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I don’t enjoy soft drinks like I used to. As a kid I used to like them a lot. My favorites were Coca-Cola, Grapette and Yoo-Hoo, but especially Coke.
I remember padding barefoot down a hot and dusty summer lane toward the sanctuary of a little store at a country crossroad, feeling rich and adult with a nickel or a dime tucked into the watch pocket of my jeans.
My feet would ache with relief when I stepped up into the shade of the plank porch. There was usually a dog to step over, and the Rainbow Bread screen door had puffs of cotton stuck into holes in the screen to keep flies out. Behind the display counter, which had yellowing cellophane tape over the cracks in the glass, sat a fat lady who’d greet you with “Hey, now,” if she wasn’t too busy reading the paper or swatting flies.
I’d head straight for the drink box, as big and solid as a boxcar in the middle of the aisle. It was filled with chunks of ice and water from the melting ice and every kind of soda known to childhood. If you were a regular customer, sometimes
the lady would let you have a chunk of ice to gnaw on, if that day you didn’t have a nickel for a drink.
I’d ease my hand down into that numbing dark and feel around for as long as I could stand it. I knew all the drinks by the shape of the bottles. Eventually I’d pull out a six-and-a-half-ounce Coca-Cola, as wet and cold and beautiful as a fresh-caught trout. Then you’d hear all the other drinks grumble and clink and rearrange themselves down in the dark cold slush.
Days when I had a dime I’d also buy a nickel bag of Tom’s Peanuts in a crinkly cellophane bag. I’d make a funnel of my hand and pour the peanuts into the Coke, watching the salt foam and slurping up the overflow. There was no greater luxury in those days: the cold sharp bite of the Coke on the tongue and the sweet crunch of the peanuts between your teeth.
It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a drink like that.
Today, soft drink manufacturers fight like schoolboys over “share” and
“penetration” and “demographics.” I’m not sure what all that means, but I do know that when I succumb to the desire for a soft drink I find myself holding a half-quart of too-sweet, too-warm liquid that doesn’t taste the way I think it ought to.
My drink is never really cold when I take it out of the “chiller.” I can't seem to find anything smaller than a twelve ounce size, so the drink is warm and sticky-sweet before I can finish it instead of being exactly enough bone-chilling tongue-biting sparkle to quench my thirst.
As an adult, I’ve chosen scotch whiskey as my leisure-time beverage. But when I have a little more scotch than I should, I tend to become maudlin, recalling childhood things, talismans of innocence, images so powerful I can never escape them.
One of those is a six-and-a-half-ounce bottle of Coke, hand-fetched from the Arctic deep of an ice-filled chest. It was a drink that satisfied more than just thirst. Your hand delivered thrills all the way down to your toes when you reached into that cold water; there was the hiss of the cap releasing its hold on the bottle and the clatter of the cap down into the bin beneath the opener. You could even pry the cork out of the cap and use it to hold the cap on your shirt like a badge. It was a drink that gave you your money’s worth, even if it was only a nickel.
And it was especially satisfying to finish your Coke and find that the glass bottle was made in some ‘way-off place called Enid, Oklahoma.
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There are days like this: I awoke just a little muzzy-headed from taking a firmer grip on the pillow and stealing an extra thirty minutes' sleep. I stumbled to the kitchen and paid morning obeisance to the coffee pot.
Wandering back into the bedroom, I parked my coffee cup on the bureau and fumbled through the drawers for the day's socks and underwear. As I turned to sit on the edge of the bed, something outside the window jammed a blood-red scream into my eye.
It was partly the delight of the unexpected: that unabashed symmetrical beauty and partly the reassuring familiarity that pleased me. An old favorite rose called “Mr. Lincoln” had delivered again.
Last year I established a rose bed along the western fence, a place where the roses would get morning sun – a must, since roses don't like wet leaves. If you have ever tried to grow roses, you know the labor involved: deep-turning the bed to the recommended eighteen to twenty-four inches, emending the clay soil with sand, bone meal and slow-release fertilizer; hand-picking the roots and stones, laying down landscape fabric to slow the inevitable return of weeds. You set the knobby living heart of the rose called a “scion,” and spread bag after bag of mulch to help hold moisture beneath the surface. Roses are surprisingly hardy if you don't skimp on labor when you’re establishing the bed.
I installed five specimens: two of “Mr. Lincoln,” a “Tropicana,” which produces a handsome salmon-hued bloom, and two “Chrysler Imperials” which develop large white blooms. My choices were arbitrary; these roses were all culls from a neighbor's garden, but I thought they might survive with some care. That's not what they got.
I made a good start, but the press of other matters forced rose care way down my priority list. Tropicana didn't survive a month. One of the Chrysler Imperials showed promise but eventually turned into a brown-fanged stick. The survivors were orphaned throughout winter.
In a rare walk around the yard a month or so ago, I took the time to prune. I eliminated the most obvious dead stems and cut everything back to less than a foot tall. That was the total effort I put into the roses this year. Yet the dependable and obviously hardy Mr. Lincoln would not be denied.
That eye-spearing blaze through my bedroom window drove my slippered feet out of the house and through the wet grass to the garage, where I found the pruning shears. At the rose bed I found a delight which will carry me through this day with a smile on my face.
Mr. Lincoln stood waist-high, presenting me with not one, nor two, but three handsome roses: one tight bud just beginning to show the deep red petals within the green husk; one half-opened flower, a perfect specimen to cut and carry to a show for judging (given that the petals will continue to unfold, and you must plan for this in order to exhibit the bloom at its exact peak); and one hand-sized mature bloom which proved just what a handsome rose can be.
Near where I’m now sitting is the fully-opened rose in a tall bud vase. I had forgotten how a single “old-fashioned” rose can suffuse an entire room with fragrance. Many of the newer varieties are developed and grown only for appearance, but my preference has always been the older roses with their perfumed breath.
This bloom I see before me stands almost two feet tall –the classic long-stemmed rose – and as I pass on my way to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, it wafts a subtle scent into the room. I've left the half-opened bloom for tomorrow or the next day, when this first rose of summer will wither, consumed again and again by my eyes and pleasured inhalations.
The third rose –that tight-wrapped bud – may provide another day or two's diversion through my window before gracing the bud vase in my front room. It may seem cruel to cut these euphoric creatures from their parent plant, but this is their design and purpose: they are, after all, “cutting roses,” a creature quite apart from the old rambler that graces eight or ten feet of my fence further on.
Cut properly, the rose bush actually becomes more productive, so I can look forward to more days of delight; days that begin with the unexpected, unearned, unselfish benediction of a rose. |
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Thanks to a good friend, I found myself at the helm of a jib-rigged sloop about a week ago, enjoying an afternoon sail and an honest Mexican beer. My host and I have been professional associates for years, but I'd only recently learned of his delight in sailing. We share this character fault.
Putting out on a late spring day meant an uncrowded lake, steady if changeable winds, and the release of tight-wound knots of daily care.
Recreational sailing reminds me of my long-ago childhood when I'd bicycle home just in time for dinner to face the usual parental questions: “Where've you been?” “Nowhere.” “What did you do?” “Nothing.”
And that's the point.
The things that occupy your mind when sailing are fundamental: the sail trim, the twitch of the tiller in hand, the sparkle of sun on wavelets and a lazy lookout for other boaters. Beyond that, the mind is free to wander; mental muscles unlatch and stretch, and the sailor enters a mild state of bliss.
Cynics have described sailing as “Going nowhere...slowly...at great expense.” While there is some truth to this, it misses the whole idea of inland sailing, which is simply to get away, to become reliant on only on the fundamentals of wind and wave, to shed the burden of weekday woes.
Some years ago, I drove to a Virginia lake to pick up a sailboat my brother had offered me at a greatly reduced price: flush with financial success in auto sales, he'd leaped into boat ownership with absolutely no experience and no tools but his checkbook. When it became apparent that his wife – a fragile girl of timorous mindset – couldn't deal with a boat that “tipped over,” he offered it to me. I'd hardly gotten the boat home and begun some long-overdue maintenance before he'd bought a small cabin cruiser. “I turn the ignition key,” he said, “and we go. And it stays flat on the water.”
This pleased Miss Mousey and eased marital tensions, but it also illustrats the gap between sailors and stink-pot sailors. Apart from the surface on which the vessel travels and the extent of exposed skin visible, there's little difference in cabin cruising and taking a spin in the family auto.
That's a prejudicial view, I know, but consider my introduction to sailing and you'll understand why I find sailing so appealing.
I was a fifteen-year-old Explorer Scout at a time when my military family and I were living in Hawaii. It took very little time for me to acclimate myself to the Pacific waters: I was a habitue of daily swims, body surfing and what today is called “boogie-boarding” in the shallows. I was introduced to scuba diving and snorkling, and there was a cove near Wiamea Falls my crowd liked, where the daring could cliff-dive into the rolling swells.
As a daily routine, we wore swim trunks under our school clothes, stripping off while the city bus made its way along Waikiki, and leaping off just past the Queen's Surf Hotel. Our book-and-clothing bundles were hurled to the sand as we charged into the welcoming breakers and sluiced off the school day.
One of my Scout advisors set up a field trip one day; a dozen of us found ourselves aboard a thirty-four-foot wood-hulled sloop called “The Buccaneer” just off Diamond Head. The Pacific was rolling in six-to-eight-foot swells and once we were well offshore, the bow began to bury itself in the waves, driving deep and rising high above the surface. Some of us decided it would be great fun to ride the bowspirit. We were all swimmers, so our advisors weren't particularly concerned, but we were required to strap on a bulky lifejacket before inching out and wrapping ourselves around the spar.
And that's where the sailing infection set in.
To this day, I remember the feeling: clinging to the bowspirit, rising high then being plunged into the face of the sea, feeling the blood-warm waters rush across my skin, the massive inertia of the Buccaneer driving me deep, deep into the Pacific, then lifting me up and up to burst through the surface in a spray of sun-drench, gasping for air and delighted. It was as sensual an experience as I have had in my life: the huge boat mass driving, the water welcoming, the thunder in my ears of water rush and wind whistle, knowing of fathoms beneath and feeling reborn into the scorch of the sun again and again.
As much as I enjoyed owning the sloop my brother's wife disdained – which in my optimism I renamed “Residual” – I sailed it for only five seasons; I virtually gave it away under the duress of getting my Mother moved from her mountain home to a seniors' community after her first stroke. I have some hope that someone is still enjoying that old hull, sloshing around some inland lake – better still, in an ocean environment, since it was designed and built for offshore day sailing.
My friend not only has reawakened my sense of escapist delight in sailing, he has also presented me with an unexpected gift of great measure: a key to the marina and the combination to all the locks. “Use it when you can, please,” he said. The last time I felt so honored with trust was the first time I asked the Old Man for the car keys and he didn't argue...just tossed 'em to me and said, “Don't burn more gas than you can afford to replace.”
It's an hour-and-a-half drive to the lake where this boat is moored, but you can bet that I'll make that trip a few times this summer. And it seems only fair that I perform some small maintenance items in return for the access granted me by my understanding and trusting friend. There have been a lot of times lately when going nowhere slowly would suit me just fine.
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THE MYSTERY OF THE MAIL c.2004 VirgilT
It was just a desk; a wooden roll-top of the kind common not so very long ago. In the faded print of memory, the image has gone brittle and sepia. Yet there is some clarity to it: a sense of the attic vault above, shadowed boxes and bundles in the background, pigeonholes crowded with the paper debris of years, dust motes dancing over the desk in a sunlight shaft that pours in from a gabled window.
I can't see the man's face. I sense a bulky presence in gartered shirtsleeves, turned slightly in his chair, a warmly smiling face. The man means me no harm; I am welcome here.
That is the image: I have carried it with me for almost six decades.
This much I know: I was three years old, the town was called Sherman, and it was summer as summer can only be in Texas. Cicadas sang from the trees and the shade of the live oaks was respite from the kiln-like baking of the day.
The man's name was Ware. Mr. Ware. His house turned a shoulder to my red brick home, locating itself on a street a half-block away yet fully-visible across the dusty grey-green of a tired grassy plot. A tall outside stairwell clung to the clapboard side of Mr. Ware's house, and I have the sense that it was white. In my mind's eye I can push close in and see the tortured paint peeling like chips on a porcelain teapot.
Every day about noon, the mailman appeared along the sidewalk that ran in front of Mr. Ware's house, sorting and fumbling a handful of letters as he cut the grassy corner and approached my red brick residence.
It wasn't "my" house, of course. My grandparents lived there; Mother and I were temporary guests that summer. My grandaddy Bill was a gauger for Texaco, in charge of a mammoth pumping station that forced crude oil along endless miles of sun-struck pipe to destinations unknown. The pumps and the holding tanks adjacent gave the air of the town the taint of ooze and gassy exhudations. His wife, Ira, spent her days in the cool dim recesses of the house, taking little midday naps which restored her from many heated kitchen hours.
Of my mother I know little from this time, except that it must have been she who took the photograph that still triggers the memory.
The house stood huge in red brick at the corner of the street. I am standing on the marble sweep of balastrades which opened like arms to welcome visitors up the steps into the shaded comfort of a house-wide porch. My outfit is a knit sunsuit in pale blue with a matching tam o' shanter. On the bib front, between two large buttons that hold the straps, is an embroidered duck. On my feet are white lace-up shoes, perhaps my first, and I am smiling the innocence of my
three years.
I can see the mailman approaching, but I do not see him opening our curb-side mailbox, nor do I see him leave. Neither do I see myself reaching high up into the post-mounted box or carrying the letters and papers into the house, but I must have done so: I was told it was my great delight.
With good reason, of course. Almost without fail there would be an envelope addressed to me. Inside would be a peppermint stick, a piece of chewing gum, a grape-flavored sucker with a looped fiber handle; childhood treats borne with good nature by the mailman on his route from the white clapboard house around the corner, across the suffering grass to the mailbox at my red brick family nest.
Mr. Ware's situation is unknown to me: he may have been a widower. Perhaps he was a man whose children had long since departed for lives of their own. Or he may have been a life-long bachelor with the sense of loss that arrives in middle age when there are no children -- no nieces, no nephews, no grandchildren -- to fill the looming void of age.
What I know is this: he took a shine to a toddler and created a life-long memory filled with a sense of kindness and imagination.
To this day, finding mail in the mailbox is a delight for me. There is suspense in not knowing what I may find; there is eager anticipation of word from friends or family; there is even reassurance in the steady flow of mortages notices and utility bills. Decry it as "snail mail" if you will; it will always ways be welcome to me.
The attic image planted early and deep in my psyche derives, I think, from a one-time visit to meet my benefactor. Perhaps my mother encouraged her toddler to meet and say "Thank you" to the man. It may be that one of my grandparents took me there; I cannot say. There is no connective tissue between the memory of Mr. Ware's attic with its immense roll-top desk, the mailbox out front, and the photo which shows me standing on the sweeping balastrade of the red brick house in Sherman, Texas. I simply know they are part of a whole, fragments of a time long gone, and those shards of memory are lodged in my mind like a fly in amber.
It is a cherished thing, this tattered memory, tucked carefully away in the cigar box of childhood with other precious oddities: a cats-eye marble, a tooth dropped by the coin-leaving fairy, a small ornate key to nothing in particular. All have grown faded and worn with the erosion of time's passing...and each is among the most valuable things I own.
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