It was Thursday morning December 13, as I came to consciousness in my bed in what had been my bedroom and was now my mom’s office slash guest room. I woke up from a dream where I was still traveling except I had lost my plane ticket home and did not have the money to buy another one. I was grateful it was only a dream and that I was in fact home. The light through the casement window was more subdued this morning. Yesterday’s sunshine had given way to a more typical gray winter day. My stuffed full backpack was still there leaning against the side of the Herman Miller chest of drawers, like I was still backpacking and just spending a few nights in my host du jour’s guest room. My head was kind of stuffy and achy too, from smoking all that weed yesterday. But I was still glad I had, and looking forward to firing up the joint Clark had “lent” me, at least at some appropriate point on this day. My clock radio indicated it was 10:25, so getting to bed after 2 AM last night it was still a good night’s sleep. I noted that my clock radio had the same sort of electromechanical mechanism of flipping metal slats displaying the appropriate series of numbers – on mine, one to twelve on the hour slats and double zero to fifty-nine on the minutes – as the big boards in the European train stations that I loved to watch and listen to them clickity clack.
Tag Archives: ann arbor
Clubius Incarnate Part 3 – Basement
I could hear that the rain was still outside, and it made me like the quiet cozy basement even more. It was a while before my dad came down the basement stairs to keep working at his desk. He was in the opposite quarter of the basement from where I sat on the hard gray floor looking at my box of plastic toy soldiers and a second box with trucks, cars and boats in it. I wanted to keep playing that story I was playing last night in the bathtub of the pirate ship in the hidden cove shooting at the goodguy ships out in the bay. The captains were trying to figure out what to do to stop the pirates from sinking their ships and killing their sailors.
I looked at the two boats in the box with the cars and trucks. They were ships that were big enough to put some soldiers on them. But only the two of them was not enough, I needed the boats that I had in the tub upstairs. I was thinking that if I went upstairs again dad might wonder what I was doing up there. This was where talking would help me.
“I’ll be right back!”, I said to him, something he and mom said to me and each other. He turned and looked at me and nodded, but I could tell he was mostly thinking about what he was working on. I ran up the stairs and through the house to the bathroom, grabbed the small plastic bin of boats and soldiers there, and ran back down into the basement. Now I had seven boats, that was better.
But now I was trying to figure out where or how to make the hidden pirate cove. Maybe if I could find something to build the land between the cove and the bay. I dumped all the soldiers out of their box and the cars and trucks out of theirs. I turned the wood boxes over and put them next to each other to try to make a mountain between the cove and the bay. I put the pirate ship in the cove part and the rest of the boats in the other and looked at how it was set up. I didn’t think it was very good. The mountain island between the pirates and the goodguys just wasn’t big enough in the big basement.
I thought of the laundry basket in the laundry room. If it was empty I could turn it upside down into more mountains hiding the cove. I walked around the furnace into that quarter of the basement. The basket was full of clothes, sitting on top of the washing machine. But as I stood in that area, with the furnace on my right and the washing machine and staircase in front of me, it made me think that the laundry room would be a great secret cove. The furnace and the stairway could be the mountains between that cove and my part of the basement, which would be the bay where the other ships could be. The sailors could try to climb up the staircase to get into the cove. I could even build a pirate fort guarding the hidden cove, and a goodguy fort guarding the bay on my side.
I was excited about pretending all this, and I got my ship that had been the pirate ship in the tub last night and put it in the middle of the floor in the laundry room. I looked at it there from different places, including looking down from the basement stairs. It looked good, but I couldn’t really stand the gray soldiers, my pirates in this story, on its deck. I would just have to pretend they were on the ship.
I brought my box of Lincoln Logs into the laundry room and used them to make the walls of the pirate fort plus a house for the pirate guy in charge in the middle. I put two of the smallest log pieces together, leaned them over and they looked like cannons, and put them along the wall of the fort pointed out into the beginning part of the cove, so they could shoot at any goodguy ships that tried to go in it. The gray German soldiers were the pirates and I put a couple of them around each cannon. The gray plastic guy in charge, with his hands on either hip and elbows out on either side, I put in the square house in the center of the fort so he could be in charge of all the cannon shooting pirates. His helper was next to him.
Back in my quarter of the basement, I made a second fort out of the rest of the Lincoln logs. I put it looking down on the bay up on the end of my lowest toy shelf so it could look out on the whole bay. The good guys’ ships could stop under it and they could climb up to the fort. I put different groups of the green American soldiers in and around the fort, each group with a special job. The watcher guys looked out down on the bay. Others worked the cannons. Others were ready to go out on the ships. The last group below the fort helped put things on and take things off the ships. The green commander, Captain Dale, his figure pointing a hand out in front of him, I put in the center of the fort with his main helpers next to him.
I took one of my bigger boats and put it in the middle of the bay. It was big enough to put five soldiers on it if I put them very carefully – one in the front, three in the middle, and the ship captain, Captain Drake, in the back. They kept falling down, but I finally got them all standing, and I laid on my side and put my cheek on the cold floor and looked at them on the ship, trying to pretend they were real. They looked neat standing on the ship. I looked at the captain in the back and imagined him being worried about his crew. I put the second bigger boat by the dock part of the fort, and then put the other smaller boats in different parts of the bay around the big one.
Once everything was set up just right for the story, I sat on the basement staircase for some time, where I could see both places, the bay and the hidden cove, and I thought about all the different things that could happen. For cannon balls I could use the small plastic wiffle balls I had. Yes, this was all good, very exciting.
I got all of my small plastic wiffle balls in the plastic bin where I kept my bathtub toys. I took it into the laundry room and sat on the floor between the pirate ship and the fort and I imagined the talking between the pirate ship captain, Captain Black, and the fort captain, Big John.
I sailed the pirate ship over to the fort and imagined Captain Black waving from the ship to Big John in the fort. Big John looked at the men and cannons around his fort and felt good. “The fort cannons are loaded and ready and the cannon shooters are ready for a fight if the good guys find the secret cove and try to come in!” he said.
Captain Black liked that. “Ha ha that’s good”, he said, “We’ll sail to the far side of the cove where we’ll have a better shot at ‘em and give ‘em hell!”
Big John laughed and said, “Yes give ‘em hell. They won’t know what hit ‘em!”
Captain Black said, “Ha ha you’re right matey!” Pirates talked that way.
The pirate ship sailed across the cove near the staircase mountains that were between it and the bay. Its cannons started to fire. I made the cannon noise and I threw each ball over the staircase and I could hear it hit the floor and bounce on the other side where I couldn’t see it. I moved to the other side of the basement and sat against the basement wall next to the goodguy fort on the end of my toy shelves and looked at what had happened. The fort and all the ships looked like they weren’t hit, but the captains, sailors, and fort soldiers were really worried. Dad was at his desk still working.
Captain Dale in the fort looked out over the bay and was very worried. “Oh my god… someone’s shooting at us. Pretty soon one of our ships or our fort will get hit!”
His helpers tried to make him feel better. “But Captain”, they said, “We built the strongest fort we could on the side of the cliff. The pirates can’t get it!”
Captain Drake aboard his ship was really worried too. “This is really bad!” he said, “Pretty soon one of our ships will get hit!”
His helper thought so too, and said, “You’re right, Captain!”
After looking at and thinking about the fort, bay and goodguy ships for a while, I got all the balls in the bin and went back into the laundry room.
Captain Black was excited. “Keep up the shooting lads! We have them right where we want them!”
Making more cannon and explosion noises, I fired more pirate cannonballs over the staircase mountains into the bay. On one of the shots I heard the crash of the ball hitting something.
Captain Black said, “Sounds like we hit something boys!”
His main helper said, “Yes, but how can we know for sure! We can’t see across the mountains.”
Captain Black thought about what to do, then said, “I think that’s a good job for you mate! Take some of the boys and climb the mountain so you can see what we hit!”
“Aye aye, Captain!” his main helper said.
I took several gray soldiers and began to have them climb up the steep side of the staircase, finally getting high enough on the washing machine where they could see out onto the bay.
I went back to the other side of the basement and sat by the goodguy fort to see what they were seeing. Three of the green soldiers that had been standing on the big ship in the middle of the bay had fallen on the floor around it, their ship had been hit.
The fort guys watching the bay yelled out, “Oh my god, they hit Drake’s ship!” Then to the Captain’s main helper, “Let Captain Dale know.”
“Will do”, he said, then to Captain Dale, “Captain… Drake’s ship’s been hit! There’ll be dead and wounded! What should we do?”
Captain Dale was quiet while he was thinking. Then he said, “Send out the rescue ship to get the dead and wounded and bring them back here. Tell the doctor to get the hospital set up.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
I had the fort captain’s main helper go down to the docks below the fort and talk to the captain of the rescue ship there.
“Captain Strong, time to go to work”, he said, “You need to rescue those sailors! Is your ship ready?”
Captain Strong said, “We’re ready! Sail boys! We must save our men if they can be saved!”
The rescue ship went out into the bay and had a hard time but got the dead and wounded sailors floating in the water and brought them back to the fort. Then the story was about the doctor, Doctor West I named him, who had to get the hospital ready. One area for the wounded and one for the dead. He looked at each rescued soldier and had to figure out which one could be helped and which one was dead. I imagined he was very worried and sad.
Finally, like in my bathtub story before, the good guys sent a team out to climb up the mountain staircase and see if they could figure out where the pirate ship was shooting from. Lieutenant Cord was in charge of that team, and they were taken by boat across the bay to the mountains. Before they could land, I went back into the laundry room and shot more wiffle cannonballs from the pirate ship’s cannons into the bay.
Returning from the laundry room I found that another ship had been hit, but not the one with Lieutenant Cord’s team, which finally reached the shore at the bottom of the mountains, ready to climb up the steps. But first the goodguys had to send the rescue boat out to get any dead and wounded from the latest pirate cannonball. Since the boat that was on its side had no soldiers actually on it, I decided there were two dead and two wounded. The rescue boat headed out and got the four of them. The two dead guys were floating in the bay by the ship and the two wounded were below deck in the front part of the ship hit by the pirate’s cannonball. Once the rescue boat returned to the fort the wounded and dead guys were brought to the hospital, and there was more worrying and being sad by Doctor West.
That taken care of, I went back to Lieutenant Cord’s team, getting ready to climb the dangerous mountain stairs. Seeing that other ships got hit out in the bay, they were all talking and worried and figured out that their mission was really really important. Lieutenant Cord talked to his team and told them they had to do it, even though they might get killed or wounded. They had to find where the pirate ship was or all would be lost. “It’s up to us boys”, he said, “Everyone else is counting on us!” I had heard grownups talk like that, at least in the stories dad read me.
Just then I realized that dad was standing behind me as I sat between him and the bottom step of the stairs. I was startled, and turned to look up at him. His eyes were dark and sad, though he had a smile on his face. He was strange that way.
“I want to get up the stairs”, he said, but he paused without taking a step up and said, “So what is this group of soldiers up to?”
I usually didn’t tell mom or dad the stories I was pretending. I was worried they might think they were bad, or silly, or even stupid. I really liked them, but I wasn’t sure they were going to like them. Or maybe they would think I should change the story and I wouldn’t want to and then I wouldn’t know what to do.
But he was asking me a question, and I felt that now that I was talking, that I should at least say something to answer his question, if I wanted them to answer mine. You had to be careful with grownups, even mom and dad, even though they gave me food, read and sang to me at night, bought me toys, and did other things for me.
So I told him, “Lieutenant Cord is leading his team to climb up the mountain to try to find the pirate ship.” That seemed like a good answer to his question.
His smile, there way above me, turned into a bigger grin. I could see he wanted to laugh but he tried hard not to and didn’t. But then his face got worried, and like he was thinking.
“You know”, he said, “I was a lieutenant in World War Two!”
I had heard him talk to his friends about the War, and that he had been a soldier in it, but this was the first time I could remember that he talked to me about it. I knew that real war was not something fun, or something you laughed about. It was what grownups said was “serious”. So I’d never asked him about it, only listened really hard when he did say something about it. And listened when other grownups talked about it too. But now I really wanted to know more so I nodded and looked at him like I was ready to hear his story.
“I was in charge of a platoon of motorized mortars”, he said.
“Mortars?” I decided to ask. What I asked was kind of quiet like I was asking whether it was okay to ask him at the same time I asked him. I wasn’t sure if he’d get mad or sad if I asked him about war stuff.
He pushed his lips together, closed his eyes and nodded, then opened his eyes again but looked over where my toys were and not at me. “They’re like cannons”, he said, “But they shoot way up high in the air”, his finger went up above his head and came back down, “Rather than cannons that shoot more straight.” He moved that same finger from one side of his body to the other without it going up very much.
Even though I had been worried, I could tell that he seemed happy to talk about it, maybe even wanted to talk with me about it. So I figured I could ask more questions.
“What did you shoot at?” I asked
He looked at me for just a second and pushed his lips together. It seemed like he was wondering whether it was okay to tell me this stuff.
“Mostly at German artillery pieces”, he said, “Eighty-eights. That’s what they call cannons nowadays, ‘artillery’.”
I knew eighty-eight was a number with two eights in it, but I didn’t know that it was a kind of cannon or “artillery”. Dad still seemed happy to talk about it so I asked another question to find out more.
“Eighty-eights?” I asked.
His smile turned into more of a frown, but he nodded his head like that was the next question.
“Big German field guns, field ‘artillery’, that shot big eighty-eight millimeter shells”, he said, holding up his thumb and finger, and moving them apart to show me how big. “That could take out one of our tanks with one shot.” He looked over at my toys, and I could see him remembering something.
“During the war”, he said, “When we crossed the border from France into Germany, the German soldiers were dug into their Siegfried Line. They set up their Eighty-eights in bunkers, which are like little forts, in groves of trees on hilltops guarding the road we were trying to advance on. My unit would be sent up to hide behind another hill near those German guns, in range but where they couldn’t see us to shoot at us. I would go up to the top of the hill, hide in the bushes, and try to spot the bunker with the Eighty-eights on the next hill and radio back to my unit how to aim our mortars to try to knock them out. Since mortars shot upward we could fire shells, they’re called shells because they aren’t shaped like balls anymore, over the hill and drop them down on the enemy guns from above. That is if I could spot their guns and give my gunners the correct direction and distance. Their Eighty-eights could only shoot at something they could see, like a cannon. Hopefully they did not see me!”
He finally stopped talking but was still looking off at my toy shelves. I kept thinking about what he had said to me. It was a lot of interesting new stuff to figure out and lots of new words, like “Siegfried Line”, “in range”, “spot” and “bunker”. He seemed to like answering my questions and wanting me to ask more. I wondered if he might even be sad about me if I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t stop thinking about that last thing he said, so I figured I’d keep asking.
“What if they saw you?” I asked.
He pushed his lips together, nodded, and his eyes got really big, as he still looked at my toys.
“Sometimes they’d see me”, he said, “And they’d start shooting at me, and I’d have to run for my life. If I was running at least they knew I couldn’t radio in their location.”
He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Let me show you a picture.”
He went over to his bookshelf and pulled out a big thick book with a dark red cover and sat down in his chair. He opened the book, then touched a couple fingers to the tip of his tongue and used those fingers to turn the pages, as he looked carefully at the pages in between. I went around behind him so I could see the book pages too. They were full of words but lots of pictures too. Not drawings like some of the books he and my mom read me, but pictures that I figured were from a camera because they were black, gray and white and looked like pictures I had seen in newspapers. There was a picture of three smiling soldiers in their helmets and uniforms standing around a large tube pointed up in the air.
“That’s a mortar”, he said, “But ours were set up on the back of halftracks.”
I nodded, but it didn’t look like any cannon I had ever seen in pictures.
He turned a bunch of pages with pictures of things I had seen before, tanks, airplanes, ships, soldiers marching, and people lying on the ground with their eyes closed. Finally there was a picture of a bunch of what looked like trucks but their back wheels looked like tank wheels. His big finger tapped on the picture.
“These are halftracks”, he said, “You drive them in front like a truck with wheels but instead of back wheels they have treads like a tank which help them go over rough ground where a truck would get stuck. They are also armored, like a tank but not as much, so the soldiers have some protection if the enemy shoots at you. The ones in this picture are set up to carry soldiers in the back. The ones in our platoon had mortars mounted on the back and carried the gun crew.”
I looked at the picture carefully and he waited for me to show that I was done. It all seemed interesting but made me worried too about all this “war” stuff, and if dad would tell me I would have to fight in a real war too. I finally nodded without saying anything and he closed the book with a clap noise and I watched him slide it back onto the shelf next to another book that was the same size and color. He looked at all the books on the shelf, smiled and nodded.
“You’re welcome to take any book off the shelf and look at it if you like”, he said “Just put it back when you’re done, okay?”
I nodded again. I would be sure to do that. Look at them and put them back.
“I have to get back to grading papers!” he said, pushing his chair with his feet so it rolled back to his desk. Then he reached behind him with a hand to grab the desk edge and spin him around to face it. I watched him sigh, fill his cheeks with air and blow it out. He took his red pencil in his right hand, and looked down at the papers on his desk.
I went back to the bottom of the stairs where Lieutenant Cord and his men, his “platoon”, slowly made the dangerous climb up the stairs. Finally they reached a stair step where they could see into the hidden cove where the pirate ship was.
Lieutenant Cord was excited. “Boys we’ve found it! There is the ship that is shooting at us. And look, they also have a fort guarding the cove too. Tell Captain Dale and Captain Drake!”
Captain Dale in the goodguy fort told Captain Drake to have all his ships with cannons fire into the cove. I got all the whiffle balls and started to throw them over the stairs into the laundry room. I could hear them bang against the floor, and that different sound when they hit the washing machine or the furnace. When I had finished shooting, I raced back up to Lieutenant Cord and his platoon up on the stairs looking at the cove. The pirate ship didn’t look like it got hit, so Captains Dale and Drake were told the bad news.
After a couple more times of firing cannons back and forth, hitting, and this time sinking one of the goodguy ships, Captain Drake, had a new plan. “We must sail to the secret entrance of the cove, sail in, and destroy the pirate ship”, he said.
“But the fort cannons sir,” Lieutenant Cord said, “They’ll tear our ships apart!”
It didn’t change what Captain Drake was thinking. “We have no choice!” he said.
On my hands and knees I moved the rest of the goodguy ships across the basement floor by the furnace to the “secret” entrance to the laundry room and the pirate cove.
Captain Drake was very brave. “Man your guns boys”, he said, “We’re going in. Give ‘em hell!”. I moved the four remaining good guy ships past the cove entrance and where the pirates in the fort with their cannons, could see them, and were ready for a fight. I made the sounds of lots of cannon shots and explosions, as the battle started. The goodguy ships were hit and got damaged, but the fort was hit too. Captain Black turned his pirate ship guns towards the goodguy ships and joined the fight. Lieutenant Cord and his men watched from up on the stairs.
His men were sad and mad. “What can we do?” they asked.
But he had an idea. “Did you bring the bag of bombs, Joe?” he asked.
“Aye, aye, Lieutenant!” Joe said.
“There is a path along the mountains there that leads to a spot right above the pirate fort” Lieutenant Cord said, “It’s dangerous, but we have to do it so we can drop those bombs on them.”
There was a narrow ledge between the bottom and the top half of the furnace, about three feet up from the floor. From the stairs they made the dangerous climb up to that path and continued from there. As the battle was going on below his platoon made their way to the far corner of the furnace above the pirate fort. Some pirates on the washing machine saw them and started shooting at them. One was hit and fell and was killed.
“Oh my god, we lost Sam!” said Lieutenant Cord.
“Keep going men”, he said, “We still have Joe and the bag of bombs!” He couldn’t worry about who was dead, they had to keep going. The rest of the platoon reached the place on the mountain path just above the pirate fort. I ran into my quarter of the basement and got all the whiffle balls into their box, and very excited, went back into the pirate cove. As the battle kept going below, Lieutenant Cord and his men dropped the bombs on the fort below. The first wiffle ball hit the fort wall. Two Lincoln Log cannons flew apart and most of the pirates shooting them were knocked over, dead or wounded.
The pirates in the fort were suddenly scared. Big John from his house in the middle of the fort yelled at his men to keep firing and not to get scared. But Lieutenant Cord and his men dropped their next two bombs right onto Big John’s house. Logs scattered, and the Big John figure was badly wounded and started to die. The pirate gun crews left their guns and ran to his side. I put all those gray soldiers in a circle around his fallen figure. Big John breathed his last breath and died. The rest of the pirates in the fort surrendered, not being able to figure out what to do about the bombs from above. The goodguy sailors got to the fort and pointed the fort’s guns that weren’t wrecked at Captain Black’s pirate ship out in the cove. He then also decided to surrender.
All the pirates that weren’t dead or wounded were marched onto the goodguy ships and brought back to the goodguy’s fort. One of the parts of the fort was turned into a jail for those pirates. Lieutenant Cord and his platoon were the last to return to the goodguy fort. They were now heroes.
That night at bedtime, dad read the next chapter of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 18. It was the morning after Tom surprised the grownups by coming to his own funeral. All the other kids at school thought he was a hero. Except for Becky, who was mad that he was ignoring her. After Tom left, she got another kid named Alfred to pour ink in Tom’s spelling book. She did that because she wanted Tom to get in trouble. The next day when the teacher found the mess, Tom would be “whipped”. Dad said being “whipped” was like being spanked, but they did it with a stick instead of their hand.
I liked that Tom always figured out what to do and then did it, no matter what. My Lieutenant Cord was like Tom, even though he wasn’t a kid. I also wondered about girls not liking to be “ignored”, which meant you weren’t talking to them when they thought you should be. I wondered if girls were different than boys that way. I thought about Molly. She didn’t seem different like that.
After we finished reading, dad added a new song to the end of his singing. I always liked hearing a new song, and this was a war song…
Over hill, over dale
As we hit the dusty trail
And those caissons go rolling along
In and out, hear them shout
Counter march and right about
And those caissons go rolling alongThen it’s hi! hi! hee!
In the field artillery
Shout out your numbers loud and strong – two, three
For where’er you go
You will always know
That those caissons go rolling along
Dad said that a “caisson” was a wagon that was carried behind a cannon that had the “ammunition” for that cannon, now shells but in the old days cannonballs. It was interesting, because he sang it like a happy song. I guess it sounded happy, because the guys singing it were brave soldiers, like Lieutenant Cord, ready to fight the badguys, even if they might get killed or wounded.
Mom came in after he had wiggled my big toe under the covers and left. She told me that tomorrow was my birthday party, which if it didn’t rain, would be across the street in the park. I remembered about that tricycle up in the attic but didn’t say anything.
“Night night birthday boy!” she said.
Now that I was talking, instead of just nodding I said, “Almost!”
She looked at me and grinned, nodding her head and said the same thing, “Almost!”
She kissed my forehead, looked at me and then left the room. I was still thinking really hard about at least two things. First my dad being a soldier in the war, and second that tricycle up above me in the attic. It was a long time before I finally fell asleep.
Clubius Incarnate Part 1 – Dubious
“So Clubius”, mom said, “Are you excited that it’s almost your birthday? You’ll be THREE YEARS OLD!”
I nodded. I WAS going to be three years old and I WAS excited. But I think they already knew that so I’m not sure why they even asked me. Grownups were always asking kids questions that the grownups already knew the answers to. She, dad and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen eating dinner. It was macaroni and cheese that I liked and that other salad stuff that I was supposed to eat too.
I didn’t like to talk very much, though I knew lots of words that mom and dad said and could say them if I wanted to. I just said “yes” or “no” sometimes if mom or dad asked me something and I wanted to tell them but they weren’t looking at me. Or if I got scared I might say “mom” or “dad” really loud if they didn’t see what was scaring me or figure out I was scared. The rest of the time mom and dad figured out what I wanted.
My friend Molly liked to talk a lot, so I didn’t need to talk very much when we played together, because she always knew what I was thinking, at least most of the time. She lived across the street and she was older than me right now because she was already three. That’s what she said. She also said that when I had my birthday and was three like her, then we’d be the same again. We both liked it when we were the same.
I was excited because I remembered that mom and dad had got me presents on my last birthday, which was a really really long time ago. I got Tinker Toys, soldiers, cars and boats. Those were all “toys”, and they helped me do more pretend stories.
Then this other time called “Christmas”, they put this tree in the house, which was strange, because all the other trees were outside. Then they put little lights all over it that were different colors, and then other shiny stuff they called “ornaments”. All that stuff came out of this big box that dad got from the “attic”, which was this place on top of my bedroom that you had to go up a “ladder” in my closet to get to. Putting all that stuff on the tree was strange too, but dad liked it and mom liked it A LOT. It did look neat when it was nighttime and those little lights were turned on.
But then they said this guy called “Santa Claus” would come on “Christmas” and put presents for me under the tree. That seemed really strange. Mom read me stories about him. He was this big fat guy in a red suit that flew in the sky in a “sleigh” that had these flying “reindeer” animals that pulled it through the sky. She showed me pictures. Then this “Santa Claus” guy would land on the top part of your house and go down the “chimney” with a big bag of toys. He’d take the ones out of the bag that were for you and put them under that special tree inside your house.
It didn’t make any sense that he would come to our house because I had looked around and we didn’t have one of those “chimney” things. We did have that attic on top of my room, so I wondered if he would come down from there, but I didn’t ask about it, I just listened. Then one night mom said tomorrow was Christmas, and while I was sleeping he would come. That made me worried that he would come down into my closet from the attic, but mom was so happy that he was coming that I didn’t say anything. But I kept opening my eyes all night waiting for him to come out of my closet but he never did.
But in the morning mom came into my room and said that he came and left presents for me. I ran out into the living room in my pajamas and there were those present boxes under the tree like in the stories she read. I was so excited to get more presents and I could tear that special paper off to see what they were. I got Lincoln Logs, a baseball glove, and more Tinker Toys.
So now that it was my birthday again and I was hoping I would get more presents. Molly had gotten presents on her birthday. Mom and dad hadn’t said I would get more presents so I was worried. I figured maybe if I talked they would know that I wanted more presents and I would get them. If I didn’t talk, maybe I wouldn’t get any. I wanted more toys so I figured I better talk.
“I want presents for my birthday”, I said. I’m pretty sure I said that the right way.
Mom and dad didn’t think I would talk, so when I did, the two of them looked at each other, tried to keep from laughing, but finally did laugh. I didn’t like it that they were laughing about me. So I decided to ask a question too. I couldn’t remember ever asking a question before but I knew how to do it. You started with one of those special question words.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked.
They both stopped laughing and looked worried. And I could tell they weren’t worried about me but worried they had laughed at me.
Mom looked at dad again and then made a sad look on her face. “Oh my god Jonathan”, she said, “We are so sorry we laughed. We were just so surprised and thrilled that you”, and she stopped to do more thinking before she said, “Spoke your mind”. She looked at dad and he looked at me kind of sad and nodded.
“Jonathan” was that name that they sometimes called me when they were really worried or really mad at me. They said that was my “real” name. Other times they mostly called me other names like “Clubius”, “Cloob”, “Zuper” or “Sweetie”, though they called my friend Molly “Sweetie” too sometimes. Other grownups mostly called me “Jonathan”, except for Molly who called by “Coob”.
I nodded, but I was thinking that they never laughed at me when I didn’t talk. It seemed like grownups didn’t tell you what they were really thinking, not even mom and dad. They did a lot of things and said a lot of things that didn’t make sense. They were so big and mostly looked down at me and looked worried a lot. They would throw a ball with me, even throw it so I could try to hit it with my bat, or take me over to the park and sit and read while I played. But a lot of the time I did not understand what they were up to or why. Like mom, who seemed to do lots of things she didn’t want to do.
Dad made more sense, though he seemed to feel one way and pretend that he felt another way. He liked to read and write and sat down in his “office” in the basement with his shelves of books and read them, and wrote things on his typewriter. He liked eating donuts, sweet rolls, and ice cream, as much or even more so than I did. He wanted the Michigan football team or the Tigers baseball team to win, and was mad when they lost. I could tell other things made him sad and worried, but he didn’t say what they were and I couldn’t figure it out.
The other people like me, kids, were different. If they wanted stuff or liked stuff or didn’t like stuff, they told you, at least they told other kids.
After dinner, dad put water in the bathtub for me. All five of my plastic ships and some of my plastic soldiers, green Americans and gray Germans, were in the plastic “bin” thing so I could play with them. Also a little “wiffle” ball. I remembered stuff from that Treasure Island story dad had read me, but I wanted to change it all around to make my own story.
I got in the tub and sat in the middle so the back part of the tub was on my left and the front part was on my right. I put my toy ship that looked like that one from the pictures in the Treasure Island book in the back part of the tub. That was the “pirate ship”, and it was in the “secret cove”. I put the other four ships in the front part of the tub. They were the “goodguy ships”. My body was the mountain island between the secret cove and where the goodguy ships were. I brought my knees up so there was no way for the ships to go between the front part and the back part, and they couldn’t see the other part either because of the mountain.
I put some of the gray soldiers on the top part of the tub in the back. They would be the pirates who were on the shore of the secret cove finding a place to make a base so they could live there. Some of those pirates could see on the other side of the mountain island in the middle, that is me, and see the good guy ships.
“Uh oh”, said one of the pirates, “The goodguy ships are trying to get us!” He jumped in the water and swam over to the pirate ship to tell the captain.
“Good”, said the pirate captain, “We know where they are and they don’t know where we are so we can shoot at them with our cannon!”
“Okay captain”, said the other ship guys, and they started firing the cannon over the mountain at the goodguy ships. I took the wiffle ball in my left hand and threw it up in the air towards the front part of the tub. It landed in the water there but didn’t hit any of the goodguy ships.
“Oh my god”, said the sailors on all the goodguy ships, “Someone is shooting at us!” There was more talking back and forth between the sailors on the ships and they told all their captains.
“Hmm”, said the captains of those ships, “It must be that pirate ship. It’s here somewhere hiding and trying to get us. We have to figure out what to do!”
I took the wiffle ball in my left hand again and threw it way up above the front part of the tub. It bounced against the wall and came down and hit the blue and white goodguy ship. I made an exploding noise.
“One of our ships is hit!” said one of the sailors on the main green and yellow goodguy ship.
“Which one?” asked the main captain.
“The blue ship”, said the sailor, “Five sailors are dead and three are wounded!”
“Take those wounded guys to the shore so the doctor can take care of them!” said the main captain.
“What about the dead guys?” asked the captain of the blue ship.
“Don’t worry about them”, said the main captain, “They’re dead. We have to figure out how to get that pirate ship!”
I took three of the green soldiers from the bin and laid them down on the edge of the front part of the tub. I took another green soldier that wasn’t holding a gun and had his hands on his sides and put him standing up looking at the wounded men lying down. He was the doctor. He looked at each wounded sailor and had to figure out how to fix them.
I did another shot from the pirate ship cannon. It splashed in the water near the main green and yellow ship. Two sailors on that ship got wounded, but they were only wounded a little bit.
“I have a plan!” said one of the young sailors on the main green and yellow ship, “We need to take some guys and try to go along the shore around the mountain and try to see where the pirate ship is so we can get it before it gets all of our ships.”
As the pirate ship kept shooting its cannon at the goodguy ships, the brave young sailor was in charge of other sailors that went on shore to try and get around the mountain island in the middle. I put five green soldiers in a row on the side edge of the tub. The young sailor leading them was a soldier with a pistol in one hand and pointing ahead with the other. It would be very dangerous, but the only other choice was to let the rest of the four ships get all wrecked too. If a team of brave sailors could make their way to the cove they could see the pirate ship and maybe figure out a plan to attack it. Cannonballs from the pirate ship kept coming down from the sky.
Dad peeked in the bathroom door to check on me. He saw the boats and the soldiers on the edge of the tub. He saw me worried, looking at the soldiers on the side edge of the tub.
“Five more minutes”, he said. It was kind of like he was just saying it but also kind of like a question. I nodded without looking at him, too busy thinking about the next thing in my story. He went away.
The team of sailors started on their dangerous “mission” to try to get around the mountain to figure out where the pirate ship was. They had to walk one behind the other along a narrow path with a steep cliff on either side. As I slowly moved five green soldiers along the top rim of the tub towards the back, one slid off and fell to the floor outside the tub.
“Oh my god”, said the young sailor in charge, “He has fallen and is probably dead or dying, but there is nothing we can do for him now! We must continue or all is lost!”
Finally the rest of the four sailors made it around my body to the back part of the tub. They finally saw the pirate ship in the secret cove.
“There it is!” said the young sailor in charge, but the pirates on the shore in the back part of the tub saw him and the other sailors and started shooting at them. The young sailor in charge got shot in the arm.
“I’m hit!”, he said.
“Oh no!”, said the second sailor behind him, “Now what do we do?”
“I’ll make it”, said the young wounded sailor, “Everybody get down so they can’t shoot us very well, and we can still shoot them!” I laid all the sailors down. Another one slid off the edge of the tub.
“Oh no”, said the second sailor, “Not another guy!” Now the team of five sailors was only three.
The goodguy sailors shot at the pirates on the back edge of tub and got one who fell into the water.
“One less pirate to worry about”, said the young sailor, even though he was shot in the arm. He told the other sailor on his team to go back to the goodguy ships and tell them where the pirate ship was so they could shoot at it.
Dad peeked in the bathroom door again. “Hey Cloob, I have to grade some papers so if you want me to read you a story you need to wash yourself including your hair and get out!”
I thought about where I was in my story. From the books dad had read me, I knew that the long stories were in “chapters”. I would remember where everything was when this chapter of my story ended and start the next chapter tomorrow night.
“Okay”, I said, “I’ll wash up and get out!”
Dad grinned, I could tell he liked hearing me talk and then asked, “Do you need help washing your hair?”
I shook my head really hard and said, “No!” Mom or dad used to wash me, but I didn’t want them to anymore, because that made me feel like a little kid. I wanted to be more like a big kid so I wanted to do it by myself.
I cupped water in my hands and poured it over my head like dad had shown me. Then rubbed the soap bar in my hair until it got bubbly and slippery on my head. Again cupping water in my hands, I dumped handfuls of it on my head. All the boats quivered in the water. I imagined it was nighttime in my story, and all the boats were shaken by the waves. The goodguy boat that had got hit by the pirate cannonball sank. Luckily all the sailors but one were able to escape and not get drowned. I now took the soap and rubbed it all over my body including the parts of me that were under the water. Now all rinsed off I picked up each toy ship, looked at it closely and put it back in the bin just outside the tub. I put all the green and gray soldiers back in the bin. I got up in the tub and used my foot to flip the drain lever open. Dad did it with his hand, but I liked doing it with my foot pretending it was another hand. The water started to glug glug out of the tub. I got out of the tub and stood on that special towel that was always on the bathroom floor, and I rubbed myself with the other towel dad had left for me and then walked naked back into my room. I looked behind me and there were wet spots on the wood floor where my feet had been. Finally, I put on my pajamas and got into bed under my covers.
“I’m ready!” I called out. I was getting used to this talking thing.
Dad came into my room grinning, holding a book in his right hand.
“So the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 17?”
I nodded but also said, “Yes!”
He sat in the rocking chair across from my bed and started to read. In the chapter he read yesterday, Tom and Huck had gone to Jackson Island and everyone thought they had drowned in the river. In this chapter everyone in town was sad thinking that they were both dead and got ready for their “funeral”, whatever that was, that you did when people were dead I guess. But Tom and Huck had snuck back into town and were hiding and surprised everybody by showing up in the middle of their own funeral! I had liked the story so far, and I liked this part because I liked surprising people, like I did today when I talked to mom and dad. It was neat to surprise people.
Dad finished the chapter, closed the book, looked at the cover thinking, and put it on his lap. He was wearing just a white t-shirt and shorts.
“So what shall we sing?” He asked. I thought I would surprise him.
I said, “Everything!” and he laughed! Then he was thinking for a minute and looked worried. Then looked at me and said, “I’m not laughing at you. You just said something funny.”
“I did?” I asked, and he nodded. I HAD said something that was a surprise, and I guess because it was a surprise, it was “funny” too.
One of my favorite things was to listen to dad sing. It wasn’t just the words in the song, but hearing him sing, and all the things he did around singing that I liked. He looked up at the ceiling thinking, trying to figure out what to sing first. Then he nodded and smiled, when he figured it out. He raised his head again, opened his mouth, took a deep breath and sang. His voice wobbled a little but sounded good. He loved the “college” songs about being good to your “school” and its “team” and not liking the other school and their team. But he also liked sillier songs about being in college. He started out with one of my favorites, “I Want to Go Back to Michigan”…
I want to go back to Michigan
To dear Ann Arbor town
Back to Joe’s and the Orient
And back to some of the money I spentI want to go back to Michigan
To dear Ann Arbor town
I want to go back
I got to go back
To Mi-chi-ganMother and father pay all the bills
And we have all the fun
In the friendly rivalry of college life (hooray)
But we have to think of a hell of a lot
To tell what we have done
With the coin we blew in dear old Michigan
I liked that the guy in the song story seemed more like me, like a kid, maybe an older kid, who was able to trick his mom and dad.
He sang two more college songs, including the regular words and then the silly words of the “Indiana” song. Indiana was another school team that the Michigan school didn’t like I guess, so when the guys that liked Michigan sang it, they sang it with silly words.
The regular words were…
Indiana, oh Indiana
Indiana, we’re all for you…At the altar, you never falter
From the battle, you’re tried and true
The silly words were…
Indiana, oh Indiana
Indiana, the hell with you…At the altar, you always falter
From the battle, you’re black and blue
I liked the way just a couple of the regular words were changed to change what you were singing about. As he sang the silly words he would wink at me and I got the idea that you said bad things about them just to “tease” them, but you didn’t really not like them.
After singing the three songs (I counted them) dad said, “Just one more!”
I knew what I wanted to hear.
“Don’t fence me in”, I said, before he could start singing anything else.
He nodded, but I could see him thinking about something else and not the song. He finally started singing it and I got to hear the feelings of wishing for something he didn’t have in the way he sang…
Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don’t fence me in
Let me be by myself in the evening breeze
Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in
That song made sense. The guy singing didn’t want anything to stop him from having an adventure. I wondered if that guy was a grownup or an older kid. There was no wink from my dad like with the Indiana song. This wasn’t a silly song, at least to dad.
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
Gaze at the moon ‘til I lose my senses
Don’t like hobbles and I can’t stand fences
Don’t fence me in
The last thing he did every night, after reading and singing, was the saying goodnight stuff. He would get up from the rocking chair, come over to the end of my bed by the door, feel around to find one of my big toes under the covers and wiggle it, and say, “Sweet dreams kiddo!” Sometimes I would play a little game with him and move my feet around so it was hard for him to find one of my big toes, but tonight I didn’t make it hard.
After he left mom came in.
She looked at me with her big eyes and shook her head and made a pretend sad face. “I wish I could sing like your dad!”
She came around to where my head was and kissed me on the cheek.
“Night night sweet Zuper!”
Instead of nodding I said, “Night night mom.” I could tell she liked it more when I talked instead of just nodding, when I said her name.
She looked at me and grinned, touched my cheek again with her fingers and left the room. I knew they were both happy that I had decided to talk. I wondered if that would help me be more like a big kid.
Coopster Created Part 4 – Billy & Alice
It was still Wednesday December 12, but no one really cared. The four of us were in line outside Crisler Arena, my three comrades listening to my stories as I continued to recount my European journey. Though we were already pretty high, Clark produced one of the “jays” from his pocket and we joined many of the other people in line who were engaged in the same concert preparation.
The oval indoor basketball arena, which seated over 12,000 was situated just east of the “Big House” (UofM’s biggest in the county college football stadium). The arena had been built in the mid 1960s, based on a growing interest in the University’s men’s basketball team after Cazzie Russell led that team to three straight Big Ten championships from 1964 to 1966. Several years later the arena was renamed after Herbert “Fritz” Crisler, the retiring Michigan athletic director, who had played a key role in championing the place being built. As my mom and dad explained it to me, he had been a famous and innovative Michigan football coach during the 1940s, whose greatest legacy to the game of football was to invent the concept of having a different set of players play defense and offense, transforming the game into its modern incarnation.
Coopster Created Part 3 – Eberwhite Woods
Coopster Created Part 2 – The Blue Front & Bicycle Jim’s
While I was phasing in and out of consciousness in bed this morning, before officially waking up and starting my first day back in the States, I had heard the vocalizing of a large scrum of kids about fifty yards from my window. I knew they must still be playing their large unsupervised soccer game before school. Probably my fondest memory of my school days in fifth and sixth grade at Burns Park Elementary School were those big, pretty much every morning and lunchtime, loosely organized games. They were “anarchic” in the best, informal governance, sense of that word. Run by the assembled group of kids, with no adults in sight, and only a few simple rules. Sixth graders on one team versus fourth and fifth graders on the other. All soccer balls in play at the same time. No official score kept. Between morning and lunchtime games, it was a good forty to sixty minutes of aerobic exercise each school day, and I remember us playing pretty much in any weather conditions.
Coop Goes to College Part 2 – Best Friends
Coop Goes to College Part 1 – Intoxications, Altered States, Song and Dance, Rhythm & Blues in the Deep End
The last week of summer finally arrived as it always did, and with some reluctance but also some excitement I left my hometown of Ann Arbor, the place where most of the developmental events of my life had occurred, the Tuesday after Labor Day in September of 1972 to head off to college. The Munich Olympics were underway and the initial killing of two members of the Israeli Olympic team and kidnapping of nine others by PLO gunmen, the beginning of the “Munich Massacre” had just occurred, though we were not aware of that yet!
I still was feeling a great deal of ambivalence about my choice to go off to school ninety miles west at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo rather than at my hometown University of Michigan, in whose university medical center I had been born, where my parents were both Alumni, and my little family had been part of the extended University academic community for as long as I could remember. My stated reason for choosing WMU was that I was planning on being a theater major and I had been told they had a better theater program than UofM. But at some deeper level that I don’t know if I could really articulate I had a strong sense that I had to leave my Ann Arbor nest to best proceed with my further development. The thought of leaving my hometown did give me a discomforting sense of aloneness, but also a more positive sense that I was somehow doing at least something (if not perhaps the best thing) to push forward developmentally with my life.
Coop’s Youth Part 7 – Limping to the Finish Line
Among other presents, my brother and I got the Beatles’ White Album and Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme for Christmas, both on our list that our mom had solicited from us. The tag on the wrapped gifts under the tree in our living room indicated they were from “Santa”. Our mom continued to believe in Santa Claus, or at least that her kids should continue to honor the myth of this jolly old avatar who loved children and spent his entire undying existence bringing gifts and joy to young people throughout an often child-unfriendly world.
Now that I had quit my paper route and no longer had my own money from it, Christmas gifts were an important source of particularly the games and record albums that were so significant to me developmentally. When we were little our mom and dad had done their best to observe our play carefully and buy us toys that would present a compelling “curriculum” for our play. In more recent years, our mom had taken to asking my brother and me for a list of the things we wanted for Christmas, and then tried her best, even collaborating with our dad, to get us those things that they could within their limited budget. I would put careful thought into our lists, because the toys, games, records, tape recorders and other stuff we ended up getting over the years continued to play the role of important self-directed developmental curriculum.
Coop’s Youth Part 6 – Coping Mechanisms
Many of the events of the outside world came into our home on the little twelve-inch black-and-white TV in my mom’s bedroom. As such she tuned in to the 1968 Democratic Convention in late August of that year. As part of her continuing effort to connect with the academic community in our university town, she was getting into liberal politics, particularly around opposition to the Vietnam War. Often her companion watching TV, we both watched as events inside the convention hall were upstaged by the young people in the streets, protesting and battling with the police. I for one was struck by the courage of the kids in the street and felt a solidarity with them, though I did not know if I had the courage to demonstrate so brazenly like that and risk the wrath of the adult authorities.