Allowances

Allowances

Noel Laflin

10-31-15

The fly-by-night carnival pulled into town early one Friday morning and was open for business by sunset.  The neighborhood was abuzz in anticipation as the old vacant lot at Lincoln and East was suddenly transformed into a city of light beckoning one and all - young and old - to come take a stroll down the hastily erected boardwalk, drop a dime, throw a dart, toss a ball, lift a hammer and ding a bell.

 

And we did.

It cost me nearly two week’s allowance to finally win a small iron horse at one of the arcades.  The game of chance had something to do with balls and hoops – or balls and bottles – or perhaps, it was balls and holes and tilting boards.  It’s all a blur now.  All I know for certain is that I finally won the smallest of prizes and declined the barker’s enticing promise of winning a bigger horse if only I would lay down just one more dime and toss, or throw, or roll another three balls.  And although I was only ten, I knew when I’d been coyly conned and nearly beaten out of my forty cents, and decided to put the small prize and my last dime in my pocket and walk away.

As there was just one coin left, I had the choice of either cotton candy or the Ferris wheel.  I chose to see my neighborhood from a higher viewpoint.

 

Once aloft, and circling about again and again, I saw the lay of the land as I’d never had before.

 

There were the tops of houses, including my own, rising and falling with every rotation of the swinging gondolas.  I had the cart all to myself.

‘Tequila,’ by the Champs, came blaring through tinny speakers down below.  The song would rise and fade with each revolution.

The old orange grove beside the vacant lot appeared to go on forever, but did eventually end at the block wall separating both it and the city’s ancient graveyard that lay just on the other side. The cemetery was dark and spooky, and the white marble angel with the broken arm was hard to spot.

 

And it was with more than just a bit of satisfaction that I was finally level with the tallest of the aged trees that shadowed the graves below.

I spied my school across the street and down the road a bit and marveled at the expanse of the playground and darkened ball field running south.

The faraway homes of friends, laid out in cookie cutter fashion, would come into focus and then disappear with every rotation.

 

Downtown lights flickered on and off with every rise and fall of the giant wheel.

And all too soon, the song was over, as was the ride.

As I was out of money I left the carnival and entered the grove I’d just viewed from above, and walked a path I’d walked a thousand times before.  I decided to take the long way home and hopped the old cemetery wall and ran the distance of the graveyard, as one just did not merely take a stroll through such a place alone and at night.

 

I climbed the ivy-covered chain link fence and dropped onto safer ground.  I was now at the end of the street that I called home and made a beeline for it.

And so the horse was taken from a pocket and placed upon a bedroom desk.  Over time, it found its way into a drawer and then eventually a box where it lay forgotten for decades to come.

I recently came across a small box within a box that had been residing on a dusty shelf buried deep in the garage.  A small iron horse lay within.

A memory regarding a game of chance – something to do with balls, and a foolishly spent allowance – suddenly came into focus.

And so did a Ferris wheel, a hit song of the late fifties, a view of a neighborhood now much changed, and a nighttime run through a graveyard.

Like that night of long ago, I see it all from a slightly different level now.

And from this new viewpoint, I also see that perhaps some allowances need to be made for seemingly foolish childhood decisions of the past.

Some Band-Aids Required

Some Band-Aids Required

Noel Laflin

10-27-15

El Nino is coming – and I am preparing.  Just ask Big Bird.

The once colossal, highly prickly, and dangerously leaning crown of thorns cactus  that threatened to pull down a backyard side fence has been carefully tamed to just three feet high now and no longer posses a really nasty cleanup scenario should a heavy wind and water event actually take place.  And, I only bled for a little while during the pruning, chopping and removal.  Some Band-Aids and carpet cleaner were required afterward, however, as I rushed through the downstairs bedroom and into the bathroom in search of flushing cold water, rubbing alcohol, and clean gauze.

Our climbing rose bush jungle has been thinned out considerably.  Again, I only bled for a little while during the procedure, and avoided dripping blood anywhere indoors as I headed from the balcony, across the living room and into the upstairs bathroom to once again flush out the wounds.  A few Band-Aids later, and I was good as new.

The old acacia tree even got a very recent, early, heavy pruning.  My shorts and tee-shirt were bloodied only a tad when I reached into the pocket containing the Band-Aids. A garden hose served nicely when it came to flushing the blood away from both limb and clothing.

Two giant, towering pencil plants have been cut down to half their former height. No Band-Aids were required – just a quick, half-blind run to the kitchen sink so that I could flush out my right eye.  You don’t want to mess with the white sticky sap that oozes out of this plant as it can blind.  Note to self, next time wear protective eye gear.

Should the garage floor flood, as it is known to do even during moderate rain, only the car tires should get wet as all other items have now been relocated off of ground level and safely stashed out of harm’s way.  No Band-Aids were required for the marathon cleaning – just a bit of Advil.

Rain gutters are now free of debris.  Neither Band-Aids nor Advil were necessary afterward – not even an eye flushing.

So I guess I am getting better at this El Nino preparation thing.

 

But, I am stocking up on Band-Aids and Advil just in case.  

And if I am in need of a flush of an eye, finger, hand, arm, elbow, or any other bodily part for that matter, all I'll have to do is walk outside.

Golden Men with Hammers

Golden Men with Hammers

Noel Laflin

10-20-15

Friends pitched in together some twenty years ago and bought me a birthday gift that I’d had my eye on for quite some time. It’s one of those Small World Rhythm clocks that dings, and chimes, and does a few other tricks.  At the top of each hour, an upbeat ditty plays as four little golden men – all decked out in top hats and fancy old fashioned garb - start the process by rising on individual pedestals. With tiny hammers in hand, the boys then strike bells that light up, as they keep rhythm with a familiar classical tune.  The bells continue to light as the little men then sound out the hour with their tiny hammers.  When it’s all over, the pedestals descend back into place – as the little ditty plays again - and the golden gentlemen patiently wait to do it all over again at the top of the next hour, all the while keeping a firm grasp on those tiny hammers.

So, precisely at six each morning, if the illumination is bright enough to activate the clock’s light sensor, a Mozart serenade rings in the day.  An hour later, a thirty-second tidbit from Mr. Pachelbel’s Canon chimes in.  A ballet piece dances in at eight. Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,’ stirs the soul at nine, only to be followed by Haydn’s ‘Deutschlandied’ at ten.   The eleven o’clock chiming of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons tells me that the morning is drawing to a close.

Then the procession begins anew with Mozart kicking off the noon hour, Pachelbel announcing one o’clock, a ballet dance at two, etc.  This continues well nigh into the afternoon and throughout the evening - up until when all the lights upstairs are eventually extinguished, I go to bed, and the little men can finally catch a break from all of that rising and hammering of the bells.

I did some calculations just now.  It seems those guys have risen to the task of bringing in lovely tunes nearly one hundred seventeen-thousand times over the last two decades.

They have me beat, when it comes to rising each day for that same period of time, by a factor of about one hundred and fifty percent.  And I never go to bed with a hammer in hand, let alone rise with a classical tune in my head.

I feel like such a slacker at times like this.

I should never have done the math.

As it is, I think I will just sit here and wait for the next tune to play, then turn off the lights and let the guys get some rest.

'There You Are'

‘There You Are’

Noel Laflin

10-16-15

If we’d had our collective druthers, and just a bit of magic at our disposal, I think many of us would have stayed for the remainder of the summer - or maybe even forever.  As it was, however, we only had the reality of three short hours together before the day ended and we drove back down the hill, returning to our homes, families, and the present.

Most of us had not seen one another in decades.  But that is the purpose of a reunion after all – that bringing together of old friends, the swapping of memories, the telling of lies, and the opportunity to relive the past just a little bit.   And so it was for this gathering of former boys now turned middle aged and beyond – the once youthful bodies that belonged to kids from another century now moving a little slower and being a bit freer of hair.

But like that remarkable scene in the movie, Hook, where the youngest of the legendary Lost Boys finally recognizes his old pal, Pan, and then declares: 'There you are, Peter!' so most of us found friends of our youth merely hiding in grownup bodies now.

Jewel Tea Man

Jewel Tea Man

Noel Laflin

 Oct. 15, 2015

There sits atop an old vanity in my bedroom a beautiful Autumn Leaf water pitcher and matching bowl.  They were my mother’s, bought some fifty years ago through the Jewel Tea Company.  The stamp on the bottom of each piece confirms their authenticity.  You can find them and a dozen other Autumn Leaf cups, saucers, flour sifters, bowls, cookie jars, tea sets, etc. in antique stores and on EBay. There are a jillion of them out there, but the real ones were made exclusively for the Jewel Tea Company.   Knockoffs will not have the unique stamp on the bottom.   Mom had the real stuff of course and as a sentimental adult nowadays, I am happy to see them still around my house.

Now, when I was a kid I always looked forward to visits from our very own Jewel Tea man for entirely different reasons.  I could have cared less for pitchers and bowls when I was seven.

And although the guy who showed up every week or two at our home in his familiar brown company truck was a neighbor who lived just one street over, when he crossed our threshold with delivery basket in hand, I could have sworn it was Santa himself coming through our door.

I recently asked my sister if she remembered the name of this neighbor, as she usually has a good memory for this sort of thing.

She said she did not.  And although she did remember him coming to our house for years, she had always thought he was called the Joe Tea Man back then.

The Jewel Tea Company catalogue listed everything from those Autumn Leaf pieces to fresh ground coffee, school supplies, clothing, small appliances, cleansers, and gift cards - none of which was of any interest to me when I was a child of the 1950’s.

No, what always caught my eye were the pictures and descriptions of the toys, chips, and candy they had to offer.  And as my mother did not drive, I believe she was somewhat dependant on the Jewel Tea man to report to Santa directly when it came to my Christmas and birthday wish list.

It’s just a shame that old catalogue didn’t list puppies.

Resume Building

Resume Building

Noel Laflin

10-12-15

I wasn’t sure that I was amounting to much in life until the day I overheard my father talking with our old neighbor, Ralph.  I was twenty years old at the time, half-way through an undeclared major at college, riding a bike to campus when there was no money to fill the gas tank, living at home as I was too broke to live anywhere else, and trying to repay that courtesy by helping my father with the constant gardening upkeep.  I had been assisting him in that outdoor endeavor ever since I was old enough to push a mower, handle a pair of pruning shears, and master a short-handled hoe.  In fact, I had been a manual laborer by choice since earliest childhood. Gardening skills were about all I could boast of back then.

 

As far as a life's resume at this point, had I even known what the word meant, I had little to show.

 

Come summertime, however, my dad was pretty much on his own, as I would head up to the mountains and play camp counselor for the next two months.  It had been going on this way for six years.  But my folks approved of the arrangement, and I was grateful for the break from both school and chores.

And so my life as a staff member at Scout camp was also somewhat predictable until the summer of my nineteenth year when I took it into head to build a log cabin.  The timing coincided with a new-found love of photography which worked out well for documenting those fledgling pioneering skills. My folks took interest at the progress of the cabin’s construction when they came to visit periodically that summer, as did the parents of a hundred other teenagers who partook in the chopping, hauling, sawing, lifting, chinking, and hammering into place homemade wooden shutters and shakes. If my folks couldn’t physically see the off-season weekend progress being made, they were constantly bombarded with the black and white photos that I produced from a tiny closet-turned-darkroom back home.

My blossoming resume would have to now include knowledge of proper axe handling, two man sawing skills, and Photography 101; still not much to brag of, however.

But, by late June of the following year, the cabin was nearly complete. It had four walls, a cobblestone floor, a hefty ridgepole now in place, and a roof over head.   I’d be moving into the structure with three of the original builders by week’s end so that we could fashion a door, bunk beds, loft, and call the place home. Camp would then be open for business once again and we four would have the coolest house on the mountain.

 

Thus, I was on the eve of my last hurrah helping my father with the mowing and trimming when I happened to overhear the back fence conversation one afternoon.

“Did I tell you about my grandson?” Ralph was saying as I was about to turn the corner of our old shed, hauling a metal trashcan filled with lawn trimmings.  I could tell by the tone of voice that he was in a boastful mood.  I knew the old man well, as I had also been his gardener for a number of years.  I had lifted our old push mower over that same rickety barrier the two men now leaned upon every Saturday for nearly a decade.

“No, I don’t think so,” my dad replied, resting against the fence that had separated our homes for the last twenty years.

“He just graduated from West Point! Can you imagine? Here, I brought a photo.”

“And my great-nephew just entered law school,” Ralph bore on, passing along another couple of snapshots.  “His sister just completed her doctorate in psychology.  Those kids are doing me proud,” he concluded boastfully.

“Say,” asked Ralph, after a lengthy pause, “what’s your boy been up to lately? I miss my young gardener. How’s he coming along in life?”

“He’s built himself a real log cabin,” my dad said with a smile.  “Hold on while I fetch some photos.”

I retired back to the other side of the shed unseen.

My newly hewed resume now included a father’s humble bragging rights and a son’s grateful heart.

Ineptitude Aptitude

Ineptitude Aptitude

Noel Laflin

10-11-15

I took an aptitude test nearly forty years ago. It came with the three week training course that I had to attend while working for the Boy Scouts of America. About the only thing I clearly remember of those three weeks were the test, the bitter cold of a New Jersey winter, and missing the warmth of California.

There were hundreds of questions and an equal number of little oval bubble answers by which to darken with our No. 2 pencils. It took a couple of hours to complete the exam. I had a headache by end of it all. 

When the results were in, I was informed by the computer-generated summary that I was most qualified to be a priest - Catholic, specifically.  The two runner up professions for me, as determined by my answers to the myriad of questions were, minister - Protestant, specifically, and youth counselor.

I was least qualified to be an accountant, according to the test. 

Whatever other potential professions were layered between celibacy and number-crunching has been lost to memory unfortunately. I wish I could remember where 'sales rep' for medical labs placed as that is what I eventually did for thirty-five years once I finished a three-year stint as a pitchman, recruiter, and fundraiser for the BSA.

But, back to those test results when I was a mere kid of twenty-four and had my whole life before me...

Despite the fact that I have never been, nor ever will be a Catholic, I did dress as a priest for Halloween on more than one occasion. 

Years later, I also became a minister (non-denominational) with an online outfit so that I could legally perform a wedding service for an old Scouting pal. Since then, I have actually officiated over four additional weddings and most recently a funeral. 

And I did work as a camp counselor for ten years prior to taking that exam.

So, all in all, I suppose that aptitude test of my youth did prove somewhat accurate after all. 

Now, if I could only figure out where the major math error occurred in my checking account a number of years back, I might even disprove the suggestion that I am least suited to being an accountant.

I may have to pray over that one.

Strong as an Oak

Strong as an Oak

Noel Laflin

10-9-15

Mature Coast Live Oak, Orange, Ca.

It was only in the last month that I learned that our country has a national tree – the oak.

But, I bet many of you already knew this.

I feel a little dumb for not knowing it sooner, as it was so designated by congress nearly eleven years ago after The National Arbor Day Foundation held a popular vote back in 2001.  The steadfast oak won hands down with over a hundred thousand votes, while the stately redwood placed second - some twenty thousand notches behind. Altogether, nearly half a million ballots were cast.

“People were invited to vote for one of 21 candidate trees,” the Arbor Day press release read back in April 2001, “based on broad tree categories (general) that included the state trees of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, or to write in any other tree selection.  The redwood, maple, pine, and dogwood rounded out the top five choices.”

It was the first time in our nation’s history where a popular vote of the people decided the outcome of a national symbol.

Finally … a vote of importance.

And I missed it.

But I probably would have voted for the redwood anyway.

Young Coast Live Oak, Orange, Ca.

Nuts

Nuts

Noel Laflin

10-7-15

I have recently learned not to stand directly beneath any squirrel once he finds a new hiding place for his winter supply of nuts.

  

Let me tell you why.

Tarzan-like, the red, bushy-tailed guy that I found so amusing yesterday leapt from oak branch to oak branch, tree to tree, top of block wall to the rounded metal highway of a chain link fence - all the while clutching a golden acorn between his teeth.  It was about a fifty foot run and I was shooting photos as I followed.

He soon reached his ancient pepper tree home, jumped aboard and scampered to a broad bough some ten feet up.   Pawing about, the furry fellow searched for the secret safe of a hole, dialed in the correct combination apparently, and quickly stashed away the golden treasure – hoarding against the winter to come.

 

Then he liberally sprayed the branch to mark his territory before leaping higher up, eventually stretching out, yawning, and falling asleep.

Glad I was wearing a baseball cap, and always close the eye that is not sighting through the camera.

Magic Trick

Magic Trick

Noel Laflin

10-4-15

Sometime around three in the morning some fifty-odd years ago, a kid rolled out of a top bunk, fell, and hit the cement floor below with a thud – a thud loud enough to wake the rest of us.

Flashlights lit the way to a switch that, once turned on by someone’s quick thinking father, soon illuminated the small Idyllwild mountain bunk room and the dazed boy sitting upon that cold, hard floor, moaning as he held a hand to his head. 

“Jeez, would you look at the size of that goose egg,” one of the Cub Scout fathers remarked, after a hasty examination of the lad settled the issue that no bones were broken.  The other half dozen ten-year-olds and their dads were also transfixed by the scene. The only damage from the fall appeared to be a nasty bump on the forehead that was quickly growing to the size of a plump purple plum.

My dad located his trousers and fumbled about in a pocket or two until he found the small oval plastic squeeze purse that he habitually carried.  He used to hold it out and shake it sometimes, challenging my sister and I to guess how much change he had.  It we were within three cents of the contents, the treasure was ours to split.

 

“Good,” I heard him mumble as he dumped an assortment of change into the palm of his hand, scanned its contents, and latched onto one large silver coin.

“I’ve got Mr. Franklin’s fix,” he told the bruised boy now sitting up on the lower bunk.  “I want you to hold this coin against that big old bump and see what happens,” he said, handing over the half dollar.  “That silver’s got some magic in it – you’ll see,” he said.

The boy took the coin and pressed it to the bump.  The rest of us, including myself, wondered just what the hell my father was doing.  But, as no one else had another remedy close at hand, we kept pretty quiet.

After a few minutes, the boy’s father removed the coin to have a look at the damage.

 

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, gently touching the flat purple spot on his son’s forehead.

“The bump’s gone,” he marveled, pulling in the rest of us to take a gander for ourselves.

“Jesus,” kids and adults muttered alike as we approached and looked more closely, some of us reaching out to touch the tender skin just to be sure that it was no trick of the poor lighting overhead.

“I’ll want that back, when you’re feeling better,” my father said, as he stretched back down on his own bunk.  “Magical coins are hard to come by nowadays,” he concluded, rolling over as he zipped up his sleeping bag.

“Actually, it’s just an old fashioned remedy,” he added, to no one in particular.  “Silver has some amazing healing qualities that folks figured out long ago.  And since that half dollar is ninety percent silver it did the trick.”

Pretty soon we all followed his lead and someone turned off the lights.  The boy with the purple bruise to the head had swapped beds with his father.  The last I saw of him he was now on the lower bunk, staring at the alternating image of Franklin and the Liberty Bell as he slowly twirled the half dollar between his fingers.  He looked like a novice magician honing in on his skills at deception. Occasionally the other hand would gently probe the top of his forehead, gently searching for a goose egg-sized bump that was no longer there.

When my father died some forty-five years later, I found a small wooden box in his sock drawer.  Amongst the few contents were three old silver dollars and an oval plastic squeeze coin purse.  There were some old Lincoln pennies, Mercury head dimes, and one smooth Franklin half dollar jingling about in there.  

I held the purse to my ear, closed my eyes, wished for magic, and shook away.