The holidays held a flurry of encounters. I could barely keep up with the pace. One very memorable instance occurred on New Year's day at my son's house when a member of what once was our "hood" joined us for dinner. He had been one of the youngest of the "gang" led by my son Mark and quite often the victim of all the mischief that they could concoct and get away with. Persa now has his doctorate in earth sciences and remains as gracious and polite as he was then. When he was 13 he came over to help me with a TRS 80 (known as "trash 80" in the vernacular). It was one of the first small computers and required real programming on the part of it's user. That would not have been me, then or now. When I got a glimpse of the colors and designs possible, that was it, I knew what I wanted to do with that "darn machine". Persa astounded me by being extraordinarily willing to create the necessary "computerese" for us to create computer graphics. For several years we worked together and all these images , simple as they were, somehow resulted in my entering the world of collage. It didn't seem to scare him, but it certainly terrified some members of my family and my friends in the art world. If they didn't recognize it as being "what is acceptable and at least a little bit realistic" it was wrong. There are a lot of literalistic souls in this world and I find them exhausting, but like Persa, I try to remain polite.
On this New Year's day we reminisced and laughed, but we asked him why he was so willing to be the victim of all the neighborhood's wild experiments. He smiled and said that being the youngest, he was just happy to be included. We all shook our heads, but we understood. However, as we talked and told our stories, it triggered my son's very healthy store of tales to tell and he launched into a great one about one of the town's formidable English teachers who, unfortunately for her, lived near us. This story did me a world of good. It reminded me of how wonderfully right-brained children are and hey..a good story is a good story. A treasure to me as it was to Persa at the moment, especially one in which he wasn't the victim. So here it is.
Well, you just had to know her. Her name suited her...Miss Keen. She was keen eyed and keen about her civic duty. She was particularly keen about neighborhood issues. I know that she was renown as an excellent and demanding English teacher. She was a little bit frightening particularly for the kids in our neighborhood who always tread lightly around her. She scared me that's for certain. The safest thing was to avoid encountering her; difficult to do since she was so full of agendas. One issue concerning the hood and very high on her list, involved water usage. Greenbelt was a cooperative and we all shared the cost of water. She was on the watch for any persons using too much water on their lawns since she would be, in part, responsible for the bill. Fortunately, she loved to travel and during those times we breathed a sigh of relief. However, this time she had returned sporting some floppy hat she had picked up in a rice paddy somewhere.
Enter two inventive boys, friends since their sandbox days, seeking to further their studies in moving dirt and who hadn't taken Miss Keen into account , or didn't know she was back in town. Whatever-their judgement button was turned off or perhaps non-existent at their age. John's dad, Lee, was something of a landscape artist in his attentions to his lawn. He had a lovely goldfish pond that took frequent hits from a neighboring cat, namely, Charlie, my cat.
The boys decided to create some sort of dam or extension ( this part sounded very vague) to the pond or around it. But the necessary materials weren't vague. Dirt, sand, clay, plastic bottles, sticks, paper, trash and tons of it, were easily acquired from the nearby trash bin.
John and Eric began early in the morning running water from two hoses, filling the area within the growing walls connected to the pond. The walls grew and grew and the water kept running. Whenever the walls wobbled , John and Eric ran to fill and strengthen the threatening breach, shoring it up with more junk. The activity took on a maniacal tone. By late afternoon, Eric said, thousands of gallons of water had been used in what was a highly imaginative and truly ugly piece of work. Lucky for them, Miss Keen had gone shopping, slipping out her front door in the opposite direction from the boys and unfortunately or fortunately missing the shenanigans. She had gone down the common path to the Greenbelt co-op for all sort of groceries. By late afternoon, unluckily for them , she was on her way back, just as they were realizing there was "nowhere up" with the walls to go.
She was beginning the long climb up the hill with her purloined grocery basket. She wore her floppy "rice paddy" hat to complete the picture. By then some of the water had gotten away from the boys' enclosure and was running across the well done yard in a merry little stream, and down the long winding sidewalk... up which Miss Keen was struggling. You bet your life she noticed it. She and her hat were in a perfect flap as she plowed uphill toward you know who busily shoring up you know what. And they were fast at it. They had to be. A major breach was occurring at the front wall facing the sidewalk and the soon to be seen, Miss Keen.
She was , by the time she rounded the bend to Lee's yard, infused with rage and began bellowing when she spotted the two young "perps"bracing the wall in front of them with their bodies. They were wrapping both arms around it as well, struggling to save the dam. Seeing Miss Keen barrelling their way, loudly venting her ire, rattled them incredibly.
The wall began wobbling uncontrollably with Miss Keen closing in rapidly in front of them, John and Eric gave each other a long look and simply let go. Miss Keen, as I said, was no dope. She did a 180 degree turn tearing across the lawn on an angle, as several tons of water and a ton of just about everything else you can name roared past her down the hill to the Greenbelt co-op. Despicable products were strewn the entire way. The two boys had made themselves scarce. Lee's wife, just home from shopping herself, peered out the door , stepped out on the little porch with her coffee cup in her hand, and froze. When she mustered her voice, she yelled back through the open door, "Lee , have you seen what those two kids have been doing?" The boys stayed hidden in the bushes up by my house laughing hysterically.
And no, I don't know the final upshot. I don't know what Lee did. I don't know who cleaned up the mess, nor what Miss Keen did about it....and I am not sure I want to know. Actually, I felt relieved that was one adventure I had been left out of. I'd had my share.
Copyright: January 25, 2012
P.S. Happy Birthday Choo-Choo. Aren't you glad you weren't the so-called hero of this one?
