A Remarkable Lack of Stimuli

The summer was coming to an end. A cicada screeching in a tree woke me to a fine August day. The bug didn't have a snooze button, I checked. It would be years until I saw one of those things up close. If there is beauty in nature it certainly isn't in that critter. But it's off to do precisely nothing today and to do it well.

Rummaging through the cabinets for the Sugar Frosted Flakes (back when the word Sugar was proudly displayed) the sound of mom's disembodied voice wails, “It's garbage day...don't forget to take out the ashes!”. The ashes. Coal furnace leavings. Getting coal was a lot more fun. Something pleasantly hypnotic about those rattling rock chunks making their way into the bowels of the house. We'll have to wait for winter to get 2 ton of buckwheat, or was it pea, or maybe rice. I don't remember. The voice from the ether calls out again. This time something about going to the store for a can of stewed tomatoes.( I somehow picture 2 tomatoes passing a bottle of vodka between them. “I hear your hic sister is a vegetable. hic ”)

Off to the store. Rumbling up the street a cement truck from Santarelli's and right on time there goes Butch, Russell's dog. Butch was tasked to keep the neighborhood safe from those 30 ton behemoths. He was successful too. At no time did one of those things ever make it past the curb. Once in a while he would even get a nip into the tire and be thrown back. Butch would just shake it off. He had to. The beast would be back in a couple of hours. Time enough to plot his next maneuver.

There was a stink... and it wasn't Butch. No, this was road oil. The brilliant idea of some bone head. A thick black PCB's-dioxin-furan laced mutagenic hydrocarbon which was sprayed from goo lined tankers to stop road dust. To us the danger wasn't chromosome damage, it was the shock wave rattling windows for miles caused by mom's voice if you were to track it in the house. Road oil may explain a lot, now that I think about it. Today I will avoid it, though tomorrow may be a different story. Off in the distance I could hear Queeny barking like the beagle she was. It wasn't really a bark as much as it was the pulmonary distress of lung tissue being forced out the throat. I guess she didn't care much for the scent of waste crankcase sludge.


The store was Tony and Vera's. Later just Vera's, later still Gert's. Only occupying the floor space of 2 sheets of plywood, it carried just about everything you would need to live out the rest of your life after nuclear Armageddon. That clickety-clack sound was the six-card machine in the back room. Somebody was pounding at it mumbling something about a dead ball, like that 1 inch ball bearing ought to possess an intelligent life force. There was a Coke machine. This one had the famous 7 ounce bottles. The kind where the glass door was opened and the bottled was pulled from the thick steel fingers protecting it's precious cargo. If you weren't quick enough, the bottle would stay, and your fingers would drag across the jagged cap, leaving behind flesh. Cans were still a few years away.


Perusing the candy case, we find Wax Lips, those strips of paper with the colored candy dots on them, wax tubes filled with some kind of liquid, various gums including Fruit Stripe and Clark's Teaberry and Black Jack for the adventurous, wafer flying saucers filled with a few pellets of something, and even candy or gum cigarettes which had a powder in them to make a puff of smoke. The manipulations of sugar are endless. Better get the stewed tomatoes.

Outside a few kids hanging around. Some are riding wheelies, another rides up on a mini bike. An argument ensues regarding glass packs versus cherry bombs and other muffler technology. One tells the other that he'll “bust his face” while the other threatens to put a “peace bond” on him. Silence befalls the combatants in reverence to the passing Corvette. A day like any other day, only more so.

Back at home, mom is hanging the wash. I turn on the TV. The sound swells up slowly. It will be another few minutes for the picture to follow. Then another few minutes of twisting the dials to get a so called clear picture. On screen the WDAU Time N' Temperature with a Tom Reilly voice over “W-D-A-U channel 22 Scranton – Wilkes Barre”. I'm watching the seconds roll to the top of the hour. “As the World Turns” comes on and the TV goes back off. We'll wait for “Dialing for Dollars” at 4, maybe it will have a good movie like the one with the giant ants invading the town.

--Part 2 to follow (maybe)