It was a warm Saturday at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in late Summer, 1974.  The McClellan High School Marching Lion band was lined up side-by-side just a few steps off the sideline of the AstroTurf field awaiting an afternoon performance.  

We were bedecked in our hot, black woolen uniforms in the blazing Arkansas sun, wearing white cotton gloves that made holding instruments securely trickier than you might think, with ridiculous Busby hats of fake bear fur towering over our heads. 

Elaine McGee, my new French horn playing girlfriend, was on my left.  We were still in the early, flirty days of our relationship and my attention was at least divided, if not outright diverted. 

Richard Manson, fellow tenor sax player, longtime bud and co-conspirator in the Cloverdale Communist Underground Railroad (a story for another day), was on my right. 

We awaited a whistle from the drum major, when we would all march the few steps to the actual sideline before the show would start.  We marched “ankle-knee,” an energetic, high stepping style where your foot went up to the level of your knee and your thigh was almost parallel to the ground. 

After the whistle blew, we enthusiastically started forward.  Richard’s left knee forcefully hit my saxophone, sending it flying out of my hands up into the air.  Fortunately I caught it about face level. 

I was surprised, so I furtively – we were supposed to be at attention – reached into the sax to check it out. I found there was a circular dent in the curve at the bottom of the instrument exactly the shape of Richard’s kneecap (I am glad to report that Richard’s knee sustained no damage). 

I no longer own the sax, but I would often think of Richard when I took the instrument out of its case and saw that concave reminder of happy days.

     During the resurgence of classic horror movies in the seventies, I discovered the Universal horror monsters. Frankenstein and his Bride, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera.  Resplendent in black and white, I loved them all.  But my favorite was Dracula, the King of the Undead, the Devil with a Drinking Problem, the Vein Attraction.

     Dracula was the most popular, if not the original, cinematic vampire, as well as the hands down best dressed villain of all time. A true Lady’s Monster, he was charming, sleek, powerful and sexy.   Compared to the Count and his superior facility for entrancing damsels, I was the Invisible Man with my transparently pathetic endeavors.  I was “a nice boy,” which was the final nail in the dirt lined coffin.

     I wanted to become like, if not actually be, Dracula.  I mimicked the Count’s eerie facial expressions and claw-like hand gestures as I practiced my semi-viscous Romano-Hungarian accent.  Inexplicably, it was not working as I had hoped.  It appears that “I VHANT to DREENK your BLUD” is the worst pick-up line of all time, narrowly beating out “I want to eat your BRAINS” and “Hi, my name is Steve.”

     While I prayed selected follicles would fall out so my hairline would more closely mirror Lugosi’s, I scoffed at the exaggerated widow’s peak worn by Eddie Munster, another pretentious young Dracula wannabe.  I was undoubtedly the only teenager in the seventies who wanted less hair.

     When I suggested painting my room black and illuminating it with hundreds of candles, Mom nixed the idea.  Citing prohibitive insurance costs, she claimed “fire bad!”

     Instead of candles, I tacked up a poster of the 1931 Dracula film.  It depicted Bela Lugosi as Dracula regarding a lady’s neck the way a good Southern boy looks at a big platter of spare ribs. 

     I obsessed over a coffin to sleep in, even though they looked uncomfortable.  That did not deter me, as I had never heard anyone complain that they lost sleep in one.  In fact, the common consensus was that they were to die for.

     After Mam-maw stitched an ominous black cape with a red lining for my sixteenth birthday, I began adding pieces to my costume.  When I perfected it down to my spats, I could dress vampiric for any occasion.  It was only with great self-control that I refrained from indulging myself on other holidays, thereby predating Jack Skellington’s ghoulish Yule antics by a generation.

     According to Hollywood, Transylvania was home to a slew of supernatural monsters.  The real Dracula, inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Victorian era vampire, lived and died there in the fifteenth century.  A merciless leader in war, he was brutal and figuratively bloodthirsty.  According to statues and portraits, he sported the original porn ‘stache long before it was cool.

     In 2001, my friend Jose’s sister Valeria was a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania.  Central Romania is a heavily forested area known as Transylvania.  Each October, the Romanian Peace Corps threw a party that the Lonely Planet Guide deemed “The best Halloween party on the planet.”  Jose, who had gone the year before, proclaimed it worth the trip, guaranteed.  It doesn’t suck, he said.  Not “bleh, bleh, bleh” at all!

     Transylvania for Halloween sounded like a dream come true.  The siren call of destiny suggested that I would finally make beautiful music with the children of the night, no saxophone necessary. 

     Our flight on SwissAir was so empty, it was like having a personal jet.  Randy and I folded down all the seats in 2 rows and stretched out for the best nap I’ve ever had on a flight.  Upon landing, we were surprised with a complete passenger complement of Swiss chocolate courtesy of our bored but generous airline crew.

     We caught up with Jose in downtown Bucharest, a capitol city renowned for stunning Soviet style architecture.  For “stunning”, read “miserable, colorless edifices of soul-crushing death.”

     We exchanged cash for Romanian lei using a crazy exchange rate guaranteeing a calculator was necessary to confidently buy anything (“Wait, does this t-shirt cost 40 cents or 267 dollars?”).

     On the train to Brasov, we passed through rustic countryside that looked untouched for a hundred years, complete with horse-drawn carts reminiscent of high school hay rides.  Ah, those chilly, moonlit rides! Where my tender bits were poked by pointy bits of agriculture while I contemplated just how bored you had to be to take a freakin’ hay ride in the first place.

     The Saturday evening before Halloween, we caught a taxi to the hostel where the costume party was about to begin.  People in Romania did not celebrate Halloween, and although they knew nothing of the whole candy-fueled madness, they took any chance to paint the town blood red.  

     Jose and his sister and her friends dressed as characters from the Powerpuff Girls TV show.  As HIM, an appropriately carmine colored devil, Jose’s face was slathered with crimson makeup.  Soon there were red splotches and splatters on walls, glasses, other party-goers and nearly every surface.  The place looked like Jack the Ripper had stopped by for a quick aperitif and some prostitute kidney tidbits (the original whore d’oeuvres).  

     Randy was a medieval knight straight out of Camelot as envisioned by Monty Python.  Of course, I was decked out as Count Dracula, complete with plastic glow-in-the-dark fangs.

     Never much of a party person, I mostly spent the night at a massive round table where the manager of the hostel, one “Asian Elvis” held court.  Signs around the hostel offered free breast massages courtesy of Asian Elvis, but I deemed it unlikely that he was actually board certified.

     In Romania, social events traditionally begin with a shot of Hungarian pálinka, which is indistinguishable from liquid rocket propellant.  With an impressive alcohol content of 52%, pálinka can be used in a pinch to dissolve stubborn tar stains or inconvenient murder witnesses.

     After our pálinka-fueled primary stage ignition, Elvis shared bottle after bottle of unfamiliar and intriguing beverages.  Pretty soon, I lost track of

    a) Randy, Jose, and Valeria,

    b) the prodigious quantities of exotic booze I was guzzling, and,

    c) all brain functionality above lizard level.  

     Having upgraded my camera for the trip, I discovered that digital cameras were rare in Eastern Europe.  Everyone wanted their picture taken.  Many requested a stint behind the lens and borrowed the camera while I sat cheerfully anesthetized.  A lot of photos were taken by people I did not know of people I also did not know.  Reviewing photos the day after the party, I found a close-up of male genitalia that, judging by size, I am sorry to say were not my own.

     Since I was and am still married, it was good and proper that I was the only person at the party who did not “get lucky” that night.   Looking back now, I believe a few young ladies did make passes at me.  It is hard to be certain; perhaps in Romania, nipple rings are a topic for casual conversation.  Also, there is always a short latency period before I realize I have been the object of an attempted seduction, usually around 20 years.

     I recall urging a young woman to patch things up with her recently discarded boyfriend.   Said boyfriend, besotted in both senses of the word, leaned against a conveniently stationary wall, head bobbing like a toy bulldog on a dashboard.  I pointed out that they were just like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, and as such, belonged together forever. 

     This soiree marked the second time I got drunk wholly without intention.  It was not a demanding accomplishment; indeed it was as easy as falling off a wagon.  I felt there should be obvious, unmistakable warnings of impending intoxication, such as vertigo, slurred speech, or a sudden inclination to argue which is funnier, “cumquat” or “weasel.”

     At daybreak, the rising sun revealed unconscious revelers strewn about like devalued beanie babies.  The hostel floor resembled nothing so much as Gettysburg after the battle, albeit with fewer amputations but a comparable amount of groaning.

     We cautiously picked our way across the floor, down the stairs, and out the door. When we arrived back at Valeria’s place, I was still thoroughly sloshed, perhaps called that because of the appalling sounds your guts emit as you stagger along. 

     As expected after such bacchanalian excess, I did not feel like a million bucks.  I did not even feel like a million Romanian lei, which were worth about three bucks or something – who could convert currency when the world kept spinning like that? 

     I relinquished my party favors around noon while kneeling in a flower bed outside Valeria’s front window.  Nestled among the little red flowers, I considered expiring right there with a funeral bouquet so conveniently close at hand.

     After recovering in Brasov that day and the next, Jose, Valeria, Randy and I boarded the train to the well preserved medieval town of Sighișoara.  Pronounced Siggy Shwara, it was the birthplace in 1431 of Wallachian prince Vlad III, also known as Vlad Țepeș, also known as Dracula.  Vlad the Impaler to his friends.

     On Halloween, we attended another party at our hostel in Sighișoara.  Still a bit green around the gills à la the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I resolved to put the “I can’t” in intoxicant. 

     Lack of costumes did not keep Transylvanian locals from schooling us regarding Halloween revelry.  There were amazing feats of drunken dexterity.  One fellow painted a colorful, Picasso-esque mural while gripping the brush with his naked bottom, surely a technique that Michelangelo soberly avoided.

     Just before midnight, a small group of us wandered up to the medieval Church of the Dominican Monastery above the city.  After admiring the impressively mustachioed statue of Vlad III, we stepped over the low wall separating the church and the ancient cemetery.  Fog was thick, wet and heavy in the graveyard, with an honest-to-goodness full moon and a few distant lights shining faintly through the mists.  The church bell struck midnight, prompting a graveyard dog to begin howling.   A shiver tingled along my spine as if the sinister eyes of Lugosi himself were watching from the shadows.

     Afterwards, we made our way by moonlight back down the hill to the hostel.  In the days to come, Randy and I visited Budapest, Vienna and London, while Jose decided to save money by staying in Romania with his sister.  Ours was a soggy adventure as it poured cold rain virtually the whole trip after we left Romania.  Perhaps Jose had the right idea, or at least the drier one.

     For me, no Halloween has ever equaled foggy graveyard, full moon, dog howling, birthplace of Dracula, midnight clock ringing, Transylvania Halloween.  I would give my sharpened plastic eye teeth to do it all again.

Ninety-nine McClellan band kids had been dropped off that August afternoon with their instruments at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.  About equally divided between sophomores, juniors and seniors (McClellan was a three year high school), we were there to learn our new halftime show for the fall.   As it turned out, I was going to learn a little extra.

We were facing a week with five hours per day of marching in the broiling Arkansas humidity.  Only the very stupidest could stand at the very gates of Hell, nostril hairs singeing with every breath, and imagine it would be exciting and fun.  Of course, I’m speaking of me.

The previous year, the first evening of marching camp unexpectedly devolved into aerobic exercise.  Like the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, the freshman boys fled before the seniors, who were determined to welcome us in that ancient and time-honored way; purely sadistic torture. 

The preferred technique was to hold a sophomore flat on his back, pull up his shirt, and slap his stomach with manic glee until it glowed rosy red.   Arkansas was then, as now, the tastefully oversized silver buckle in America’s Bible Belt.   Had we thought to suggest that such hazing seemed slightly homoerotic, we might have remained unmolested by all those good Southern Baptist seniors.  I can imagine their reactions had someone under their careful ministrations rolled their eyes and moaned, “Oh, baby, keep it up!  Just like that!  Oh, yay-yes!”

My friend John Robinson sported an astonishing profusion of curly blond hair.  He could grow a moustache at an age before most boys’ testicles dropped.  His wooly chest, which John cavalierly displayed with several extra undone buttons on his shirt, put one in mind of a baritone-playing Norse gorilla in Levis.

The seniors had made special plans for proud, hirsute John.  While pinning him down, they mercilessly slathered his chest with Nair, an odorous and mildly toxic foam used to dissolve unwanted body hair.   John struggled and protested for the full five minutes required for the depilatory to work its magic, but when he was released, his hair remained completely intact.  At least for that evening, John was our hero simply because the Nair could not deforest his manly pectoral thatch!

That earlier year, I had spent the evening in hiding, perched in a barn-sized air conditioning unit.  The enormous machinery’s droning hum offered two benefits; it was calming in a Zen-like way, and it drowned out the pitiable screams of my fellow prey. 

Happily for me, this year I was neither sophomore nor senior, and the primal hunt proceeded without me.

I had a lot of friends in the band, many of whom fell into three distinct categories.  I spent the most time with the “science kids,” Mark Cook, Tim Teague, Carra Bussa and Mark Griffin. We threw all night chess parties, where we drank Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola from brandy snifters.  We loved science fiction almost as much as pizza, don’t forget the extra cheese, thank you very much.  To top it off, we formed our own German band consisting of trumpet, tenor saxophone and three trombones, and we played such crowd pleasers as “Ach du lieber Augustine.”  We were real, you know, chick magnets.

My second gang was the “cool kids,” Susan West, Holly Anderson, David Stebbins and Kenny Trantham.  They were the brainy bunch, sharper and far more dedicated than me, and were justifiably acknowledged as teachers’ favorites.   I’m not sure how I got included in this group, since most teachers regarded me on par with gum stuck in their bangs.

The third classification of my colleagues was the most beguiling, the most tempting, the most excitingly dangerous to a naturally nebbish lad like me.  This cohort, the “crazy kids,” was really a loose conglomeration of fellows with a common joie de vivre.  Among them I counted Andy McGee and Richard Manson, Billy “Wild Bill” Pearrow, Randy Motley and Buddy Presley.  A certain fire in their blood elevated them to a slightly risky level, and I, self-restrained to the point of dormancy, relied on them to drag me out of my somnambulant safe zone.

Randy, Billy and Buddy snagged me after dinner that first night at band camp and ushered me into their room.  Before my astonished gaze, like magicians releasing doves from under a handkerchief, they unveiled hefty bottles of rum and whiskey.  These jugs were large enough to pickle the entire brass section with plenty left over to get the flute section pleasantly cross-eyed as well.

Years later, Buddy informed me that my memory was somewhat muddled by subsequent events, and that it was vodka and bourbon rather than rum and whisky.  That is likely true as I did not know the difference or even care because it all tasted like Esso High Octane to me.  Either combination would have ensured that the evening’s undertaking followed in the footsteps of Wile E. Coyote, with unintended and slightly disastrous results.

Unfamiliar with my burning intellectual curiosity about the effects of alcohol on human consciousness, they naïvely invited me to have a little tipple.  Before they knew it, I was upending a bottle, the amber liquid bubbling down my gullet.  With a few startled expletives, they wrestled the bottle from my hands, but too late!  Stage one of the great experiment was underway.  Inspired by Neil Armstrong, I was one giant leap on my way to a lunar rendezvous.

Several periods of time sneakily passed without my knowledge or consent, and soon I was striding up and down the hallway, Groucho Marx style.  Heedlessly mixing pop culture references, I was laughing like a mad scientist after too many hits of nitrous oxide.   

Before long, I threw up.  A truly spectacular multimedia event according to those unlucky enough to witness it, my non-Olympic hurling lasted about four days, subjectively speaking.  I’m told the judges were suitably impressed with both my form and endurance.

At some point, I was standing in the shower, held up by unknown hands, marveling stupidly at the steam billowing around me.  From somewhere outside my unfocused vision, Andy invoked his nickname for me with doleful empathy, exclaiming “oh, shit, Shirley!” 

While my innards were twisting the night away, Billy and Buddy got locked out of their room.  They had left the room guarded by Randy, now rendered incapable of mastering any mechanism as devilishly complicated as a door knob by virtue of having passed out on the bed.

Limply standing in line for breakfast the next morning, I entered the final phase of my scientific research, the hangover.  My head throbbed like the dying heart of the last mastodon, run through by a Neolithic javelin and awaiting a swift coup de grâce (mastodons love ze pretentious French metaphors, bien sûr)!

I struggled to not sink to my knees as we inched closer to the cafeteria serving area.  Rather than just propping me up, my inconsiderate friends kept speaking to me.  I did not know where they found the strength to talk so loudly, as even my vocal chords ached.  Surely during the night I had been thrown from the roof and lay awaiting an ambulance, only to be run over like  saxophone-wielding road kill?

If I live a thousand years, I will never forget the sheer horror, the utterly tactile revulsion I felt encountering row upon row of greasy breakfast sausages staring up at me.  I swear I could hear the little swine laughing contemptuously at my nauseated discomfort!  Or perhaps that was just the drummers doing monkey imitations for the flag line.

The rest of that first day of marching camp was spent learning and reviewing basic march steps.  Our marching style, called “ankle-knee”, was as unnatural as broccoli flavored ice cream.  To master it, we had to lift one foot and balance on the other while our stance was checked for perfection, again and again and again.  Forget differential equations!  Prolonged balancing on one foot with an epic hangover is really hard!

We also learned left and right faces, and, most horrific of all, the about face.  Spin, rest, spin, rest, spin.  Had he witnessed this diabolical torment, Satan himself would have felt so sorry for me that he would have sent flowers and a nice box of chocolate.

Thinking it odd how hangovers seemed funny on TV, I realized it was only funny to the other, non-hungover characters, but that realization came too late to save me.  I regretted my inadvertent masochism, and I concluded that it was most sincerely not the thing for me.

Throughout the day I wondered, is it possible to die just from wishing?  On one hand, I felt as ready for death as I might ever be, but I had hoped to make it to first base with a real, live girl before shucking off my mortal coil.  I credit anticipation of exposure to an actual three dimensional female breast or, even better, two of them, with keeping me alive that day.

Other questions I pondered as minutes passed like a procession of giant tortoises on quaaludes:

Discounting any possibility of moderation, who in their right mind would drink booze realizing such misery was a consequence?   Did people not grasp the cause and effect nature?

Why, oh why, would one undergo such tribulations to briefly metamorphose into a witless, albeit happy, ninny?   Did they relish a fling with insensibility?

As a chronically starchy white guy, was I doomed to projectile barfing and a throbbing cranium every time I wanted to unselfconsciously dance with girls?

And to think, people went to college for this.

In February, 1972, Mom and Dad brought home a little fuzzball to join our family.  She was off-white (a color the AKC called “champagne”), a little bigger than a softball, with bright, intelligent eyes.  She was a poodle, half miniature and half toy, and she was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

Rather than walking, she fairly pranced around the house, so we called her “Prissy.”  She was born on Christmas day, so her middle name became “Nicole” in honor of Saint Nicholas.  Her solemn and full name was “Priscilla Nicole Hendricks,” but we never called her that no matter how much trouble she got into.

A couple of days after we got her, we brought Prissy along on a day trip to the Mountain View Folk Festival.  We all took turns carrying her, and she was the darling of the day, winning the hearts of everyone who saw her.  In the afternoon, the weather turned, and we were caught in a downpour without umbrellas.  Dad stuffed Prissy in his jacket where she rode happily with just her tiny, wet head peering out.

We called Prissy the best doorbell on four legs because anyone at the door would set off her canine alarm system, and she would race to the kitchen barking.  When the door opened to reveal a human rather than a monster, she would dance around, wiggling her whole body with ecstasy.   My friend David Stebbins always wore sandals when he came to visit. Prissy would lick his toes, causing him to jump about like a cowboy when a movie villain fired hot lead at his boots.  “It tickles!” David would exclaim as he danced across the kitchen floor.

Prissy was extremely fast for such a small dog.  I have a single picture of her streaking along in the back yard, but she is just a white blur.  She loved to run all-out, especially after a narrow escape from death in two inches of warm bath water.

One time Mom was having a snack while talking with Prissy in her lap.  Using her long, skinny tongue, the dog adroitly scooped out a morsel from Mom’s mouth between syllables.  Mom was both amazed and disgusted.  The moral of the story: don’t talk with your mouth full, not with a fast dog nearby.

A couple of years earlier we had planted a pecan tree in the back yard.  Little did we know that we were aiding and abetting Prissy’s future arch-nemesis.   Prissy despised the squirrel that stole all the pecans from the tree.  She would bark at the critter from the sliding glass door that looked out onto the back yard.  The squirrel would happily ignore her until we opened the door, and then the race was on.  Prissy would zoom out just as the squirrel made a spectacular jump to the fence and raced away.  Although she never gave up trying, she was definitely not the best squirrel deterrent, because we never got a single pecan from that damned tree.

While still a puppy, Prissy started sleeping in my bedroom.  She would cuddle up in my arms at night, where she slept like a favorite teddy bear.  If the weather was hot, she would sleep on my pillow, her back against the crown of my head.

Home floorplans of early seventies commonly included a serving bar connected to a pass-through from the kitchen to the living room.  We had four avocado colored stools at the bar where we enjoyed all meals except those on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

One morning, Mom awoke to find Prissy nose-deep in a jar of peanut butter on the kitchen counter.  She had jumped on the couch in the living room, stepped over onto a side table, hopped onto a bar stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to the kitchen counter where her favorite snack awaited, lid conveniently unscrewed.

As well as JIF, Prissy loved every food she ever tried with only a few exceptions.  She did not like pickles or olives and would carry them from room to room before finally abandoning them.  She liked M&Ms, but not the kind with peanuts.  If given a peanut M&M, she would lick the chocolate off the outside and leave the peanut.  She loved peanut butter, so I have no idea why she disliked peanuts.

One Saturday, Mom’s brother Anthony stopped in to say hi.  Prissy had been working on some peanut M&Ms.  Anthony was sitting on a bar stool while Mom picked up leftover peanuts from the floor and dropped them in a bowl, awaiting transfer to the trash can.  After a few minutes, Anthony absent-mindedly reached into the bowl and tossed a handful of the peanuts into his mouth.  Mom’s jaw dropped as she watched Anthony realize what he had done.  His eyes opened wide and he muttered, “Oh, God.  Those are dog peanuts, aren’t they?”

At that time, Mom drove a new two-tone Electra 225, which was Buick’s answer to the aircraft carrier.  It was 19 feet long with a shelf under the rear window big enough for emergency napping.  Prissy claimed this area as her own whenever we took a drive.  She would jump from the front seat to the back seat to the shelf, check the vicinity out the back window, then reverse the trip to catch the action out front.  Watching her hop back and forth was like having primo courtside seats at Wimbledon.

We never figured out how she knew what day it was, but every Christmas morning (which was also her birthday), she would run excitedly from room to room and wake us up.   We joked that she was the best darned alarm clock, although for only one day a year.

After being awakened, Randy, Mom, Dad and I would follow her to the living room and sit around the tree.  There Prissy would receive the first gift, which had been loosely wrapped and placed on a tree branch.  She would tear open and then parade her gift, usually a squeaky toy, around the room for all to admire.

Her favorite toy was a little rubber alligator she got one Christmas.  Whenever she felt bad, she would sit at the end of the coffee table and slowly squeeze him, making sorrowful little squeaks until she felt better.

Prissy greeted me at the door and slept at my side whenever I came home from college or was visiting from California.  By the time I went to grad school, she was slower to meet me in the kitchen and she no longer wiggled her body with uncontrolled joy.  I had to lift her up on the bed at night because she could no longer run down the hall and fly from the door to my side.   She was almost completely blind, and so she no longer took offense at squirrels raiding the pecan tree.

I knew that our time with Prissy was growing short, and I was ready when I answered the phone call from Mom one evening.

When I next visited Mom and Dad, I looked out the sliding glass door.  There was a little dirt mound there near the pecan tree.  I opened the door and walked over.  Standing there remembering all those sweet moments, I was all hollowed out with emotion.  As is often the case with loss, I was wrong in thinking myself truly ready.

While I stood there, Mom came up from the house to stand with me.  She put her arm around me and said simply, “She was a good dog.”

“Yes,” I whispered, “she was the best.”

In August, 1968, after a year of apartment dwelling, our family moved to a newly built home in the growing suburb known as Southwest Little Rock.

There were no parks near us and relatively few kids in the neighborhood.  There was never even enough breeze to fly kites.  I sometimes tried tying a kite to the back of my bike and pulling it behind, but results usually involved a destroyed kite, a bike crash, or both.  I never understood how Charlie Brown could get his stupid kite high enough to get stuck in a tree.

Without sufficient kiddy TV, convenient parks or nearby friends, and given the finite number of comic books that I had not read to tatters, it was inevitable that some days involved searching for something interesting to pass the time.

My younger brother Randy and I owned a large chunk of unremarkable modeling clay.  It was dark blue and it never hardened, so it was no good for making toys like batarangs or useful household items like ashtrays. 

Now, Carlyle Drive was one of only a couple of access roads into the Windamere subdivision, and people would drive down the street at astonishing speeds.  The straight and nearly treeless street could be a dangerous place to play if not for the fact that you could see cars coming long before you were in mortal peril. 

One day, Randy and I realized these two seemingly unrelated circumstances of clay and street could be combined to produce novel and potentially interesting mischief.

We fashioned a dozen blue clay 8 inch spikes, striking in their similarity to hardened steel implements of death.  With an attention to detail rarely seen outside of the military, Randy and I placed our spits all across the road in front of our house.  As we had planned, no car could possibly avoid them by driving in between.  We then stood in our yard, quite plainly the architects of this road hazard, waiting for unsuspecting motorists.

As the first car turned off the main road of Geyer Springs, Randy and I steeled ourselves for imminent chaos.  The road offered no encumbrance to unsafe driving, and the car roared towards us gaining speed.  To our disappointment, the driver either never noticed the spikes or just decided that maybe it was a good day to die in a fiery crash; he drove over them without slowing.

Disheartened by our first victim’s nonchalance, we reformed the nails and waited for another car.  It was not long.  The next driver was barreling down the road even faster than the first when he saw the spikes.  With admirable reflexes, he slammed the brakes, leaving black rubber marks and screeching to a halt mere feet away.  The car sat there idling long seconds.  The driver looked down at the spikes, then at the two young troublemakers waiting to see what he would do next.  Cautiously, he inched his car over the spikes, gently flattening them to blue smears on the pavement.  I have no idea why he thought puncturing his tires slowly would be better than just getting out and moving the nails, but then people were always in a hurry on our street.

Randy and I were thrilled by our experiment.  Before another car could venture into our neighborhood, we ran into the street and quickly reformed the skewers. 

The next driver was doing the usual bat-of-out-hell routine when he spotted the spikes and two idiot kids lurking nearby, supervising the action.  Without touching the brakes or even letting up on the gas, he drove up into the lawn across the street from us, fishtailing around the potentially life-threatening road hazard, and on down the street.  As he rounded the corner, he never even looked back.  His car had left impressive 30 foot long ruts in the recently planted yards across from our house.  Randy and I cackled with delight, totally satisfied with our mildly evil handiwork.  Now THIS was entertainment!

Subsequent cars produced variations on these outcomes until there was not enough clay to remake barbs, having been ground into the asphalt or carted away wedged in tire treads.

That evening, we did not tell anyone about our adventure, realizing we were lucky that nobody yelled at us or just drove over us for payback.  Thereafter, whenever we were gifted more modeling clay, Randy and I would grin at each other, silently making plans for our next adventure.

Nobody in my family was what you would call a serious drinker.  Dad had a can or two of Old Milwaukee or Pabst Blue Ribbon at the company picnic every summer.  In the cabinet sat a couple of souvenir Hurricane glasses from New Orleans, about the only evidence that Mom ever imbibed. According to her, a Hurricane was the H-bomb of inebriation; it only took one to get the job done.

While hunting for some mislaid pan at Mom’s behest, I discovered a bottle of whiskey hiding out under the stove.  It was so far back that I had to crawl partially into the cabinet to reach it.  I suppose it was there for emergencies, such as if Dean Martin dropped by unexpectedly, or anesthesia was needed for a quick home appendectomy.

I had never encountered a drunken person in real life, but they looked like a lot of fun on TV.  There the gently plastered did amusing things like put their hat on upside down or accidentally goose Sonny instead of Cher.  You never saw them kneeling at the toilet beseeching Jesus to please, please just end it all.

One Saturday Mom and Dad were off surrendering some cash at the horse races.  Unsupervised, I determined it was the perfect time to experience a new state of altered consciousness.  

I dug out the whiskey bottle and poured myself 20 ounces in a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor glass.  Not wishing to water it down and thereby risk continued sobriety, I skipped the ice.

I took a large swig, a mouthful to make Dionysus proud.  My tongue pulled back in my mouth like a surprised possum and then rolled over and played dead.  The whiskey tasted like kerosene with a dash of paint thinner to liven it up a little.  Evidently the stuff had gone bad!  Nobody would drink this on purpose!  I poured the rest down the sink praying it would not eat the gaskets out of the plumbing.

A year later, my good friends Andy McGee and Richard Manson lit on a plan to make some homemade wine.  I had never so much as tasted the fruit of the vine, but I knew it came in several lovely colors.  Surely it tasted much, much better than dreary brown whiskey, right?   In any case, I was always up for any diversion Richard and Andy’s fevered brains concocted. 

For reasons now lost to time, we decided to acquire the ingredients in downtown Little Rock.  Too young to drive ourselves, and adding to the sense of adventure, we caught a municipal bus there in southwest Little Rock.

It was blustery and cool when we stepped off the bus a couple of blocks from the central library.  Downtown Little Rock was slightly seedy and lent the barest whiff of danger to our excursion, or maybe that was just residual smell from that one old guy on the bus.

Only moments after our debarkation, a few scraps of paper blew past on the sidewalk.   A fleeting glimpse of Colonel Harlan Sanders caused us to chase down the papers.  To our delight, each was a coupon for a free meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is what they called KFC before “fried” became synonymous with “greasy death food.”

At the restaurant, the manager asked us to write our names and phone numbers on the forms.  Andy and I obliged without a thought, but Richard was worried and so filled out a fake name.   He later told us that he had given the name “Dick Richards”, which cracked Andy and me up.   We decided that we would henceforth be “Andy Andrews” and “Steve Stevens.”

Richard, Andy and I wandered into the Mount Holly Cemetery, where we saw the graves of great and famous Arkansans, glorious namesakes of parks, elementary schools, and sewage plants.  Among the angels and crosses, we fired up cheap cigars to enhance the sheer joy of being young, alive, and most especially, naughty.

I remembered that slug of whiskey had tasted bad, alright, but my cigar was running neck and neck for the sweepstakes.  Dirt off old shoes might have been more palatable, but bravado dictated that I enjoy my cheroot to save face, no matter how green it became.

“You boys shouldn’t oughta be here!” I jumped so hard my cigar went flying.  A previously unseen groundskeeper in dusty overalls stepped out from behind a nearby monument.  His eyes suggested origins in a dangerously inbred Ozark society, the kind that might eat 14 year-old boys for a mid-afternoon snack.  I was pretty sure I heard the twang of distant banjos.  We skedaddled the hell out of there without a second thought for my mislaid stogie.

After a bit more meandering, we took the bus back home and bought the grape juice at Safeway.

We mixed up the juice with water and yeast, and poured it into gallon size jugs.  We capped the bottles with condoms, thereby allowing the fermentation gases to expand without breaking the containers. 

We proudly lined up the jugs on a shelf in Richard’s room.  There the wine simmered gently, awaiting recorking in bottles more appropriately sized to hide in a certain hollow log near school.

As the wine fermented, the condoms swelled until they were comically huge.  They resembled nothing so much as beige balloons at an uncommonly dull circus.  Just before the wine was ready, one of the condoms exploded, spewing yeasty purple gunk everywhere.

Richard’s mom, a wonderful lady with a great sense of humor, wagged a cautious finger at him and said, “Now Richard, let that be a lesson to you!”

In 8th grade PE class, I was relieved to find my teacher was Joe Walker.  Coach Walker knew me because his son Duke was best friends with my brother Randy.  I had hope for leniency and was planning to throw myself on the mercy of the court, so to speak.

Lee Buxton, my 7th grade PE coach, had been unsympathetic. He had forced me to run laps even with a painful degenerative knee disease.  (What is it with coaches?  Do they get kickbacks from Big Aspirin?)  Doctors’ notes held no sway over Coach Buxton.  I’m sure he believed I invented Osgood Schlatterer’s Disease to get out of running.  If I had made it up, I would have picked something simpler and more to the point, such as My Knees Hurt Like Hell Syndrome.  It was years too early for an attack of Tonya Harding Knee.

That first day of class, Coach Walker put his arm around my shoulder.  He guided me into his office and sat me down in front of his desk.  He fished around in a bag he pulled from his hip pocket and inserted a hefty pinch of chewing tobacco inside his cheek.  I waited as he repositioned it carefully with his tongue, concentrating as though pondering subatomic physics or the ineffable nature of gym shorts on teenage girls. 

“Steve,” he finally said, “I have an idea.  Why don’t you lead the class this year?  You just take roll every day and then do whatever exercises you want.”

Images of Rod Serling flashed before my eyes, because this could not be happening to me.  A nerd before it was even remotely cool, I could not climb a rope more than 3 feet without intense vertigo.  What sort of person would trust me to lead a PE class? (“A lazy person” is the answer, by the way.)

I considered the possibilities.  Why, I would practically be a COACH!  Under my benign direction, there would be no sweating, no panting while running laps, no embarrassment because I kicked the basketball when trying to dribble.  I saw no downside to this arrangement, so I accepted.  Coach Walker looked so pleased that he could just spit.  Actually, he did spit.

My first job as an even-handed and totally impartial leader was to divide the class in 2 groups: the kids I knew and liked, and the remaining unlovable dregs.  I then trekked back into the Coaching office to gather equipment. 

I disregarded basketballs and baseballs and other implements of jock world domination.  I was looking for something appropriate.  Something suitable for young men that would rather be enjoying Gilligan’s Island, especially the parts with Mary Ann and Ginger.

Behind stacks of disreputable-looking tables and chairs, I spied a rickety croquet set leaning against a mound of colorful rubber horseshoes.

Croquet and horseshoes!  Why, it was purest genius!  I would never again break a sweat in PE, never shower with kids who had hair in bewildering places!

I designated my own group as the first croqueteers.  The other group got horseshoes, the perfect game for high intoxication levels of coordination.  It would be handy in high school, no doubt.  My elegant plan was that the groups would trade games after returning from Christmas break.

We soon mastered croquet.  To keep things interesting, we began making modifications to the game, which was inevitable for 8th grade boys.  We expanded the shape and dimensions of the field to encompass the entire area at our disposal.  It meant whacking the balls with extra vigor, which was as close to real exercise as we got.

A highlight of play was when an opponent’s ball got knocked off the grassy area and onto the paved driveway.  If you got the angle just right, the ball would roll a hundred feet and wind up in the teacher parking area.  We were so cruel as to insist the player knock the ball over the curb to get it back into play.  No simply picking up the thing for us!  With luck, the poor player would knock the ball too low to clear the curb, causing it to ricochet back towards the teachers’ cars.  This sent us into paroxysms of laughter and jeering, also inevitable with 8th grade boys.

In our minds, an hour a day of croquet for a whole semester brought us up to Olympic competition levels.  I was destined to be the most popular coach at Cloverdale Junior High School, ever.  Well, in my mind.

15 months earlier, in the final days of 6th grade, there had been an assembly to promote band, which was first offered in 7th grade.  I had been impressed by the performance of a flute trio, resplendent in their matching green blazers adorned with flashing medals.  I decided flute was to be my destiny.  I would be a flautist!

When 7th grade started up in September, 1970, I found myself the only boy in the beginning flute section.  I had inadvertently selected a “girl instrument!”  I was mortified! Plus, I could barely even look at girls, much less sit amidst a bevy of them every day!  In another stunning display of stupidity, I dropped band rather than simply change instruments. 

After forsaking band, I took up private guitar lessons.  I practiced about as often as I voluntarily cleaned my room, which is to say never.  I learned no music beyond “Sparkling Stella,” which was just “Twinkle, twinkle little star” renamed to sound posh.  After a year of determined apathy, I acknowledged my failure and gave up guitar forever.  I had less musical aptitude than a tone deaf consumptive dying in the streets of late 19th century Paris, although that might be putting too fine a point on it.

It continued to nag at me that most of my best friends were in band.  Even worse, they seemed to really enjoy it, the wretches!  One day while gleefully launching a croquet ball, I decided it was time to try again.  I signed up for beginner band in the spring, this time learning the manly tenor saxophone.  That meant I had to give up my glorious coach-hood.  I could no longer lead the PE class! As a result, I never got any good at horseshoes, drunk or sober. 

It was worth it.

Most weekends began promptly after school on Friday when Mom, Dad, Randy and I would pile into our enormous-by-modern-standards, tastefully tan Pontiac Catalina.  Dad would point the land yacht northeast and we would leave behind lesser metropolitan Little Rock. 

Along the 90 minute drive, we passed through several towns no larger than a four-way intersection, sometimes with a little church nearby.  Occasionally we would pass a barn with a large ad for Dr. Pepper or fertilizer painted on the roof.  There were few miles without trees and trucks, the truest hallmarks of rural Arkansas.

Dad’s side of the family mostly lived in humble Bradford, on an unpaved, single lane road.  You could pull two wheels into ditches on either side to be passed or for parking.  Because of the tilt, it was considerably harder to open the car door on the non-ditch, uphill side, so Randy, Mom and I usually tumbled out into the ditch.

Not even realizing I was hungry, my mouth would start watering about this time.  You see, first up on our Friday afternoon visit with Grandma was an iron skillet full of fried potatoes, the most comfortable of comfort foods.

Since everyone lived in 4 adjacent homes, it was easy to catch up with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and, of course, many dogs.  Everyone was easy-going, with lots of humor all around, and the sense of family was strong and reassuring.

With the promise of returning Sunday afternoon for a longer stay, we would drive on up to see Mam-maw, Mom’s mother.

A couple of years after Pap-paw died, Mam-maw moved off the farm and into an apartment in Newport, a town on the White River.  She lived a few blocks from the river, the train station, and the main streets of town. 

On Saturday afternoons, we would stop in at Grimes’ Drug Store, where racks of comic books on either side of the front door offered a variety of four color delights.  Following careful selection of the most promising issues, we indulged in hand-squeezed limeade at the soda fountain.  The merest whiff of lime takes me back there in a heartbeat.

We would then hurry down Front Street to the Five and Dime, a store with an impressive array of cheap crap.   There, Randy and I compared toys for sale with those across the street at the Ben Franklin Store, dragging Mom back and forth between them.  A few years earlier, Sam Walton had been owner and manager at the Ben Franklin before he decided to open his own store in Bentonville.  You may have heard of it.

Around supper time Saturday evening, Uncle Aut (pronounced like “Otto” without the last “O” and short for Arthur) and Aunt Oma would stop by. 

Aut and Oma owned a little store up the highway in Tuckerman.  They always brought a bag of candy with an astronomical caloric payload: Pixie Stix, wax lips, candy bars, and chocolate wrapped like coins and baseballs and footballs.  There were also little wax bottles each containing 3 drops of syrup.  Since we never figured out what they were supposed to taste like, we distinguished them by their colors, as in “red flavor” or “green flavor.” 

Mam-maw’s living room housed a big console TV, a gas stove to keep the apartment warm (the TV helped, too), a dining set, a couch, a comfy chair and a coffee table.  A newspaper turned to the crossword puzzle rested on the coffee table, along with Mam-maw’s Pall Mall cigarettes (called “Pell Mells”), a cigarette lighter the size and heft of a hand grenade, two ash trays (one for each end), and a set of Rook cards.

While Randy and I rode the sugar express to nirvana, the adults would break out the folding card table.  They would grab up the Rook cards, divide into teams of two players each, with one adult sitting out until the next game, fire up a round of cigarettes, and start dealing.

Randy and I would usually pull up a couple of dining chairs and watch.  It was always entertaining to see what shenanigans Uncle Aut would pull.  He was a wild and enthusiastic player, and maintained a running commentary of what he was up to.  “Oh, my,” he would say, “this is the worst hand I ever saw.  I’ll bid 90.”  90 was an aggressive bid that rational players only attempted with really good cards or as a sort of Hail Mary play.  As a result of winning the bid, Aut would get a few extra cards to incorporate into his hand.  Flamboyantly dropping his cards on the table for all to see, he would exclaim “Now, HOW am I supposed to make 90 with THIS hand?”

Sometimes when a game ended, I would ask to play.  I might as well have requested a cigarette and a whisky sour.  The answer was always “Not yet.  You are too young.  Someday.”

One Saturday, after a couple of games, I inquired again.  Uncle Aut, always the daredevil, gave Mam-maw a conspiratorial wink and said, “I think it is time.  Let’s let the boy give it a try.”

Uncle Aut surrendered his seat to me, and I sat down proudly among the adults.  Everything seemed immensely better than it had been just moments before.   I felt electricity in my fingertips as a stack of Rook cards was dealt to me.  Conscious that this was an important moment, I picked up my first hand and contemplated my opening bid.

I don’t recall any other details about the game that day, but I was the winner in every way that counts.

During sophomore year of high school, when first period band ended each day, I scurried as fast as I could to Mr. Jeff Weatherly’s geometry class.  I always finished my previous night’s homework at the beginning of class.  

I started it there, too, so there really was no time to waste.

A few extra minutes were granted to me because second period began with school announcements.  Filled with trite homilies and reminders to be attentive, students unironically ignored them all.

Working feverishly, I always paused when Mr. Weatherly read out the cafeteria offerings for the day.  I was intrigued and delighted by his curious pronunciation of the inevitable green selection du jour, “ssshef sssolid.”

Mr. Weatherly was, as Shakespeare might have put it, “a man of finite jest”.  I don’t recall that he ever smiled or joked in class, not once.  I’m sure that, unlike us, he found no amusement in the name “Pythagoras,” nor in any theorem involving the “length of the hypotenuse,” which we regarded as a sly and naughty euphemism.

As in many classes, students were seated in alphabetical order.  Holly Anderson was in the first row, first seat.  I was to her right, in the second row, first seat.  To my right, the third row, first seat was inexplicably empty. That fact is germane to this tale.

Behind Holly sat Steve Anderson, a student with whom I had never spoken nor had another class.  Steve’s usually inattentive manner told me that he did not care if we were studying algebra or vertebra.  I was quiet and serious; my laces were far too straight for his consideration, and he was too much a consummate goof-off for mine. 

Mr. Weatherly had a curious habit of standing just to my right, between my seat and the empty seat on the third row.  He would rest his left calf flat on the desktop, his shoe sole facing me at a distance of perhaps 20 inches, as he pontificated on the doctrine of original sine.

One day, as Mr. Weatherly was standing with his leg on the desk, I experienced an intense odor of putrefaction.  Had some varmint expired in my proximity?  A brief investigation led to an undeniable conclusion; noxious fumes were wafting my way from Weatherly’s nearby Oxford.  I turned my head aside, tucking my face away from the stench, and covered my nose as best I could without being too obvious.

I observed Steve sitting with fingers wrapped tightly around his desktop, hunched over as if struggling to resist gale force winds.  Conspiratorially, he whispered, “Stinks, don’t it?”

Oh, that such an innocuous phrase was my undoing!  I had to laugh, but it seemed injudicious with Mr. Weatherly standing RIGHT THERE.  Trying to hold back giggles, I started to squeak a little, producing sounds like air escaping from the stretched neck of a balloon.  Steve was making noises as though he might hack up a hairball any second.

Mr. Weatherly had returned to the blackboard with his back to us when our repressed cackles grew too loud to ignore.  He turned, sincerely unentertained, and asked, “Mr. Hendricks, WHAT is ssso funny?  Would you care to share it with the clossss?” 

His precise and extra sibilant enunciation, equally funny and horrifying because it was directed at me, had a detrimental effect on my self-restraint, now only a single control rod away from total meltdown.

What could I say in this situation? 

“Can you honesty not smell that?” 

“Do you have a sick dog at home?”

“Sir, have you considered that you may have stepped in something unfortunate?” 

I tried to devise a response that would not guarantee a disciplinary excursion to the office. Desperate, I glanced over my shoulder at Steve.  No aid or succor was to be found there.  His eyes were shut and his face was screwed tight.  He looked as if struck with dysentery in the vicinity of precisely zero toilets. 

“Ummm, well, ah…” I offered with sublime oratorical brilliance, playing for time. 

As my wife Angelina lovingly and frequently attests, I am a fantastically bad liar.   At that moment, balanced on the knife-edge of hysteria, my beleaguered mind could only supply inappropriate verses about a fellow from Nantucket.

Attempting to throw the teacher off the scent, so to speak, I stammered out a minimal “no, sir.” By answering the second question, I had artfully avoided the more perilous first.  Alas, it did not quell the oncoming tsunami within me.

Soon, Steve and I were laughing like crazed hyenas. You know, if hyenas studied geometry.  The whole class stared at us like we had gone mad, perhaps watching our mouths for telltale foam and froth.  I suspect Mr. Weatherly was contemplating a barrelful of the Ole Yeller treatment for each of us.

At one point, reduced to flaccid husks with tears running down our cheeks, we were too spent to laugh.  Like pugilists hanging on the ropes, we uttered only the occasional helpless whimper until the class bell spared us.

Having escaped the consequences of our reactions, Steve and I gathered our books and filed out of the room. We nodded to each other almost imperceptibly, acknowledging an unexpected and newfound brotherhood, and continued on to third period.

     After 14 years of chastity, I was soon to have my first date.  I had confessed to my good friend Susan that I was in love with her good friend, Lynnette.  Susan confessed that she loved my good friend Terry.  By an odd coincidence, Susan and Terry and Lynnette and I went on a double date that Friday night.

     We decided to see Encounter With the Unknown, which sounded scary enough to prompt the girls to run to the boys for protection.  I hoped so.

     An uneventful week passed prior to the movie.  My civics teacher told me that she disliked me, and Terry caught a cold.

     By Friday, I had amassed five dollars and found a matching pair of socks.

     Friday passed slowly.  The pep assembly lasted for decades.  As I played my sax, I envisioned my neckstrap as Lynnette’s soft arms around my neck, pulling me closer.

     After school, I hurried home to perform the rituals to the goddess of Love.  The first unnecessary thing I did was shave.  At that time, hair had never been seen between my neck and nose.  Next, I showered lightly in my father’s cologne.  Dressing quickly, I walked confidently out the door.

     “Be careful!” my mother shouted after me.

     “I won’t,” I thought, grinning like I knew something.

     At the movie, I proudly purchased two tickets, two popcorns, and two huge drinks.

     We sat in the back row.  When the lights went out, it did something I wasn’t prepared for.  It got dark.  I was afraid of darkness with a passionate woman beside me.  Before I had time to defend myself, the movie illuminated the room, and I saw that Lynnette was talking to Susan.

     The movie droned on as I sat, cross-armed, staring at the chair in front of me.  I knew that I wanted to hold Lynnette’s hand.  I also knew that I would in just a minute.

     After an hour of worrying, I reached over to hold her hand.  On the screen, an ambulance careened madly down a street, lights flashing wildly.  As I touched her hand, she gave my arm an upward push.  Magically, my arm went around her neck.

     I sat in the semi-darkness, my right arm around a girl’s neck, staring at the wall to my left.  Her head was on my shoulder.  I could feel it.

     Something was missing.  I knew it was.  So I slowly turned my head to see if Lynnette thought so, too.  She slowly turned her eyes up toward mine.  I couldn’t look away.  I was caught, whirling madly down blind alleys like the ambulance.

     I realized what I had to do.  It was no longer of my free will.  It was a command, an order, an inevitability that I kiss Lynnette.  But what if I missed?  I didn’t want to kiss her nose or chin.

     Then she kissed me.  Then I kissed her.  It was a set pattern after that.

     Later, after I had kicked over both cokes and vainly tried to get comfortable with a chair arm in my side, I noticed Terry.  Terry was noticing us.  A momentary feeling of pity touched me as I remembered Terry’s cold.  But it didn’t slow me.

     When we felt the movie ending, Lynnette and I disengaged and watched it.  When it was over, we watched the people file past.  In the empty theater, we stood up and laughed.  We laughed about the coke, about the movie, and about our fears.  We walked home.

     Before I entered my house, I loosened my tie and unbuttoned my collar.  I then firmly opened the door, strolled through the living room and my family, and walked to my room.  I jumped on the bed, lacing my fingers behind my neck.  I lay there a long time, staring contentedly at the ceiling above me.

     Hell, lipstick on my collar or not, I knew that I was a man.