leered in at him. Minute scratches in the windshield made long-rayed stars out of approaching headlights. The rays spun as the car flew past. It ached, it ached, it ached, it ACHED.

He opened his eyes and he was in bed at Grandma's. The light show on the highway had stopped. His mother took his temperature and sat on the edge of the bed. It made him feel secure when she did that. She gave him half of a medicine capsule covered with jelly on the open end. His sister arranged his toys on the windowsill by the bed. The ceiling light was on, but it was alright since it didn't move. He watched the plastic dinosaurs on the sill. They were marching in a line: Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannus Rex. He knew their names and slept. He awoke the next morning feeling better. The sun coming up across the street between two houses stonehenged a gold and silver arc through his window...

February 1976