Lord of the Flies / King of the Carp

 1/1/2006

The Plan

The plan was hatched in Donnie Carlson’s storage area. 

His house sat at the corner of Boyer and Everett Ave. E.  Everett Avenue sloped about 75 yards down to Portage Bay where it dead ended at the remains of a rickety dock surrounded by cattails and Lilly Pads.  The dock had been the sidewalk for a houseboat community that was displaced by the building of the 520 viaduct. 

Donnie’s house was built on the hillside with the main floor at ground level on one side and the exterior basement door at ground level on the opposite.  A deck off of the living room extended over the basement door and the deck supports provided the main framing and footprint for the storage area.  The walls were enclosed using translucent corrugated fiberglass panels.  Access from outside was through a light wooden door that was held shut with a screen door hook.

The area was used for storing outboard motors, oars, life jackets, seat cushions, fishing poles, reels, nets, tackle boxes, lawn mowers, rakes, garden tools, large mysterious olive drab canvas things of unknown purpose.  Interesting artifacts were stacked, slung and hung everywhere in this 8’ x 10’ space and emitted intriguing smells that really got the juices stirring in this young boy.  The mingling scents emitted by jars of salmon eggs, cheese bait, vinyl seat cushions, well-aged fishing creels, air-dried kapok life jackets, motor oil, gasoline, dried grass, army surplus pup tents with just a hint of rodent pee filled me with wonder.  My God, what a magnificent smell.  The light that filtered through the fiberglass paneling played across salmon flashers, trout lures, odd floats and old jackets that were suspended from the rafters.  This was a cathedral and any boy who entered was overwhelmed by the possibilities.  It was in this temple that Donnie unveiled the prize given to him by his Grandpa. 

In his hand he held a green trident spear tip.  Four sharp prongs, each finished with a barb, all set into an elongated cap designed to fit over the end of a shaft.  He held it out to me and smiled.  It was beautiful, dangerous, wicked, perfect!  I was transfixed.  What more could a boy want?  Without any idea of how I would use it I knew that I had to possess one and it had to be soon.

Test Pattern

 

We weren’t the first of families to own a TV set.  They were novelties then and whenever relatives were together, if a TV was available, we would gather and watch.  There wasn’t much in the way of programming at the time.  Whatever the programming was it was in black and white and I don’t recall channel choices during the ‘50’s in Kansas. 

I do recall sitting on the floor in front of the TV before the Saturday broadcasting began staring at the test pattern that featured the Indian Chief and listening to that test tone.  My God, the anticipation of staring at that image while having that unwavering low fidelity tone blast through my head.  It was divine in such an unacceptable way by today’s standards.  In order to distract kids during the pre-programming test pattern period some crafty entrepreneur packaged up a clear vinyl film with a few crayons and sold them to frazzled Mom’s.  We had one.  The film was pressed onto the screen where we would “color” the test pattern.  The crayon could be wiped off of the vinyl with toilet paper so every day the Indian chief could be a different color.  Of course, you couldn’t get too imaginative because there were only 5 color crayons.