Day one: Clearing away the cobwebs

It's really not Day one.

Day one was started and since this is all new to me, was deleted amongst much frustration, while trying to ABC-Spell check it.

Oy.

So this is what i recall...and let me be brief.

This, this place I come to is to clear away the cobwebs in my head. Think of it like clearing off your desk as you prepare to write checks on bill paying night, or to write letters ( this gives away that I grew up in a time where people actually wrote letters instead of sending emails) or clip coupons. Maybe cobwebs isn't really an appropriate idea to expalin what's happening so let me try like this.

Stories are like children.

They all need attention. Some actually demand it. They all have their space within the room that is inside my head all awaiting their own chance to come forward and take center stage.

So while others wait their turn...

Jo-Jo Potato was your average run of the mill fat kid. So many of the stories of my ill-spent youthful summers were in that New Hampshire town where I met Jo-Jo. He had that, and probably still does, everyday blah colorless feature that now as I finally put it into type I'm not altogether sure if it's the colorless images of my fading memory or was he and everything else back then colored patina brown. He had that sandy-brown hair that would fly every which way when the wind blew but always laid back into it's original position the second the wind died down that I hated him for. Okay, maybe I didn't hate him for it but I would truly get pissed at him or maybe it was both of my parents for having thick wavy hair that went everywhere if anything more than a light breeze blew. It didn't matter how long the wind had blown, my hair would remain sticking up. It was a cruel joke but always before leaving the house my mother would always make sure that I had a black plastic comb which could do nothing to my hair unless it was soaking wet and pasted to my head. Anyway, I don't ever remember Jo-Jo wearing red, blue, green, orange, yellow or even black. It was always brown. Yes at times his shirts were striped or solid, tee's or button-up's, had pockets or no pockets, tucked (but mostly un-tucked), but the one thing they always were was some sort of brown that matched his hair. Pants whether long in the non-summer days, short in the summers which revealed tan oversizied socks that always bunched around his ankles and brown lace-up dress shoes. His face was round as were his nickel sized eyes that to me were brown but he always said that he had hazel colored eyes like his grandmother with whom he lived with.

We, by which I mean my family, which consisted of my older twin brother and sister Samantha and Sampson (or just Sam and Sam) my little sister Troye, Mom and Dad, and our stupid Dog Moe moved to this little no-name-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere town during the summer of 1975. It was like anytown USA with a four-block downtown Main St with a soda shop, a restaurant or two which changed as the years passed, a drugstore, an aging cineplex with a halflit marquee, mercantile (whatever that meant) post office, and full service gas stations at each end of Main Street that competed for the non-existant passing through tourists. Every Monday and Thursday old man Mortensen would stand at the edge of the sidewalk with his army-issue binoculars to see what The Jenkins Family Motor Through set their gas prices at so he could sell his by five cents cheaper. Once the Jenkins' found out they turned their sign 90 degrees so it faced Main St. and this upset Old Man Mortensen to no end. It was rumored that he stormed into the Mayor's office, unnannounced, saying that a sign that was not 90 degrees to the street was bad for the town because drivers would be looking at the sign as they passed instead of in front of them as safe-normal American drivers ougt to be. jenkins' sign remained as it was until the mid 80's when sky-signs became unfavorable with town ordinances and both signs were brought down. As for the rest of the town it had it's fair share of drama amongst it's twenty or so nearly perfect square blocks that had it's neighborhoods that as the towns children we called, The Good Side-of-town, The-Wrong-Side-Of-The-Tracks, Battlefield Creek, Dragon-Smoke-Stacks, Parkside, Richville and around it all was The Edge.

Like I said it was summer time and to a kid in summer with two-and-a-half-months until school there's nothing important in life as much as your friends that you'll be spending the summer with getting in and out of trouble. But for those of you with short attention spans or if you have not been paying attention, let me remind you this was a new town for us so as of yet I had no friends to get out of trouble with. Notice I put only half of the summer activity there. I had no freinds to get out of trouble with. What this means, and i'm sure you can think of it on your own if you took a moment, is that to get into trouble it does not take more than one twelve year old with an over-active imagination, but that to get out of trouble it can be helpful when needing a quick excuse to have back-up. It's good to have a partner like in Adam-12. Yes, I know I had siblings. Three in fact. Thanks for the reminder. Sam, my brother, and Sam, my sister, were now responsible young adults or so my mother said and didn't have time to be playing around doing nothing all the live long day and come to think of it I should consider helping out around the house more since I too was getting older. I left the house before she assigned me an un-wanted task that I am sure was going to include keeping Troye out from underfoot.

I left our two story white salt box house with green shutters on my Orange Thunderbird bicycle. It had long plastic strands that came out of the handlebars that made me think of flames. They should have called this bicycle The Pheonix instead. I had never seen nor did I think there had ever been Orange Thunder. Anyway I don't remember if it was that day or the next when I met Jo-Jo. I just know that in the scheme of my memories that there are memeories without Jo-Jo and then suddenly there are memories with him. In this one Jo-Jo appeared as we entered town from the North. Not being a Monday or Thursday Old Man Mortensen was not at his vigil point facing south and the Jenkins Family Motor Through. Jo-Jo had once had a bicycle he told me. But that was way before we moved into town. "It was a black dirt-bike that we got at a yard sale but I left it out in the rain and forgot it for the winter outside so I couldn't get to it 'till mud-season so it got rusted out." Jo-Jo was a little absent-minded at times. For those of you that don't know mud season count yourself lucky. It's the fifth season here in New England. Once all the snow melts plus some additional rain, the locals have to go from rock to rock or chance getting stuck in the mud. Literally.

Town wasn't very busy. It was still before midday so the lunch force wasn't out yet and the store deliveriey trucks had been done for a few hours already. A couple of cars including the Trooper at the Doughnut franchise, a car getting gas, a grandma pushing a baby in a carraige, a couple window shopping and Jo-Jo and I. Not much going on in this town.
"Hear about the Gypsies?" Jo-Jo asked
I straddled my bike beside jo-Jo as we made our way towards the center of town.
"Nope." I said bored.
"They came into town day before yesterday and set up a buncha tents out past Battlefield Creek."
"What?" I had though Jo-Jo was going to tell me one of his lame not very funny jokes like What do you call a gypsy when he's had to much to drink? A tipsy-gypsy. See what I mean?
"Gypsies." Jo-Jo wiped off his sweaty forehead. "Mom called it a tent-town. They rolled into town and set up a fair or something. Mom says we can't go a'cause they try and rip us off or something and she don't make no money fer crap like that."
"Where?"
"Where what?"
I had to stop and give Jo-Jo a look.
"Oh the gypsies?"
I just stared.
"Like I said out past Battlefield Creek."
"What and where is that?"
The answer he gave carried us through the rest of town and then back to the center of town where we turned east onto Webster Lane. But the short of it was that Battlefield creek was where the Great Dirt-clod wars had been fought a couple of summers before against a rival town. Officially this was an event that never happened despite all the town boys and a few of the girls had been questioned in a special session that had been held in the school auditorium. According to the town this was an off limits area for children. A developer had come in and bought a few acres and then his wife and some guy ran off with most of the money. There were large pits that were supposed to become basements, hills created by bull-dozers, trenches like they had in real wars and a few crumbling concrete foundations. In other words a kids ultimate playground. But out beyond that was The Edge where some summers fairs would set up with real elephants, tigers, and bears. Oh My.
"Can we stop?"
"Why?"
"It's wicked hot."
To this day I don't understand the use of Wicked. "You want to ride instead?"
"For the rest of the way?" Jo-Jo was a good negotiator.
"Sure." Anything to keep moving towards something to do in this town.

Little did I know what was waiting...