Death and Childhood
The summer I was seven in Dover Massachusetts my father
was worried that I might accidentally kill some of the fireflies that I would round up and keep in a jar on my bedside table
at night, so he cooked up two excellent substitutes.
One was a heavy six sided light green glass pyramid. The other was a strong
cardboard picture of a sly looking human skull. In the cellar Pa had a gallon of phosphorescent paint that glowed light blue
like the full moon on a cold night.
With meticulous detail he put a thick coat of the magickal paint on the skull
and on the bottom of the pyramid. It took forever to dry and I was delighted beyond words with the result. I continued to
enjoy fireflies, but at a distance.
I had begun to acquire a reputation in the neighborhood as naturalist. That
Autumn a neighbor, Harris Pratt, gave me a dead bat. My father fixed the wings in spread position with copper wire and pickled
the bat with alcohol in a long olive bottle for my private museum.
The next summer Harris' daughter Nancy brought me a dead bird. I asked, but
Pa said it would not pickle well and that I should bury it. Debbie Chandler, the little seven year old girl next door, and
I held a funeral for the bird and buried it in a Maxwell House coffee can.
Kids wonder about death and so a week later, after much soul searching, Debbie
and I dug up the bird to see what was changes, if any, had occurred.
There were white worms and red worms each about three sixteenths of an inch
in length. Debbie said she had heard that in some special situations connected with the army there were also blue
worms.
Two years later I heard a standard childhood poem. I'm sure
that versions vary.
When You Are Dead
Don't you laugh when the hearse goes by,
for you may be the
next to die.
First they send you in
while your relatives sit and grin.
They wrap you up in a big white sheet
and
send you down about six feet deep.
All goes well for about a week,
but then the coffin starts to leek.
The worms
crawl in.
The worms crawl out.
The worms play penacle on your snout.
And one little guy who ain't so shy
crawls
in your ear and out your eye.
Your blood then turns a sickening green
and oozes out like thick whipped cream.
You
wrap it up in a piece of bread
and that's what you eat when you are dead.
April 19, 2006
9:53 AM
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Death
Very Close on Twenty Occasions
Nothing supernatural here. These are all stories that
happen once in a great while. I decided to write them up breiefly because I feel lucky to have survived so many
situations where, if anything had gone just a little bit differently, I wouldn't be here to write anything at all.
Big Fish in Florida
Three stories all set around the time when I was eleven
years old in Palm Beach Shores Florida.
One day I was in the ocean up to my neck in the water. I looked up at my
father standing on the beach which rose twenty feet above the water before leveling off to the pine groves.
Pa beckoned casually for me to come out of the water. I asked what he wanted.
He said he had to talk to me so I came walking out. At the point where I was ankle deep my father pointed behind me. I turned
to see seven shark fins pass exactly where I had been just twenty seconds earlier.
Another time I was snorkeling around a bunch of coral rocks. This disturbed
a deadly poisonous Morey Eel who lunged at me viciously. I dodged him and retreated. The eel glared at me and went back into
the rocks watching me intently with a very sour expression.
Sometime later I was snorkeling in the part of the Inter-coastal Waterway
called Lake Worth and suddenly came face to face with a giant female barracuda guarding her nest. She eyeballed me like I
was on the dinner menu opening and closing her mouth of huge fangs.
Was she trying to scare me with this vulgar display of cutlery? If
so, it worked. I knew instinctively that I would be telling her I was prey if I retreated too obviously so I slowly swam a
bit to the right, then turned and swam gently to the steps leading to the top of the seawall.
March 30, 2006
Afternoon
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The Budliner
Long ago there was a diesel commuter train called the Budliner. It was ribbed stainless
steel and ran from the far western suburbs right through Dover Massachusetts directly into downtown Boston. The autumn I turned
thirteen there was a bad train accident.
Thirteen deer were crossing through a narrow place between ledges when the Budliner came swiftly out of
the night and killed them all in one swoop. The townspeople sadly dug two large holes and buried all of
the deer together. Clergy read words over the two unmarked graves. Later it was said that you could still hear the screams
sometimes at night.
The following summer I was walking the railroad tracks one sunny day with a good friend named Nelson Emmons.
The land in Dover is very hilly. We came to a large gulf spanned by a ridge of crushed stone piled eighty
feet high. It was very steep on the sides and narrow at the top. We were walking peacefully along talking when I heard
a faint click on the tracks behind behind us.
I turned to see the Budliner about fifty feet behind us doing sixty miles an hour as it always does. I yelled
to Nelson to jump and we slid down the rocks looking up just as the train whizzed by. It couldn't have been any closer.
We all know that deer become immobile under headlights, but I believe that even if they didn't, that in
that place, at that time, they could never have escaped the silent and deadly Budliner.
Arril 3, 2006
10:34 AM
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Insane Driver in Massachusetts
One car I drove in college was a "poor man's Porsche". Two weeks after I
sold the Karmann Ghia roadster, I was driving my first rich man's Porsche, a Gray 356BS Coupe, through Wellesley Massachusetts
about 4:00 PM on the way back from classes at Suffolk University.
As I started into an intersection I looked up and saw some nutcase in a
hot Chevy running the red light. He came flying up over the steep hill to my right. He was air-born just like in the police
chase movies filmed in San Francisco.
It was too late to stop so I trounced on the accelerator. The car surged
forward and I saw the Chevy just miss me in the rear view mirror. The K shells of the atoms in our paint jobs exchanged electrons
it was so close. He was doing about sixty five. If it had been two weeks earlier and I had been in the Ghia .....
March 30, 2006
2:05 PM
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More Porsche Adventures
One Rainy Night
I was doing about 85 MPH on the Massachusetts Turnpike in the
356 coming back from a night class at Suffolk. There was a truck up ahead of me going about the same speed. Suddenly a crate
the size of a washing machine fell off the truck right in front of me. I swerved sharply to the right to avoid it and the
car fishtailed violently in absolute silence for three hundred feet on the slippery pavement. Finally I got the old girl under
control.
One Dry Night
One night I was driving a girl home from a party in the 356 doing
85 MPH into a tight uphill corner on a narrow country road. The car became air-born, but I didn't know it, so I kept turning
the steering wheel to the right. When we came down the care lurched violently to the right and fishtailed for about a hundred
feet. The tires sang a frightening Toccata and Fugue in D Major.
One Dry Day
Five years later I was driving home on Route 495 in my father's
red 911T Porsche Coupe. I decided to see what she would do.
As I hit 100 MPH, a guy pulled out into the right lane ahead.
I thought it would be fun to see the look on his face, but I went by so fast he was hundreds of feet behind by the time I
could look into the rear-view mirror.
As I hit 130 MPH the car suddenly began to lift and pull quickly
to the right. There was a problem with aerodynamics, so I slowed down promptly. The lift happened because the right front
fender was buckled by an accident Pa had when some Bozo pulled out of a side street without looking.
March 30, 2006
3:57 PM
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When the Trees Reach Out with Claws
Mt. Washington in New Hampshire has the lowest recorded temperature and highest recorded wind
speed on Earth. You can ski Tuckerman's Ravine eleven months of the year. The weather station at the top has a huge chain
anchored in stone running right over the roof. The temperature can drop sixty five degrees in fifteen minutes, The wind speed
can increase one hundred miles per hour within twenty minutes.
Not including all those who disappear every year, over a hundred people have been found
who died on Mt. Washington. There are stone cairns everywhere to mark where they fell. Two weeks before my adventure two chaps
were blown to their deaths right off the face of the mountain. The rangers advise you to carry so much survival equipment
that you would need three porters to carry it all.
The following story of grim adventure is not that strange in itself. What is strange was the
subjective feelings experienced in living it. I have simply reproduced my journal entry for that day with a little bracketed
commentary.
June 22, 1989
Executions number 7 and arrests 1600 in China.
11:30 AM. Ride Stage up Mt. Washington. Hot and hazy. 25 mile view. 51 degrees at the top. After
egg salad sandwich and macaroni c 1:30 PM hike down to Lake of the Clouds favoring my left knee all the way [As a skier
beating up my knees mountain climbing is not acceptable. One must prioritize].
Leave there c 3:30 not realizing that I am heading into one of the most frightening and desperate
adventures of my life. As I leave I can see my destination at a bewilderingly great distance.
The trail proceeds for quite a while in a normal fashion. At a certain point it begins to narrow,
but seeing recent footprints, I keep on over a ridge and down a very steep area. Trail keeps getting less like a trail. At
one point my foot pokes through into a cave up to my thigh. [Luckily this did not break my leg].
The pitch of the land takes me back toward the river. I come down a place it is impossible to
get back up and am confronted with having to pass between two parallel ledges each an a 45 degree angle with rushing water
below. I am very angry at the AMC at this point [for not warning me] and very frightened.
Inch my way along slippery surface. [Using hands above and feet below avoiding the wet moss.
If I fall the short distance here I will break both legs on the jagged boulders and starve to death, unless animals get me
first]. Slip at one point and just barely make it through. Coughing and exhausted, I don't even bother to photograph beautiful
cascades behind me - I don't want to remember this.
Climb up steep banking back into forest. No trail now. Back towards water. Come to an even worse
situation. Down to a place where I can't go either down or up. [Can't go up because in descending I slid down a steep stone
face catching my heels at intervals to stop me. Impossible to go back up. Can't go down because I will have to jump down fifteen
feet into a pool where I will probably pitch forward and hit my head on boulders, get knocked out, and drown in two feet of
water. Go up a way. Come down again. Still hopeless].
Yell for help. [Even at this point I think of the pictures I will take when the helicopter comes.
Soon realize it's not going to come, and because of waning energy I will die, if I don't do something quickly]. With all my
strength do the impossibe and climb back up the rock face to safety. [As I do this it seems like everything is reaching out
to snag me. Like in a German fairy tail when the trees have faces and conspire against lost children. I put away knife
and camera in pack].
Walk to place where I can cross river. [Beautiful cascade waterfall with pool where one would
normally get naked and have a dip. Time, exhaustion, and my emotions will not allow this]. Rest and head down trying to avoid
water. Land almost forces one towards the water. Krummholtz is now about six feet high and ultra dense. Slope is very steep.
I can't see my feet.
Each step has a new surprise - a three foot drop, a jagged rock, a dead tree spike, a crevasse
covered with primeval moss so it looks solid. This is worse than any Viet Nam movie, literally Hell on Earth and ranks with
seven or eight other things as one of the worst experiences of my life [as of the date recorded].
At one point, I fall down over a banking right in front of a dark cave. I fear bears at this
point. An encounter with bees would mean certain death. I am falling more than walking now because my strength is gone. Finally
I see a flat river bank. As I head down, I see path on right and know I will live. [Getting dark with moon rising].
After resting, move on, my knee troubling me a bit. Large lynx comes running across path about
60 feet ahead. [Can hear the thunder of his paws even before I see him. Manage not to have him not see me]. My imaginings
turn to mountain lions at this point and where I would hunt if I were a lion - near a river bank, of course. I decide that
I must put knife back on my hip. Finally make base lodge at 7 PM.
Home via Whitefield and Gilman.
June 23 Am lame all over from yesterday's adventure - especially in arms. Can hardly walk
down stairs.
Had to lay in bed for three days. Five near brushes with death in one day gave me my
share of wilderness adventure for awhile on this one. I didn't climb again until November 13, 1992 when I ascended Cannon
Mountain to Lost Lake.
March 12, 2006
11:18 AM
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More Mountain Perils
