Bronx Zoo, Joe's part II: Crossing the Threshold

At last we had reached the Zoo, and not just any Zoo, but the Bronx Zoo -- one of the biggest, bestest, and beastiest Zoos in the world. We piled out of the van and stood agape in the parking lot as the winter fog swirled around us, around the rows of cars, and around the tall entryway to the Zoo itself. It was an historic moment. Like the great explorers, Columbus, Magellan, Marco Polo, we too were about to enter the Land of the Unknown and see its wonders and hear its deepest secrets whispered in our ears. Except that we had string cheese for our journey, which makes all the difference.

"Everybody here?" Dad asked, counting wool-capped heads. "Michael?"

Mike was bobbing up and down to the Beatles bursting through his headphones. He pulled the 'phones off for a second and raised a thumb. "Here," he said, and went back to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

"Barbara's missing!" Mary exclaimed. "She was here a second ag -- oh, here she is. What are you eating?"

Barbara shoved the candy packet in her thick pink coat and muttered, "Memntosh."

"What?"

"Memntosh. Der ull gun."

"She said mentos, and they're all gone," Sarah piped up, peering like a turtle out of her winter jacket. "She ate all of them, right now, I saw her. Put them all in her mouth."

"Sharrup," Barbara mumbled through six different flavors.

"Come on, everybody!" Dad shouted. We moved in a single mass towards the gate. Joe and Sam lingered in the rear, each trying to stomp on the others boot toe in a beautiful show of brotherly playfulness. The contest could have gone on forever, if Bill hadn't solved the problem by stomping on both their toes simultaneously and pushing them in the direction of the gate. The gate keeper leaned out of his booth.

"School trip?" he asked Dad.

Dad was used to this sort of question.

"Well, actually, we're a traveling circus -- Mike here is the acrobat, and Mary is our high-wire act, and Rob here wants to be a lion-tamer so we came here to practice. No, really, these are my kids. We have twelve in all."

"Twelve kids?! My Gosh. They all yours?"

"Every one. Do we get a group discount?"

As they haggled Mary took up her previous disagreement with Rob and Bill, who had wandered over to the glass display next to the gate where a fat and wide-eyed lemur monkey watched them from a branch. Rob had discovered that nodding his head vigorously would make the monkey nod in reply. Bill promptly began a conversation with the lemur.

"Aren't you a fat little monkey?" he asked, and the monkey nodded. The boys nearly exploded in silent mirth.

"Aren't you the fattest little monkey in the world?" Bill continued. The monkey nodded enthusiastically.

"Do you want chocolate cake and donuts?" asked Bill, almost choking on his laughter as Rob snorted.

The monkey nodded, stood up, and leaped off the branch towards the glass, screeching. The boys fell over backwards in their surprise.

"There, you see?" Mary stormed at them, "you bothered him, now he's mad. Poor little monkey."

"Maybe he just wanted donuts," Rob said, and he and Bill held one another and staggered around the parking lot, laughing.

"Come on, guys, let's go!" Dad waved the tickets, the magic signal, and we poured through the gates into the Land of the Unknown, clutching our string cheese, ready to meet . . . whatever.

Bronx Zoo, Barb's Part 1: String Cheese and Mentos

Dad gave us string cheese in the van. We were driving past what Dad was calling Harlem, as he recalled a non-detailed account of one of his inmates. I had never in my life tasted string cheese before. 

I twisted the cheese free from the clear packaging and simultaneously thought of last winter. Of the smoky wooden cabin of a bookstore, with the little bear carve-out knocking back and forth in the wind, his splintered paw slung over the top of the shop's sign where he was nailed onto crookedly, hugging his own books to his chipped painted chest.

I clenched my mittens tightly onto the slim packet of candy my father had handed to me as he pulled into the pebble-splashed lot. The light from a lamp post spilled out across the setting, a powdering of snow slipping out of the clouds. The thin strands of winter-wary bangs stuck defiantly to my forehead as my knitted cap and the heat of dad's truck teased them.

I pulled back the folded foil, ripping the colored paper that hugged it ever so softly. I didn't want Dad to know.

Pink.

I turned the packet to the side, reading aloud in the softest of whispers, "Mentos."

I crept silently into the quieted bookstore, stepping strategically over the piles of musty hardcovers. Dad walked straight to the counter. With my left eye on his back, I popped out the the small candy-coated soft mint.

It fell onto the eager explorers of my tongue and I was immediately delighted.

Orange.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Pink!

Dad's voice pulled me back to the finger greased van windows.

"There's the Zoo!"

I didn't yet care. I was pre-occupied.

The cheese was meant to be eaten in a pulled fashion. Strand by strand. My siblings' noses were pressed up against the glass, their fingers wiping the fog away as quickly as it appeared. I went on nibbling, my tastebuds clapping and cheering, my mouth fighting between a smile and a chew.

Bronx Zoo, Part I

I have never been to New York City. But I have been to the Bronx Zoo.

Before you start classifying me with the geographically challenged or the hopelessly senile, I admit that I am
aware that the Bronx zoo is in New York City. I mean, as far as I can tell. But when you are five years old and Dad tells you that you are going to the zoo, everything else gets blocked out of your five-year-old brain. There are no memories in my present-day brain of New York City. The Bronx Zoo, on the other hand . . .

Traveling across the state border was always a big deal to us Kids. To be honest, traveling into Springfield, the closest Big City, was a big deal; going to Connecticut or New York meant entering a whole new realm, a different country. And it usually meant loading the Van with chips, sandwiches, lemonade, and other choice foodstuffs. Whether our destination was the beach or Dad's hometown of Chester, Connecticut, the trips made themselves memorable for high-level excitement and Doritos crumbs.

So one day Dad decided to take us to the Bronx Zoo.

Mom tried to reason with him: "How are you going to keep an eye on them? What if they get in the lions' cage?"

Dad grinned. "Don't worry, I'll tell the zoo I'll replace the lions."

Mike, the Eldest, slipped the Walkman headphones off his ears for a second and asked, "Dad, how long is this ride going to be? An hour?"

"You better get some more tapes for your Walkman, son," said Dad. "It's a three-hour ride as the emu flies."

Mike stared at the ceiling momentarily before slouching out to re-fill his backpack.

"What are we gonna do for three whole hours?" Mary, Second Eldest, asked her junior associates Rob and Bill as the three of them made sandwiches to fill the van's cooler. Rob was busily suffocating the inside of the rolls with mayonnaise and then stacking the thick sandwiches in a precarious leaning tower on the counter. At his side, Bill struggled to stick the rolls into plastic wrap. His left-handedness made his left elbow a continuous danger to the stack of sandwiches.

"Maybe we can play cards in the back of the Van," Rob ventured, holding the dripping mayonnaise knife thoughtfully in mid-air. "We could gamble for Doritos. What say you, Billy?"

Bill's elbow narrowly missed the sandwich tower in his attempts to stuff a particularly obese sandwich into its shroud of plastic. "If we gamble for Doritos, I want to be in charge of the bag. You were eating them the whole time we were playing the last time, you cheater. And I don't want to be the one picking Doritos off the floor of the Van. It's Mary's turn for that."

"I am not messy like you two pigs," Mary protested. She laid a perfectly-wrapped sandwich into the cooler to prove her point. Rob took this opportunity to wipe the mayonnaise knife on the back of Mary's shirt. In the ensuing commotion Bill's elbow hit the sandwich tower and the floor was littered with onion, cinnamon, and whole wheat rolls.

Mom swept into the room, told Mary to change her shirt, sent Rob to clean out the Van, made sure Bill was finishing up making the rolls, and turned to look at Dad who had just entered the room and was watching the scene bemusedly.

"You better pay them double for those lions," Mom told him.

Dad laughed and went to bring the cooler to the Van.