Digging through a junk drawer I found a collection of old
stuff that was once important to me.
Each item has a story, of sorts, and tells a tale about some part of my
younger life.
Take the Cub Scout badges, for instance….I don’t remember
what each one was for but I did achieve Webelos which meant that I matriculated to the rank of Tenderfoot in Boy Scouts. I mostly enjoyed Cub Scouts in spite of the
uniform requirement. It was fun with the
exception of going door-to-door selling Clamorama tickets. I hated that.
I was keen about advancing to Boy Scouts but that turned out to be
something that I really wasn’t suited for and, though I wasn’t kicked out, I
ended up leaving under a cloud due to actions and circumstances that are
disagreed upon by all parties to this very day.
That little square silver box holds the Boy Scout ring that I took off
my finger on the day I left.
People were always giving me pocket knives. I have a ton of them and I can’t recall the
who or why on most but that red knife is special. When I was in the first grade I talked my
parents into buying it for me at Sears Roebuck in Wichita. I couldn’t believe that they actually did
it. Being given stuff that we didn’t
need was out of the norm. Look closely
and you will see Roy Rogers and Trigger on it.
Dale didn’t make the cut and if she had I wouldn’t have wanted the
knife. I always thought that she was
bogus. In retrospect so was Roy. I mean that pair dressed like Liberace. I broke the end of the large blade off
carving my name into our chicken coop.
The green things are Heinz Pickle Pins that were featured
during the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair at the Heinz exhibit where you could push
a little button and a pin or two dropped into a tray. There was usually a mob of kids waiting their
turn and a Pickle Pin Monitor dressed in a green blazer making sure that each
kid only got to push the button once. I
went there one day and there was no mob of kids and no pickle monitor. Out to lunch I guess so I cranked out a whole
lot of those pins because I could trade them for gum, candy, a decent used
Duncan Imperial, several packs of strings or cigarettes. As you can see I only have 9 left. What do you want to trade me?
That brass tag belonged to our dog, Ace. It’s his rabies tag from Wichita. Ace was a good dude and my best and only
brother.
That silver thing “north east” of Ace’s tag is one of those
tiny cigarette lighters. They were
highly valued by some kids (including me) and came in gumball-type machines in
a little clear round plastic case. Seems
like those machines might have cost $25 a try and I spent a few dollars before
I finally got one. It was really
exciting when I finally saw it drop but it was very disappointing as a
lighter. Poor performance, no wind
protection, leaked in your pocket and that irritated the skin. Leakage meant that it was always out of fluid
and wouldn’t light, you had a scab on your leg and that you always smelled of
lighter fluid and Bactine.
The little knife in the scabbard was something that I
purchased in a souvenir shop. I don’t
recall where but probably the Roadside Geyser, Estes Park, The Big Well, who
can remember? Some family vacation
someplace. Originally it had a white
plastic pearl handle but I thought it looked a bit wussy so I colored it black
with a felt pen.
That shiny rectangle is my dog tag from Jesse Chisolm
Elementary School in Wichita. All kids
were required to wear them to aid in potential body identification after the
Russians dropped the bomb. Note that it
lists religion and blood type in case you were still alive. I wonder if Atheist was an accepted choice in
those days? We lived in fear.
I bet that the Buchan’s Championship patch hangs you
up. There was a bread company in Seattle
called the Buchan Bakery and they sponsored an amateur basketball team called
the Buchan Bakers. They won AAU championships
in 1956, 1957 and 1960. Brett Fidler’s
Dad refereed AAU games and I got to go to a few of them. Mr. Fidler gave me that patch and it seemed
so cool at the time.
Above the knife are two pins that I think might
have been for some school athletic award.
A silver and a bronze. That would
be 2nd and 3rd place, right? The silver pin is actually a bronze pin
painted silver. I don’t remember
painting it silver but somebody did so it might have been me. I may have been out of gold paint.
To the left of those is a pin I got for being on the Junior
Safety Patrol. That pin mattered to me
because I was a big shot. I was an
officer and a Second Lieutenant! Third
in command. At least I was until I was
kicked out. Mr. Aguilera managed the
patrol, taught 6th grade, Spanish and Square Dancing. He was ill-suited for his job because he
seemed to hate kids and had serious anger management issues. He kicked me off patrol because he didn’t
like the way I square danced. When the
call came to swing-your-partner I was paired with Alison Arsove and she swung
me hard up against the folded bleachers with a great deal of force. Aggie went berserk, picked me up, shook me by
my shoulders, banged me hard against the wall and stripped me of my commission
right there in front of God and everybody.
The bruises didn’t last long but I was totally humiliated and all I had to
show for my work ensuring the safety of Montlake crosswalks was that pin. But wait.
There’s more. He didn’t just take
my silver 2nd Lt. badge away, he kicked me completely out of
patrol. He found me unsuited to hold a
red flag on a stick. That pin and the
school photo of the Safety Patrol is all I have to show for my lack of skills
at square dancing.
Some Members of the Junior Safety Patrol
Those little white things are my baby teeth. None of my baby teeth ever got loose enough
to pull. I would have a permanent tooth
coming in somewhere in my mouth and it would have no place to grow so I had to
have each of them pulled by a dentist.
My Mom made sure that I had straight, beautiful permanent teeth and she
was very proud of them until I got them knocked out in a car wreck. Oh well.
That little silver and red thing is a West Bend Super Duper 502
fishing lure missing its treble hooks.
It seems that all three barbs got embedded in Chuck Carlson’s thumb and
fore finger which is a whole ‘nuther story for a ’nuther time. Chuck’s fingers were the only thing that either
of us caught that day and he had to go to a doctor to have the hooks
removed. I got the lure back sans hooks. Chuck was grounded and probably beaten for
being a dumbass. Charles Howard
Frederick Carlson was one of my closest friends and had a sad and short
life. That lure really is one of my
treasured possessions.
The orange award ribbon was for a Halloween costume party at
Montlake Playfield. I was dressed as a
college professor. Don’t ask. It was a goofy costume and the ribbon might
have been given to me as a mercy award.
It’s hard to understand why I still have that.
Finally the red and white ribbons were won at a Montlake
Playfield track meet. The red was for
the long jump and the white for the hop-step-and-jump. I only competed in the hop-step-and-jump
because it looked silly and seemed to have no practical application in life. I did the long jump to see if I was ready to make
the leap from the roof of the school across the alley onto the lunchroom
roof. It was a personal goal because
after so many earlier failures I still thought it might be possible to
fly. I had been working on it for over a
year and long jumping everything in sight that I didn’t think would kill
me. I guess I was a pretty strange kid. The red ribbon told me that I was ready and
so I climbed up and did it. I barely
cleared the alley and the impact on the lunchroom room roof would be best
described as violent and painful.
While David Belle may be recognized as the undisputed
founder of Parkour I was into it for over a decade before he was born. It would be a stretch to say that I was a
parkour visionary, though, because my young mind didn’t always work through all
of the details. While envisioning the
flight I carefully worked on the mechanics of the launch and the flight,
itself, but I never gave a second thought to the landing part. THAT_LANDING_HURT_A LOT. It was a harsh toke.
