T. was, or still remains, a friend. As a child he was quite imaginative. During fifth grade sleepovers at his house, we would play until dawn, composing elaborate battles on the floor and shelves with plastic or metal soldiers. The most impressive toy was a metal spring loaded cannon that shot crumpled tin foil bombs, maybe about 3 feet. Towards the wee hours we would eventually sleep. Looking up there were WW2 bombers hanging from strings on the ceiling--ones with shark mouths and double fuselages. T also had a working steam engine--one put in some burnable playdo like substance. The engine would heat up, and with a few encouraing flicks of the finger on the round shiny thing attached to the piston, the engine would enthusiastically whirl away. About that time, fifth grade, we sometimes discussed, for the entire, on phone the whole of Star Trek, trading observations. We made a movie at this time modeled after Dark Shadows, with a decrepit camera. My part, I recall, was falling down dead into a hole, which I did several times. Some friends from the neighborhood, around Lincoln avenue in Southern Rockville center, provided encouragement and advice. Dark Shadows, incidently, was also a daily viewing ritual. At that juncture Barnabus Collins, a dapper, hipster dressed vampire very much in fashion with the wide lapels and sidburns of the day, was walling up the hypocritical Reverand Trask. Reverand Trask was everything that was unpopular at that time--hypocrasy, judgemental authority, arbitrary adult power. He wasn't quite wearing a peace button, but could have been.
About that time, we raided a junkyard and carried away an old refrigerator and some fluorescent lights for use on the project. The projects could be real, such as shocking ourself, or fantastical, such as making space age weaponry. In his workshop garage, T. was making a spaceship while I made a cannon that would shoot an electron charge. My cannon was built of an electrical coil gotten from the refrigerator plus some other things randomly attached. We talked as if these contraptions would work. There was a certain "as if" quality about the whole endeavor. But didn't those wires looked thick and powerful. We did plug it in and a lot of smoke ensued.
In class, T drew battle scenes--tanks, explosions, each bombs trajectory indicated by a series of dashes. There were also rows of and bombers dropping torpedo like figures, rows of them falling, angling back to account for the forward movement of the plane. And electronic drawings--resisters and capacitors. It can truly be said that the corner of the library with the electronic books was populated exclusively by us. .
In my early teen years, an early riser to avoid the censure of staying out too late, sometimes I would go to T's house early early in the morning, just as dawn was breaking.. Rocks against the window would wake him up. Then in his basement we would--probably not much except contemplate that it was so early in the morning and sort of odd to be up while the world slept, or maybe listen to music. Maybe we experimented with cigarettes, as well.
We had to be quiet lest T's father wake up. He was a tall man. He seemed stern but in retrospect must have been a remarkably tolerant and resourceful person. He was a banker and smoked a pipe and tilted his head back and looked at you, with a puff coming out the side of his mouth as if observing intently. T. spoke of him in the third person using his first name.
Another activity that T promulgated was dare-deviling with bicycles. This is chronologically a little earlier, maybe seventh grade. His bicycle was a mongrel of several--with a massive sissy bar in the back, the long sting ray handlebars, and forks stuck into each other to the front tire. Instead of a banana seat there was old fashioned saddle, which gave the contraption a dangerous and farcical look. People gasped with excitement when they saw it. There was a park where a ravine had been made by rain on the hard earth siding of a bridge. Tipping the front wheel off the cement, we would drop forward onto the hardened mood ravine, then accelerate down a chasm. Ocasionally the bicycle would, if you fell off, flip end over end down the ravine. Magically, no one ever got hurt.
Eventually T became a professional musician and chairman of a university music department. I watched him at age 14 pick up an old white Strat and a broken amp that was in my basement and soon he could mimic complicated guitarists. He played with various famous musicians of the day. To the rest of us his playing sounded perfect, but to T it sounded awful, and frustratingly wrong--he never seemed satisfied with what was coming out of the amp. The quickness with which he learned was discouraging to other musicians who had been playing a long time, and I remember one wondering, "where does he store all those songs?"
December, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment