The hill hidden behind the houses that dot my street is a long slope. A drop. No chiggers sticking to my socks or Converse shoes as the grass is refreshed, newly mowed by the Jett, Kan. school district's finest from its parks department. This is the big drop into life, facing behind the middle school and towards Colorado.
Forgot my watch. Look at Maria's Android phone. (My iphone is back home on the charger.) Time -- 5:47 a.m. Temp. 73 degrees. Hummingbirds are chirping -- you hear them out here, all over the trees in the neighbors' backyards -- and a vocal family of pigeons have roosted clandestinely in our gutters at home. During the nice occasions when it snows here in winter and school gets called off on account of "Snow Day," you'll see families - each individual waiting his or her turn to swoosh down the white fluffy hills in a sled.
Below, past the soccer field and goal posts, there's the old soccer field, boxed inside a frame of white peeling paint. The orange sign, "Keep Out" looks you in the face. From there, I wander into neighborhoods. A garage door is open, a group of guys are sitting at a table underneath a lightbulb and tool racks, laughing and joking. Smoke traveling like Hunkpapa signals.
A young dark-haired woman stands in her driveway behind a Suburban. She's wearing a black sleveless top, a white skirt with a palm tree design and neon prints of exotic florals, left arm tucked under the right elbow bent upward, a cigarette between the two main fingers of her hand.
I gotta ask about those guys.
"They havin' a poker game?" I ask her.
"Beer pong," she says, affably.
"Man," I say. "They been goin' at it all night?"
"Pretty much. I just got back from work."
(smile) "Pretty cool. Well, have a nice day," I say, waving my hand, walking away.
"You too."
What's the story, morning glory
My grandpa Mac would always be up early like this. I'd rise early as well, catch him on the back porch, looking at morning glories and vines twisting around the lattice wall. He liked talking about that stuff. Old man would be facing true north, looking ahead, across the street at Kober Brothers Supermarket. A few years earlier, in the early '70s, it was a grassy field. My sister, Angie, and I would run around there with our uncle Ted, flying a kite.
For Grandpa, the greatest year ever was 1929. Sure it was the year the stock market crashed, and he and Grandma would go on and on about how horrible the depression was. But for Grandpa, something good happened that trumped all that.
His 17-year-old bride was on a hospital bed. The doctor said "she had once chance in a million of living through the night." I could picture him in my mind, outside pacing like he said he did, unable to sleep at all. Now I wonder why he didn't just stay in her hospital room, but maybe they didn't let them do that, then.
"I prayed for probably the first time in my life," Grandpa said. "I went to her room the next morning. She was sitting up in bed and asked, 'What are you doing here?'"
He told the story so much that for me it was relegated to the ramblings of an old man. Happened to people a long time ago. Had nothing to do with my life, but Grandma was alive, right? Frying chicken on a gas stove and setting a karafe percolating on one of the burners.
I would go to church with the grandparents on those weekends I stayed all night there, which was frequently. The Bible Baptist Church, a red brick building at the corner of State and Seventh streets, next to the full-service Texaco station, rivaled the Methodists for the status of biggest church in town. This bigness opened up a world for me.
What were Grandma and Grandpa learning in their old people Sunday school classes? Adults, my parents' ages, in their classes? Teenagers? Had to be sophisticated, deeper than what I was learning, but I'd get there.
On your birthday, you could pick prizes from a basket. Stuff like a pack of bubble gum, picture of Jesus, a Swiss Army knife. Mrs. Lowery, the woman leading Sunday school, would talk to us about our "mommies and daddies." I'd get so pissed off, thinking, "I'm not a little kid! I call them Mom and Dad!"
After a few songs and a lesson from Mrs. Lowery, we would split into the little classrooms for first, second and third-grade. I remember in second-grade, our teacher was an 18-year-old woman, just out of highschool. Eighteen, might as well had been 28 to me. I remember her name was Sandy like Sandy Duncan, the Broadway actress who appeared in a bunch of TV variety shows in the 1970s. (I was always amazed how this woman could pass for a 12-year-old boy, playing Peter Pan in some television production.)
Seemed like old people style, cornball entertainment was always on at the grandparents house. (Grandma and Grandpa Guy even watched Lawrence Welk.) On Saturday nights, it was always The Carol Burnett Show. They were so cool. Weren't like the hillarious, yet tragically hip young pot smoking Not Ready For Primetime Players on Saturday Night. When Tim Conway and Harvey Korman would start laughing, breaking character in the middle of one of their skits, it was refreshing.
The bad thing was the question-and-answer session at the start of the Carol Burnett show. Someone in the audience was always asking her to do that stupid Tarzan yell.
So one morning, we're in the Sunday school classroom with Sandy. It's a free-for-all. Kids are all over the place, bouncing, loud-mouthed. Just obnoxious little shit-asses. Can't speak for the other kids, but I remember exactly what I was doing that day. Mrs. Lowery comes in, dresses us down and says, "And who's doing the (she pantomines chest pounding, makes a yelping sound.) Tarzan yell."
"Jeff!" Every kid in the class points at me.
I don't remember what I was doing the night before, but I bet you a million dollars, I'd seen it the night before on The Carol Burnett Show.
