Peonies

Tucked away in a small box on the top shelf of my father’s closet is an old 8 mm film.  It is a chronicle of our family during the years of 1965 and 1966.  One scene in particular has always brought me a chuckle.  In this brief snippet I am seen as a three or four year old boy walking through my backyard on a sunny May day.  Then as now, the yard was lined by peony bushes in full flower.  I stroll along looking at the bushes and eventually stop to smell one of the blooms.  Although there is no sound, my father who is holding the camera asks me to pick one of the blossoms for my mother, so I try to oblige him.  I take the peony bloom in my hand and give a gentle tug, but nothing happens.  Undaunted, I decide to give it a little more effort, but unfortunately the result is the same.  As the smile slowly fades from my face, I shift tactics and grab the bloom with both hands, lifting and pulling with all my might.  Nothing! I start stamping my feet, and as I turn to the camera I am clearly frustrated.  My face is red and there is a trace of tears welling up in my eyes.  Even then my pride reared its ugly head and you can see my determination grow as I try to accomplish the job and regain my dignity.  To show that I am up to the task, I put one hand behind my back, confident that this time I had the strength to win the battle.  I take hold of the bloom and charge away from the bush, but the stem does not yield and I am quickly snapped back.  Repeatedly, I lunge and lunge, and repeatedly the peony holds fast.  Finally out of sympathy, my father stops filming.  

One of the ever present ants exploring a bud.

That was about 45 years ago and so much in my life has changed, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that fencerow of bushes.  One of the many wonderful qualities about peonies is their long life, and these plants, at nearly half a century of age, are a testament to that fact.  They are as full and their heady fragrance still perfumes the air in April just as it did all those many years ago.  It is a scent I can still appreciate, but now that my sense of smell has greatly diminished, I can no longer appreciate the aroma of the foliage itself.  I became acquainted with it as a boy searching for the occasional errant baseball that had disappeared into their dark recesses.  With only a general idea of where the ball had disappeared, I would move bush by bush, separating the stems and searching their bases for the ball.  Two things would become obvious - the air was always cool and moist below these bushes, and there was a very distinct smell to the leaves.  In my memory the smell is still quite strong, but in actuality my nose can no longer register it.

For many years the peonies became part of a family tradition.   Each May my mother would sell bouquets of their blooms for those who wanted to decorate graves.  Although Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) was originally recognized as a day to honor fallen veterans, it has evolved into a day to remember all loved ones who have passed on.  Peonies were a very popular flower to leave at grave sites in those days, although the tradition has seemed to fade over the years.  But in those days, when May rolled around, Mom would make signs to place in the local grocery stores advertising our flowers.  I was given the job of taking a sign and nailing it to a telephone pole along 16^th Street, the busy avenue that ran a block from our house.  Then we would wait for the people to come.  The total was never large, but each year a respectable number would knock on our door and ask for some flowers.  Mom would grab her scissors and lead them out back to pick out their bouquet.  Our bushes were pink and white with a couple of cherished red ones that bloomed a deep mahogany.  These were Mom’s favorites, and I think she tried steering people away from them, but I’m sure if they asked, she snipped them a few red blooms, too.

Our peony selling days eventually came to an end for a couple of reasons.  Perhaps the greatest reason was that we started spending all of our weekends, when the “flower business” was at its peak, at our trailer at Raccoon Lake.  Weekends were the prime time for visiting cemeteries and people were looking for fresh blooms.  Another reason was that our bushes tended to bloom late, and it seemed that over time their bloom period finally became too late for Memorial Day.   That opened the door wider for our biggest competitor, the Huebners who lived behind us.  The Huebners held a couple of big advantages over us.  First, their peonies were an earlier blooming variety, so they had a good supply ready when the holiday rolled around.  Secondly, they lived on 16^th Street itself, so they had lots of traffic.  Our house sat on a dead end, so unless you lived on our street, you never passed our house.  I’m sure our ads at the store and my sign on the telephone pole probably brought them a little extra business.  While trying to find our house, the customer would invariably drive past their house with its own “Poenies for Sale” sign posted out front and turn in.  But I don’t hold that against them.  They were a wonderful family and had as much right to sell their flowers as we did.  In fact, one of those weekends when we were “playing” at the lake, Mrs. Huebner sold some of our flowers.  We did not know this until we returned home Sunday evening, and she came strolling from her backyard through ours.  She knocked on the door and presented my mother with money, explaining in her thick German accent, “While you were gone it rained, and all your peonies looked so sad beaten to the ground.  I shook the water off, but they would not stand up.  I did not want to see them lying on the ground, so I clipped some and sold them.”  We would have never noticed the missing blooms, but the Huebners were an honest couple. 

They say peonies are one of those generational plants that gets passed from family to family through the years.  Such is the case with my family’s plants.  I have owned two homes in my life, and at each one I have planted peonies from my parents’ backyard.  My sister has even presented me with starts from the Huebner’s yard, which to me is just as meaningful.   

This year the peonies will again serve their original purpose for our family.  In a week or two, we will gather a bundle of the pink, white and burgundy blooms, and we will take them to the cemetery.  There they will be placed in a vase at my mother’s grave.  It will be our first Memorial Day without her, but I know she will be happy seeing her peonies once again.

My mother, very much loved and very much missed.

Treasure Chest

I grew up in a much simpler time.  There were no computers, no videos or video games to distract us.  Televisions were mainly black and white and got three or four channels, at best.  For my generation, you spent your free time outdoors, and your best friend was your imagination.  And I will admit, my imagination in those days was very well developed. That is not to say that we didn’t have toys with which to play, we just didn’t have the great bulk of “things” that kids seem to accumulate these days.  I’ve already written about my favorite accoutrement to play, my swing set.  But the swing was not the sole attraction of my backyard.

First and foremost, given that I am from the great state of Indiana where basketball has always reigned supreme, there was the basketball goal.  Early on after my parents moved into the house in which I was to grow up, my dad hauled in an old telephone pole and sunk it in the ground in the back corner of the yard.  He then fashioned a wooden backboard and hung a rim.  There was no official court, just lawn and hard packed dirt.  The free-throw line was where the grass was most worn away.  I tried and tried to become a proficient basketball player, but somehow that skill (as did most athletic skills) eluded me.  However, it did not prevent many fun games of horse or 21.  In later years as various trees were planted and grew large, new twists were added.  We started trying to make baskets by throwing the ball over the apple tree.  Or there were three point contests from the edge of the garden.   A few years ago, after nearly four decades of standing vigil in the back yard, the goal which had seen the family grow up and move away finally gave way to age and the elements.  You wouldn’t think there would be much emotion with such a thing, but it was like clipping the umbilical cord to my youth, and it also marked the point in my father’s life where he admitted he was getting too old to play basketball any more.  I am proud to say, he stuck it out into his 80’s, however.  There is a brief aside to this story.  When the goal finally came down a few years ago, you could have found a particular knothole a few feet up from its base that was filled with some light colored material.  It was my chewing gum that I had stuck in there in 1976 and into which I had pressed the number “76” into with my fingernail.  That was the country’s bicentennial year, and wanting to mark its passage and looking for a way to deposit my worn-out gum, that was my solution.  I never dreamed it would remain for almost 30 more years.

For a brief period, a tether ball pole was added.  I can remember only a few games, more with my sister and her friends than myself, but the tether ball pole held a different fascination for me.  At some point the ball snapped off the rope, and rather than replace it, the pole was left as is, with just a fragment of rope hanging from it.  This is the period I most enjoyed because it gave me something other than my swing set on which to climb.  I enjoyed shimmying up the thin, metal pole to reach the top. It might have served as the mast of an imaginary ship, or perhaps it was the palm tree I would climb to look for signs of civilization once I had shipwrecked.  Or it was simply a test of my strength and ability, but regardless the purpose, the pole was still fun to climb.

I've used this photo before, but it is the only one I know which shows the old tire sandbox.

I can also remember all the time I spent playing in our sandbox.  It was made from an old tractor tire that my father had re-purposed for his then growing family.  It was very large and could easily seat a few children around its perimeter.  It is so early in my life, that much of its memory is lost to me.  I can vaguely recall going with my father to buy sand for it.  We did not go to a store, but rather to something more like a strip pit, I believe.  I don’t recall how we got the sand home, but I do remember the trip to get it.  I recall a few little toy figures that “lived” in the sandbox.  They would be buried in the sand and finding one was always like digging up buried treasure.  Not being fine beach sand, it had a way of forming hard clumps that I would break up with my hands.  These often formed in the deeper recesses of the tire itself, which is also where the buried toys most often lurked.  My neighbor and I made many mud pies and sand cakes with sand and a little water, but it was my goal to create a formula to turn it into concrete.  I don’t recall what I would add to the sand and water, but I was always confident I would succeed.  As much fun as playing in the sand was running around the tire’s perimeter.  I seem to remember having wrestling matches where the goal was to shove your opponents off the tire while remaining standing to become “king of the hill.”  When we had all outgrown the sandbox, Dad cleared it out and took the tire to a friend.  That is when I learned something I had never noticed in all the years we played in it.  My father had carved his and my mother’s initials into the hard rubber sides when they had first gotten the tire. 

Me wielding my small Indianapolis Indians bat

One of my favorite areas, yet the most dreaded, was our toy chest that sat under the old elm tree.  It was quite large and constructed of wood and thin strips of metal, with a curved lid and a latch which gave it the appearance of the classic treasure chest from every pirate story I had ever read or watched on television.  And that is what seemed so magical about it.  For me, it was a true treasure chest, and I think I always half-expected to open its lid to reveal piles of gold coins and jewelry.  What was revealed when the lid was opened was what I least liked about that chest. It made the perfect home for dozens of spiders.  When we would go to retrieve something from its dark interior, the lid would be lifted and spiders would scatter, their webs and egg baskets would clinging to its underside.  You would make a quick survey of the contents, then reach in and grab your toy as fast as you could before running away from the trunk and allowing the lid to fall closed with a loud “thunk.” 

Ours were blue and red.

Inside was the sports equipment and outdoor toys with which we played.  There was an ancient football actually constructed from pigskin, with a smooth suede feel to it.  And there was our basketball which eventually went over the back fence into the pen with Gigi, the German shepherd who lived behind us.  Gigi was large and loud and scared us all.  She lived in a garage but had a short, enclosed metal run from her doggy door to the outside.  The passage out was at a right angle, so you could never see in the door to know if she was headed out or not.  When the ball bounced into her pen, you had to steady your nerves, make a quick leap over the fence, run to the ball, fling it back into the yard then quickly dash back to the fence before she emerged barking and charging.  It was very frightening to me, so when I was alone and the ball bounced into her pen, I was usually too scared to retrieve it.  This happened on one occasion, and I just left the ball there and went inside.  I finally told my brother, and we were able to retrieve it a few days later, but not before Gigi had ripped the entire covering from the ball.  It was still inflated, but it was just a soft rubber ball after that.  Tossed in with these was our scoop ball set, a pair of curved plastic handles and a whiffle ball that served as a tame Midwestern version of jai alai.  You could throw a wicked curve ball with that set, but I frequently used the handles as my peg leg when pretending to be a pirate.  There were assorted other baseballs and softballs and a collection of bats which had been relocated here from my father’s old army bag in which he used to transport them to the little league games he helped coach.  And finally, there were my brother’s old metal Tonka toys including a dump truck, a road grader, a flatbed trailer and an old Jewel Tea Company truck.  You could always pull something fun from that old chest.

Although not ours, this is how the Jewel Tea truck looked until I painted it.

My brother's Tonka road grader

The old Tonka truck hooked up to the flatbed trailer.

The remainder of my entertainment sprang from what grew naturally.  There were trees to climb.  I had a small tree house in the old apple tree next to the basketball goal, but I loved climbing the large silver maple even more.  There I would spread myself on a wide branch and try napping or sit and read a book. For fun one afternoon, I took a volume of our Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia into the big maple and memorized the first half of the Gettysburg address. Iris leaves made wonderful swords, and we waged many a sword fight.  Bugs were plentiful so we caught large grasshoppers, praying mantis, bumble bees and lightening bugs.  We didn’t have to watch nature programs, we learned it firsthand.

Everything put together could not have cost much and most were hand-me-downs, but to me I was the richest kid in the world.  I do not recall wanting for anything.  I only wish my own children could appreciate such simple things.  My wife and I are guilty for that, I guess.  We have always given our children too much, and we encouraged technology at an early age.  We never kicked them out the back door and told them to entertain themselves.  Although they both showed those early bursts of creative imagination, I felt the seed never was allowed to hit fertile soil and take root as it should.  Maybe when I become a grandparent in a few years, I will rectify my errors.  I vow now to get them outdoors, to walk in the woods, to have stick races on the creek and to sit back and see what they can accomplish with a few simple toys and their imagination.  I think that is one of the greater gifts I could provide.  After all, sometimes a greater treasure than gold and jewels can be found in al old pirate chest.

Swinging

It seems I was born with a naturally nervous disposition.  Since my earliest memories, I have always had to be moving.  As a two or three year old, I had an old spring horse as my release.  I can remember sitting in the saddle and taking long rides back and forth, the springs squeaking out the rhythm.  When I was bored with that, I would switch to a hopping pattern, slowly jumping the horse across the living room floor.  When not on my horse, I could frequently be found rocking in a rocking chair.  This is a trait I carry to this day; if there is a rocking chair in the room, that is where I will be seated.  In fact, I am sitting on my front porch, in an all hickory bentwood rocker made by an Amish man in New York as I write this.  Rocking chairs don’t really stand a chance with me.  I am a vigorous rocker, and the toll of my exertions is usually soon apparent.  As a toddler, I would rock so hard I would tip the chair over.  My parents then switched to an antique platform rocker that for many years had sat in the poultry house where my grandfather worked.  Many springs were broken on that poor rocker before I moved on.  For years I would rock myself to sleep in it each night.  The chair has followed me into my adult life and keeps a vigil next to the piano in our living room. Traditional wooden rockers separate at the joints, and even the tough, curved hickory runners of the chair I’m now sitting in are worn and splintered. 

Even in my sleep I move.  There were six of us growing up in a three bedroom home, which meant we slept two to a bed.  My brother and I shared a bed for several years.  The only way I could go to sleep was to tap my foot or rock my leg.  Over and over again, my poor brother would grab my leg to stop me.  The rocking of the bed probably made him seasick, but for me it seemed the only way to burn off the last vestiges of that day’s energy and relax.  The same pattern continued in school, church or any other situation in which I was forced to sit for extended periods.  Even now, if I must sit through a movie or a lecture, my foot is tapping or my leg is gently swinging.  I must be in motion at all times.

 

But for many years the main outlet for all of that nervous energy was my backyard swing set.  In the early days my swing consisted of a glider type swing and two traditional metal swings.  The glider was easier for me to use in the early days when I had not yet learned to pump my legs, but once I learned to master the other swings, I was hooked.  

For me the swing was more than an energy outlet, it was the center of my world, both real and imaginary.   Very early on I learned a swing is a great place to think.  Some people meditate, but I would lose myself in the rhythm of the swing, the squeak of the chains being my mantra.  There I reviewed the day’s school lessons in my head or plotted my future plans.  In May, I would bask in the sweet perfume of my family’s peony bushes, and in the summer I would watch my father mow the lawn as I breathed in the smell of the freshly cut grass.  I can remember swinging and singing, my repertoire being an eclectic mix of Nat King Cole and country music.  I can recall having many heart to heart talks with robins and mourning doves, encouraging them to nest in my yard.  I would also swing and talk to Gigi, the intimidating German shepherd who lived in the yard adjacent to us.  Gigi was probably a nice dog, but she scared me to death, and I was always trying to convince her I was worthy of her friendship.

Speaking of friendship, the swing was something to be shared.  How many times did my next door neighbor, Julie, and I try to swing and touch the telephone lines with our feet?  Obviously, there was no chance of that, but to a pair of five year olds, the sky’s the limit.  As we swung, we became aware of our individual rhythms and would adjust our pumping until we were totally in synch.  Sometimes it would become competitive, and we would see who could swing higher, leaning our bodies back and kicking out legs straight out to gain momentum.  Eventually, we would reach the point where the swing would stall in mid-air, the chain would slacken and we would snap back towards the earth as gravity took over.  Julie’s sister, Becky, as well as other neighbors, would also join in the action as we switched to jumping games.  There were variations on this theme ranging from who could jump the highest to who could jump the farthest.  Then there was the statue game where one would leap off the swing and strike a pose in mid-air, trying to maintain it on the ground.  Eventually, one of the metal swings wore through and broke, and my parents replaced it with a white plastic seat.  The seats were the same width, hung at the same height and traced the same arc, yet the white swing never felt right.  Only the old black swing felt comfortable to any of us.  So the battle cry as we ran into the backyard was always, “Dibs on the black swing!”  I was not very chivalrous, so I usually claimed the rights of ownership

The swing set was the perfect stage for my active imagination in those early years.  It served as boats, planes, racecars, rockets, caves, etc.  I survived many shipwrecks on that old swing.  It was the time of Gilligan’s Island, and I sang out the theme as my adventure began.  The rise and fall of the swing became the S.S. Minnow riding the ocean swells, and with a leap from the seat, I was suddenly tossed onto a deserted island.   As I explored the island, the frame of the swing set became trees and hills.  The end supports were shaped like the letter “A” and by climbing up and over the cross bar, I could imagine myself entering a cave or climbing still higher in a tropical tree.

The swing naturally lent itself to the role of a fighter jet.  The constant dragging of my feet through the years had left the ground below barren of grass and with a fine dust layer.  The poor unsuspecting ants became the enemy vehicles I was to take out.  With proper sound effects of jet engines, rattling machine guns and explosions, I repeatedly strafed the enemy below.  By tapping my foot in the dust, I could raise a small cloud which looked to me like bombs exploding far below.  I usually emerged victorious, but on occasion, my plane would be hit by artillery and I would be forced to bail out.

 

I’ve written before of my wonderful years at Raccoon Lake.  I was not without swings there, either.  However, there I traded the traditional swing for tire swings.  There were two different tire swings through the years, but they were both suspended from tall trees in the woods.  If you had a good push, you could enjoy quite a ride; however, there was always the fear that you would get off track and crash into one of the supporting trees.  Even before the tire swings, there was a large rope swing behind what would eventually become our third and final trailer.  It was a thick rope attached high into a large poplar tree.  You had to stand on a small tool shed to mount the rope, but the ride was well worth the effort.  It carried your across the lot and into the woods before gently bringing your back to the shed.  It could almost take your breath away.  The family who at that time owned the property did not appreciate our playing on their rope, so sadly one weekend it suddenly disappeared!  Occasionally, we would find a large grapevine that someone had cut, and we would do our best Tarzan impersonations by riding it through our Midwestern “jungle.”  The problem with grapevines is that once they are cut, they begin dying and sooner or later they break.  My sister, being older and larger than me, was the usual victim of these vine failures.  It was a two phased problem.  First, the vine would break sending Sheila sailing to the ground below, but that was not the end.  The second phase was the long vine falling to the ground from the tree, peppering her with chunks of wood and vine.  

As with all things, time marched on and I outgrew the little swings, moving instead to porch swings and gliders.  I still give them a run for their money because I am anything but a subtle rocker.  But I enjoy them no less than those early days in my backyard when Gigi and the mourning doves watched a small boy trying to swing high and touch the telephone lines, and the squeak of the chains rand out all day long.

Something in the Air

They say that the sense of smell is one of the strongest triggers for memories, and I was reminded of that fact the other day while driving home from work.  It was a welcomed warm spring day, and I was finally able to drive with the windows down.  In front of me was a small car driven by a man puffing away on a cigar.  The smoke drifted back and soon the smell of tobacco surrounded me.   I was immediately transported back to my early childhood when I would tag along with my parents to afternoon softball games.  The team was the Anchorettes, a women’s fastpitch softball team that played at a field on Sherman Drive located on the east side of Indianapolis.  One of the players, Miss Wetzel, was the physical education teacher at my elementary school, so I was greatly intrigued to see her in a role outside of that parameter.  However, other than the remarkable speed and power of those pitches, the thing I most remember of those hot, summer afternoons was the smell of cigars and popcorn. It was the first thing I noticed when entering the bleachers, and it lingered in my nose even on the car ride home. The same smell greeted me a few years later when my parents would take me to Busch Stadium to watch the Indianapolis Indians play an exhibition game against the Cincinnati Reds during the era of the Big Red Machine.   I come from a family of mostly non-smokers and generally detest the smell of cigarettes, but that particular blend of cigars and popcorn always stirs happy memories.

 

I have already mentioned in another post how the smell of wood smoke or burning leaves is a most effective time machine for me.  My most obvious connection to those smells is my early years at the lake.  From sunup to sundown, a fire was always kept burning in the outdoor fireplace.  On cold days we huddled around its warmth, and at all times we relied on it to cook some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.  In the morning, the first one up had the job of rebuilding the fire for the day.  When the task fell to me, my goal was to find some still glowing embers from the night before and rekindle the fire without the aid of matches.  With bits of newspaper, small twigs and lots of blowing, I would soon have the fire springing back to life.  In the autumn, those campers who did not live adjacent to the woods, would rake their leaves into the road to burn.  A constant haze of smoke hung over the camp, but it was never unpleasant.  Even to this day, if I step out of my house on a cool evening and smell a fire burning in a neighbor’s fireplace, I am a boy back in the woods warming myself by the fire.

At home each year, my father would prune the trees that filled our property.  The branches would be piled high on the garden to dry, and then one evening in late summer, Dad would burn them in a giant bonfire.  I can remember sitting in my swing watching the fire light up the backyard as dusk fell, waiting for the pile to burn low enough that we could then roast marshmallows.   It was a great ending to summer.

The lake had another smell which, although not as pleasant as smoke, still evokes a unique response.  Each morning we would get up early, gather our fishing gear and head down to the boat to get a head start on the day’s fishing.  As we approached the water there was a very distinct smell which hung heavy in the wet morning air.  It was a mixture of wet clay, fish and lake water.  Initially, I found it unpleasant, but through its association with all those good times, I grew to like it.  I now have the privilege of having a large creek run through my property.  On certain days when the temperature is hot and the air is humid, the same smell will drift up and touch me, placing me not in my backyard but on the muddy shoreline of Raccoon Lake all those many years ago.

An equally powerful memory booster is, oddly enough, the smell of Johnson’s paste wax.  My parents were faithful practitioners of the age old practice of “spring cleaning.”  Early each year the house would be scrubbed from top to bottom.  The commencement of the process would be signaled one morning by the sudden appearance of mattresses in the hallway.  Taking one room at a time, Mom and Dad would dismantle the beds and move all furniture out of the bedrooms and into the living room and hall.  Walls were washed with Murphy’s Oil Soap or freshly painted, the curtains were laundered and ironed, and then as a final touch, the hardwood floors were waxed and polished with Johnson’s paste wax.  Mom would coat the floors with the wax, and Dad would buff them to a high gloss.  I would celebrate the completion of the task by charging into my room and sliding across the floor in my stocking feet.  And of course I would whistle and shout and listen to my voice echo off the empty walls and floor.  That night I would snuggle into my clean, fresh smelling sheets and drift to sleep with the scent of wax still lingering in the air.  To me that smell  meant cleanliness, and it still brings back cherished images of my parents working side by side to give us a wonderful home.

There are assorted other smells that also create snapshots of my childhood.  If you mention Easter, I don’t think of flowers and green grass.  Instead I smell the vinegar that we used with the dye to color Easter eggs.  Mom would get her family China from the cabinet and line up the tea cups to use for dying eggs.  It was the only time of year they were ever used.  Mom would carefully measure out the water for each cup, add vinegar and then drop in the tablet of food coloring.  The eggs looked so pretty soaking in those fancy tea cups, but the sour smell of vinegar was ever present.  After Easter came the month of May which meant the peony bushes that lined our backyard would begin blooming.  By Memorial Dad you could be sure the entire yard would be perfumed by their sweet fragrance.  I have transplanted a couple of those bushes to my own yard, and each spring I walk out, grasp a bloom in my hands and bury my nose in the pink or white petals and breathe in the scent of my childhood home.  June followed May, and the scent of freshly mown grass replaced the smell of the peonies.  Although I paid for much of my college by mowing lawns, I did not mow my own family’s lawn.  However, as a boy, I enjoyed sitting and swinging while watching Dad mow, and it is that association that still clings to that smell.  It is the labor side of lawn care that comes to mind when I smell gasoline, but to me the fragrance of cut grass means enjoying a summer afternoon watching my father working in the yard.  Speaking of gasoline, when we were kids, my sister and I loved it when my parents would drive behind a city bus, and we could smell the diesel fumes.    I don’t know what our attraction to that was, and I don’t believe it is a smell I enjoy as an adult, but it is one which I can distinctly remember from my youth.

I do have one grown up association with a scent.  It is the smell of the baby lotion I rubbed on our two children each night after their baths.  Evening was my bonding time with my son and daughter, so while my tired wife got a rare moment to relax, I gave the children their daily bath.  Afterwards, I would lay them on a towel and massage them with lotion, and I would breathe in its clean fragrance as I held them tight or tucked them into bed.  How I miss those times.

In my adult years, my sense of smell has become greatly reduced.  I no longer seem to be forming those bonds between scents and memories, but how thankful I am that occasionally a certain smell from the past will drift by my nose and carry me along on its vapors to another time and place. 

Sinking feeling

The great naval accident began innocently enough.  The crew of four boarded their small craft at some point in the mid-afternoon.  It was a muggy, July day and the sun dancing on the water blinded the seamen.  With a unified effort they launched their craft from the muddy shore and set sail.  Their paddles sliced silently in the water as the craft headed away from land.  The water was relatively smooth, but occasionally a wave would still lift the front of their boat and set it back down.  They had made good progress and the larger body of water loomed ahead when it happened.  At first there was only a strange hissing sound, then water began appearing at their feet.  Before anyone knew what was happening, all four were in the water.  Disaster was at hand!

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite so dramatic.  If the truth be known, it was just me and a few buddies from junior high taking my sister’s raft out for a paddle at Raccoon Lake.  There were four of us in a three-man raft, which should have been my first warning, but it seemed like a fun way to kill some time during our summer vacation.   Jay, Dan and Danny had been classmates of mine for several years.  Actually, Danny had only joined the class in 7th grade, but his outgoing, friendly persona soon made it feel that he had always been a part of the group. 

We had paddled the length of our cove and were approaching the main lake where we planned to turn around and head back, a small rubber raft being no match for the army of speedboats slicing the lake that weekend.  Suddenly, there was a hissing sound followed by bubbling, and I could feel the sides of the raft softening and buckling under my weight.  Realizing what was happening, I called out, “It’s deflating!  It’s deflating!”  Dan, one of the more eccentric of the group, gave his own spin to my proclamation.  Shortly before the end of school that summer, we had learned about the body systems in health class.  A revelation to us all was that gas was known as flatulence.  Giving this a slightly Latin turn, Dad changed my words into “It’s da flatus!  It’s da flatus!”  Dan must have taken those health classes to heart because today he is my personal physician.

Soon water was filling the boat, and the rear half where the air leak had originated collapsed into the water.  The deflating boat and tumbling friends threw the remainder of us off balance and soon we were all in the water.  We were dog paddling and trying to round up the sinking raft and the paddles that were being pushed away by our splashing.  I stopped to take a survey of my friends to make sure we were all okay.  I did so knowing that Jay had admitted beforehand that he could not really swim, but as kids are known to do, we had left without any sort of life preserver.  I looked around and saw Dan and Danny, but Jay was not there.  For a moment I felt panic shoot threw my body as I whipped my head from side to side trying to catch a glimpse of him.  As my gaze turned towards shore, there was Jay crawling out of the water.  It may be considered sacrilegious to make this proclamation, but I am quite sure that Jay walked on water that day.  I know of no other way he could have reached the shore so quickly, especially given he was not a swimmer.

With Jay safe and accounted for, the rest of us relaxed and started having a good laugh as we drug the limp raft to the water’s edge.  Although there was a small level area, we came ashore where the banks were tall and steep.  It was no small feat to drag ourselves and gear up the hill and into the woods at the end of the camp road.  There we tried to dry ourselves a little.  I can remember how Danny was wearing corduroy pants (I am still not sure of his choice since this was summertime,) and he took them off to wring them out.  There he was in his underwear while we grabbed each end of his pants and began twisting them as if we were taking part in a taffy pull.  In the end, the pants were considerably dryer, but the lines on his corduroy ended up being arranged in a pronounced zigzag pattern.

In the end, we were all fine and had a good chuckle over the experience.  My sister never fully forgave me for “breaking her raft” and still mentions it from time to time.  The parents never did replace it, and for that I do feel guilty.  However, the memory of that day is still afloat in my mind over 30 years later, and when I’ve mentioned it to my friends, I can tell it is still vivid for them, as well. Rafts come and go, but memories last a lifetime.

(Dedicated to my friend Jay who has subtly hinted I should write about our great water adventure.  Jay, your memories may be different than mine, so feel free to add your own version below.)