Through the Zoo: The Monkeys

At last we were inside the Land of Wonders. Long avenues of gravel walkways stretched this way and that, leading past Plexiglas cubicles and fences which housed the creatures of the Unknown. Whoah.

Dad led the way, still waving the tickets commandingly. Mike strolled along with his hands in his jacket pockets and his head in his earphones. This left Mary the task of herding the rest of us into a more or less cohesive unit. Probably less cohesive on the whole, although she tried her best.

"Rob!" she called over half-a-dozen heads. "Get back here! We're going to the Monkey House."

"That's where you all belong," Rob called back, chortling at his own wittiness, and slapped Bill on the back, who fell over into a potted Rhododendron. It was a harmless plant, but Bill took offense anyway and chased Rob to the other side of the xanthu cage. The xanthu chewed its cud impassively. Nothing seemed to impress the Bronx Zoo animals very much.

"Come on, boys! Let's go, girls! Onetwo threefour fivesixseven eight -- where's Sam -- ah -- nineteneleven," Dad counted rapidly, "that's everyone. Nobody eaten yet? All right. Let's go see the monkeys."

Barbara took Sarah's hand and squeezed it. "I hope they don't scare us," she whispered in Sarah's ear, or the probable spot on Sarah's well-wrapped head where her ear would be. "I hate scary monkeys. Like the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz -- whooo!"

"Stop it," Sarah said as they climbed the steps into the big white building. "Don't make me think about it."

"Do you remember the part when they ripped apart the Scarecrow? And then they stole Dorothy and --"

"Stop it! Stop it! Evelyn, Barbara's scaring me."

Evelyn took Sarah's other hand and smiled wisely on her little sister. "There's nothing to be scared of, stupid. The monkeys can't get out -- they're behind huge windows ten feet thick, or something, and they're chained to the floor and, besides, they don't eat people. I don't think. Monkeys eat -- well, bananas and mixed fruit. Right, Joe? Don't they eat fruit?"

"And bugs," said Joe, jostling with Sam to get into the Monkey House door. "Bugs and coconuts. Only the big ones eat meat. Gorillas. King Kong ate people."

"No, he didn't!" Barbara protested hotly. She loved King Kong, which was inconsistent with her fear of monkeys, but nobody told her that. "He killed those bad dinosaurs and saved the woman. I remember the movie. They chained him in the movie theater and he got out and -- and -- I don't want to talk about it."

The inside of the Monkey house was dimly lit, a single long hallway with the glass show-windows lining either side. A few people were lingering next to one or two of the windows.

"Here we go!" Dad rumbled happily, gathering his flock around the first window. "Look at that one -- he's a big boy, look at him climb that tree! Wow! See how he uses his tail to grab onto the branch? That's a prehensile limb, everyone, prehensile. It can grab trees and other objects, just like a hand can. This one is a . . . what's the plaque say ?. . .striped spider monkey from Oceanus. They are indigenous to semi-tropical and heliotropical tropes. Many of the spider-monkeys habits are environmentally conditioned to compensate for the egregious variations in the ionosphere -- the rest of the print's too small to read -- well, that's the spider-monkey, everyone! What's this next one over here?"

Rob and Bill stayed to watch the spider-monkey as Dad led the rest of us past the miniature lemur, the spotted catamaran, the wide-toed bibiscus and the truncated yellow-eyed snootch. Dad's booming commentary rolled through the hallway.

"And this one's a snootch -- look at him -- lazy boy, isn't he? He'll break that tire swing if he gets any bigger . . . a rare species native to Southern Hypatia and the Indigo Islands, the snootch must not be confused with his more well-known cousin, the snitch, native to Fizharmonica and the suburbs of Poughkeepsie . . . why do they use such tiny letters on these placards . . . ah well, anyway, those are the monkeys, everyone! Let's get to the Big Cats before twelve."

The gang began to evacuate from the back door.

"What's the big deal about monkeys?" Bill asked Rob, tapping the spider-monkey's window in an attempt to make the animal do more than swing its prehensile tail. The monkey paid no attention to the brothers whatsoever and swung its tail in a prehensile way back and forth.

"They're just like people," said Rob, "only they can't talk."

"And they have tails," Bill pointed out.

Rob shrugged.

"And they have fur, and no clothes," Bill went on.

Rob headed for the door.

Bill followed close behind.

"And they live in the jungle. And they don't have houses. And they don't go to school or the doctors or pay taxes. Or eat chocolate cake or gummy worms or become veterinarians or  write books or play for the Red Sox or -- or -- or --"

Rob planted his hands over his ears and sprinted to join the rest of the group making with all speed to the House of the Big Cats.

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.

Evelyn vs Me

Screams and gnashes. Hair pulling and threats. Sisters loathing, hating, abhorring, disliking more than anything else in the world. It was a wonder that we were able to live underneath the same roof for even a day, let alone our entire childhood existence.

Evelyn and I had the worst case of sisterly rivalry.

In between the few days that all went well in the world beneath that sloping farm rooftop, between the calm and the serenity of a Sunday morning, where all in the house were asleep, quiet, unmoving. Between those real precious moments, there was an animosity that grew with each and every interaction.

Of course, reader, I exaggerate. But anyone with a sister knows exactly what I mean.

Evelyn came in, came into the bedroom I shared with Sarah, Nell, Christina and baby Gina, screeching and raging like a hopeless woman lost in tears over the horrific plight she was unfortunately caught up within.

"WHO RIPPED MY PURPLE TANK TOP?! BARBARA, DO YOU KNOW WHO- [even louder now]- WHO RIPPED MY FAVORITE PURPLE TANK TOP?!"


There was no escape possible. No sneaky door to pull open or chandelier to swing from. No grandiose battling that only Mr. Toad and his cronies, Moley, Ratty and MacBadger, could  muster.

Shoot.

I cowered on the top of my bunk, pulling the blanket up close to my chin, the tattered Babysitters Club book I was reading flopped over on a lost page at my side. My off-white, greased-from-use Granby Public Library card bounced out of the paperback and fell pitifully to the ground, attempting a not-so-masterful escape.

I gulped. There was only one thing I could do here.


"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" I kicked back the blankets and scuttled backward toward the wall. "You musta ripped it in the washer machine!"


No matter. Evelyn lunged up the rickety rockety ladder leading up to the ceiling-kissing bed, throwing herself at me. The end was clearly near. As near as her fingernails.

I hurled myself off the bunk bed and ran out of the room, screaming at the top of my lungs-- a blood curdling scream that rattled the windows and shook the floor beneath me.




Barreling down the stair with Evelyn in hot pursuit, I shot out the front door and flew over the gravel driveway and out into the side lawn. The Blessed Mother Mary, standing stiffly and planted,  looked patiently at me, her graceful hands clenched in prayer against her holy bosom. I hoped it was in prayer for me.

I dared a peek behind me. There she was. Evelyn, standing atop the stair overlooking the driveway, screeching at me in an inaudible and clearly angry language. There was no time to decipher. I fled into the back field, barefooted and gangly legged, running from the fury that was my older sister.

Good Morning, Powells

The sun snapped awake that day. A ZAP! A POP! A ZIING of a sun rise-- well, more like of a sun jump. A leap out of horizon's bedding and into the cloud-kissed ocean of a sky on the calmest of days.

I snapped awake with it--snapped up and leaped out of my tangled and wrangled sheets, pushed aside the matted pillow, the worn-with-love teddy, the dog-eared book from the Granby Public Library. Atop the highest bunk bed in all of Western Massachusetts, I firmly grasped the raised wooden siding with both of my ten-year-old hands and swung with the agility of a spider monkey.
I dropped to the ground, grazing Nina's mattress underneath me with my pudgy toes.
It was almost as thrilling as climbing the oak tree in the side lawn (the one with the Spring Swings Backyard Zip Line drawn out from the deck to its sturdy branches) climbing that tree to the slab of board my brothers nailed atop the branches where we would dare each other to jump to the ground. Mom would grasp her heart and throat, her "nerves shot," her gasp echoing throughout South Street. 


I hit the floor with my feet, as only a professional could. Taking off running, I pushed aside the off-white sheet that hung by a few silver tacks in place of a bedroom door, turned sharply down the hallway filled with crayon scrawling and scratches toward the aged, grumpy stairway. 


I skidded to a stop at the top of the steps. My heart pounded with both adrenaline and nerves. I cleared my throat and crept down slowly. 


"Can we get up now?"


Crickets. I waited patiently for an answer, but began to grow tired after a stretched-out eternity of 30 seconds. 


"MOMM! DADD! CAN WE GET UP NOW?"


Mom only then emerged from the dining room with hushed footstep, "Yes, but please be quiet. It's still early."

Once "Yes" left mom's lips, I hurled myself down the stairs, Sarah sleepily rounding the top of the stairs after me with Joe tripping his way past her. Evelyn walked down gracefully, her hand grazing the banister with morning freshness.

Atop the dining room table were five boxes of cereal to appease us. Special K (for special kids, mom used to say). Corn Flakes. Wheaties. Honey Nut Cheerios. And Shredded Wheat. An unopened carton of milk cowered in the center of the table, surround by bowls and spoons, very much aware of it's last drops on earth this morning.

A plastic place mat adorned the 12-foot wooden table-top. A table, Bill and Rob claimed, that dead people were laid out upon 50 to 100 years ago. I never ate off the table without a mat in fear of touching the same surface as those corpses. This morning was no different.


Splunk! Spoons coupled with chipped bowls. Dinkle dinkle dinkle. bits of whole grain, wheat and honey nut spilled into the chinaware. Glub glub. 2% topped each pile off.

Good morning, all.

Arms and the Van

         When organizing large masses of humanity, time is of the essence, as General Paton noted: "I would rather have a good plan today than a perfect plan two weeks from now." The general must have felt the crunch of getting his men into the best possible position within the shortest possible time. But, for all Paton's accomplishments, he should have tried getting twelve children into a van and off on a road trip within any time at all. After a feat like that, he could have retired in full colors.

          Perhaps it's a little unfair to General Paton expecting him to accomplish this marvel of command from scratch, when mom and dad were able to build up to it over the years. The first four of us were reared in an apartment in the busy center of Chicopee town -- with the church and school an easy two steps down the sidewalk and the grocery store just across the street, perfect for short forays and an occasional skirmish at the doctor's and the park. When the family moved to Granby, however, the plot thickened. Dad needed to travel farther for work, Mom needed to drive us to school and the park, and we were enlisting pretty rapidly in the Powell ranks. So, to paraphrase Jaws: We were going to need a bigger car.

          Dad always had a truck. At least, that's what I remember. Whenever he rumbled into the gravel driveway after a day of work at the Hampden County Correctional Center it was in a truck, first a red and then a green one. I was told there had been a gray one back in the mists of time when the campaign was just underway, but I was newly enlisted then, busily stacking blocks and doing other intensive training to notice much. There had also been a station wagon, which served Mom's needs until all lesser forms of travel bowed humbly to the great and powerful means of Powell transportation: the Van.

         The Van, like the ocean in the song, was big, and it was blue. Unlike the song's description of the ocean, though, I don't think the Van had a bottom, since anything dropped under the seats never seemed to come up again. We were convinced that pennies and nickels of enormous quantity must have been buried under the floor lining, offering easy riches to the Kid who would undertake the excavation; but it would have taken so much work that we were content to sit on the seats and dream about it. Once in a while one of us would get into the spirit of Jacques Cousteau and attempt the deep-sea dive. These searches yielded some success: handfuls of pennies, exotic pencil erasers, a matchbox car, a forgotten bag of M&Ms. The rare find of a quarter would cause much admiration and speculation on future missions, especially Rob and Bill who one day -- they said -- hoped to explore the trenches under the back seat. Sadly, lack of funding and equipment doomed the missions to what-might-have-been.

              Mom took the helm of the Van during the week, driving us to school and running practice and the dentist, carefully coordinating the trips to make sure we all went where we had to go, and came back when we had had enough of it. She performed these expeditions with the utmost skill and patience. Dad took over the wheel on Sundays -- after guaranteeing his small company dressed, pressed and at the ready, Dad would rumble out of the driveway in the blue fifteen-seater onto South Street, through the tree-lined roads of Granby which passed farms and fields and foresty hills, to church. 

             An hour of song and prayer while the Van waited for us in the parking lot. It rubbed shoulders with the two police cars and fire truck of Granby's Protection Force, which shared the parking lot with the church, as did the Town Hall; and our big blue Van was not one bit out of place among those noble vehicles.    

        

             

Mutiny in the High Trees

       Summertime brings with it the keen desire to do stuff. Even if you don't actually end up doing anything, there still a feeling that you could be doing whatever you wanted, if you weren't so busy combining lemonade with a lawn-chair. This feeling of course is a left-over from those days when you had finally stuffed everything from your desk into your backpack and waved goodbye to Mrs. O'Leary and raced out into the parking lot knowing you were a free man -- with three months to exercise that freedom to its limit. Summertime was like a sudden life extension for a dying patient; every day priceless, to be filled with meaningful activity, and water balloons.

      The Kids, needless to say, knew what kind of meaningful activity they wanted. No summer camp or Boy Scout Training Programs for them. The entire fourteen acres of our home in Granby, the field and the woods beyond, the nearby golf-course and the small-town roads winding their way to adventure, all this lay before them like the tower view of the kingdom to an admiring emperor.
Now all they needed was to carve out these raw materials into the delicate shapes of fun.

       It is amazing how much fun a Kid could milk out of the simplest and most mundane experiences. As soon as the sun rose we were up, bouncing down the stairs and demanding fun from every corner and cranny of the house, until Mom fed us cereal and opened the door to let us out. Sally the golden retriever raced out with us. The dew trembled on the grass. Lilacs in the doorway bloomed. Some things go beyond words -- that sensation of utter freedom in the early hours of the day, which might subside into a light boredom later on but which now fills the veins and breaks out in spontaneous shouting.

      "Don't be too loud!" Mom called from the window. Joe, Barbara, and Sarah paused from their frenzied dancing and looked at one another sheepishly. Sally rustled in the hosta bushes looking for her ball. Sparrows tittered in the trees. The first moment of delerium had passed, the first wild abandon to the gloriousness of the day, and now the concrete business of fun-making lay at hand.

          "What'yr wanna do?" Sarah asked the universe.

          "Sally!" yelled Barbara, running over to where the one-year old dog was busily digging a hole in the hosta bed. "Stop it, no dig! No dig!"

           Sally retreated from the plants and looked askance at The Kids. Unlike her colleague The Cat, who was an animal of calculating mind, Sally needed direction and encouragement. Most dogs do. She sat down and waited for further instructions.

            The Kids deliberated in the center of the side yard, which rolled at a slight tilt upwards toward the road. Hedges lined the far border with the neighbor's yard. Two big maple trees, one with a tree house up top and a sand pile beneath, cast their shade over the scene. Sally was beginning to doze off when a yell from Joe threw her into attack mode. Fortunately it was only a yell of excitement.

          "Pirates! Pirates! Come on, mates!"

          Something at last. Sally trooped behind The Kids as they raced behind the house to the gravel driveway and the Red Shed, where inside Barbara quickly took out the wooden swords and the plywood shields desperately needed on such occasions.

        "Here they are! And bananas for the crew," she said, as she handed out sword, shield, and a strip of cloth to the others.

         "It's bandana, not banana, and pirates don't have shields. They have pistols in their belts, and the captain has a big black hat and an eye-patch, cuz his eye's been blown out by a cannon-ball," Joe protested. "Give me that pipe, that's my pistol. I'm the captain. Let's go bury some treasure."

          Sarah scooped some shiny metal disks (used with nails when Dad could find any The Kids hadn't already buried) and threw them into an enormous wooden chest already stuffed with various metal junk. "The treasure chest's full, captain. We must bring it to the ship. The wind's a-blowing, it's a-blowing and a-blowing." She had heard this in a pirate movie and it appealed to her musical sense.

        "Ar-har, me mateys." Joe led the way out of the Red Shed, leaving Barbara and Sarah to lug out the wooden chest as best they could, which wasn't very good since it weighed about forty pounds. At the door Joe met Sally who had stood guard throughout the proceedings.

      "Blast me eye-balls! It's a sea-dog! Watch your livers, me hearties, these are wild beasties. Come on, me sea-dog, we'll make a pirate of you and you'll be our slave. To the ship!"

      Joe ran ahead to the tree-house, followed by Sally who didn't seem to mind her new slave status, then by the girls who dragged the chest behind them leaving a scarred trail on the gravel driveway. When they finally reached the green fishing net that served as the ladder Barbara dropped her end of the chest. It fell on Sarah's toe. Sarah screamed.

      "OWWW! You stupid! Right on my big toe!"

      "Sorry," Barbara whispered, shocked at having hurt her best friend in the world. "I didn't know your big toe was right there. Just try to forget about it."

      "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. 'Just try to forget about it'? That's so dumb. I don't want to play this any more. My arms are tired."

       Poking his head out of the opening in the tree house Joe waved his pistol-pipe at the girls and growled, "Up, me hearties! Weigh anchor and set the sails for the . . . the seven seas! We sail tonight!"

      Barbara left the chest where it was and climbed the net like an expert monkey-imitator to join Joe in the tree-house. Sarah sulked. It wasn't fair that Joe was the captain every single time, she thought mutinously. Then she had an idea.

      "Where's our matey Jones?" Joe asked Barbara when she clambered aboard. The tree-house was an open platform, large enough for a small tent, with high wooden railings and a magnificent view of the back field and woods. Sally barked from her position below. She was enjoying the activity, and being a sea-dog has its advantages -- usually in the shape of baloney sandwiches stolen from some Caribbean Island village.

      "Jones be down below. My name be Smee. All ready to sail, Captian."

      "Good matey, Smee. Jones! All hands on deck!" Joe bawled.

      "The poop deck!" Barbara added, and dissolved in laughter.

       Joe scowled wickedly at her. "This be no time for cracking jokes, Smee. Where be our matey Jones? We got to catch the high tide before midnight. Jones!"

       Jones was making off across the yard dragging the treasure chest behind her. When the Captain saw this flagrant mutiny from the ship he gave a howl.

      "Sarah!!! Get back here with the treasure chest!!!"

     "It's mine! I'm the new captain! It's my treasure!" Sarah yelled, puffing as she tried to heave the chest to the driveway. Joe danced with rage on the fo'c'sle.

       "Come back! That's our treasure! You're not playing the game right!!!"

        Smee slid down the net, almost landing smack on Sally who was running excitedly back and forth across the sand pile and barking her head off. The dog could sense war in the air, and war almost always ended in sandwiches. Don't ask me why that is, but it is true.

       Joined by the Captain Smee-Barbara dashed after the faithless pirate. However, to their collective dismay they discovered that Sarah had dragged the Treasure-chest into the van and locked the doors. No threats or pleading could unbend her iron determination.

     "I have the treasure, I'm in charge, I'm the captain!" Sarah shouted through the tinted van windows. "This is my ship, I'm calling it the Pinata. Go and get your own ship. Anchors away!" She rolled the steering wheel and blew the horn.

    A council of war yielded no results. Barbara was of the opinion that Sarah had beaten them fair and square. Joe wanted blood. Sally scratched her ear and looked helpful. A stalemate threatened the mid-morning air.

     The back door swung open and Mom leaned out. "Who's blowing the horn? Barbara, Joe, Sarah?  You guys better come inside for awhile -- come in and have some sandwhiches."

     Sally leaped for the door before the others had a chance to move. A dog's instinct is always right. 

    

Assurance

Bringing the past to the present....

It's a little piece I call "Assurance"

My New York City apartment sits like an overgrown man on the fastfood-yellow subway benches, sloppily planted, going nowhere. The green awning with the neatly printed white bold “203” reaches out pitifully toward the small tree on the sidewalk’s crusty path. 

I feel oddly poetic today. The soft sprinkle of rain has slowly tapped its way into my soul, puddling it. It’s as though I should float over to the Park. Float until the trees force me back to the ground with their sprawling limbs, shouting softly at my urges. It is then that I raise my lips to the wetness of the rain and whisper with it thoughts no one has heard before, ideas yet to emerge, songs yet to be writ. Watching through slit brown ovals heavy with dewed lashes as those whispered words weep with the rain, slowly rising like forgotten smoke, swirling up through the branches and out of sight for no one to catch.

I once felt this way as a child—strangely alone in my deepened connection to the unknown. I had a tree of my own. She waited for me to return from school every day and called out to me to sit atop her branches. I did not know double digits in age; yet, I only knew the waxy Crayola scent of the classroom, the raised curb in the school’s lot that I balanced on as the other girls played in closed circles, the poems I hid in my Social Studies notebook and the stickers I knew the others swapped and shared. I climbed atop my tree with these truths sitting heavy on my heart.

But she held me as I cried. Held me as I stared out at the weed-ridden corn field, the back woods guarding the stalks in walled defense. As I questioned, as I thought, as I let the worry of nine years slowly release its death grip on me. The leaves softly spoke, hushed assurances and lullabies.

When I was 16, my father cut that tree down. He didn’t know better. I couldn’t be angry. The tree was leaning then. Leaning in toward the barn, intruding on a project I didn’t understand.  I laid my hand over the deadened heart beat of her stump. I looked out at the weed-ridden cornfield and the back woods and tried to hear it all once again. But it was gone.

But, she came back today. As soon as I stepped out onto 8^th Avenue and the first droplets of rain kissed my forehead hello. Followed me through the subway, making her way around strangers with kindness. Held my hand as I re-emerged onto the street in my unfamiliar neighborhood, gliding from one concreted sapling to the next.

I walked past the Church, the same Church that has sat with sterile grace alongside my lazily slumped apartment. I felt her tug my sleeve toward the stoned steps, pointing through the open hand carved door, heavy with age, at the carpeted aisle leading toward the candle-lit alter. I stopped for a moment, looking in. I saw the weed-ridden corn field; the oak and elm guards. I closed my eyes and heard the feathered assurances, the rushing rustling of wind and leaf and limb.

The worry of 23 years slowly released its death grip on me. I raised my lips to the wet rain and allowed them to turn up in an easy smile.

Looking for Trouble

Kids can turn almost anything into a weapon. It's one of those laws of nature written deep in the soul, a law true for any kid, of any country, of any time since kids were first running around with sticks.

You don't hear very much about cave-children. That's probably because they all were running around with sticks and ended their short lives before any historian could get a chance to write about them. The ones who survived became cave-men and cave-women who had learned the first lesson of being human: never give anything to a kid if he might even remotely hurt himself with it.

Sadly, after the cave-people we all started ignoring this and so kids run around to this day with sticks, rocks, firecrackers and worse. Our cave-grandparents would be aghast.

Of course, it is impossible to entirely remove kids from harm's way, and we Powells found many exciting and creative ways to get in harm's way on our own. The barn continued to be the Aladdin's Cave of sharp metal tools, high ladders, and shaky catwalks. The trampoline offered various thrills including mid-air collisions and fancy somersaults over the side. Putting a Zip-line from the deck to the tree across the yard ended in a few epic bruises. Tree-climbing was a class by itself.

And yet none of us sustained more serious injury than a few broken bones and one or two cuts that needed more than Antiseptic and a Band-aid. If kids are assigned Guardian angels we must have upped the employment rate by ten percent. At least.

But it's not like we didn't try to turn innocent household items into weapons. I remember standing at the top of the stairs and throwing a plastic clothes hamper down upon my younger sister Sarah, who fell underneath the onslaught screaming to Mom that I was trying to kill her. I don't remember my exact motives – I was six – but I think that might have been exaggerating things. It was probably curiosity, for all I know.

Another time our oldest brother Mike had left his soccer cleats among the crowds of shoes by the back door; it was an error of judgment to leave any personal property by the back door but especially anything with spikes on them. I don't know if it was Rob or Bill who found the cleats but whoever it was had an inspirational flash worthy of Da Vinci. Imagine sitting down in your chair at dinner straight onto a turned-up pair of soccer cleats and you'll understand why the originator of the idea chose to remain anonymous.

In a kid's storehouse of mischief, however, clothes hampers and soccer cleats are peanuts compared to some of the high-class weaponry hidden around the house. And the one that comes to my mind is, of all things, the vacuum cleaner.

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. Most high-class weaponry stories begin like this. If you removed rainy Saturday afternoons from the calender you could avoid quite a high percentage of mischief from a kid's weekly planner. But God gives creativity every possible chance. So it was Saturday, after the hour of noon, and raining.

“I'm so bored.”

Somebody has to say that, right? In this case, Barbara.

“Yeah. Me too,” from Sarah. The stage is set for mischief. Enter Mom, who picks her way through the litter of wooden blocks on the rug and opens the closet and puts the vacuum cleaner inside and shuts the door. Ignorant of the chain of mayhem she has touched off, Mom picks up a few of the blocks and kisses her daughters on the head. The daughters play dumb. As soon as Mom leaves, the mayhem begins to escalate, quickly.

“Get the vacuum!” Barbara whispers, as she peeks around the doorway to the family room to make sure Mom has left backstage. Mom has gone upstairs to check on the sleeping Twins. All systems clear, Captain. Engage.

Sarah tugs the shiny purple Hoover onto the family room floor. Its lower half isn't very interesting, just a flat head to suck up dirt from the rug, no real potential, sorry sonny. The long plastic tube reaching out from the back like the tentacle of some slimy sea monster, on the other hand– that's talent.

Barbara plugs in the cord. Sarah flips the switch. The sea-monster tentacle roars to life.

Now, Barbara and Sarah had both seen the vacuum in action before. They had seen Mom work up and down the room with the purple thing inhaling crumbs, guzzling cat hairs, and scooping dust-bunnies to their dooms. At those times the vacuum was an ordinary, if noisy, part of the background scenery. But suddenly here was the purple Hoover alive and well and in their grasp! They looked at each other gleefully. If glee is a good sign for mayhem there was going to be a lot of it.

Sarah began the mayhem on a strong note. “Let me hold it,” she said.

“One minute,” Barbara answered, which translates into 'I'm going to do this until you physically make me stop' in the Kids' Pocket Dictionary. “Look! We can pick up the blocks with this!”

She pushed the wheezing nozzle among the blocks and captured one. She waved it triumphantly in the air. “I got one! I got one!” she screamed, and with a flick of the wrist sent the wooden cube whizzing across the room until it smacked against the wall and disappeared behind the couch.

The cat, whose name was The Cat (not for lack of possible names but because there were too many names to agree on except the most obvious) looked up and yawned.

'Let me hold it,” Sarah persisted, as she yanked on the lower accordion-folded end of the tube. Barbara payed no attention and kept sucking up the helpless blocks and winging them behind the couch.

The Cat watched from his position on the armchair. He was a big striped tabby, a good natured animal who liked to sit and observe everything with the calm indifference of the scientist in his laboratory or the psychiatrist in his study. No doubt these two children with the vacuum were an interesting case. The Cat observed, eyes half-shut.

“It's my turn!” Sarah said.

“One minute!”

“My turn!”

“One minute!”

With a flash of genius Sarah bent her part of the tube. The wheezing nozzle stopped sucking blocks. Barbara, faced with the terrible choice between surrendering the tube or trying to suck up blocks with something that wouldn't suck, at last gave in. Sarah took the tube. Glee ran high.

The Cat licked his paw meditatively. In his experience The Kids (he thought of them all like that, because he didn't care) were generally harmless, and they would even be nice enough to stroke your tummy or give you all the attention you wanted if you chased a little bit of string around the room.

It hurt a grown cat's pride to do it, of course, but The Cat had to pretend he was interested once in a while. He knew which side his bread was buttered.

The Kids were now right next to the armchair. Sarah tried the block-sucking routine but discovered it was not as fun as she thought it would be. Plus, she liked being original. Looking around the family room her eyes landed smack on The Cat. The wheels turned in her mind.

“Barbara,” she whispered, “get The Cat.”

“What? I can't hear you.”

“The Cat. Pick up The Cat. I'm going to suck in his tummy.”

That sentence means exactly what it says, and unfortunately The Cat wasn't paying attention. Before he could say “Mew!?!” he was in Barbara's strong grip and face-to-face with the business end of a hungry Hoover. For an awful instant Sarah held the tube mere inches away from the tabby-striped tummy. Then she pounced.

If there is a sign somewhere or other which lets you know when you cross from Mayhem into Pandemonium, it must have been right there in the family room. There are few things more horrible than the terrified yeowlings of a cat whose tummy is being sucked in, and after a couple vigorous kicks he was out of Barbara's hands and bounding across the furniture which stood between him and the door. On his way out he knocked over two lamps and a small coffee table. They could hear him scramble upstairs to find some place to lick his tummy back into shape and meditate on Fate.

The Kids put the vacuum cleaner away. Even they knew when enough was enough.

Saturday Task Force

Before I even could open my eyes, I knew. I knew what today meant.

I knew it was a Saturday. A Saturday in the middle of June. I suppose that in most childhoods a summer Saturday meant a day to explore and laugh and play and soak up the sun and chase your friends on your bicycles while your parents sat on the patio and sipped their chilled wine.

Not on the Powell homestead. Dad was home from work for the first time all week and he was certain to make sure we all knew.

Oh, I knew.

Everyone up! He hollered up the stairs, There's a whole lot to do today and only a day to do it!

The task force was split up accordingly. Me, Joe and Sarah were sentenced to weeding duty. Evelyn lucked out and got to help Mom out in the cooled house. Therefore, she got to play with the kittens and relax with Mom. She always got the best jobs. Rob was ordered off to mow the 3 enormous lawns. Bill and Mike ran errands with Dad-- to the dump, to Home Depot, to till the garden and pick and water the vegetables. Mary helped out with the youngsters, playing blocks and reading to Nellie and Nina, the twins.

Typical Saturday in June.

On any other day, the sun was a playmate of ours. It danced as we foraged new lands, explored the vast forestry full of dwarves and evils and Indians, challenged our bare feet against the hot, sharp drive way gravel. But now, it turned against us. We bent over the stones surrounding the house, tugging and yanking at the overgrown weeds with our young warrior hands, the sun's belly shaking with a powerfully overtaking burst.

Ripping roots. Sweating. Kicking away the rock. Pausing to catch a butterfly. Pulling. Digging. Tossing to the side. Piles of discarded plants, dandelions and tall grass and the horrid stinging nettle, grew on the small side lawn where we worked.

Breaking in the late afternoon, we scurried to the hose out back. Mom would never allow our dirty hands and feet and faces back into the house after cleaning with Evelyn. We danced and splashed in the wet grass where we flooded a patch of the lawn as we cleaned off.

Turn off the hose! Mom shouted out. The dishwasher was whirring in the kitchen, the washing machine sputtering in the basement and Dad was catching an early shower.

Dashing away from the hose directly to the oak tree in the middle of our sand pile out back, we raced up the knotted fish net ladder to the tree house, purposefully entangling ourselves on the way up. Our huge tractor tire hung by a sturdy woven rope shook from the excitement, creakily giggling alongside us.

It was just a typical Saturday in June.

Sick Day

It was a hot and unpleasant day. The heat stuck to me like a fuzzed dryer sheet, unashamed by the electric snag it had on me. Or perhaps more so like those rascally prickled bunches that traipsing about in the woods and fields will get you. It was damn hot and I was damn uncomfortable.

To make matters worse, my head was pounding. Angry pops of hurt that refused to leave me alone, scraping up against the inner tunneling of my head, filling the gaps with reckless waves of pain.

                                

This is the worst day of my life.

It was early June. School was almost over and there was little to be accomplished in the classrooms. Teachers brought the kids outside to sit in a circle and weave dandelions in the little girls’ hair and catch grasshoppers for the boys. To quiz the group on their freshly-learned vocabulary and create stories with those new words. To laugh and bond and play in the warm shade that the beating sun created with its marriage to the trees. The four walls of the school were forgotten as children laughed the afternoon away under their melting blue ceiling poking through the harbored peeking holes in the branches.

And I was not there.

I lay there on the couch, my eyes barely able to focus on the blinking and flashing VCR. Don Quixote was there atop a plump, smiling ass, his chin crooning up to the heavens as he proudly rode down what should have been the quiet road. But his anthem followed him along his journey, a trot and a kick and a boom and a tra-la-la of adventure song, attributing the notes to his bravery and valor.

I was too uncomfortable to care.

My head lay against a swampy pillow on the couch, a blanket knotted up in a ball at my feet. A sudden surge of frozen air swept over me, causing my spine to curl against my back, a tremor to overtake my frail body. The aching coupled with a moan as I shuffled my feet, capturing the blanket and slid it up toward my arms. I grabbed at the quilted squares, pinks and roses and purples and greens sewn together in an endearing pattern.

I will always associate that blanket with being sick.

And then, a moment of peace. Of wonder. Of calm and of beauty and of perfect medicine.

The household cat—be it Checkers the dark gray and tuft white feline or Buster with the lightened gray coat or Stubby the three-legged cat— jumped up on my hot and cold stomach and nestled himself against me. It was as though he knew I was at the end of the rope, the deepest depth of the pit, the last straw of my sickly camel. He fell into a thunderous purr, brushing his head against my temperature-rising skin.

I fell into slumber, the adventurous chime of Quixote and the happy rhythm of my cat setting my sickened and uncomfortable body to rest.  

Sneaky

Mom used to call me sneaky. Said I was the sneakiest. 

Margooo, she'd croon. You should use it for good, she used to say. You should be a private eye, a detective. Join the CIA.

You can do all the sneaking around you want in the CIA, I thought.

But, I was just sneaky.

Mary went to her classes much earlier than I hopped into mom’s van for school. She was the oldest girl. She never wore family hand-me-downs, like me. I loved to creep into her room once she was gone.

I poked my nose in her jewelry box. Pulled out the Tiffany earrings snuggled in that iconic soft blue pull string bag. I fingered them jealously, rolling the rounded pearls through my fingertips, aching to wear them. She won’t be home until after cross country practice, I thought, she won’t know I ever took them to school today. I eyed my ears in the mirror. They shouted at me, burning with a desire I could not control. I slipped the backings from one, poking the needled silver through my dainty young ear, dropping the velvet stringed fabric and holding onto the other pearl so tightly it hurt. I pushed it into the remaining ear. I was thrilled. I knew I’d get away with it.

And I think I did.

Dad sometimes left his wallet out. Either on his dresser upstairs or on the kitchen counter or on one of the side tables in the family room. I wanted money. I wanted to be just like the kids at school who went out to the movies and the mall every weekend. Bought the hot lunch at school and the candy bars to follow. I craved George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Mr A. Hamilton. But, especially, Andrew Jackson.

I was just sneaky.

One time, Dad caught me. Well, more so that he noticed there were a few gentlemen missing from his well-packed wallet, a wallet browned and cracked from use, yet endowed.

A household alert went out.

Whoever took my money, he bellowed, Whoever took my money must place it in this envelope in the kitchen before tomorrow morning. THEN there will be no punishments. His hot, angry breath powered through the walls, into the surrounding rooms, hitting my now naked ears like a dulled punch against a padded wall.

Shoot.

I never put the two Andrews into the envelope in the kitchen before the next morning. Rather, I dropped them beneath the table where his wallet plumply sat. Victims of a misfortunate fall— that was my reasoning.

I never took a dime from my father again.

And sadly, I never joined the CIA. I must have lacked the qualifications. 

A Summer Saturday

A Summer Saturday

A sweaty summer Saturday. A faint breath of wind on the grass. The looping chase of sparrows as they tease each other against the brilliant blue canvas. The sun arching its back, stretching out atop it's pillowed sky, arms of sleepy light raised in every direction. The side lawn lazily drinking the yellowed rays as the lilacs smiled drowsily on the side. 

The front steps, cracked and wise from the last century of steps and bounds, stomps and skips and leaps. Braces himself.

We tumbled down them, a shower of crab apples pattering our blonde heads. Shrieks. Giggles. 

Resounding faintly as I now reminisce. 

The old, dear friend of the steps, a peeling white farmhouse, sighs with a happy creak, watching the children stream out toward her blankets of grass. Her cherry door rubs its knobbed nose, trembling still from the hurried excitement.   

Crunch crunch crunch. Barefoot over the gravel driveway. Toughened feet of farmtown youth. The cool green grass, soothing. 

Around and around we spin, twirling about with our heads swung back, gasping from laughter, bumping into one another from dizziness. Collapsing in heaps. The farmhouse looks over the children, her windows agape, their happiness flitting through. 

A car passes unknowingly, a soft put and whir. Slow Children reads the sign.

We used to argue that we were quite fast. 

Collections of treasures. Dandelions for mother. A clover. A butterfly sighting followed by a squealing chase--no capture. And luck! A praying mantis-- the ultimate possession. A June bug's shell shed against the elm tree. It crackles as we pry it from the bark.

A sweaty summer Saturday. The windowed eyes of the aged Farmhouse, the gapped stone steps, watching the children at play. 

Homemade Radio Shows: a sampler

Murder in the Wherehouse?

A Short but Riveting Sherlock Holmes Tale by Powell Radio

Starring Sarah as Watson and Sam as Sherlock Holmes

(Music: “Duh duh duuh!” and drumming on the speakers)

Narrator: Welcome back to….Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Today’s Episode: Murder at the Warehouse! (“Duh duh duuuh!”)

We find ourselves at Baker street -- 2b Baker Street – where Sherlock Holmes,

and Dr. Watson, are at the breakfast table.

Watson: Well, Sherlock, what d’you think we’ll do today?

Sherlock: O, I don’t know, maybe go . . . strawberry picking?

(muffled laughter)

Watson: What a wonderful idea! I’d better get my little hat.

Sherlock: I’d better get my, uh, uh, uh, uh, tractor?

Watson (laughing): Your tractor! What a wonderful idea! Do you have a hay ride for everybody?

Sherlock: Yeah!

(knocking on the door)

Watson: What’s going on? What’s that? You’d better get it.

(Whispering off-stage: “Sam, it’s a note. Go on, say it, a note.”)

Sherlock: There’s nothing there except a note!

Watson: Read it to me.

(Pause. Whispering: “Meeting at the warehouse, something about meeting at the werehouse.”)

Sherlock: Uh – “Will meet you . . . at . . . the warehouse . . . at . . . twelve, er – twelve o’clock in the

morning.”

(bursts of laughter)

Watson: Are you joking?

Sherlock: No, it says that.

Watson: Let me see – you can’t read! It says, “Mr. Chucky . . .” hahaha!

Narrator: AND SO the two friends jumped into their car and drove to the warehouse to find out

what was the trouble.

Watson: Vroom vroom vroom vroom, vroom vroom vroom vroom

Sherlock: (taps on the speakers to imitate footsteps)

Watson: We’re in a car, you dummy.

Sherlock: Okay!

Watson: (singsong) Vroom vroooom vroooom, vuhrooom vroom vroooooom….

Narrator: And they reached the warehouse.

Sherlock: Well – here we are.

Watson: oh great, what do we do now?

Sherlock: Well the note says twelve o’clock. But it’s all dark and nobody’s here.

(Pause)

Watson: I"m going in to investigate! Arrghhhh!

(Shouts and crashing)

Sherlock: Ow!

Narrator: And that’s the end of our episode, join us next week for another exciting adventure

of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson!

Watson: Bwaa ha haaa!