I’m four years old, sitting on the concrete front steps of our house. I like to watch the wheels go around inside the glass globe of the electricity meter sticking out of the side of our house. And listen to the ocean.

The ocean is always out there. Even when you can’t see it, you can hear it. In our town, whenever you go outdoors, or even open a window, there’s the Pacific Ocean purring like a big old cat.

Our house is made of wood. The whole outside is covered with worn wooden shakes that radiate heat when the sun shines. This is the only house my parents will ever own. I don’t know this at the time, but even when I am forty years old I will return home to visit my parents in the same house. I also don’t know that this is the only time in my life when I will have enough spare time to sit and watch the wheels go around in the power meter.

I hear my mom turn on the faucet in the kitchen. I look up and see her through the window at the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes. My mom is real pretty. She has beautiful brown eyes the same color as her hair. She is, as usual, smoking a cigarette, and looking sort of serious. I decide to go inside and do something funny.

Before I open the door I fall to my knees, and drag myself across the linoleum floor, like a legionnaire dying of thirst in the desert.

"I needs me spinach," I croak.

Mom walks calmly to the refrigerator and pulls out an open can of spinach, kept for just such occasions. I chew feebly at first, then faster, and jump up and down Popeye in the cartoons.

We are an odd family.

My dad is a doctor. Everybody in town is always telling me how he saved their life, cured their cold, or delivered their baby. This is back in the days when doctors made house calls. Dad is always dashing off in the middle of meals, carrying his little black bag. To this day both my parents still hate the phone.

I think it’s so glamorous. My favorite memory is of a Coast Guard helicopter landing on the beach behind our house, Dad running across the lawn with his black bag to aid some ailing sailor or fisherman.

We had a dog, a dalmatian named Sindoo, at the time. It seemed like Sindoo was always in trouble - chasing cars, growling at people.

Every time we sat down to eat, Sindoo would scratch at the front door to get out. My two older brothers, Orman and Tooey, allow me the honor of letting her in and out, which is practically every time I lift a forkful of food to my lips.

Dad decided it would make things a whole lot easier if he taught Sindoo to ring the doorbell. He gave her a dog biscuit every time she pushed the doorbell. Then the dalmatian kept ringing the doorbell every time she wanted a dog biscuit, and we had to untrain her.

One night at dinner the doorbell rang, only it wasn’t Sindoo. It was Officer Maltman, the Highway Patrolman. Dad went out on the porch to talk to him. "Evening, Doc," the policeman said.

"Hello, George," my dad said.

Officer Maltman rubbed his index finger along the side of his nose. "Doc, Helen Malone said your dog’s been killing her guinea hens…"

"Sindoo?" my dad replied, like he was real surprised. "Not Sindoo, George! Sindoo would never do that!"

At which point old Sindoo, herself, walked up the sidewalk, with a dead guinea hen hanging out of her mouth.

Somehow, my dad got off with a warning!

But the very next day Sindoo came home carrying the muddy carcass of a cat. It was Mrs. Malone’s prize Persian cat, Wobbles.

Dad was sure Sindoo was history after that, so he took the dirty dead cat into the bathroom and bathed it in the sink. Then he blew her hair dry with a hair dryer and put Wobbles on Mrs. Malone’s front porch, curled up like the cat died in her sleep.

The next morning Mrs. Malone stepped outside to collect the newspaper, took one look at Wobbles, and fainted. Luckily, she had a doctor living nearby.

"Great Ceasar’s ghost!" Mrs. Malone exclaimed after Dad revived her with smelling salts. "I buried Wobbles under the rose bush in the back yard last Tuesday!"

Before my dad began remodeling the house so we each had our own bedrooms, my brothers and I all slept in the same big brass bed on the third floor. Orman and Tooey put me in the middle. When they started one of their nightly slug-fests, I always got caught in the crossfire. Some mornings my arms were practically purple.

It was the perfect place to tell scary stories - with the wind whistling and the ocean roaring outside the windows. Tooey, the middle son, was a natural born story teller. He had a blonde crew cut (everyone had crew cuts then), bright brown eyes (like a racoons, I always thought), and was the smallest of us boys. Tooey never let me forget he was older, though. Even as adults he still insists on his predominance (he is a lawyer).

Anyway, the story he told that scared me the most was all about Mad Mr. Elliot, the town barber. My brother said he cut off his wife’s head with his razor sharp shears and buried the body in a cranberry bog behind his barber shop.

Shortly after sharing these atrocities, Mom asked my brothers to take me over for a haircut. In those days, a haircut only cost fifty cents.

As Orman and Tooey walked me over to the barber shop (which was in a garage across the highway from the lumber yard a few blocks from our house) Tooey told me that the barber had trimmed Orman’s ears with his razor sharp scissors - they had been as big as an elephants’ before!

My brothers had to practically push me through the front door of the barber shop, and when I saw Mad Mr. Elliot in person, I had to suppress a whimper. He was about ten feet tall, and did not have a single hair on his head - not even eyebrows!

He put a board across the arms of the barber chair, and once I was in place, wrapped a white sheet around me so I couldn’t get away. The barber shop smelled strongly of hair tonic. My brothers sat in the waiting area, smiling sadistically at my predicament.

When the barber came up behind me and clicked on the electric shears, the sudden buzzing scared me so bad I wet my pants. Then I had to sit in utter misery, my damp secret concealed, until the moment Mr. Elliot whisked the white sheet away at the completion of his services.

I have hated haircuts ever since.

Every other house in our neighborhood was a summer house, boarded up from September through Spring, or occupied only on weekends. There was a kid across the street, I remember, a five year old from Chehalis who let me know right away that coming from a larger town and being a year older than me put him in charge.

I heard his mom yelling at him all the time, "Patrick! Patrick Brown!" It seemed like he was in trouble a lot.

One of the first times I ever played with him, he had me climb under his house where he showed me a pack of cigarettes he had stolen from his mother. He threatened to tell my parents if I didn’t smoke one with him, but I ran home crying instead.

One day Patrick Brown came over and asked me if I wanted to go down to the ocean. There was a foot path that went from our back yard, wound through the sand dunes, to the flat hard dark sand beside the surf. I had never gone that far without a grown up before.

Patrik and I invented a game called "Grandma!" We pretended the ocean was our Grandma, who we were running away from. We would run after the receding surf, waving our arms, until the wave rolled back in, when we would run away screaming, "You can’t catch us, Gramdma!"

Boy, the surf was loud when you got close to it. We were both hollering our chant, and Sindoo was barking at our heels.

It was probably a good thing we were making so much noise because one time when my turn came to run after a wave it turned on me, and the next thing I knew I was in over my head in freezing salt water. I struggled to get to the surface, but it was as if something had a hold on my feet and wouldn’t let me up. I knew then what my parents were talking about when they warned us about the undertow.

Suddenly, two hands plunged through the murky depths and lifted me to the surface, sputtering and gasping for breath.

I always thought it was a miracle that my oldest brother, Orman, happened to be walking on the beach, heard Sindoo barking, and saved me from drowning. I rode home on my big brother’s shoulders. For punishment, my mom made me get into my pajamas and into bed at four o’clock in the afternoon, and when my dad got home he gave me a big glug of some nasty tasting medicine. That pretty effectively ended my adventures with Patrick Brown, but that was all right because the best part about living at the beach was that there was always a fast turnaround of tourists to do things with.

Every Saturday night my mom made hamburgers and deep fried French fries, and we all got to carry our dinner into the windowless room at the back of our house which we called the TV room, to watch Perry Mason. Normally we kids weren’t allowed to eat any place except at the dinner table, but Perry Mason was my parents favorite television show, and it came on late enough that Dad would be back from his evening house calls so we could all eat together. Nobody knew it, but these family nights were sheer terror to me.

Perry Mason scared me. All the actors had big black shadows under their eyes, and all the characters ever did was argue, frown, and shout at one another. I even thought the theme music was scary. The only part of the program I did enjoy was Perry’s secretary, Della Street, but her appearances were in my opinion entirely too brief.

So I suppose I should have been grateful that I was appointed the gopher. No one else was willing to tear themselves away from the compelling courtroom cases long enough to run back and forth to the kitchen for ketchup, drink refills, or to let the dog in and out. So I went. Unbeknowst to the rest of the family, there was something sinister right outside the TV room even more monstrous than Paul Drake’s resemblance to Frankenstein.

Between the TV room and the kitchen was a short hallway that took a right turn where the staircase leading upstairs emptied, a long, dark, narrow stairway.

I had a recurring nightmare, in which a monster materialized at the top of the stairs, oozing out of the light fixture on the second floor landing like a genie from a lantern. It had a huge head, a wide, wiggly mouth, big, bulging bloodshot eyes - the creature closely resembled, in fact, the cartoon monsters of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, from Orman’s hot rod magazines. The monster would fly down the stairs, chasing me, laughing like mad - but I always woke up just before I was captured.

That’s why I sprinted to and from the kitchen as fast as my feet would carry me, holding my breath, with my eyes squeezed shut. It’s a wonder no one ever asked why I returned from those missions so out of breath.

I did not know what to do, or who to tell. My parents were still upset about the fire I accidentally set in the kitchen, after dreaming that cartoon characters cut from the front of a cereal box came to life and did a dance in the oven when baked at three fifty. So I suffered in silence.

Well, one night I dreamt that the monster was chasing me again, only instead of waking myself up I let the dream play itself out - I let the monster catch me. And guess what? The monster turned out to be as jovial as Captain Kangaroo!

So I learned a valuable lesson - how to control my dreams.

But I never did get over my fear of Raymond Burr.

Until I started grade school, I spent every day alone with my mom. We were good buddies.

While Mom cleaned the house, prepared meals, or entertained her best friends Verla Monnes and Pauline Doupe at the kitchen table, I would sit on the linoleum floor in a patch of sunlight from the window over the sink. I would either stack the tin cans from the low cupboard beneath the oven in tall towers and castles that I’d then knock down, or play records on my red plastic phonograph. My favorites were the themes from Bonanza and Maverick, the Jimminy Cricket safety song (which I can still sing every word of today), and "Heartbreak Hotel."

Sometimes my mom’s friends would be there, smoking cigarettes around the kitchen table. Pauline Doupe was the wife of Marshal Doupe, who ran Doupe Brother’s Department Store with his brother Charles. Verla Monnes was married to Will Monnes, who had a real estate office right under the traffic light downtown. I loved it when Verla or Pauline fussed over me, and told my mom what a well behaved boy I was. They both had pretty hair and curvy figures.

In the afternoons, Mom liked to take a nap on the living room couch. While she rested, she’d have me take a nap in the TV room. But most the time I’d fool around in there - I didn’t need as much sleep as Mom.

Once I was playing in the TV room while Mom slept in the other room. The TV room walls were covered with acoustic tiles, which were supposed to keep the noise down. I was pretending that a carpenter came to fix the house. I took a coat hanger out of the hall closet and pulled off half the acoustic tiles on one wall.

"Mommy! Look what the carpenter did!" I cried aloud.

"What carpenter?" my mom asked sleepily, entering the room.

When she saw the damage I had done, she called my dad at the clinic. When he got home that night I got one of the few spankings I can remember him handing out. Later, when I heard my parents retell the story to company, and they all laughed, I decided it was worth the licking.

My favorite part of the day was when we went to the post office. The post office was about ten blocks from our house, next to Henderson’s grocery store.

Now, the post office was a small, square, windowless building covered with ugly yellow ochre asbestos shingles. Inside, three walls were lined with mail boxes. Ours was box 114. It had two little wheels you turned with a combination, and a little window. If the window was empty, then you didn’t have any mail that day. I hated an empty window.

Right next door was Henderson’s Food Store. The sign outside said, "Henderson’s - the friendly store." This was true. You didn’t go to Henderson’s if you were in a hurry!

Joe Henderson, the proprietor, was one of the nicest people I have ever known. His store had wooden floors, a pickle barrel, a long cooler full of popsicles, Dixie Cups, and ice cream sandwiches, and three twirley racks of comic books.

Sometimes Joe would place me up on the counter while Mom shopped and feed me chunks of cheddar cheese from a big wheel imported from Wisconsin.

"Alvin," he would say kindly, "you are some fellow!"

Once my mom bought me a bag of Planter’s peanuts; cost: 5 cents. On the back of the bag was an ad for a Genuine Mr. Peanut Silver Spoon. For some reason, a Mr. Peanut spoon lured me like a snake charmer does a cobra. I begged my mom to let me send away for one.

The next morning, starting about seven a.m., I started pestering my mom to take me to the post office. When we stopped at the store I told Joe Henderson all about the Mr. Peanut sterling silver spoon I was expecting. It was all I thought about for weeks.

Finally, after driving my poor family and anyone else who would listen crazy for two and a half months, Mom opened box 114 one morning and handed me a small brown box with my name on it.

Something didn’t feel right. The box didn’t weigh as much as a sterling silver Mr. Peanut spoon should have. When I opened the package, I discovered a silver spoon, all right - a silver plastic spoon. My Mr. Peanut spoon was molded plastic! I was only four years old, but learned an important lesson in the American free enterprise system that I would never completely recover from.

Back then, when Tooey and I were both small enough, we took our baths together in the same bathtub, a bathtub with four feet!

Tooey took being the middle brother seriously, as seriously as he took everything. Despite Orman's imperfections (he seemed sort of thick sometimes, and had a bad temper), Tooey stayed faithful to Orman because he was the oldest, deserving of unwavering loyalty, that I didn’t always share. Tooey also assigned himself my mentor -- at birth, apparently. He was my teacher, THE authority. I remember him teaching me the alphabet in the bathtub, and then the sounds of the letters so that I knew how to read before I even started kindergarten. Tooey adopted phonics years before the public schools did.

Tooey had great concentration. He would look at something and pay serious attention to it, whether it was a stick or a pine cone or the sunset or a stranger in an airport or our neighbor’s dog or a comic book, that object had Tooey’s serious attention. He stuck to things. And he never forgot anything. In fact, he remembers all these funny anecdotes about me that I don’t even remember -- even though I’m in them! Like the time he claims our family was in a fancy restaurant and the waiter brought Bing cherries to our table floating in a big bowl of water, and I distinguished myself by bobbing for them. Tooey always felt that if a story was good enough, it was all right to tell it. Well, I guess my whole family is that way, now that I think about it.

Human Suffering and Loss Dept. - I have been stuck for three days on the next installment, about a visit from my grandfather, whom I also feared. While my writing stalled (after all, hadn’t the last five segments centered around subjects I feared - I mean, how fearful a four year old was I?), I watched television. Now, I can’t explain this (like it would really take Freud to explain it), but every Leave It To Beaver segment where June and Ward showed understanding and sympathy for Beaver’s latest screw-up, every Andy Griffith Show wherein Opie is absolved for a misdemeanor, any Home Improvement episode where Jill and Tim work out their marital and familial differences so amicably (within thirty minutes!) - I inexplicably burst into tears!!! (Jeez, I even get teary over Friends episodes.)

I dreaded visits by my grandfather. I know that doesn’t sound very nice, but to be perfectly honest, my Grandpa Weaver scared me.

How do I put this? Grandpa Weaver was from Arkansas. He was rich - something about a fortune in Champion Sparkplug stock and owning several apartment buildings in Little Rock, Arkansas. The ring on his finger sparkled with diamonds. He looked like William Powell and his middle name (as far as I was concerned) was Intimidating. I was the only member of our family who did not propose sainthood where my mother’s father was concerned.

Anyway, it was Christmas Eve, 1957. Dad was going to drive to Portland to pick up Grandpa Weaver at the airport. I went; so did Tooey (he positively worshipped Grandpa). Now, normally our Christmas Eve ritual consisted of Dr. Egg visiting the peninsula nursing homes with his three sons, a basket of presents for the nursing staff, and our boyish good looks and unaffected good cheer a holiday placebo for the elderly occupants. Afterwards, we would always drive down to Ilwaco (a neighboring fishing town), passing Black Lake, which the volunteer fire department had decorated the distant shore of with a brilliant display of Christmas tree lights, before returning home always just moments after Santa Clause left our Christmas presents under the tree.

Not that this year wasn’t without it’s share of holiday wonders. On the five hour drive to Portland International Airport (in those days, the roads between Seaview and Longview were gravel) in Dad’s Valiant station wagon, we followed Santa’s progress on the radio (there were reports of a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer blipping the Coast Guard’s radar screens), AND we encountered real snowflakes (signaling our first white Christmas, just like the Bing Crosby song)!

But when Grandpa got in the car he made us turn the radio off. He wouldn’t let us stop once all the way home, and even though Dad thanked Ivan profusely for providing the loan that allowed us to own a luxurious Valiant station wagon, Grandpa criticized the comfort of our car the whole way home!

When we finally arrived home, all Grandpa Weaver seemed interested in was a glass of brown liquid. Of course, my brothers and I were more interested in all the brightly wrapped presents Santa Clause had left under the Christmas tree (according to my mom, we missed his Ho-ho Holiness only by a matter of minutes!).

Traditionally, we were allowed to open one present early, on Christmas Eve, and save the rest for Christmas morning. Mom and Dad usually stacked the deck to make sure we picked something entertaining for the evening. So Orman, Tooey, and I were particularly primed by the time we assembled in the living room.

We had to wait a while longer while Grandpa emptied the brown liquid from his glass, requested a refill, and after a leisurely sip, sat staring through his glass of brown liquid first at the fireplace, then at the twinkling Christmas tree.

Grandpa Weaver was one of the few people who called my dad "Oliver". Most of the people in town called him "Doc". My mom called him "Obie" (for his first and middle initials). The sign on Dad’s clinic read "Dr. O. B. Egg, MD." As long as I’m dealing with details, I should also mention that Sindoo, our errant Dalmatian, had disappeared after another run in with the authorities in October.

"Oliver, go get my bags," Grandpa ordered in his Southern accent; he pronounced "bags" with three syllables.

When my brothers and I jumped up to follow Dad down to the basement, he inexplicably turned on us. "Stay!" he insisted. "Sit!"

We sat.

To diffuse the situation somewhat, Mom placed a plate of Henderson’s special imported Wisconsin cheddar cheese and crackers on the coffee table, poured more brown liquid in Grandpa’s glass (as well as her own glass, out in the kitchen), and put the Burl Ives’ Christmas album on the hi-fi.

By that time Dad was back with the bags. Grandpa, seeming to us boys, at least, to be moving in slow motion, carefully removed the airline labels from each suitcase handle, one by one, with a miniature pearl handled pocket knife he apparently carried for that purpose, unlocked each suitcase and searched through their contents for about twenty minutes apiece, methodically unfolding and refolding every article of clothing on the way to extracting a pile of presents wrapped in bright, shiny gift wrapping paper and fancy ribbons from Little Rock, Arkansas’ finest department stores.

Naturally, Mom made a big fuss over the pretty packages, which resulted in our getting Grandpa’s gifts as our one token Christmas Eve opening! Grandpa kept telling us to be careful, so as not to tear the fancy gift wrapping paper. When we finally got them opened, my brothers and I each had matching sweaters from Neiman Marcus.

While the Egg brothers stood there, trying to appear enthusiastic over our new matching wardrobe, Dad disappeared. A moment later he came clomping back up the wooden basement stairs. A funny clattering came from the kitchen, claws skidding across linoleum, before a black blur cleared the end of the couch and a puppydog skidded in our midst!

Eloise (our mom named her) was black with a white blaze between her eyes, a white throat and belly, and white on the tip of her tail. Her eyes were the same shade of brown as all of ours, and she had that peculiar puppy smell. Now, back to her eyes - they seemed like they had seen a lot, even though she wasn’t that old.

Anyway, she jumped all over us, licking our faces and fingers, then wandered over and whizzed right in front of where Grandpa sat on the couch, nursing his drink. He frowned down at the dog, but if it bothered her, she didn’t show it. Eloise came back and sat down next to me. I smiled, all innocence, and petted her head. We had bonded.

Christmas morning, Orman and Tooey got coonskin caps. Dad got a banjo! Dad gave Mom a ruby ring; then Grandpa gave her a fox stole that still had the head attached, biting its own tail!

Me, I got a jack-in-the-box. I had never seen one before. Mom and Dad knelt down on the floor, and showed me how to turn the crank and play "Pop Goes The Weasel." When the clown popped out, it surprised the heck out of Eloise, who was looking on with keen canine concentration!

A few days after Christmas, my mom asked Grandpa to drive me down to the pool. I was taking swimming lessons at the public swimming pool, a result of the Patrick Brown incident.

I felt nervous, all alone in the car with Grandpa Weaver. He was particularly cranky in the early afternoons, before he had his first glass of brown liquid at 5:00. I wished Eloise were with me.

Grandpa stopped at the end of the driveway, and asked, "Which direction?"

I pointed toward town. "That way!"

Grandpa said, "No, I mean left, or right?"

"That way," I repeated, pointing. I hadn’t learned left or right yet.

But my grandfather insisted I learn them right then. "Left, or right?" he insisted.

So I guessed. "Right?"

Unfortunately, it was the wrong guess. Grandpa pulled out in the opposite direction from the public swimming pool!

"Left!" I cried.

He turned up another street, stopped at the stop sign, and said, "Left, or right."

We ended up going in circles for about forty five minutes, and arrived late for my swimming lesson. I had a hard time not crying. I still was confused about this right and left business.

To this day, I tense up whenever anyone asks, "Left, or right?"

Chapter Two: Nineteen Sixties

Now I was six. My universe was expanding.

I was in the first grade at George Washington Elementary School, a big, wooden, creaky, old two-story building painted a queer shade of green. There was a wide stairway leading up the front of the building that no one was allowed to use because they were too dangerous. Naturally I ran right up them my very first day and got yelled at.

You had to be careful on the stairs inside the school, too, because the wooden steps were practically worn out from so many kids traipsing up and down over the years. One time Billy Herman, a fifth grader, clomped downstairs too hard, broke clean through, and got stuck under the stairs; he had to sit in the dark for an hour before the principal, Mr. Van Over, and Sven, the janitor, figured out a way to get him out.

The first and second grades were downstairs, as well as the kitchen and the lunchroom (which had monkey bars on the walls!). The older kids, who included both my big brothers, were upstairs. There was a big bell at the top of the stairs, and a sixth grader ran out and pulled the string that rang it for recesses, lunchtime, and at the end of the day. I couldn’t wait until some day I was old enough to ring the bell.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Peterson. She had pretty brown hair, which she piled on top of her head, and glasses that were shaped like cats’ eyes. She smiled all the time, with plenty of teeth.

I liked her a lot. I always tried to do exactly what Mrs. Peterson taught me to do, so she would really like me, too. She seems particularly pleased with my being able to read so well. That is because Tooey taught me the alphabet and how to sound out words while we were in the bathtub together. But I couldn’t tell my teacher that!

When Mrs. Peterson read us stories she did the voices of all the characters, even if they were animals! My favorite books were Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel and Curious George. In the afternoon she played the piano and we all sang. I like the way her legs looked when she sat on the piano stool. To this day I still remember one of the songs:

                I like monkeys

                They are cute

                Riding on horseback

                In their purple suits!

There were only fifteen kids in the first grade. We sat in really tiny chairs and wrote with pencils the size of tree trunks. For the most part, we would stay together all the way through high school.

Nicky Folger and Ron Krebs lived next to each other in the swampy part of Seaview, and would remain partners in crime throughout life. They were famous for, among other things, inventing the game 'pantyhose', which they tormented Jo Ann Henderson with relentlessly. Jo Ann's dad owned the grocery store, and was a deacon at the Presbyterian Church. She had red hair, and always got straight A's - reminding me of the character Margaret, in the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

Anyway, the way you played 'pantyhose' was, no matter what anyone asked you, you answered, "Pantyhose!" For example:

Jo Ann Henderson: "Nicky, how old are you?"

Nick Folger: "Pantyhose!"

Jo Ann Henderson: "I said, how old are you?"

Nick Folger: "Pantyhose!"

Jo Ann Henderson: "Mrs. Peterson!!!"

Steve Nickles lived right across the street from the school, which made him special in no ones eyes but his own. He was always combing his hair with a pocket comb.

Gabe Meany, whose father owned the lumber yard, could always be depended on for information; even as a first grader, she could confirm any rumor about anyone in the school, or for that matter, about anyone in town. She could also recite the TV schedule and knew all the songs on the Top Forty. Her best friend was Diane Pickles, who was very short, but the most ferocious fighter on the playground. Diane's dad was the milkman. In those days the milkman used to come into our kitchen and leave milk in the refrigerator while we were still asleep upstairs, if you can image. Diane had a very 'mature' vocabulary (she swore a lot!). She and Gabe were always whispering secrets to one another.

My best buddy was Willie Marsh. He was a chubby kid, hence his nickname: Marshmallow. Within weeks of school starting Marshmallow and I were inseparable, bike-riding fanatics.

Ricky Rice was naturally gifted athletically, but not exactly a great student. He was feisty, funny, good at getting along with people and particularly popular with females, the captain of every team sport, and future president of the student body of Ilwaco High School. Rick was always fun to be around.

Cydni Cleavey always had a funny affect on me. I sort of had a crush on her, but was still too young to know what a crush was. She had a really nice laugh. Her best friend, Sherry Maidenhead, was always blowing bubbles with Bazooka bubble gum, which she was asked to spit out on average six times a day.

Filling out the class roster were Galen Doughty, a kid I only remember because of his funny name (he moved away in the middle of second grade - I think Gabe told us that Galen's dad embezzled money from the bank); Debbie Carpenter, a snively, freckled girl who always liked me a lot more than I liked her; and finally Carol Stanway, who was an only child and always seemed more adult, more worldly, somehow, than even our teacher.

Then there was Dennis Holtz. Dennis was always in trouble. Dennis was about a foot taller and much more muscular than most third graders. His parents had a huge dairy farm on the edge of town, so he had been raised with hard work, milking cows, and bore the mysterious distinction of being adopted. Dennis didn't just find trouble, trouble sought him out! He probably spent more time getting hollered at by Mr. Van Over in the furnace room than he spent in the classroom in the eight years it took him to finish six grades.

Every day at 11:10, Mrs. Peterson walked the first graders single file down the hall to the lunchroom. We broke into two groups: those lucky kids who ‘brought their lunch’ peeled off into the lunchroom, took their seats at a picnic table, and started eating. The rest of us had to line up for ‘hot lunch’, served by Mrs. Warner.

The only good thing about waiting in line was having your ticket punched by Mary Somela. Mary was a sixth grader. I held all upperclassmen in awe (with the exception of my brothers, of course). Mary Somela was, in my eyes, as pretty as Donna Reed, or even Ingrid Bergman. She always smiled so nicely at me – probably because the mere sight of her made me blush as bright as a beet.

Once I got past Mary, and could breathe again, I took a tin tray and moved down to the serving window. Mrs. Warner, the cook, was about four feet tall, and wore a hair net. She had to stand on a milk crate to ladle lunch on our tin trays. She always had a huge grin that reminded me of the picture of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, which Mrs. Peterson was reading us. Mrs. Warner always had her AM radio tuned to KISN, a Portland station that played Elvis Presley, Dion and the Belmonts, Ricky Nelson, Chuck Berry, Chubby Checkers, and this new thing, surf music.

The coolest kids in the school were the ones working in the kitchen. You had to be a sixth grader for this honor. Mary Moon (about half the girls in the school were named Mary) and Millicent Meany (Gabe’s oldest sister – the Meany’s were a big sprawling family who were related to about half the population of Long Beach) were Mrs. Warner’s serving assistants. They both lived in my neighborhood, which should have qualified me for bigger portions or something... but they were sixth graders, and rarely acknowledged my lowly existence. Even cooler were the dish washers – Don Houston, Butch Jasperson, and Duck Meany, who were famous for their daring deeds, such as pushing a donkey in the emergency exit of the movie theater downtown, blocking the screen.

For thirty cents we got a tray of good government approved creamed-tuna-on-biscuits, or maybe meatloaf, or sloppy joes, boiled vegetables, chocolate pudding, peach or pear halves slathered in a sugary syrup, and stacks of buttered white bread guaranteed to have you bouncing off the walls twenty minutes later. Was it any wonder kids were always falling asleep in the afternoons? But Mrs. Warner always wore such a fiendishly friendly grin on her face as she spooned out this stuff (it sort of reminded me of the delirious expression our dog Eloise wore after inhaling her canned dog food every evening); who was I, a mere first grader, to critique the cuisine? Besides, I wasn’t that interested in eating. I liked to run from table to table, shmoozing.

One feature our lunchroom had that made it unique was wooden monkey bars built up the sides of each wall. Kids would suddenly spring up the wooden rungs, hang by one arm, and drop down again – sometimes smack dab in the middle of a crowded picnic table, scattering diners in all directions.

In another corner of the room was a line of garbage cans. My brother Orman was one of the ‘scrapers’, who along with his best friends Greg Reese and Lenny Cox, collected our utensils and, armed only with rubber spatulas, emptied our trays. They had to wear plastic aprons and white paper hats, a small price to pay for the privilege of banging the tin trays against the inside of metal garbage cans an hour a day.

For sheer volume, the bedlam of the lunchroom could have drowned out the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The picnic tables so tightly packed together were crammed with the constituents of every clique – groups of boys and girls of all grades (seldom sitting together, but often screaming or throwing things at one another), basketball groups, baseball groups, student government groups, cheerleader groups, and splinter groups who didn’t fit in anywhere else. No one was exactly sitting still, either. Many major food spills occurred each day. Poor Sven, the janitor, would stand sadly in the corner, leaning on his mop handle, waiting to be needed.

How I wanted a lunch pail. For some reason, I thought the kids who brought their lunches were glamorous. My mom had explained that our family could afford for me to eat hot lunch, that it was a privilege. Yet I would go in the coat room every morning and cast my eyes on the brown paper bags and colorful lunchboxes sitting on the shelves, the aroma of peanut butter, tuna fish, and ripening bananas enticing me, intoxicating me.

Steve Nickles had a Davey Crocket lunch pail. Diane Pickles had a Mickey Mouse Club lunch pail – with Annette! Cydni Cleavey had Felix the Cat, Gabe Meany had Howdy Doody, and even Debbie Carpenter, whom I considered quite uncool otherwise, had Woody Woodpecker. I wanted to join this exclusive club.

Every day I begged my mom until finally she relented. The next time we went to the store, she said I could get a lunch box.

Henderson’s Food Store wasn’t like the supermarkets we have today. There wasn’t quite the selection. In fact, I only had few models to choose from. One of those was a plain black lunch box. And there was simply no way I was taking the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans model. That was for sissies.

"Why don’t you get the Dr. Kildare lunchpail?" my mom suggested.

"Aw, Mom!" I moaned.

"Because your dad is a doctor," she explained.

"Aw, Mom!"

Mrs. Henderson, who was a very religious person, leaned over the counter and said, "It’s really too bad they don’t make a Jesus Christ lunch pail, don’t you think?"

"Or John the Baptist," Mom replied, dryly.

But my mind was already made up. I had my sights on the Elvis Presley lunch pail. Both my mom and Mrs. Henderson rolled their eyes over my preference. I didn’t care, though. I was going to be one hip first grader! Even my brothers would be impressed.

The next morning I woke my mom up about an hour before sunrise to pack my lunch. I watched very closely as she made my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Don’t cut it!" I exclaimed. "Don’t cut it! That’s right, just fold it over. When you cut the sandwich, all the flavor leaks out," I told her.

My mother eyed me warily and lit a cigarette. She was not what I would characterize a morning person.

Mom wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper, which is all they had to wrap things with in those days. She filled the thermos with milk and placed it inside the lunch pail with a banana and a paper napkin. It looked quite cozy in there.

"There you go, Buster," she said, snapping the lid shut.

All the way to the bus stop I was singing, "You ain’t nothin’ but a lunchbox!"

Our bus stop was in front of the Moon’s house, three doors down the street. Charlie Moon made his living painting pictures. He liked kids a lot – in fact, he and his wife, Maureen, had seven of their own! The Moon’s bumpy back yard was a favorite place for the neighborhood kids to play football. Their driveway doubled as a basketball court.

Between their house and Charlie’s shop was a big Tarzan swing; their eldest son, Jim (who was in the military) shinnied up the tallest tree on the property and attached a long rope with a stick handle on the end you stood on. You climbed up a ladder to a fifteen foot tower and jumped, Tarzan style – the rope swung you way out across their lawn and over the street. It was exhilarating fun, and also quite dangerous, but nobody worried about that in those days.

Anyway, we were all playing basketball while waiting for the bus: my brothers, several of the Moon girls (there were four all together), a couple Meany’s, and a Fink, I think. I put my lunchpail down and when I wasn’t looking Mrs. Moon backed over it with her car!

She didn’t apologize, either. Smashed my Elvis Presley lunch box (and thermos!) flatter than a pancake, and called me a ninny for leaving it in the driveway.

Of course, all the kids were rolling on the ground, laughing hysterically at my tragedy. And there I was, confronted with the most awkward social situation I could conceive of. My beloved Elvis Presley lunch pail lay squashed on the asphalt, leaking milk. I could have cried. Instead, I lowered my eyelids and adopted the cool, semi-detached expression I’d studied from the movie poster of James Dean’s East Of Eden that Tooey had hanging in our room.

"C'est la vie," I said. I borrowed that from a Chuck Berry song.

To my astonishment, laughing the matter off in this manner paid off handsomely. Boarding the school bus, all the kids kept saying, "C'est la vie," over and over. I’d launched a buzz phrase that I heard in the hallways and was tossed around the playground for weeks!

The best part was later that morning when I took my place back in the ‘hot lunch’ line. When Mary Somela took my lunch ticket, she smiled fondly at me and said, "Hey, Alvin. C'est la vie!"

We were sitting in a circle of miniscule chairs, and Mrs. Peterson was flashing her flash cards.

I didn't like math much. Instead of paying attention, I was looking at the picture of George Washington that hung over the blackboard. Every room in the school had the same portrait. You've probably seen it, where the bottom third of the picture is covered with clouds because George Washington died or something before the artist finished. I was wondering why the artist couldn't have just painted the rest of George Washington's clothes from memory, it shouldn't have been that hard to do...

Mrs. Peterson held up another flash card, and pointed to the numbers. "Three plus three. Who knows the sum of three plus three?"

Jo Ann Henderson waved her hand frantically. "I know! I know the answer, Mrs. Peterson!"

Mrs. Peterson called on Steve Nickles instead. Steve carefully pulled a pocket comb through his hair, stood up, put the comb back in his pocket, and answered, "Six."

"Very good, Steve!" Mrs. Peterson turned the flash card over, and slowly swept it back and forth for everyone to identify the answer.

"Why does the six have a line under it?" Debbie Carpenter asked. She had recently assigned herself the Class Question Asker.

"That's to show it's a six," Mrs. Peterson replied. "If you turn it upside down, it looks like what?"

"Nine!" several students chimed.

"Hey, that's sort of like Tom Mot, in the third grade," Ricky Rice said. "His name is the same backwards and forwards!"

"Well, sort of," Mrs. Peterson conceded. "Okay, who knows this one: zero plus one?"

Jo Ann Henderson started waving both hands before Mrs. Peterson was even finished speaking. "Please, Mrs. Peterson! Please!! I know the answer!!!"

"Thank you, Jo Ann. I'm sure you do. How about you, Ronny?" Mrs. Peterson said.

"I don't know," Ronny Krebs said, so slowly that it sounded like every word in his sentence had a period after it.

"I know! I know!" Jo Ann shouted.

Mrs. Peterson bent closer toward Ronny Krebs. "See, Ronny? You have one," she said, holding up one finger, "and you add zero," she continued, making an O with the fingers of her other hand. "What have you got?"

Ronny thought about this several long seconds. "Zero?" he asked.

Jo Ann could barely contain herself. She jumped out of her chair and chanted, "I know it! I know it!!!"

"Nicky Folger, can you help Ronny with the answer?" Mrs. Peterson asked, kindly.

"Pantyhose!" Nicky piped.

Just then the door opened and our Principal, Mr. Van Over, waved Mrs. Peterson over. Mr. Van Over had red hair, which he wore in a military hair cut. He always looked like a war hero to me; or maybe it was just that he resembled Ernest Borgnine.

Mrs. Peterson went over and they started whispering.

"It's one!" Jo Ann Henderson informed everyone in our teacher's absence. "One and zero is one! It's so easy!!!"

But no one was paying Jo Ann any attention. We were all staring at the two teachers conferring in the doorway. Standing just behind Mr. Van Over, almost completely concealed by one pant leg, clung a tiny, timid girl.

I knew who she was, of course. Shannon, the youngest of the Moon girls. She had the same crooked nose and wide mouth as her mom. What I couldn't figure was what she was doing here. Shannon was a grade ahead of me, and in all the time we'd been neighbors, she had probably only spoken to me a time or two.

"Hi, Shannon!" I called. I was only trying to be friendly.

She gave me a withering look.

After Mr. Van Over left, Mrs. Peterson escorted Shannon to an empty chair and resumed the math lesson.

Gabrielle Meany and Diane Pickles started whispering fiercely. The phrase "held back" passed around the room with the speed of lightning.

Shannon didn't say a single word all afternoon. She either hung her head so that her hair hid her eyes, or stared sullenly out the window, avoiding all eye contact with her new, unwanted classmates. When school let out, she streaked outside. Mrs. Moon was waiting out front in an antique automobile – a shiny Pierce Arrow with a fancy hood ornament. Shannon scrambled inside, scrunched down in the back seat, and drove off without so much as a glance at any of the kids standing in the school yard, staring after them with their mouths wide open.

When the dismissal bell clanged at the end of the school day, the building emptied out with the commotion of a jungle stampede. We would rather walk home than ride the school bus, even if it was raining. My brother Tooey and his friends, Freddy Meany and Herman Herman, being older and that much more advanced, would walk half a block ahead of me and my friends, Ricky Rice and Marshmallow. Freddy Meany, who was a hoodlum at birth, would throw rocks to keep us at a respectful distance.

There were several excellent trade routes to take home. By far our favorite way home was along Washington Street, past the big Baptist Church and the lumber yard, past a deserted and therefore haunted house, and through a vacant lot (there were lots of vacant lots in those days). Candy bar wrappers littered the well-worn foot path through the vacant lot, from goodies kids bought at Dell Dinger's Texaco station across the highway from there.

Ricky Rice's house was at the end of Washington Street, so he would break out of our formation just before the vacant lot and run the rest of the way home. And I mean run. Ricky was the fastest runner in our class. His arms and legs pumped with the efficiency of pistons; he moved so fast that he left a cloud of dust in his wake.

Our first stop was always Star Corner, the Texaco station/grocery store/bait shop run by Dell Dinger on the corner of 12th Street. In addition to gasoline, Dell sold bait and tackle for all the fishermen in the area, but to us kids, he was the candy man. He kept the candy counter stocked with every brand of candy bar imaginable, as well as plenty of penny candy. In those days, a dime bought a candy bar that was huge – sometimes Marshmallow and I would pitch in a nickel apiece for a Baby Ruth or Mountain Bar that would satisfy both of us (well, almost). But most of the time we bought penny candy – licorice, Bazooka Bubble Gum, wax tubes of colored sugar water, Pixie Sticks, jawbreakers, wax lips, root beer suckers, malt balls (two for a penny!). For a few cents you could get a bag of stuff that would last almost all the way home!

Now, on this particular afternoon we were walking down the Ditch Road, eating candy. We called it the Ditch Road because it had ditches dug along its sides, where the sewage from all the houses ran. It was a safe street to walk down because people didn't drive as fast as they did on the highway, which gave a kid time to get out of the way.

There were always lots of frogs croaking from the ditches along the side of the road, so Marshmallow and I decided to stop and catch some. We got down on our bellies and inched up to the ditch. The frogs all stopped croaking when they sensed us there, but we stayed still for a few seconds until the frogs started sticking their eyes above the surface of the water to look around.

That's when we pounced. Our arms shot out and grabbed in the gooey water. Then we sat up and slowly opened our clenched fists, which were dripping with slimy algae, to see if we caught anything.

"Did you get one, Alvin?" Marshmallow asked.

"Naw," I said, wiping my hands on my pants. "Did you?"

"Almost," Marshmallow said. "Come on, let's try again."

So we kept trying. It did not even occur to us that we were sticking our arms in raw untreated sewage.

"Hey, I know," Marshmallow said. "How about if I hold on to your legs? That way we can get closer to them!"

"All right!" I agreed.

Soon I was suspended out over the surface of the water. I felt a little unbalanced, but what kid wouldn't sacrifice comfort to catch a frog any day? Then I saw a big bullfrog surface a few feet in front of me.

"Look!" I whispered.

"Yeh!" Marshmallow marveled, behind me.

I slowly stretched my arms out, and was about to pounce...

SPLOOSH!!!

Freddy Meany snuck up and lobbed a big rock right next to us! The bullfrog swam away, Marshmallow lost his grip, and my head and shoulders plunged into the mucky water. Luckily, Tooey and Herman Herman rushed up and yanked me out by my belt loops.

"Oh, man!" Freddy Meany laughed.

"Geez!" I sputtered.

"That's not funny!" Marshmallow said. Although dripping wet, he was laughing as hard as everyone else.

So we headed on home. Marshmallow's house was first, then Freddy Meany's. Tooey, Herman Herman, and I walked the final few blocks to our house together. Herman came home with us a lot, because he liked our household better than his own. My sneakers make squishy sounds.

A couple blocks before our house, we saw our dog, Eloise, coming up the street toward us. She looked lost. Her tail was hanging kind of low.

"Hey, girl!" we called.

Eloise ran up to us, wagging her tail. She didn't care that I smelled like sewage.

When we got to the concrete steps leading up to our house, Eloise refused to climb them. She sat down at the base of the stairs with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Gee," Herman said. "I wonder what's wrong with Eloise?"

"Come on, girl," Tooey tried. The dog wouldn't budge.

"Why don't we go in and make some sandwiches?" I suggested. "She'll want in if we have some food."

"Say, that's pretty smart for a first grader," Herman said, as we headed up the stairs.

"Race you!" Tooey cried. The three of us clambered up the steps and raced for the front door. Naturally, the older guys got there first. I ran up and collided with them in a noisy pile right inside the kitchen door.

Standing at the stove was a stranger, a tiny, elderly lady with frizzy blue hair, like a Brillo pad. She wasn't very big, but she frowned at us so disapprovingly that we cowered against the front door as if she were Count Dracula.

"Who are you?" Tooey stuttered.

"I'm Mrs. Hudson," sneered Mrs. Hudson. She pointed a wooden spoon at Herman Herman. "You there! Get on home!"

Herman untangled himself and lunged out the door as if she were the Wicked Witch of the West. "See you guys tomarrow!" he called, retreating down the sidewalk. Now we knew why Eloise wouldn't come in.

"Where's Mom?" I whimpered.

"Your mother is in bed. I am taking charge of you boys until she has her baby."

"Baby?" my brother and I said, at the same time. You would think that in a doctor's household we would be a bit better informed.

Instead of answering, she pointed at me with a crooked finger. "You are taking a bath."

"I don't need a bath," I started to say, and ended up, five minutes later, soaking in the bathtub. Tooey sat on the toilet seat nearby, looking glum. A few minutes later Orman entered the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

"I sure hope Dad gets home soon," he said.

After barely passing Mrs. Hudson's critical inspection, we were allowed upstairs to our parent's bedroom to visit our mom. She was sitting up in bed, propped up with a pile of pillows, wearing a nightgown, reading a Herman Wouk novel.

"Hello, fellas," she said. "It's all right to breath."

The three of us exhaled with relief.

"Don't worry," she said. "I just need to take it easy for a month or two, until the baby is ready. Mrs. Hudson will help around the house and keep an eye on you guys after school until your Dad gets home from the clinic."

"She made me take a bath," I blurted. Orman nudged me to shut up.

Mom smiled and asked, "Which would you boys rather have: a baby brother, or a baby sister?"

My brothers and I looked at our feet.

"You decide, Mom," said Tooey, the future litigator.

The evening meal was an ordeal. Mrs. Hudson had two moods: cross and very cross. After we finally coaxed Eloise inside, Mrs. Hudson banished her to the basement, slamming our poor pet's tail in the door in the bargain, which caused a minor insurrection in itself.

Then she sat us down at the dinner table, and placed before us plates of corned beef, sauerkraut, and peas. We greeted this hideous concoction as eagerly as soldiers facing a court martial. I missed Eloise sitting in her usual place under the kitchen table, where she always assisted in eating my meals. I doubt she would have been any help with my sauerkraut and peas, anyway.

I was still sitting stubbornly in front of my plate when my Dad got home, shortly after dark. He barely got to put his black medicine bag on the bishop's bench inside the front door before my brothers rushed him, as if they hadn't seen him in a year.

After greeting both my brothers, he helped Mrs. Hudson into her coat. "Thank you, Rosetta," he hurriedly said, practically pushing her out the door the second she had her hat pinned on.

Dad came over to the table and examined my plate appreciatively.

"How was your day, Alvin?" he asked.

"Just fine, Father."

"How's the cuisine?" he ventured.

After Dad scraped the plates he went up to talk to my Mom. Then he fed the dog, cleaned the kitchen, and sent us off to bed.

Before I fell asleep, Dad started practicing his banjo playing in the kitchen, where the sound was the best. You could hear it all the way upstairs. His style had yet to develop. There were noticeable pauses between the chord changes. He made occasional plinking sounds that I felt certain were not an intentional part of the arrangement.

I drifted to sleep to the strains of "Someone's in the Kitchen With Dinah", one of my all-time favorite songs:

                Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah

                Someone's in the kitchen I know

                Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah

                Strumming on the old banjo!

                Fee, fie, fiddly-eye-o

                Fee, fie, fiddly-eye-o

                Fee, fie, fiddly-eye-o

                Strumming on the old banjo!

That Friday night my brothers and I were going downtown to see a new Jerry Lewis movie. Mrs. Hudson set the dinner table. A meat loaf was in the oven, and Brussels sprouts boiled on the stove.

We waited anxiously for Dad to get home. It was a rule in our family that we always have dinner together. With Dad's job we sometimes started sort of late.

It was nearly six thirty when Eloise's ears perked up - she always heard Dad's car engine before we did. When he walked in, we were at our places at the dinner table, our silverware poised. The movie started at seven.

Dad dismissed Mrs. Hudson and disappeared upstairs to see Mom. Precious minutes passed. Tooey, Orman, and I fidgeted nervously. The sickening aroma of boiled Brussels sprouts added to our discomfort.

By the time Dad came downstairs and served supper, it was a quarter to seven. We lunged at our food like a pack of ravaged animals. We even gulped down the wretched vegetables.

"Well, boys. What did you learn in school today?" Dad asked - a trick question which, frankly, there wasn't time for.

Orman acted as our spokeman. "Not much, Dad. Mr. Pells is making us memorize the states and their capitals. Can we be excused?"

"Well, what's your hurry?" Dad asked.

"There's a Jerry Lewis movie downtown, Dad," I explained.

"Oh, Jerry Lewis," Dad conceded, rolling his eyeballs in resignation. "Guess you want to get going, huh?"

We were on our bikes roaring down the Ditch Road within moments. Orman had a big black Schwinn bike - I rode on the handlebars. Tooey raced ahead on his shiny blue J.C. Higgins bicycle, ordered from the Sears catalog.

It had always confused me why we called it 'downtown', since the business district of Long Beach was only three or four blocks long. Didn't that imply that there was an uptown somewhere?

"Yow!" I cried. I wasn't paying attention and put my foot in the spokes. The bicycle, Orman, and I crashed in a tangle to the hard concrete road.

I shrieked hysterically. My leg was bent backwards in an extremely painful position, by foot stuck between the bicycle wheels spokes. My scraped elbows burned as if on fire.

"Are you all right, Alvin?" Tooey asked anxiously, bending over me.

"Ahhhhhh!!!" I screamed. Of course I wasn't all right.

Orman went to work with the same serious precision our dad employed in the operating room. He took a wrench from a set of tools he kept in a little black bag behind the bike's saddle. He hurriedly loosened the bolts from the front axles and straightened my twisted leg. My crying turned to sniffles. With the same calm concentration Orman used a spoke tightening tool to free my foot.

Even though we were late by now, we walked our bikes the rest of the way to the movie theater. My face still stung from my tears. Despite my discomfort, all I was really worried about was seeing the latest Jerry Lewis picture.

Downtown Long Beach was decorated with outdoor Christmas tree light twelve months a year, strung across Main Street from the telephone poles on the end of each block, lending a faux carnival atmosphere to the business district. We parked our bikes on the porch of the Pacific Hotel, a dilapidated wooden building that dominated the center of town. It was so old and run down that it would get torn down within a year, along with the aging train depot - to make room for a drug store, a bakery, and an asphalt parking lot.

We ran up to the box office of the Sunset Theater, breathlessly. Millicent Meany, Gabe and Freddy's older sister, sat in the ticket booth, blowing a big pink bubble with a look of benign boredom on her face.

"Sold out," she said, snapping her gum.

My brothers and I slumped our shoulders in a collective gesture of dejection. I felt tears coming on again.

Smitty, the owner of the movie house, stood in the open doorway with his hands in his pockets. He was a big man, with a remarkable resemblance to W.C. Fields.

"Psst," he pssted. "Hey, guys! Come ear!"

He took us inside, and led us into the projection booth. It was dark in there, and smelled of machine oil and cigarettes. The projectors whirred away, showing previews.

Smitty shoved a sturdy wooden table against the wall underneath a small square window, and helped the three of us up. I had to stand on tiptoe, but I didn't think about it as soon as the movie started.

I can't remember what the movie was called, but it was in black and white, and Jerry Lewis played a TV repairman who wanted to be a private eye. He was the long lost son of a millionaire, and got chased around by some man-eating robot lawn mowers. We laughed ourselves silly. Smitty even provided some popcorn. We didn't know it, but our dad treated Smitty's wife when she suffered from the miscarriage of their only child.

When the show let out we retrieved our bikes and took our time heading home. The sidewalks were crowded with people spilling out of the movie, still laughing over the comedy. We joined a bunch of kids hanging out in front of Stoltz's Candy Store, sniffing the delicious aroma of fresh, hot after-theater carmelcorn, and gawking at the high school kids cruising their cool cars up and down Main Street.

Tooey bought a ten cent hunk of hard peppermint salt water taffy which we cracked on the sidewalk and sucked on, as the three of us headed down the sidewalk toward home. We passed Shier's Dry Good Store, with it's dusty, faded window displays, and the Police station, which was located right across the street from Mary Lou's Tavern. Next to the tavern was a long wooden bench, where some of Mary Lou's customers sometimes slept it off!

We crossed the street and leaned our bikes against the wooden bench, being careful not to disturb old Ben Sott, who snored away quite unselfconsciously.

We stopped to pay homage to our favorite local shrine. Although our town only had a population of two hundred and sixty, Long Beach claimed to have the largest and longest of everything: the World's Longest Beach, the World's Largest Piece Of Driftwood, and last but not least, the World's Largest Frying Pan!

If you traveled to the farthest corners of the planet, you would find few tourist attractions to rival the magnificence of the World's Largest Frying Pan. The gigantic cast iron skillet was, with the exception of the water tower, the tallest structure in town. It needed to be that big, legend told, to fry the humongous razor clams which grew out front. Bleached whale bones were scattered by the base of the monolithic skillet to emphasize its enormity. As was our custom, my brothers and I salamied the giant black cast iron skillet several times before returning home.

Although my elbows and ankle still stung, I had recovered enough to climb back onto Orman's handlebars for the return trip. I would drive my family, teachers, and friends crazy with Jerry Lewis impersonations for weeks to come.

Everyone was afraid of Chick Mitchell. It was said he drank beer. He was a huge kid, with a big barrel chest and bulging arm muscles. He had red hair which stood on his head in greasy spikes, like he was sweating all the time. A rash of freckles splattered his face, and his eyebrows were so thick they grew together in the middle, like a furry feral animal. He always walked around with a toothpick in his mouth, sometimes two, one on either side of his mouth - which made him look really tough.

He was just a mean kid. One time he came over to our house and asked if I could come to the door.

"Hey, Alvin," he sneered.

"Hi!" I squeeked, nervously, wondering what Chick Mitchell wanted with me.

"Alvin, I want you to do something," Chick Mitchell said.

"What?" I asked, innocently.

"Press your face up against the screen door," he said.

"Okay!" I said. I pushed my face against the screen and Chick Mitchell slugged the screen right where my face was. This was my first experience with an actual terrorist, and I did not like it. It didn't go over very well with the other kids in our neighborhood, either. But it took the football incident to bring things to a boiling point.

We usually played football in the Moon's back yard, but one Saturday we were playing in the Crosby's yard across the driveway from our house, so our mom could watch us from her bedroom window. The Crosbys' were 'summer people'; in fact, they occupied the house infrequently, just a few weeks in July or August. So we were free to tear around their yard most of the time, and climb their trees. They had an authentic Indian totem pole in their front yard, which we weren't supposed to climb on – a rule which for the most part we respected.

The other feature that made their yard really attractive, especially for football, was a steep cliff running the length of the lawn, or the northern side line. It was about an eighty-five degree gradient, dropping directly into the gravel driveway below, so you didn't want to get tackled on that side of the field. The football field itself was only about forty yards in length, and the Crosby's house butted up against the opposite side line. We modified our rules so that you could complete a pass by bouncing the football off the Crosby's house. Accommodations also had to be made for the totem pole, which stood in the middle of the end zone.

Anyway, the two teams that Saturday consisted of Mary and Alice Moon, Tooey, and Freddy Meany on the shirts team, and Orman, Herman Herman, Marshmallow, and I on the skins team. The pairing of the teams wasn't really fair, but the Moon girls couldn't very well take their shirts off, now could they?

Mary Moon was the undisputed all-star of the neighborhood – she was better at sports than any of the guys. Whichever team she was on always won. Alice Moon, Mary's junior by one year, was also good at athletics – but Alice was gentler than her oldest sister.

The score was 46 to zero. Our team huddled.

"What do you think we should try now?" Orman asked Herman.

"I don't know," Herman Herman said. "Maybe if we run that last play over again we'll catch them off guard."

"We lost yards on the last play," I said.

"I wish we could put our shirts on," Marshmallow said. "It's cold out here!"

"Hurry up, already!" Freddy Meany hollered.

We decided to punt.

I held the ball, hoping I wouldn't get kicked in the head. Marshmallow was usually the best punter we had. Unfortunately, the ball sailed off sideways, wobbling end over end, bounced down the hill, and landed in the street. Everyone charged after it, but screeched to a halt – there in the middle of the road, tossing the football up and down with one hand, stood Chick Mitchell.

Mary Moon was there first. "Hey!" she growled. "Give us the ball!"

"Is this yours?" he asked belligerently. If he felt outnumbered, he didn't act it.

"Give it back!" Mary repeated.

"Yeh, give it back!" we echoed.

"Why don't you go home to your mama?" Chick Mitchell mocked.

Freddy Meany, a man of action, ran around behind our enemy and tried to grab the football. Chick Mitchell held it over his head, laughing cruelly, and forced Freddy to jump up and down and up and down in vain. I was reminded of the evil puppet master in Pinocchio.

"Come on!" Orman ordered. "Give it to us!"

"Who's gonna make me?"

"I am!" Mary yelled.

"You and whose army?" Chick Mitchell sneered.

Mary Moon had a pretty short fuse. She lunged at him; they tussled. She grabbed the arm that held the football and tugged with all her might…

"Let go of me, you dyke!" Chick Mitchell spat.

Suddenly, we all went silent. We had never heard anything so vile. I didn't even know what a dyke was, but I knew it was something really bad.

Mary hung her head. It completely diffused her.

Chick Mitchell turned, and threw the football in a perfect spiraling, Johnny Unitis pass that lodged in the branches of a treetop in Bradley's Lot, a patch of woods that occupied half the block.

Then he ran. We ran after him, but he outran us all.

We gave up a block later, and all stood there, panting, feeling very defeated.

"We've got to get that guy," Mary Moon murmured.

The next day, I was standing out in the street, strategically placed between Chick Mitchell's house and the beach. I waited around, scuffing my sneaker in the dirt, until I heard a whistle.

"Hey, Chickie!" I called. "Hey, Chick-eee!"

The front door to Chick Mitchell's house flung open. Chick Mitchell burst out like the Tasmanian Devil. He spun around and around, shaking his fists menacingly.

"I'll kill you," he slobbered.

I ran as fast as I could down the street, Chick Mitchell in hot pursuit. I called out, "Chick-en! Chick-en!"

I headed for the beach. The soft sand started to slow me down. Chick Mitchell was gaining.

I led him between two sand dunes. "Chick-en!" I called, victoriously.

A rope snapped up, catching him at neck level. Mary and Alice Moon were on one end, my brothers on the other.

"Erk!" Chick Mitchell gagged.

We dragged him by the neck through a sticker patch, a mud puddle, and a couple blocks of pavement. We deposited Chick Mitchell on his own front doorstep, as deflated as a burst balloon.

Mary Moon bent down and spit on him.

That night, my brothers and I were in our bedroom, on the third floor of our house, when we heard Chick Mitchell's mother screaming down the street for our father.

After the yelling died down, Dad came upstairs to talk to us.

"Gentlemen," he began. "You nearly killed that boy."

We stared back, as blankly as cigar store Indians.

"I guess I have to punish you," Dad said.

We didn't care.

Chick Mitchell never bothered any of us again.

One day after recess, Ricky Rice and I were dawdling in the coat room before returning to our seats.

"Did you know ‘racecar’ is the same spelled backwards and forwards?" he asked.

"You're putting me on," I replied. I was sort of surprised Ricky could spell racecar, either forward or backward.

Shannon Moon came up to us holding some slips of paper.

"Here Ricky," she said, handing him a piece of paper . "I made a list of your faults."

"No kidding," Ricky said, reading. "Too gub?"

"What’s gub?" I asked.

"That’s not gub," Shannon insisted. "It’s glib. You’re too glib."

"It looks like gub to me," Ricky said. "Doesn’t it look like gub to you?" he said, showing me the list.

"Gub," I said.

"IT’S GLIB!" Shannon shouted.

"Glib," Ricky repeated, scratching his head. "Could it be?"

"Impossible," I assured him.

"Oh, blow up!" Shannon Moon exclaimed, shoving a list at me.

My list was a lot longer than Ricky’s list. It unrolled like a roll of toilet paper.

"Oh, come on!" I moaned. "Are these all my faults?"

"Now that you mention it," Shannon said, "I think I forgot something." She took the list back and started scribbling something else on the bottom.

"There is always room for self-improvement," she said.

Sometimes after school I liked to stop by my dad’s doctor office on the way home from school. Dad’s clinic was a small red building with a flat roof next to the highway a couple blocks south of Dell Dinger’s Texaco station.

There was always quite a crowd of patients sitting in the wooden captain’s chairs in the waiting room, reading magazines and smoking cigarettes - the cancer threat hadn't been uncovered yet.

In one wall was a window, well above my head, where Mrs. Saunders, the friendly receptionist, sat.

"Hello, Alvin," she gushed. She always sounded glad to see whoever walked in the door, even if they were extremely ill.

"Hi!" I squeeked. I felt really small all of a sudden. After spending the day around people my own size, the grown up furnishings of the doctor’s office made me feel comparatively Lilliputian. "Can I see my dad?"

"I’m sure we can arrange something," Mrs. Saunders said, winking. She made it seem like there was no one else in the room, and we were whispering secrets.

A second later the door that led from the waiting room to the examining rooms opened. Alice O’Keefe, my dad’s nurse, stood in the doorway, as tall and thin as a piece of paper. I don’t remember ever seeing her wearing anything but her crisp white nurse uniform. Everyone in the waiting room leaned forward expectantly – hoping their wait was over.

Alice smiled at me primly. "Alvin? The doctor will see you now."

Everyone in the waiting room laughed. What else could they do? They were a captive audience.

Alice took me by the hand and led me down a narrow hallway. She slid open the flimsy door to Dad’s lab. My dad was perched on a padded bar stool, squinting into a microscope. He had a shiny silver device in one hand, with a button he kept clicking. There were racks of test tubes, a whirring centrifuge, and cabinets stocked with thousands of jars filled with powder and bottles of multi-colored capsules. It smelled very medicinal.

"Hi there," Dad said. "Would you like to look in my microscope?"

"Sure," I said. I was actually more interested in the shiny silver gizmo he kept clicking. "What’s that?"

"It’s a counter," he explained. The machine had a tiny window with numbers that advanced every time he pressed the button with his thumb. "I am counting blood cells. Want to see?"

Dad slid off his stool and lifted me up to stand on the soft leather seat. I leaned over the microscope and looked in the eyepiece.

"I don’t see anything," I said.

"Let me look again," Dad said. He leaned over, adjusted the focus knob a little, and leaned back. "There," he said.

I looked, but it just looked black. I tried switching eyes, but it still looked black.

"Here," Dad said. He reached down and jiggled the mirror underneath the slide.

"There!" I exclaimed. "I see something!"

"What does it look like?" my dad asked.

"It looks like a bright light," I answered.

Dad sighed. "That’s just the reflection from the mirror," he said.

I was beginning to feel like a failure. Dad fiddled with the knobs some more and had me look again, but I couldn’t see what he was talking about.

"Squint," he suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"You know, squint your eye. Like this," he said, demonstrating.

I squinted. Still couldn’t see anything. I tried squinting with the other eye and thought I saw something.

"Do you see anything, Alvin?" Dad asked.

"Yes. It looks like... a big eyeball!"

"Good grief," he moaned. "That is your eyeball!"

Alice O’Keefe slid open the door. "Doctor?"

"What is it, Alice?" Dad asked, a little exasperated.

"It’s your wife, doctor."

There was a pregnant pause.

"Your wife, doctor," Alice repeated. "Her water just broke."

"Oh?" Dad simply said. He unclipped the stethoscope from around his neck and placed it on the Formica counter. We all considered it for a moment.

"Alice, send an ambulance to pick up Val - I'll meet them at the hospital."

"I've already done that," she said.

"You'll need to reschedule my patients," Dad said.

"I've done that, too," Alice deadpanned.

I was still puzzled about what was going on.

"Thank you, Alice," Dad said. "Come on, Alvin!" He picked up his black bag with one hand, then scooped me up and carried me like a sack of potatoes under his other arm, and headed down the hall.

People spilled out of the waiting room after us. "Good luck, Doc!" they called. Mrs. Saunders smile looked like it would split her face in half.

Within seconds Dad's Valiant station wagon was speeding toward the hospital in Ilwaco, the next town, ten miles down the highway. Dad was driving fast. He lit a cigarette, which was unusual.

"Dad?" I said. "I'm sorry I couldn't work the microscope."

"That's okay, Al," my father assured me. We were pushing sixty. The station wagon roared past Black Lake and skidded to a stop in the Peninsula Hospital parking lot.

The hospital staff greeted our entrance in the emergency wing as rapturously as the Second Coming. People collided like pinballs, waving and shouting and congratulating my dad and each other ecstatically.

I was still not sure exactly what the commotion was about. I was feeling a little anxious. Everyone was so much taller than me!

"Hi, darlin'!" a friendly, familiar voice called. An elderly, full figured woman in a starched white nurse uniform rushed up and smothered me against her amble bosom in a tight embrace.

"Hi, Ruby," I said. Because she was hugging me so closely it came out, "Mffmfff."

Ruby Ring was my godmother. She was assisting in the operating room on the day I was born. I didn't remember this, of course, but Ruby did. She also remembered my birthday every year, Christmas, and even Easter. This past Easter she gave me the most amazing gift: a bar of soap shaped like a bunny - when I washed with it, the rabbit grew a fuzzy coat of fur overnight, resting in the soap dish. Truly magic!

Ruby sank down on a vinyl sofa and began bouncing me on her knee. I felt comforted. Dad crouched down in front of us and explained that he had to go help deliver Mom's baby.

"When can I see her?" I asked.

Dad tousled my hair. "They don't allow kids back there," he explained, pointing to the double doors marked 'STAFF ONLY'. "We'll see what we can work out later, okay? You go on over to Ruby's, and I'll pick you up later."

"Okay, Dad."

"I'll give you a nice big piece of pie," Ruby promised with a wink.

"All right!" I agreed readily. I liked pie.

Ruby's house was in upper Seaview, about a block from Ronny Kreb's house. When we drove by he and Nicky Folger were throwing rocks in a mud puddle on the side of the road.

They waved and yelled, "Panty hose! Panty hose!"

Ruby laughed and said, "Those characters!"

I looked over and raised my eyebrows innocently.

Ruby's house had a huge front porch, big enough to ride a bicycle on, or play hockey. The wooden planking made pleasing sounds as we clonked around to the side door that opened into the kitchen. Ruby left her kitchen door unlocked, in case her neighbors needed to borrow anything from her well stocked pantry.

She went over to the refrigerator and took out a plate of cold fried chicken and placed it on the counter, next to three homemade pies - apple, rhubarb, and my personal favorite, blackberry.

"Soup's on!" she sang.

I was given the best seat in the house, the naugahide reclining armchair right in front of the television set. We watched the Huntley-Brinkly Report, What's My Line?, and Cheyanne, sampling slices of all three pies as the evening wore on. I fell asleep about half way through The Untouchables.

My dad was shaking me. "Alvin? Alvin? Wake up, son."

He carried me, still half asleep, out to the car and placed me in the back seat. Orman, Tooey, and Eloise were in front. The dog scrambled over the front seat, landing in my lap, and licked me.

We drove down to the hospital and parked in back, among tall pine trees.

"Everybody out!" Dad called.

"What about Eloise?" I asked.

"Eloise too," Dad replied, jovially. "Follow me, everyone!"

Stealthily, Dad led us along the back of the hospital building. We kept shushing each other. Eloise's tail wagged back and forth, showing she was happy to be along.

Finally my father found the window he was looking for.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

After a moment, a light blinked on inside. Dad lifted me up so I could see inside. Tooey handed me Eloise, so our dog could look inside, too.

My mom came over to the window and placed her hands against the glass. I had never seen her look so beautiful.

Mom was really glad to see us. It showed in her eyes. She smiled so nice, it lit up the night. It must have been lonely for her in the hospital. I realized, all of a sudden, how much I had missed spending time with my mother lately.

We visited through the window for a few minutes, then a nurse came up behind Mom and handed her a bundle of blankets wrapped around a brand new baby. A serene smile spread across Mom's face. She took the baby's tiny hand in her own and waved it in greeting.

"Hi, guys," Mom said in a baby voice.

"Hi, girls," Dad beamed, proudly.

"This is Olive," she said through the window.

"What?" Orman asked.

"Olive," Dad repeated, reverently. "You have a sister."

Tooey, Orman, and I exchanged uneasy glances.

A sister. Life would never be the same again.

Monday morning. Show & Tell.

Steve Nickles walked to the front of the room, combing his hair carefully. He squared his shoulders, and began twitching his upper lip. Everyone stared at him, uncertainly.

"I'm Elvis Presley," Steve Nickles explained. He moved the left side of his upper lip up and down a couple times to illustrate. We all stared at him silently. "Geez, haven't you ever seen an Elvis Presley movie?" he pleaded.

His shoulders sagged. He had probably been practicing in the mirror all weekend.

"Thank you, Steve," Mrs. Peterson said, kindly.

Debbie Carpenter came up next, carrying a hula hoop. "My cousin from Portland visited this weekend and taught me this trick," Debbie said shyly.

We had all seen a hula hoop before, of course. But instead of lowering the hula hoop over her head and rotating it around her hips, Debbie grasped it upright in one hand and tossed it, with a backhanded twist of the wrist, away from her. The hula hoop landed a few feet away, spinning in place like a car tire stuck in the sand - then it hopped right back into her hand!

"Wow! Neat! Cool!" the class applauded. "Do it again!"

Debbie performed her trick a few more times, completely captivating her audience. By the end of the week every kid in town would have tried it. Despite my earlier reservations, I had to admire Debbie Carpenter for introducing a new fad.

Jo Ann Henderson followed after that. She seemed extremely pleased with herself. She stood in front of us, hugging herself with both arms. "Yesterday in church I gave myself to Jesus," she announced.

The rest of us were as unsure how to react as we had been when Steve Nickles impersonated Elvis Presley's upper lip. She seemed really happy, though. I figured on asking Tooey tonight what Jesus was about.

"That's nice, Jo Ann," Mrs. Peterson commented, nervously.

Shannon Moon stood up without raising her hand. "What if instead of being a person, I were really a butterfly?" she demanded. "And my whole life were just a dream? A butterfly dream."

Jo Ann Henderson was on her feet instantly.

"Wait a minute!" she insisted, aghast. "That's wrong!" Her face turned the same shade of red as her hair.

"It's a free country," Shannon shot back. "Everyone's entitled to an opinion."

"Yeh," Nicky Folger agreed. "Maybe I'm really a dog!"

An unspoken understanding flashed between Nicky and Ron Krebs. They simultaneously dropped to the floor, and scooted around on their hands and knees. "Woof! Woof!" they laughed.

"You're just being mean," Jo Ann wailed, practically in tears. Her religious foundations had clearly been shaken.

"That's enough now!" Mrs. Peterson instructed. "Let's return to our seats."

Marshmallow raised his hand, waving it urgently. "Mrs. Peterson?" he said. "Mrs. Peterson!"

"Yes, Willie."

Marshmallow stood up. "There's free candy and popcorn at George's after school today!"

It took several minutes for the class to calm down after Marshmallow's news flash. 'George's' referred to Stoltz's Candy Store downtown. Each Autumn the kindly owner would give out free candy, caramel corn, cotton candy, snow cones, and popcorn the day before he closed his shop for the winter. The Stoltz's vacationed in Florida during the off season, and liquidated their stock - which would otherwise grow stale or attract ants in their absence.

When the brouhaha subsided somewhat, Mrs. Peterson turned to me and asked, "Alvin, don't you have something special to share with us?"

"I don't think so," I said with some uncertainty.

"Class, Alvin has a new baby sister!" Mrs. Peterson proclaimed.

"Oh, yeah," I said.

"She must be a beautiful baby," Mrs. Peterson gushed.

"I suppose," I said, uncomfortably. "She's sort of wrinkled."

This was what I would deal with, wherever I went, for the next few months. Neighbors, teachers, total strangers - everyone had something to say about Olive. You would think I was personally responsible for bringing my sister into the world.

I didn't mean to be a grouch about it. I was happy about Olive’s arrival, the same way I was happy for Jo Ann Henderson. Just because I wasn't as ravid as everybody else. As long as it made them happy, I was happy.

"Now, class," Mrs. Peterson said, interrupting my thoughts, "when you get home tonight ask your mother…"

"Mrs. Peterson?"

"Yes, Galen."

"Can I ask my father?"

"Of course you can. Ask your mother or your father to send a bath towel to school with you tomorrow."

"Are we going to take a bath?" Galen inquired.

"No," Mrs. Peterson said slowly, as if she were silently counting to ten in her head. "Tomorrow we will be making plaster of paris hand prints in art class. It will be a bit messy, so you will need a towel to clean your hands afterwards. Don't bring your mom's best towel - bring an old towel neither your mother or your father or your aunt or uncle or anybody else under the sun would mind getting dirty."

It was uncharacteristic of Mrs. Peterson to resort to sarcasm.

Recess!

Ricky Rice, Marshmallow, Nicky Folger, Ron Krebs and I hung from the monkey bars in the lunchroom.

"Brother, I think our teacher has cracked," Nicky said.

"Be afraid. Be very afraid," Ricky said.

"I think we should give her a break," I said.

"Teacher's pet!" Ronny Krebs taunted.

After recess, Mrs. Peterson read us a story about a little Dutch boy who saved the city of Amsterdam by plugging a hole in a dike with his finger. Mrs. Peterson seemed back to her normal self. We did some flash cards, practiced our penmanship, finger painted…

Finally the dismissal bell rang! The school emptied out even faster than usual. The streets and sidewalks of Long Beach were thronged with kids, lured to the call of candy. The line at Stoltz’s Candy Store ran out the door and down the sidewalk for a full block.

I was with Marshmallow. We were thinking caramelcorn. Hot caramelcorn. Heavenly hot caramelcorn. The line took a long time.

Finally we were inside. The aromas were mesmerizing. We had a sugar high from just breathing. Just inside the door was an overflowing popcorn machine, a shiny cotton candy machine spinning long strands of pink spun sugar, and a long glass candy counter filled with fudge, rocky road, chocolate covered nuts and raisins, and salt water taffy. Mrs. Stoltz stood behind the counter, wearing a pretty pink apron. She had gray hair and fine lines radiating from the corners of her eyes from smiling her whole life. Behind her, George mixed a big batch of caramelcorn with a baseball bat in a big steel drum. He wore thick glasses and a huge toothy grin. His arms were huge, the result of mixing huge batches of candy.

"What’ll it be, boys?" Mrs. Stoltz asked.

We each got a brown paper bag of warm caramelcorn. Marshmallow also got some cotton candy, a pink cloud of spun sugar two feet tall on a paper cone. Before we were finished Mrs. Stoltz forced a square of fudge wrapped in tissue paper on us.

"Thanks!" we giggled.

"You’re welcome," Mrs. Stolz said, warmly.

"Thanks, George!"

"So long, fellas!" George called.

Out on the sidewalk, several kids waiting in line snatched strands of our cotton candy. We didn’t mind.

"It doesn’t get much better than this," Marshmallow giggled.

We made our way down the sidewalk, pausing to show our friends what they had to look forward to. I saw Mary Somela and, blushing badly, gave her my fudge.

Two blocks later we were reeling from an acute cotton candy overdose. We stuffed the remainder of the sticky stuff in a garbage can, which almost instantly attracted a bunch of bees.

"Let’s go to the shop," Marshmallow suggested. His parents owned the most popular tourist attraction in Long Beach, Marsh’s Free Museum. The shop took up half a block on the south end of town, right beside the amusement park. Marsh’s Free Museum was housed in a rickety whitewashed wooden building with hundreds of tiny window panes that rattled every time the door closed. Attached to the roof with visible wires were a peculiar assortment of life-sized statues of pirates, sea captains, women in Victorian dress pushing baby carriages, dogs, cowboys, cattle – what was even more peculiar, all the mannequins had huge white angel wings attached to their backs. One of the statues had a human body (wearing a tuxedo), but a horses head!

The inside of the building was crammed with hundreds of wooden bins containing a prolifera of items – seashells, sand dollars, dried seahorse corpses, corals, clam shells, oyster shells, sharks teeth, Japanese glass floats, plastic slide whistles, cheap jewelry and charm bracelets, beads, dribble glasses, fake vomit, fake dog poop, toy monkeys that danced on a stick, pens that revealed topless ladies when turned upside down…

The crowd-pleasing image of The World’s Largest Frying Pan was printed on post cards, decals, sweat shirts, key rings, Oriental fans, china plates, hand held slide viewers, charm bracelet ornaments, even underwear!

The "free museum" was a misnomer. There were free exhibits of ‘SOME OF THE STRANGEST SIGHTS ON EARTH!’ such as a stuffed three-headed calf and an authentic shrunken head from the jungles of Borneo, plus Jake the Alligator Man – the fossilized half-man/half-alligator! But tourists rarely left the shop without buying something. I thought Marshmallow had the greatest parents alive.

When we went in Mrs. Marsh was sitting behind the counter. She smiled when we came in and kissed her son. Whenever I was around Marshmallow’s family I noticed the way they kissed each other, fondly and completely unselfconsciously – quite unlike my family, who rarely even hugged. We were dignified. Mrs. Marsh kissed me too, and gave me a free seashell.

Marshmallow asked his mom for a nickel, and led me to a turn-of-the-century pinball machine. It was a baseball game, with iron statues of the Boston Red Sox behind the plates and standing in the outfield. The pitcher lobbed large steel balls from a hole in his stomach, and you whacked a handle to swing an iron bat behind home plate. There were holes in front of the players – if the ball went in you were out, otherwise you scored. Marshmallow was so practiced we got to play about twenty minutes on our one nickel.

Then we sneaked over to a hand-cranked peep show that showed flickering images of nude ladies from the days of silent movies. The women all seemed overweight by modern standards.

When I got home Mom was on the phone. "Yes, Dad," she was saying, so I knew it was Grandpa Weaver on the other end. She put her hand over the receiver before I could sneak past.

"Alvin, could you check on your sister? I left her on the couch in the living room when I answered the phone. I may be a few minutes."

"Sure, mom."

"Dad," she said into the phone, "she isn’t old enough for a pony."

Olive was lying in the middle of a blanket on the sofa, barricaded by couch cushions. I thought she was asleep when I walked up, so I carefully placed a chair next to the couch and sat down gingerly opposite her. I dug the seashell out of my pocket so I’d have something to play with while I waited for Mom to get off the phone. I pretended it was a flying saucer. All at once I realized Olive’s baby blue eyes were upon me.

I swooped the seashell in circles around her head a few times, providing some eerie outer space sound effects. Olive’s face crumpled with displeasure.

The last thing I wanted was to make her cry. It seemed inevitable; then I remembered the story Mrs. Peterson told us about the little Dutch boy and put my finger in her mouth.

To my amazement, Olive stopped fretting. I stood there about fifteen minutes while my sister happily sucked on my index finger.

Mom rushed into the room at long last, looking anxious – but relaxed when she saw how I was handling things.

She smiled and tousled my hair, before carrying Olive into the other room. I waited an appropriate time before going into the bathroom to wash my finger. I wasn’t sure if you could die from baby drool, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

I was washing my hands a second time when Tooey came in.

"Hey, Alvin," he said. "Whatcha doin’?"

"Washing my hands."

"Oh."

He went over and used the toilet. Then he came over and washed his hands.

"Tooey, do you know who Jesus is?"

"Sure," Tooey said, drying his hands on his pants. I looked at him expectantly.

"It’s kind of hard to explain," Tooey said. He sat down on the toilet seat, and thought about it. "I guess Jesus is, like, all the love in the world. He’s always there for you, all the time, even if you do something bad. If you believe in Him."

"Do Mom and Dad believe in Jesus?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, I don’t think they believe in all the stories about Him walking on water and giving eyesight to the blind, but they believe in His philosophies. You shouldn’t let that change the way you think, Alvin."

"What’s phil-sof-afee?"

"Philosophy? That’s what people think. Like ‘It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for a really rich guy to get into Heaven.’ Or the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you."

Just then Orman barged into the bathroom. "Hey! What are you guys doing in here?"

"Discussing philosophy," I said, stopping him short.

"What philosophy?" he said.

"The lamp post stands with folded arms," I said.

Orman stared at me a second. "Come on," he said. "Supper’s on the table."

7:15 a.m. All along the bus route, first graders board bearing bath towels.

7:45 a.m. Students arrive at school and stuff so many towels in the coat closet, it looks like a linen closet.

8:00 a.m. Classes commence. Mrs. Peterson has students take turns reading out loud from a Dick and Jane book. Some students read torturously slow; they will be branded as such for the remainder of their public school tenure.

8:45 a.m. Sven The Janitor enters classroom carrying a cardboard Woofie's Dog Food box filled with mixing compounds. As he unloads the supplies on a long wooden table covered with butcher paper, he attracts a captivated audience. "Stay back, now," he says, importantly.

9:00 a.m. Mrs. Peterson places fourteen paper plates on the table, one per student. Sven stirs plaster of paris mixture, whistling through his teeth, making his mustache puff in and out over his upper lip. Students stare like zombies as molden material is poured into paper plates. Teacher tells the class that they will have to wait patiently for plaster of paris to set. Waiting is not exactly a first grader's strongest discipline.

9:45 a.m. The first lucky student is chosen alphabetically. For once, Steve Nickles is so eager he forgets to comb his hair. He is wrapped in a bath towel, and his hand is placed in the center of the plate, forming an impression of his handprint in the hardening plaster of paris. Glitter, a perennial favorite among first graders, is sprinkled around the edges. Meanwhile, the rest of the class practically claw themselves with suppressed anticipation.

10:03 a.m. I finally get my turn. The feel of the cool, hardening plaster of paris is delicious. Seeing my hand print sculpted so precisely, so permanently, my senses brim with unabashed awe, an overwhelming feeling of my own position of immortality in the history of humankind.

10:06 a.m. The students standing in line behind me grow auspiciously impatient, like a tea kettle about to boil.

10:10 a.m. Against the anguished protests of Mrs. Peterson, Nicky Folger puts his face in the plaster, instead of his hand. The impression this creates is quite sensational. Several students surge forward for a closer look. Mrs. Peterson begins to panic.

10:11 a.m. Ronny Krebs doubles over with laughter. Nicky aims a second pie at his pal, who ducks under the table. The pie smacks squarely against my chest. I pry the plaster pie off and swing it around in a circle, aiming at Nicky. The plaster of paris pie presses, instead, into Mrs. Peterson's hip. She screams. Sven sputters. Nicky dives under the table with Ronny, sliding more pies toward the floor.

10:12 a.m. The table upends and Sven gets a pie in the face. First grade does not get any better than this!

3:30 p.m. Nicky Folger, Ron Krebs, and I stay after school, taking turns writing "I will not throw pies," one hundred times on the blackboard.

A short, unsheltered sidewalk led from the back door of the school building to the gymnasium. The gym was a big box of a building, with two wide double doors which, when opened, unleashed the sounds of bouncing basketballs, shouts echoing, kids running, jumping, colliding, sneakers squeaking on the varnished floor. The walls were built of tongue and groove boards, which thumped when walloped with various hurled objects. It didn't have any windows, either.

We had so much rain in Washington that we played inside a lot. Most of the time we played basketball. Bombardment, or prison ball, was also popular, played with inflatable balls the size of pomegranates which were hurled at the velocity of heat seeking missiles; if you were hit you would walk around the rest of the day with a round red welt, a testament to being tagged.

There was one particular game called American Eagle 1-2-3. The biggest, strongest kid was usually "it", who stood in the middle of the basketball court, while the rest of the players lined up along one wall. When the big kid in the middle gave the signal, everyone tried to run to the other end of the gym, without getting caught. If you got caught, the player who was "it" had to lift you up so your feet didn't touch the floor, and shout, "American Eagle, 1-2-3!" Then there were two who were "it", and everyone would run back and forth until there was just one poor kid left panting against the wall, and everyone else was in the middle of the floor. The last kid was usually the swiftest; he had the hunted look of a cornered rabbit. When the mob in the middle caught the hapless victim, they would lift him above their shoulders, shout "American Eagle 1-2-3!" (in unison), and throw him like a rag doll as high in the air as they collectively could - to plummet down, down, down to the hard wooden basketball court with a resounding, and I might add, satisfying crash. Then he was "it." We didn't worry about safety as much back then.

Anyway, one morning we were in our classroom, singing along to Mrs. Peterson's piano, anticipating a little ultra-violence in the gym at recess. We were boisterously singing:

                Let's all sing like the birdies sing

                Tweet! Tweet-tweet! Tweet-tweet!

                Let's all sing like the birdies sing

                Peep! Peep-peep! Peep-peep!

or something like that. When we finished singing we all started jockeying for a position by the door for the race to the gym.

"Alvin," Mrs. Peterson said, "would you mind waiting a minute, please?"

"Huh?" I huhhed, as the recess bell clanged.

Everyone else ran ahead, laughing and jostling each other, having a good time without me.

Mrs. Peterson said, "Alvin, I have wonderful news!"

I looked past Mrs. Peterson, out the window, at all my classmates running down the sidewalk to the gymnasium, waving their arms and screaming. It looked like fun.

"You have been chosen from the whole school to sing a special song at the Christmas pageant this year!" Mrs. Peterson announced, proudly.

I gave my first grade teacher my full attention.

"What do you think of that?" she gushed.

I remained silent for a minute or so, letting her sweat it out. Finally I said, "Can I go to recess now?"

Mrs. Peterson rushed ahead breathlessly, ignoring my request.

"You will have to practice every day. Mrs. Anderson is going to rehearse the song with you. Now, this is the most important part in the pageant - it's positively pivotal! Your parents are going to be so proud…"

A growing sense of dread began to envelope me. I didn't want the most pivotal part in the school play. I couldn't sing. I just wanted to bash some balls around the gym.

"You have such a sweet voice! I'm sure with just a little coaching from Mrs. Anderson…" she gushed. "Alvin? Honey, are you all right? Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

Mrs. Anderson was the third grade teacher, a very stern, almost fabled disciplinarian. Tooey told me if you misbehaved in her classroom, she would rap your knuckles with a wooden ruler - hard! She was shorter than most of her pupils, but made up for her size by yelling a lot. Sometimes we could hear her hollering all the way downstairs.

She didn't smile much, and when she did, it was very scary looking. She smiled at me the first time we met. It reminded me of a mean dog we had living down the street.

"Stand up straight, Mr. Egg!" she said. "Just so we understand each other, I taught both of your brothers, and will tolerate no nonsense from you, either. Understand?"

I nodded my head as fast as I could. This was probably not a good time to play 'panty hose'.

"Okay, Alvin. Let's warm up by singing the state song, shall we?"

"Okay."

Mrs. Anderson started to pound the piano keys. I was afraid to admit that I didn't know the state song. After a few bars she stopped and looked down her nose at me. I shrugged helplessly.

"All right," she sighed crossly. "I'll sing it first, then you."

After adjusting the pile of encyclopedias she was sitting atop, she resumed her piano pounding and sang:

                Washington, my home!

                Wherever I may roam

                This is my land, my native land

                Washington, my home!

Fortunately, I had an easy time remembering song lyrics, and sang it correctly the first time through. Mrs. Anderson showed her approval by ending with a flourish.

"Now let's rehearse the song you are to sing in the pageant. You will be a pixie…"

"What's a pixie?"

"A sprite," she explained.

"What's a sprite?"

"All right, a leprechan," Mrs. Anderson said, crossly. "All the animals in the forest wake you up in time for Christmas. Your song starts:

                Wake up, wake up, sleepy head

                Hurry, hurry, out of bed

                All the creatures in the zoo

                Want to take a look at you…"

I raised my hand. "I thought I was in the forest."

"You are," Mrs. Anderson said, impatiently.

"Well, how come the song says the zoo?"

"Because. That's. What. Rhymes," she said through clenched teeth, deliberating between each word.

"Who wrote this, anyway?" I asked. After all, I was only a first grader. I hadn't learned any tact.

"I did," Mrs. Anderson said, her voice shaking.

"Oh! Oh!" I said, using the same exclamation as they used in the Dick and Jane books.

Mrs. Anderson banged the piano case shut. Her whole face was shaking, now. "That will be all for today!" she shouted.

I ran as fast as I could to the gymnasium. Just before I got there the doors flew open and everyone piled out. I almost got run over!

In the intervening weeks, I sacrificed numerous noon recesses to practice for the school play. Mrs. Anderson made me sing the same song over and over and over. She would pound the piano keys so hard that the baggy skin under her arms would wiggle. I had to look away when that happened, and she would yell at me for not paying attention. I didn't know how many more rehearsals I could take.

"That was just about right," she would say. "Now try it again, but enunciate the t's. Like this: waittttt. The audience won't be able to hear the words you are singing if you don't enunciate."

"Try to roll your r's more. Rrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Don't pop you p's!"

I didn't see what all the fuss was about. It was such a simple song. She had me practicing scales all during recess like I was Figaro, or something.

Meanwhile, the other kids were playing prison ball and Johnny-on-the-pony in the gym. I felt gypped. But Mrs. Anderson was so ferocious in her piano pounding, I dared not dissent. When word leaked out what my role in the school pageant was, I had to suffer further abuse.

"Hey, pixie!" Nicky Folger said in the lunch line one afternoon.

"Just shut up," I grumbled.

"Hey, everybody! Alvin's a pixie!" He made it sound like pixie was a dirty word.

All my classmates started laughing and pointing their fingers at me.

"Pixie! Pixie! Alvin is a pixie!" they chanted.

"What's a pixie?" Ron Krebs asked, slowly.

"You know," Nicky leered. "Like Tinkerbell, in Peter Pan!"

"Wait a second," Ron said, while he figured things out. "Alvin's not a pixie… he's a fairy!"

That was too much. I shoved Ron Krebs with all my might. He fell back against the garbage cans and knocked over a stack of tin lunch trays, which clattered to the floor, spilling creamed corn and tuna gravy all over the place.

I had never been in a fight before. But Nicky and Ronny had. Nicky socked me in the nose, and it hurt! I took a mad swing back at him, but I slipped in the grease and spun around like the Tasmanian Devil in the Bugs Bunny cartoon before crashing into Ron, who was trying to stand up. We both banged into the garbage cans and slopped soapy water onto the floor, which made it even more slippery.

Then my oldest brother Orman and his friend Lenny Cox and Sven the janitor and Mr. Pells the fifth grade teacher joined in the fracas. They all slipped and fell too! What a mess.

Mr. Pells managed to untangle us. Everyone was yelling and jumping up and down. Talk about confusing. Then both doors to the lunch room burst open, and it was as if all the air were sucked out of the room…

The school Principal, Mr. Van Over, was not a violent man; he did, however, have a voice that could be heard above an air raid siren. "HEY! ALL THREE OF YOU KNUCKLEHEADS GET DOWN TO THE FURNACE ROOM RIGHT NOW!!!"

The furnace room was the private domain of Sven the janitor, Mr. Pells, Mr. Van Over, and a few bus drivers. The temperature of the furnace room never dropped below a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. As every kid in the school knew, the furnace room was where you went to get swats.

Nicky, Ron, and I cowered in front of the boiler, which burned away like the Ovens of Doom. The seat of our britches felt like they were on fire, and we hadn't even been spanked yet. It was dark in there; the flames from the boiler made Mr. Van Over's eyes gleam unnaturally. Sweat beaded his forehead, and I feared that his furry red eyebrows, the size of hamsters, might burst into flame with the heat, or his burning anger.

Mr. Van Over marched back and forth in front of us like a drill sergeant. Mr. Pells, on the other hand, sat cross legged in a captain's chair, gently tapping a ping pong paddle against the palm of his long, bony hands, a bemused look on his face.

"WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?" Mr. Van Over hollered. The hair on our heads blew back like we were in a wind tunnel.

"WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT? HUH?!?!!

Ronny mumbled something indecipherable.

"SPEAK UP!"

Ronny had the shakes pretty bad, and Nicky couldn't seem to lift his chin up from his chest, so I figured I might as well act as the spokesman.

"Well, you see, Mr. Van Over," I explained meekly, "Ronny called me a fairy in the food line…"

"DID YOU DO THAT?"

"Ye-h-h-s-s-s s-s-s-i-r-r-r," Ronny stuttered, like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT A FAIRY IS?" Mr. VanOver demanded.

"It's-s-s-s uh, it's-s-s--s-s uh," Ronny attempted, his knees knocking audibly.

"WHAT ABOUT YOU?!?" Mr. VanOver shouted, his mouth only an inch from Nicky Folger's ears. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS?"

Nicky nodded his head imperceptibly, his eyes as big as pies.

"DO YOU?" Mr. VanOver screamed at me.

I looked at the toes of my sneakers, P.F. Flyers, before I had the courage to reply. "A sprite."

"WHAT?!?!?"

"A leprechaun?"

Behind us, Mr. Pells chuckled, and pulled his chin.

"Red," he said, "may I confer with you a moment?"

They consulted in whispers for a moment. Nicky made a long mugging face, but Ronny and I were too terrified to laugh.

Mr. Van Over turned around and glowered. "EGG! DO YOU WANT TO MISS SINGING IN THE SCHOOL PLAY?"

"Yes, sir! Very much, sir. Thank you, sir," I said. I would have bowed, but I didn't think my knees would support me.

Mr. Pells snickered again. Evidently their punishment had backfired.

"ALL RIGHT, YOU SLACKERS! LINE UP!"

We knew what this meant. Swats! We took turns. First Nicky, then Ron. They both got two swats with a wooden paddle about three quarters of an inch thick with holes drilled through it that hung beside the boiler door. Then I had to grab my ankles and receive the same sentence. It stung, all right, and my bottom burned the rest of the afternoon.

When we marched out of the furnace room, kids scattered in all directions. We were minor celebrities for a day or two. But it didn't get me out of singing in the school Christmas pageant.

That night our family was dining together in the kitchen. Mom was feeding Olive, or trying to, anyway. Olive kept spitting out the strained baby food that Mom spooned in her mouth. It really didn't look very good. Eloise wouldn't even lick up what the baby spilled. The Gerber Baby Food Company gave doctor's families free samples of their baby food. We had cases of the stuff

Dad looked up from his plate and said, "Well, boys. What happened in school today?"

I kept staring down at my plate. So did Orman. Tooey looked up and smiled mischieviously.

"Nothing, Dad," he said.

"Oh, come on," Dad said. "Didn't anything interesting happen in school today?"

I concentrated on my peas.

"No, Dad," Orman replied, without looking up. We all started shoveling our food in faster.

"I see," Dad said. He turned to me and beamed. "Well, Alvin. How is the singing coming along?"

I peeked up from my plate long enough to peep, "Fine, Dad."

"Can I be excused?" Orman said. "I've got a lot of homework to do."

"Yeh, me too," Tooey said.

"Me, too!" I echoed.

Both my parents remained silent, following our movements out of the corners of their eyes, while we carried our plates to the sink.

"Bugga bugga!" Olive babbled, banging her hands on the tray to her high chair.

We tromped up the stairs before anyone could comment further.

"Do you think they suspected anything?" Tooey whispered.

"Naw," Orman said.

"Naw," I echoed.

"Cut it out!" Tooey said, socking me in the arm.

"You cut it out!" Orman ordered, punching Tooey in the arm.

"Boys! Don't make me come up there!" Dad called from the kitchen.

The day of the Christmas pageant, we had rehearsals in the hallway all afternoon. The gym was off-bounds the last few days, as Sven the janitor applied fresh varnish to the floor. Only a few sixth graders were allowed inside to help decorate the stage. We had a contest to see which grade could make the longest chain of alternating red and green construction paper loops; when the chains were combined, they stretched fifteen lengths of the basketball court!

Since we couldn't go to the gym for recesses, we were all cooped up in the school building instead. You know how wired kids get just before Christmas? The halls reverberated with noise. All the teachers staggered around with glazed looks on their faces. School finally let out an hour early for final preparations before the evening's proceedings.

For dinner my mom made my favorite meal, Welsh Rabbit. That's what I called it, anyway. It was a Hollandaise sauce poured over toast, in honor of my singing debut.

It was a dark, starry night. The air seemed supercharged, like in a cereal commercial. Dad drove Orman, Tooey, and I to the school in the Valiant station wagon.

When he dropped us off he said, "Break a leg, boys," which sounded kind of comical coming from a doctor, I thought.

I had never seen anything as beautiful as the inside of the gym. It was so sparkly. The basketball court gleamed, reflecting the Christmas tree lights, the big kind, trimming the walls and rafters. About a hundred folding chairs were arranged in straight neat rows, enough for the whole town. Fir tree branches and fake snow covered the front of the stage. It smelled so good, varnish and wood!

The biggest Christmas tree I had ever seen towered all the way to the ceiling. It's branches held hundreds of handmade ornaments: painted wooden thread spools from the first graders, egg carton segments with glitter glued to them by second graders, glossy magazines pictures pasted on paper saucers by the third graders. The fourth graders contributed these feathered monstrosities that were supposed to resemble partridges, the fifth graders folded construction paper and cut snowflakes, and the sixth graders strung popcorn.

The basketball hoops were hoisted to the ceiling for the occasion, and thick blue velvet curtains were drawn dramatically across the stage. I stood and stared for five minutes. It felt so Christmasy it gave me goosebumps.

"First graders!" Mrs. Peterson called from the front door, clapping her hands. "Come get into your costumes!"

Doubling as a dressing room, our classroom was like a war zone. Most of the first grade girls were struggling into flower costumes. The boys were being outfitted as animals. I was the only elf. Several mothers had volunteered to get us all dressed. It was understandably chaotic.

"Nicky! Stop that!"

"Diane, stand up, dear!"

"Who is the other end of the donkey?"

"All the bunnies line up!"

"Get over here!"

"Put that down!"

"Stay still!!!"

Then they dropped the bomb. All the boys had to wear lipstick!

"I AM NOT WEARING LIPSTICK!!!" I screamed loud enough to hear in the next county.

"But boys, the stage lights will wash out your features," Mrs. Peterson pleaded. "You will look like dead people."

"I would rather be dead than wear makeup," Steve Nickles said, sticking out his tongue.

I dove under a desk. Mrs. Worthington, who had spent hours working on my pixie costume, tried to coax me out.

"Alvin, be careful. You'll wrinkle your costume!"

"I AM NOT WEARING LIPSTICK!" I howled.

I was wrestled into a chair and smeared with the poisonous stuff.

"Stop wriggling, Alvin," Mrs. Worthington begged. "You're just smearing it." Actually, she was smearing it - all over my face.

After the humiliating ordeal, the boys retreated to the coat closet to take turns in front of the mirror. It took about ten paper towels to rub the dreaded stuff off our faces; the school issue paper towels were as course as sandpaper, and removed several layers of skin in the process.

For some reason, Ricky Rice didn't seem to mind the makeup. He studied his red lips and rouged cheeks in the mirror in the cloakroom reflectively.

"I don't think this is my color," he mused.

The play started with all six grades crammed on bleachers spanning the stage, singing Washington, My Home:

                This is my country

                God gave it to meeeee

                I will protect it

                Ever make it freeeeeeee…

                Washington, my home!

                Wherever I may roam…

Looking out over the audience, I could see Mom and Dad, who both looked like they were in pain (I heard them whispering in the kitchen how they had to 'endure' the evening). Mrs. Moon already had a handkerchief to her eyes. My godmother, Ruby Ring, was right in the front row. I started making eye contact with as many people as possible. If you smiled sweetly at them, they would smile sweetly back. I liked having an audience.

We made as much noise shuffling off the stage as we had singing. Orman was on the stage crew. He, Lenny Cox, and Butch Jasperson started sliding props into place. They pushed a huge paper mache boulder onto the stage, straining and wiping their brows like it was really heavy. Everyone in the audience laughed loudly. They weren't supposed to do that.

"All right you guys!" Mr. Pells barked from the wings.

The theme of the play had something to do with animals. At least, ninety percent of the players were wearing animal suits. There were about a dozen dancing daisies, and Marshmallow was a bush. Dennis Holtz was wearing a cow costume, but when he came out on the stage little Johnny Bays cried, "Look, Mommy - a billy goat!"; causing Dennis to moo real loud all through the play and Mr. Pells to continually shush him from the wings.

Flowers danced around and around the stage while animals trotted back and forth, an odd assortment of barnyard, domestic, and jungle creatures - a donkey, a tiger, a rhino, a giraffe, a turkey, a tortoise, a lion, a weenie dog, a zebra, a raccoon, an elephant, a frog, a rabbit, a penguin, the Cat in the Hat (a costume left from last Christmas), an alligator, and a dancing bear. I was zonked out in a bed, oblivious to the bedlam. Why my bed was in the forest in the first place was never fully explained.

They sang:

                Sleepy head, sleepy head!

                Warm and cozy in your bed

                Good thing your nose isn't red

                Aren't you glad that you're not dead?

                Tra la la

                La dee dah

                Doe dee oh doe

                Jelly roll

                Donut hole

                Show moo the way to go home!

(It was supposed to be, "Show me the way to go home," but once again Dennis Holtz drowned everyone out mooing.)

The flowers planted themselves around my bed. All the animals danced the Charleston, then crumbled cross-legged across the