1960. First thing I recall during that late hot August was a newly-built section of suburban Memphis (I was roughly just past eight) and my uncle Ira (my "late" uncle since my mother's first sister soon divorced him after) running down the tarmac in front of my real uncle's house. An ex-Marine, he was chasing for all his might after a gas-powered mini-car he'd fired up, the engine an angry wasp, which had got away from him.
We – me and two of my cousins were out front – and watched. Next door a young guy washing a yellow Mustang convertible, car radio playing “Ring Of Fire”, stopped. He watched, grinned. Waved at us as he repointed a black garden hose at the car’s sides bringing up small rainbows.
This was Sunday morning. The edges of the front lawn yellow-brown, the asphalt driveway and street charcoal. My other aunt (later a divorcee herself, but still at this time wife to my Mother's younger brother) was curler'd and in a white-&-pink padded housecoat with faded green piping. She emerged.
This was Sunday morning. The edges of the front lawn yellow-brown, the asphalt driveway and street charcoal. My other aunt (later a divorcee herself, but still at this time wife to my Mother's younger brother) was curler'd and in a white-&-pink padded housecoat with faded green piping. She emerged.
The sudden sound of the screen door made us all turn. On the door's concrete slab, with filtered Benson & Hedges and sweaty Coca Cola bottle hand-in-hand my uncle's wife Janet stood heavily on thick bare feet. Smoke from her cigarette snaked up into still suburban air. She swayed slightly. Gravel-voiced, pasty-white she pronounced it was a good day.
At eight in the morning the day was already hot, the sun slant-wise, bright, relentless – and the few good trees dotting the neighborhood looked like isolated failures. Hitting first on the Coke, then the cigarette, she asked or said to no one in particular "Who wants chocolate cake?”
That was Breakfast. Then my real uncle stumbled downstairs in his printed cotton PJs and said Saddle up, we’re off to the Ihop – Something special.
That was Breakfast. Then my real uncle stumbled downstairs in his printed cotton PJs and said Saddle up, we’re off to the Ihop – Something special.
My then-aunt smoked out her cigarette and threw it into a tan-colored coffee mug. . . . 30 minutes later, finally dressed, my uncle fired up his T-Bird – all the while my aunt leaning back over an electric blue front seat, saying Howdy, dragging on another Benson & Hedges and yelling at my uncle about beer and cigarettes for a Sunday.
Later on after canned whipped cream, berries and waffles, later on to that afternoon we were cycling, Mike and I . . . and I didn't know Mike ignored Sundays. But he was surely there regarding destruction. (I also didn’t know this: At the time we'd cycled out of the newly-constructed area, tangoing on our bikes, Mike had stolen his. It'd been forced from a neighbor’s driveway across the street - he’d bullied some kid into using it for his own.)
Outwards and away we went from the new suburban community and straight towards a swamp, straight towards a large cement 3-foot wide conduit in-and-out of dark earth, and straight alongside a steam choked with tall cat tails.
