Kid Life

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.