Nov 2015
Flashback...
We'd spent all day
In "the fields"
Not twenty yards from the whitewashed cemetery fence posts
Floating and then burning
Paper boats on a muddy puddle in a depression in the dirt
Phillip and Chris scored some Skoal From Danny or Billy, I forget which...
It was "long-cut"
We try a bit...putting it in our cheek
Like the big kids did
The Skoal making a strange and potent tea from our spit
The smallest amount of this tingly elixer is swallowed- and it's over.
I lose my lunch.
I am yawning in technicolor.
Chris and Phillip laugh and laugh.
Then Phillip follows suit barfing on his shoes
Chris gives him an arm punch, with a smile.
I think Phil and I were both done with chew.
There was never a shortage of things to do here
Under an old barnwood board, was a magazine with glorious pictures that made us feel strangely isolated
From one another
We would memorize each line, each curve
For later when each would be alone
With the Sears catalog and some tracing paper.
We made single line trails for our bikes
With banks and jumps
Chris was the daredevil of the bunch
He would take a new ramp at top speed
His little brother would too
Sometimes with drastic results
Concussions and broken bones.
There's a chain store now
in the spot we called "the fields".
It used to seem vast.
And now it looks small.
But that is the past.
Memories. That's all.
We'd spent all day
In "the fields"
Not twenty yards from the whitewashed cemetery fence posts
Floating and then burning
Paper boats on a muddy puddle in a depression in the dirt
Phillip and Chris scored some Skoal From Danny or Billy, I forget which...
It was "long-cut"
We try a bit...putting it in our cheek
Like the big kids did
The Skoal making a strange and potent tea from our spit
The smallest amount of this tingly elixer is swallowed- and it's over.
I lose my lunch.
I am yawning in technicolor.
Chris and Phillip laugh and laugh.
Then Phillip follows suit barfing on his shoes
Chris gives him an arm punch, with a smile.
I think Phil and I were both done with chew.
There was never a shortage of things to do here
Under an old barnwood board, was a magazine with glorious pictures that made us feel strangely isolated
From one another
We would memorize each line, each curve
For later when each would be alone
With the Sears catalog and some tracing paper.
We made single line trails for our bikes
With banks and jumps
Chris was the daredevil of the bunch
He would take a new ramp at top speed
His little brother would too
Sometimes with drastic results
Concussions and broken bones.
There's a chain store now
in the spot we called "the fields".
It used to seem vast.
And now it looks small.
But that is the past.
Memories. That's all.
East Henrietta Road, 1980
