Every weekday morning
for more than twenty years, my Mother drove my dad to the train
station and picked him up there again at night. Like the other
housewives, she would slowly pull into the semicircle of cars inching
forward as everyone got close to the station for a perfunctory
“goodby” or “hello” peck on the cheek. Sometimes if the train
was late coming back in the evening, I had time to put pennies on the
track, overlapping the edges, hoping they would fuse into a line of
mashed and distorted Lincoln images, post Ford's Theater images
reflected back from fun house mirrors. Dad practiced law in a
building at 5 Broadway. He was mostly fueled on Cokes, cigarettes and
stress. Mom wore dresses with pearls, just like June Clever. That was
in the 1950's and 1960's. It seemed to me like everyone on Alden
Avenue lived similar lives. Dr Ingram, next door, only had to go
downtown for his work and Mr Robinson on the other side was a paint
chemist who worked from home. He developed special paints for the
Brooklyn Bridge to keep it from rusting. He was my buddy and often
gave me little vials of mercury to play with. I swished it around in
my mouth just to feel it's liquid weight. Dr Ferguson, across the
street was a prominent entomologist who often took his son, my best
friend Donny, and I down Lawrence Avenue to Egypt Hills for a morning
of insect collecting. I had a cyanide jar to kill the bugs I planned
to mount in one of the old cigar boxes on the top shelf of my closet.
Although I knew it was poison, I often took deep breaths of the
deliciously almond scented vapors, and when I didn't die, I did it
again. Our Ford Fairlane 500, with tail fins ready to fly us off into
space, baked in the summer sun on the asphalt driveway. The metal
parts, pretending to be all innocent and shiny, waited in ambush to
burn any exposed flesh foolish enough to make contact. No seat-belts,
of course.
Those were dangerous
days when ignorance was bliss and every road trip to visit my
Grandparents in rural Virginia came complete with a kids cornucopia
filled with 22 bullets and Cherry bombs. I long for those simpler and
often more exciting times, in fact, I wish I had a nice supply of
cherry bombs right now. I would dip them in glue and BB bullets and
shove the fuse up the filter end of a lit cigarette. That would give us a
good five minutes to get away. Just like those old days, we would be long gone.
.jpg)