My legs were tired. We’d been moving all day along the side of these mountains. My pack felt heavy on my back, and my rifle, hung by its strap on my shoulder, banged against my body with each step. The regular army was after us and our commander said we couldn’t stop moving until we made it to the secret mountain sanctuary where we might be safe from the government soldiers, at least for a while.

One of the other guys whispered, “Commander, are you sure this is the right path?”

Then I heard strange people singing. I couldn’t tell where their voices were coming from. I woke up. They were coming from the clock radio…

Stay on the right track
To Nine Mile and Mack
And get the best deals around
‘Cause Roy O’Brien has the best deals in town

It was yet another Roy O’brien Ford commercial, I’d heard them since the first time we turned our little TV on down in the basement of our old house seven years ago. Next it was the CKLW “DJ”, that’s what my friends and I called them, much cooler than calling them “disc jockeys”…

Twenty twenty weather word, “thaw”. Warmer winter temps today. Looks like we’re going to be fryin’ out there in the high FORTIES boys and girls. WHAT winter! RIGHT? The times and the temperatures they are definitely a changin’… so how ‘bout a little Bible verse that’s been hot hot hot on the charts since the fall…

And then the beginning music part with no words of that “Turn Turn Turn” song came on. I liked the beginning because the first three “notes” sounded like hope. I knew what musical notes were now because of my music class at school, learning to play the saxophone with Stuart, which meant learning to read the music on the “sheets” and play the notes one after the other in each “measure” and “phrase”. Those first three notes, “dah duh dah”, sounded like we kids COULD take over and make everything better, and then the two bangy ones at the end of the musical phrase, “dun dun”, made me feel like we WOULD. And then the older kids in the band sang together the words…

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

I’d been hearing the song all over the place since October, on the radio and in restaurants, stores and at Discount Records. Even though it was one of those “rock” songs by older kids, even a lot of grownups liked it. Maybe because it had words from the Bible in it, and a lot of grownups I guess liked the Bible, though mom and dad never talked about it, and I don’t think we even had one…

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

It was my friend Mike’s favorite song right now. He said the band that played it, “The Byrds” spelled with a “y” instead of an “i”, was a “FOLK rock” band. We all knew there were just plain FOLK singers and groups, like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, and Peter, Paul and Mary, that played regular instruments and sang those folk songs that were usually older, slower or sadder, and with words more about worrying about stuff than the rock n roll songs that were faster and more about girlfriends and love and having fun and stuff. Arthur said his older brother said that the regular folk musicians like Bob Dylan were starting to play electric guitars rather than the regular “acoustic” ones, because that’s what the British bands – like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Animals and the Searchers – were doing…

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

The words were interesting. Opposite things happened at different times, and the guys singing or maybe the Bible, thought that was the way things were. I wondered if that was true, if you really had to let some really bad things happen because it was just “time” for them, like mom and dad getting divorced.

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rain, a time to sow
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late

I felt a warm thing on top of my bed covers between my legs. It was making little snoring and purring noises. It was our new kitten, Midnight. Last night was my night to have him on my bed, because he wasn’t big enough or strong enough yet to jump up on our beds by himself. He at least could jump down by himself so he could go to the bathroom in his kitty litter box, which was under the big wicker table in our room. But if he did that in the middle of the night he would meow really loud and wake us up so we’d bring him back up on one of our beds, whoever’s turn it was. It wasn’t always great having him on your bed because if you moved your feet around in the middle of the night under your covers, even a little bit, he might attack them from on top and wake you up in the middle of the night.

Mom’s new friend Maryjane’s cat had had kittens that they had given away, and mom and David had gone over to see them and ended up bringing one home. David had picked out the all black one that he decided we should name “Midnight”. We had only had him for a few weeks and mom had already given him a nickname, “Middie”, which was basically short for “Midnight”.

I tried to pull my legs out from my covers so he didn’t wake up, but he did and jumped on my feet and tried to bite them through the blanket and sheet. Even though he was little he had really sharp teeth.

“You crazy kitty”, I said, and he looked at me and pushed his back way up high to stretch his legs out and then kind of shivered.

It was 7:30 in the morning and it was a school day so I had to get up soon or I wouldn’t have time to play much soccer before school started. I turned off the radio, and I wondered if Midnight liked listening to music. I got up, closed our bedroom door, took off my pajamas and put on my clothes as he watched me but also curled himself in a ball to sleep some more.

Leaving our door open so he could get out of our room later, I went into the hallway. Mom’s door was closed and I could hear the TV on in there. Mom had moved the TV into her room last month, so David and I had to go in there when we watched our shows in the evening. She would always stay up late watching it and fall asleep with it on so usually it would still be on in the morning until she woke up. I figured she was probably still asleep or she would have opened her door.

I had heard her crying in her room late last night with her door closed and the TV still on. Then she called dad and was really mad at him. I heard her say, “Eric, you didn’t have the GODDAMN GUTS to be honest with me about HER until I finally figured it out for myself. How the HELL can I ever trust you again? Tell me that! Tell me that, you bastard!”

Then she said, “And what am I supposed to do? I’m alone! I have no one! What kind of life is this for me? Why was I such a fucking naive idiot to believe I’d get my half of our bargain?”

I’d never heard her say that “fuck” word before, which most kids thought was the worst of all the swear words, though I’d hears some older kids starting to say “fucking A”, like that was something good.

Then I heard mom say, “I wish I never met you!” and then I heard her bang the talking part of her phone down on the other part to hang up, and she started crying again. Finally I heard her get out of her bed, still crying, and the channel changed on the TV and finally I didn’t hear her crying anymore.

Looking now at her closed bedroom door, I wondered if David had heard all that last night too. When I was hearing it, David looked like he was still asleep. But there was no way I was going to ask him or talk to him about it.

I ran down the stairs and could hear David in the kitchen. We each had to make our own breakfasts in the morning, which was always Cheerios and milk, and our own sandwiches when we came home for lunch, except for now Mondays and Wednesdays when dad would come by at lunchtime and take us to the Food and Drug for lunch. Mom would usually still make dinner, but when she didn’t feel like it it was better, because she would call Dominos and they would bring a pizza, half pepperoni and half green pepper mushrooms. That was way more fun to eat than the stuff she made for dinner, like pork chops, meat loaf, fish sticks, liver and onions, macaroni and cheese or spaghetti.

Sometimes she’d even make our “old family favorite”, which was a joke because it wasn’t. It was that “Roberts Spaghetti” stuff that we made when we didn’t have anything else for dinner in the refrigerator. It was pretty easy to make. You boiled the water and cooked the hard spaghetti noodles or macaroni in the bigger saucepan and then opened a can of stewed tomatoes with the can opener and heated that up in the smaller saucepan. Then when the noodles were cooked enough, you poured off the leftover water and then dumped the heated stewed tomatoes into the bigger saucepan with the noodles. I could even do that, though mom said that David wasn’t old enough to cook by himself yet.

David was eating a bowl of Cheerios at the kitchen table. He looked at me as he chewed a big mouthful and said, “I put Midnight back on your bed when I got up.” It WAS my turn to have him on my bed last night. David and I didn’t always agree on stuff, and he was always worried that I got to do stuff that he didn’t, but we always worked together when it came to taking care of our new kitty.

“Is mom awake?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I don’t think so”, he said, with his mouth full of milk and half chewed Cheerios, “She sleeps a LOT!”

“Yep”, I said, nodding and fixing myself a bowl of Cheerios and milk too, and sitting down at the other chair at the kitchen table. There were only two chairs in the kitchen, so if all three of us ate together we had to eat in the dining room at the bigger round table.

“Is that ‘cause she’s divorced?” he asked.

“Probably”, I said through my own half-chewed mouthful, “That’s why she moved the TV into her room she said, to keep her company when she gets lonely.”

“If dad was back she wouldn’t be lonely”, he said. I nodded but didn’t know what to say. Hearing what I heard mom say to dad last night, I didn’t think he was coming home anytime soon. I quickly finished my last few bites of Cheerios and put my spoon and bowl in the sink.

“I gotta get going”, I said, “I’m sure my friends need me out on the soccer field.” He nodded but didn’t say anything.

I grabbed my jacket and went out the front door. It really DID feel a lot warmer, I didn’t even zip my jacket up, and didn’t put on my gloves that were pushed down in my pockets.

***

It was a different sort of morning out on the soccer fields. Mike wasn’t there, so Todd was playing goal for us on that field with Billy “tending” goal on the field next to him, though with Billy it was always more like “PREtending” than “tending”. Not sure if that would be considered one of those “puns”.

After soccer, school was school. We were learning about the Greeks and then the Romans. It was all empires and wars, though the Greeks invented democracy and did plays – tragedies and comedies – and the Romans built roads. I knew some of that stuff already from mom reading David and me the “Child’s History of the World” book, so I “participated”, that was the word that teachers used on your report cards, a lot in class when Mrs Herman talked about that stuff so she’d think I was extra smart. And we were doing “inequalities” in math, which was basically what numbers were more or less than other numbers. That was interesting at first until I figured out how it worked and then it was boring.

When the bell rang for lunchtime, Mrs Herman asked me to stay behind because she had something she wanted to talk to me about. Billy said, “Uh oh, Cooper’s in trouble!”, but Mrs Herman told him to, “mind your own business!”, which made Stuart and Frankie laugh and tease BILLY as they left the room, Frankie saying, “Yeah Billy, mind your own damn business!” And Mrs. Herman didn’t even say anything to Frankie for using the swear word.

Now all the other kids were gone and I was still sitting at my desk. She walked over to me and sat at the desk in the row next to mine.

“So how are you doing?” she asked, “Your mom said she told you that she told me about… the divorce.” I nodded.

“I like your mother”, she said, “She’s quite a lady, and I just want to assure you that I won’t share what happened with anyone else at school.”

Then she asked, “Have you told your friends?”

I shook my head, but then I said, “Mike knows, but he promised not to tell anyone.” Mrs Herman nodded, thinking.

“Well I’m glad you could share it with somebody”, she said, “Mike’s a good kid from what I’ve seen and what Miss Hubbel says.”

“I didn’t tell him”, I said, “He just figured it out.”

“Well”, she said, “I guess Mike is pretty smart as well. And so are you, young man!” I never knew what to say when grownups said things like that to me, even though I liked that they were thinking that and said it. Grownups always wanted kids to say thank you to stuff like that, but I didn’t like doing that, it made it seem like they were in charge of me. So I just did a smile and nodded.

“Anyway”, she said, clapping her hands together and shaking her head slowly, “I really don’t know what you, your mom, and the rest of your family is going through, but PLEASE, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you out. Maybe if there’s some homework or a book report you can’t get done on time, just let me know. Or if you want to talk about anything.”

I couldn’t even IMAGINE talking to her about ANYTHING other than schoolwork, but I figured I should nod so I did. It was a Monday and dad would be picking us up to have lunch at the Food and Drug so I had to go. I nodded, but looked up at the clock and said, “I gotta go, my dad is taking my brother and I out to lunch.”

“Ah, okay”, she said, “Didn’t mean to keep you from that. It’s good to hear you get to spend time with your father.” I nodded again, but looked at the door.

“Go! Go!” she said, waving her hands toward the door, “And say hello to your mother for me.”

***

Christmas had been different this year, but not as different as I thought it would be even though mom and dad were divorced. Dad still took David and I, in our car and not his, out to the Christmas tree place to buy a tree, and we brought it back to the house tied to the top of the car and set it up in the living room. Then he stayed for lunch and we all ate sandwiches around the table in the living room. It was strange to see mom and dad talking to each other like they were just two grownups who knew each other but weren’t like a married “couple” anymore.

Just like other Christmases, wrapped presents kept appearing under the tree when David and I weren’t around to see who put them there. Because they were divorced now, I was expecting that maybe they would give us separate presents, some just from “Mom” and some from “Dad”. But I was surprised to see presents appear still from “Mom & Dad”. And all the presents from “Santa” appeared under the tree when we came down from our room on Christmas morning, like he had come in the night before we got up. But mom had told us that dad wouldn’t be there Christmas morning when we unwrapped our presents, but would come over at lunchtime, stay for lunch, and then take us over to his place for the rest of the day.

So dad came, and after lunch he said he would take us sledding in the Arb. We put our Flexible Flyer sleds in the trunk of his little VW Bug, which was really strange because it was in the front of the car instead of the back, and we drove over to his house by the cemetary. At his house, he didn’t have a Christmas tree, which I thought was sad. But we walked over to the Arb and had a great time sledding, because now David was old enough to do all the really big hills like I did, even the really long one from the place where you go into the Arb from Geddes. Instead of walking along the road part, you went down to the right near where the houses were next to the Arb and around the right side of the first hill and then down into that big valley part with the two hills on one side and the third one on the other.

Along with the other presents we got Christmas morning, like models and games and more stuff for our Aurora slot car track, we got two more comedy albums that we were listening to a lot when we were doing stuff in our room. David read comics and did his drawing, and I read comics too. The latest ones we had were the January “Detective” that said “Batman Killed” on the front, though he really wasn’t, and the January “Strange Tales” with Doctor Strange and Nick Fury Agent of Shield. Also when I got them at the Blue Front, the “Classics Illustrated” comics rack by the door had both “Robur the Conqueror” and “Master of the World”, the two Jules Verne stories, that I was surprised to see, but had enough money to also buy if I didn’t buy any candy or gum. I also was setting up my new Avalon Hill “Afrika Korps” wargame that I’d gotten with money my grandparents gave me for Christmas.

“Mom Always Liked You Best” was the new record by the Smothers Brothers that we got from “Santa”. Tom and Dick did funny stuff AND folk songs. Dick was always trying to be like a grownup, but Tom was more like a kid who liked to do things to be silly or make his brother mad. David and I liked listening to the two of them get mad at each other. They talked about remembering when they were younger kids and how Tom, who we figured was the younger brother, always thought their mom liked Dick best, because Dick had a pet dog and a bicycle and Tom only had a pet chicken and a wagon with only one wheel.

They also did a lot of folk songs, sometimes singing them the regular way with nothing funny. But other times, when they were singing a regular folk song, there would be little funny parts that Tom would do to be silly and make Dick mad.

Listening to the two brothers get mad at, or tease each other, reminded me, and I think David too, about how we would get mad at or tease each other sometimes. So now, if I got to do something that he didn’t, he’d say, “Mom always liked you best!” and we’d both laugh. And then maybe I’d wrestle him to the ground and sit on his back and pretend spank him for, “All the bad things you’ve done when I wasn’t around.”

We both liked PRETENDING we were mad rather than REALLY being mad at each other. It made it feel more like we were both on the same team against mom, and we would help each other get through all this crazy stuff that was happening with the divorce. And since we were worrying about mom and dad so much and that we would be a “broken home”, it was nice to hear silly stuff that made us both laugh.

But the other record, from Aunt Pat, was REALLY different and interesting. It was called “That Was the Year that Was”, and it was all satire songs by this guy Tom Lehrer. And they weren’t really SILLY satire songs like that Allan Sherman guy did, but they were about news stuff happening in the world. Some of them were super funny but others were making fun of things I didn’t know a lot about yet, like the first song, “National Brotherhood Week”…

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek
It’s fun to eulogize
The people you despise
As long as you don’t let ’em in your school

He was different than Allan Sherman because he didn’t sing the songs in a silly way like you were supposed to laugh, but in more of a regular way, though you could hear people on the record laughing because it was one of those “live” records.

When David and I played his record, mom would sometimes stand in the doorway and listen and laugh through her nose and shake her head and smile. One time she asked us, “Do you know who Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are?” We both shook our heads.

“Well”, she said, opening her eyes wide and smiling, “Lena Horne is a famous black singer and dancer who is also a big civil rights activist. Sheriff Clark is this bigoted Alabama sheriff who let his men beat up black protestors who were peacefully marching for the right to vote. THOSE two would NEVER dance together!”

“Then why does he sing that they are?” David asked. I figured I knew why, that was the whole satire thing, but I wanted to hear how MOM would answer that question.

“Sweetie”, she said, “Tom Lehrer is making fun of a holiday, National Brotherhood Week, where everyone is supposed to get along with each other, when the truth is they really don’t. Does that make sense? Your dad could probably explain it to you better than I can.” Then she puffed up her cheeks, and blew air out of her mouth and shook her head, like she had talked about dad by accident.

Then the last song on the first side of the record was REALLY funny. It was about “pollution”, which I was hearing about on the news and we were learning about in science at school…

If you visit American city
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air

Pollution, pollution
They got smog and sewage and mud
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud

Now this was the kind of funny song I could tell my friends about and sing it to them if they hadn’t heard it before, which it turned out none of them had…

Just go out for a breath of air
And you’ll be ready for Medicare
The city streets are really quite a thrill
If the hoods don’t get you, the monoxide will

Pollution, pollution
Wear a gas mask and a veil
Then you can breathe
As long as you don’t inhale

The first time mom heard THAT song she did a regular laugh and said, “He really is very funny. Your Aunt Pat has quite the sense of humor, I can see why she likes this guy. She says he’s a math professor at Harvard, who writes and sings these songs on the side.” Grownups were always talking about “Harvard” like it was the best college in the whole world! She said she hoped that David and I had a chance to go to Harvard after we finished high school.

Tom Lehrer even had a song about doing math problems in school called “New Math”. He started out talking about it and you could hear people on the record who were listening to him in the audience laughing…

Tom Lehrer: (speaking) Some of you who have small children may have perhaps been put in the embarrassing position of being unable to do your child’s arithmetic homework because of the current revolution in mathematics teaching known as the “New Math”. So as a public service here tonight, I thought I would offer a brief lesson in the New Math. Tonight, we’re gonna cover subtraction. This is the first room I’ve worked for a while that didn’t have a blackboard, so we will have to make do with more primitive visual aids, as they say in the “ed biz”. Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that:

(speaking) Three from two is nine, carry the one, and if you’re under 35 or went to a private school, you say seven from three is six, but if you’re over 35 and went to a public school, you say eight from four is six …and carry the one, so we have 169.

I didn’t understand that last part, about private school and public school doing it different, and there was a bunch of other stuff he talked or sang about that I didn’t understand either, but still it was all really interesting…

Tom Lehrer: (speaking) But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer. Here’s how they do it now:

(singing) You can’t take three from two
Two is less than three
So you look at the four in the tens place
Now that’s really four tens
So you make it three tens
Regroup, and you change a ten to ten ones
And you add ’em to the two and get twelve
And you take away three, that’s nine

(speaking) Is that clear?

And he just went on singing like that and did the whole subtraction problem. Then he did it again in BASE EIGHT, which I didn’t really even know about yet…

(singing) You can’t take three from two
Two is less than three
So you look at the four in the eights place
Now that’s really four eights
So you make it three eights
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add ’em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight
Which is ten base ten
And you take away three, that’s seven

(speaking) Ok?

But my favorite songs on the record, and David’s too, were “Who’s Next” and “So Long Mom, I’m Off to Drop the Bomb”, which were both satire songs about nuclear bombs and WORLD WAR THREE. I couldn’t believe anyone could make up funny songs about that, but he did…

First we got the bomb and that was good
‘Cause we love peace and motherhood
Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s okay
‘Cause the balance of power’s maintained that way
Who’s next?

I had been hearing about the “balance of power” on the news, and my friends even talked about it. My friend Mike said the idea was that if both the US and Russia had enough nuclear bombs to blow up the entire world, then neither side would use them because they’d be blown up too. Billy thought the same thing, but he said, “If they nuke us we’ll just nuke ‘em back! So what are they, stupid?”

When I started singing some of those Tom Lehrer songs to my friends, they really liked them, and I even let Mike come over and listen to the record. I wasn’t letting my other friends come over very much, because they might figure out mom and dad were divorced. If it was just Mike coming over that was okay, because he had already figured out they were divorced but promised he wouldn’t tell anybody. And if there was anyone in the whole world that wouldn’t break a promise I figured it was Mike.

France got the bomb, but don’t you grieve
‘Cause they’re on our side (I believe)
China got the bomb, but have no fears
They can’t wipe us out for at least five years
Who’s next?

I remember the stories on the news on TV about France wanting their own nuclear bombs even though they were in that “NATO” group with the US and Britain, who already had them. France exploded their test bombs in the Sahara desert, which I knew was in the north part of Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, because that was the same desert where my new Avalon Hill “Afrika Korps” game was played. And I also remembered when China exploded their first test bomb last fall when I first started going to Burns Park school. Our teacher last year had tried to explain to us that the Chinese were only testing it, and they didn’t have lots of bombs already like the US and the Russians did, so we shouldn’t worry about them too much.

Then Indonesia claimed that they
Were gonna get one any day
South Africa wants two, that’s right
One for the black and one for the white
Who’s next?

When Mike heard that part of the song he said it was pretty funny, because South Africa was run by the white people and they “oppressed” the black people by keeping them separate from the white people by using this “system” called “apartheid”. I’d heard that word on the news sometimes but I’d never figured out what it really meant.

Egypt’s gonna get one too
Just to use on you know who
So Israel’s getting tense
Wants one in self defense
“The Lord’s our shepherd” says the psalm
But just in case, we better get a bomb
Who’s next?

Mike said that was funny because Egypt and Israel had fought two wars against each other and probably would fight another one. He said that “Lord’s our shepherd” part was probably from the Bible. I asked him if he’d read the Bible and he shook his head. “Not me”, he said, “But I think my dad teaches his students about it.”

Luxembourg is next to go
And, who knows, maybe Monaco
We’ll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb
Who’s next, who’s next, who’s next?
Who’s next?

Though I didn’t get the parts about South Africa and Israel and Egypt, at least until Mike told me about them, I figured the Alabama part was about all that civil rights stuff that was happening in the South. Mom was always talking about it with Molly’s mom Joan and her new friend Maryjane.

And then that Tom Lehrer guy said on the record that if we were going to write any songs for World War Three like we did for other wars, we better start writing them now, because the war wouldn’t last very long. The people on the record laughed, and then he sang…

So long, Mom
I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me

But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter
You can see me
On your TV

While we’re attacking frontally
Watch Brinkally and Huntally
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost
No need for you to miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust

I knew Huntley and Brinkley were those news guys on channel 4, and I figured he changed their names around so it would rhyme with “frontally” at the end of the line before. And I had no idea what “contrapuntally” meant, and neither did Mike when he heard it, but he and I figured it was just some strange word Tom Lehrer put at the end of the next line so that one would rhyme too.

Then this was the best part…

Little Johnny Jones, he was a U.S. pilot
And no shrinking violet was he
He was mighty proud when World War Three was declared
He wasn’t scared
No sirree
And this is what he said on
His way to armageddon

It was funny how his voice sometimes, specially when he sang the last line of a verse, would get more quivery and like he was singing through his nose.

So long, Mom
I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me

But though I may roam
I’ll come back to my home
Although it may be
A pile of debris

Remember, Mommy
I’m off to get a Commie
So send me a salami
And try to smile somehow
I’ll look for you when the war is over
An hour and a half from now

None of my friends had the Tom Lehrer record, though Mike said he was going to get it, but they all thought the songs were really neat when I sang them the words. Specially the ones about nuclear bombs and World War Three, because we all worried and talked about that a lot, and it felt good to be able to make fun of it instead. It also made my friends think I was extra cool, because I knew these really neat funny songs that no one else did.

Billy REALLY liked the “Hello Mom…” song when I sang it to him, and I KNEW he would. Whenever I heard the song I thought of him, and I would even switch his name into the song. So after he had heard me sing the song with all the regular words and he asked me to sing the song for Gil and Teddy, I put Billy’s name in instead…

Little Billy Boyd he was U.S. pilot
And no shrinking violet was he

He “got a kick out of that” as Stuart or Mike would say.

But what was REALLY interesting about Tom Lehrer was that he was doing satire and making fun of stuff grownups were doing all over the world. He made it sound like though they were in charge, they were doing a lot of stuff that wasn’t very smart, maybe even kind of stupid. That’s what I’d always thought, that grownups weren’t as good at being in charge of everything as they thought they were, and he was even a grownup TOO! That gave me hope that all us kids, as we got older, could figure out how to take over and do things better, like the way I felt hearing those first notes in the “Turn Turn Turn” song. Like how us kids did our soccer games every school day before class without any grownups in charge at all, or even helping at all. Well except maybe Coach Bing leaving some soccer balls out for us!

***

It was hockey season and David and I liked watching the Hockey Night in Canada games on Saturday nights on channel 9 on our little TV, though it was now in mom’s bedroom, so that made it kind of different. She said we were always welcome to watch TV in her room unless she was sleeping. And if we wanted to watch a show that was different than the one she wanted to watch at the same time then we would have to “negotiate”, though that didn’t happen very much.

The other problem was that her bed took up most of the room. The TV was on the little dresser against the wall by the end of her bed, which used to be green but mom decided last month to paint white, to match the white walls in the room better. She used this new “milk paint” stuff to give it a “softer patina”, which she said was “less shiny than semi-gloss but not flat”. So to watch the TV, David and I either had to sit on the end of her bed or in the far corner of the room on the carpet against her bigger brown dresser. Or we could move the wood rocking chair from the other corner of the room next to the TV to be by the big dresser, but only one of us could sit in it, and the other one had to sit on the floor somewhere or on the end of mom’s bed. But it worked out I guess, because maybe I’d sit in the rocking chair and David would lie along the end of her bed, or else the other way around.

Anyway, on Saturday nights during the hockey season, instead of watching “Get Smart” on channel 4, David and I would watch “Hockey Night in Canada” on channel 9. I had gotten into watching it last winter, and now David liked it too. The Detroit Red Wings were doing good, and we’d just watched them beat the Toronto Maple Leafs to “improve” their record to 18-12-4. The “4” was for ties, which you could have in hockey or football, but not in baseball or basketball, where you would play extra innings or overtime until one team won.

Even though it could be hard to keep track of what was happening with all these guys skating around and passing the puck around on the little black and white screen, the announcers were pretty good about telling you what was going on, and who was doing it, and I at least was figuring out how real hockey was played. I already knew all the positions – center, wingers, defensemen and goalie, and I was figuring out now that teams had different “lines” of players that they switched in and out during the game. The Detroit Red Wings had their famous “Production Line Two”, with Alex Delvecchio at center and Ted Lindsey and Gordie Howe on the wings. The whole changing lines thing while the other players kept playing could be pretty confusing until you DID figure that out. It wasn’t like football where guys went in and out between plays, or basketball when they did when the clock was stopped before one team threw in the ball from out of bounds.

So when it WASN’T Saturday night, David and I would play our own table-top hockey games down in the basement. Usually we played on the basement floor, even though in the wintertime the bare concrete floor was kinda cold. But mom liked to keep the house hot in the winter so the furnace was running a lot and we sat on the floor right next to it. Hearing it make all its humming and groaning noises, plus the whooshing noises when the flame turned on, seemed like part of our hockey games.

The basement was pretty much our part of the house, because mom didn’t go down there except when she did the laundry, which was usually just once a week. Midnight would go down there with us, because he seemed to like being where David and I were, and there were also lots of interesting places for him to explore. And he liked watching us move the little plastic players around, though sometimes he would jump on our hockey set and attack the moving players or swipe his paw at the puck, knock it onto the floor, and as it rolled away would chase after it. But we figured that was just part of the game.

And to make our own pretend games even more fun, I started trying to be like the announcer guys on Hockey Night in Canada, pretending other people were watching OUR game on TV and I was telling them what was happening, what dad had said was called the “play by play”. So I would say stuff like, “The blue team left-winger passes to the center who drives toward the net and fires the puck but it’s saved by the red team’s goalie who gets it to his right defenseman.” But that didn’t sound as good as the REAL games where all the players had names, and all those real players had stories that the announcers would tell about stuff like how many goals and assists they had or what line they played on or whether they were new “rookie” players or older “veteran” ones.

So I told David that OUR teams and players should have names and stories too. He liked the idea. So we decided my city was going to be “Cooperstown” and my team would be called the “Cats”. It was a little harder coming up with a “David” city name, but finally we decided on “Davidville” and then tried to use that idea of the same first letter, for his team name too. It was harder to get a good team name starting with “D”. I said maybe “Dogs”, because then it would be “Cats versus Dogs”, but David didn’t like that. He liked my “Dragons” idea better, but then he came up with his own idea, “Destroyers”. I liked that idea too, and I reminded him of all those times back in the basement at our old house that he liked destroying all the forts and cities I built with Godzilla.

He nodded and smiled because he remembered too, and he told me that, “Back in our old house when I was a little kid, I was jealous that you could build all these neat big cities and forts, so I liked wrecking them to get my revenge.” I nodded and laughed through my nose, because that made sense. It was the first time I could remember him talking about when he was a “little kid”, and using the word “jealous”. I also liked that he thought I’d built really neat stuff, he’d never said that to me before either. He was beginning to seem more like a regular person to me, instead of an annoying little brother.

So my team’s “first line” center was named “Steve Scimitar” and the left-winger was “Harry Hendricks”. But even though I liked making up names with the same first letter for both names, I figured that not ALL my players should have the same first letter for both their first and last names, because that would be kind of silly and maybe even sound stupid. So my right-winger was “Joe Dough”, his name kind of rhyming instead. My defensemen were, on the left side, “B.B. Baker”, and on the right side, not wanting all my names to sound so cool and sporty, “Calvin Poindexter”. He would be like the super smart guy on my team, like Poindexter in the Felix the Cat cartoons. Finally my goalie was “Marty Wall”, which seemed like a good goalie name.

I helped David come up with names for all his guys too. I wanted his center to be “Bobby Blast”, but he said he should be “Jerry Richardson”, though he wouldn’t tell me why, but “Bobby Blast” could be one of his wingers along with “Shorty Lang”, another one of my ideas. His defensemen were “Ronny Way” and “Lester Best”, and his goalie was “Johnny Johnson”.

So just to impress David on how much more I knew about hockey, I even made up a “second line” for my team, with “Sonny Starr” as center, “Jack Black” and “Jason Argo” at the wings and “Dicky Deets” and “Benny Boyd” on defense. “Jason Argo” was named after “Jason and the Argonauts”, one of those Greek mythology stories I got to read in fifth grade that had that really cool movie with the skeleton soldiers I’d seen on TV. And “Benny Boyd” was named after my crazy school friend Billy Boyd.

For some reason my blue left-winger guy on our hockey set could do this special shot that none of the other wingers on the set could do. He’d be moving the puck AWAY from David’s red-team goal, but then I could quickly spin the end of the control stick to the left really hard, and then the little yellow metal hockey stick held by the blue plastic player would spin all the way around and whack the puck towards David’s red goal. Sometimes those shots would go in for a score. Since my first line left-winger was Harry Hendrix, my announcer guy called the shot the “Hendrix Hook”.

“Hendrix, skating away from the goal… but now he EXECUTES HIS INFAMOUS ‘HENDRIX HOOK’ FOR ANOTHER SCORE!”

We also decided our teams should have coaches, like the real teams did. Since my team was the “Cats”, I decided my coach should be named “Kitty McBee”, and since David’s team was the “Destroyers” that his coach would be “Rodney Zilla” or “Rod Zilla” for short, since “Rod Zilla” sounded a lot like “Godzilla”, who David said was on his team’s jerseys.

My team even had an owner guy, because dad said all the “professional” teams, like the Tigers, the Yankees and the Red Wings had rich guys that owned each team. Dad said the Red Wings were owned by this guy, Bruce Norris, who “inherited” the team from HIS dad, James Norris, when his dad died. Dad said when people die, specially rich people, they usually decided, before they died, who should get the stuff they owned, like houses, businesses, or even sports teams. James Norris was a Canadian guy who got rich selling cattle and grain, like the oats in our Cheerios, and used most of the money he made to buy the Red Wings.

Then his son Bruce inherited the team, but our dad said, like a lot of rich people, he wasn’t a very good guy. Dad said when I was a baby, the Red Wings had this really great player named Ted Lindsey, who played right winger on the line with Sid Abel, who was now the Red Wings’ coach, and Gordie Howe, when he first started playing. But Lindsey wanted to start a players union, to try to get more money and better “working conditions” for the players, who dad said were basically owned “like slaves” by the team owners like Norris. So Norris got mad at Lindsey and traded him to another team, the Chicago Blackhawks, and then “busted” the players union.

So I made up an owner for my team, “Manfred J. Sedgwicks the third”, which sounded like a rich guy name. His friends called him “Manny”. For David’s team I figured the owner could be coach Rod Zilla’s dad, “G.D. Zilla”. David liked that idea and the funny names that sounded like “Godzilla”.

And since real hockey had a playoff, and the two teams that won the first round of the playoff played in the finals, I decided that our two teams were playing against each other in the finals as well. In real hockey they played for the “Stanley Cup”, so our teams should be playing for a trophy too. We had dominos, so I painted one silver and glued it to the bottom of one of those little plastic Dixie cups we used in the bathroom, which I had painted blue. I called it the “Silver Domino”. I put it next to our hockey set while we played, though Midnight would swat at it with his paw and knock it over and then attack it.

I was better at playing our table-top hockey players than David, so I could score more goals, at least most of the time, than he did. But he was still pretty good too, and sometimes HE’D be ahead. So it was like when we were playing with our soldiers or dinosaurs or monsters in some sort of battle, where we were in charge of how it was going to go, and we had to decide which side was going to win, if there was any winner at all. We both would try to figure out and agree on what would make for the best story this time, maybe the soldiers holding off the dinosaur assault, or the dinosaurs, maybe helped by Godzilla, who was always in charge of the other dinosaurs when he was around, chasing the soldiers off the island.

So if we were pretending with our hockey set to be playing a seven game championship series between the Cooperstown Cats and the Davidville Destroyers for the “Silver Domino” trophy, maybe I’d play well and get a lead in the first game, so my team would end up winning, though the Destroyers would make a “furious comeback that fell short”. Then maybe the next game the Destroyers would “somehow” battle back to win, maybe the announcer saying that “Hendrix, with a slightly sprained ankle, not shooting well today”.

It wasn’t so much like I was playing against him. It was more like we were each in charge of one side in making the interesting story together, that I would announce for all those pretend fans watching the game on TV, like Hockey Night in Canada, only “Hockey Night in the Basement” or “Hockey Night on Concrete”.

So the Cats ended up winning the championship against the Destroyers four games to three in an exciting series. Unlike real hockey, we immediately started a new season and played regular season games against each other.

And with Midnight usually interested in watching, most of the time at least once every game I would have to announce, “OH MY GOD! A giant black cat has jumped onto the ice and swatted the puck out of the arena. The refs have called a timeout until the puck can be retrieved and play can resume.”