“Did I Ever Tell You About The Time… (Memories & Nightmares)” by Richard F. Yates

Did I ever tell you about that time I kicked this girl (who I had a crush on) in the face? (True story.) I was trying to show off my kung-fu skills (which I got from watching kung-fu movies on Showtime,) but instead of just kicking real high in the air, I made contact with the girl’s nose, and she ran off, crying, with her hands covering her face, and quickly disappeared into her house… (I don’t know why she never liked me…) I think I was about 9 years old at the time.

Funny thing about when I was a kid (back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s), our parents weren’t exactly as WORRIED about us as I tended to be about my own kids. I remember being 9 or 10, and my mom would hand me a couple of bucks, then send me and my two brothers (Dave, probably 7 or 8, and Andy, who as maybe 5 or 6) off to the store---which was about five blocks from our house. (I think she just wanted the house to be quiet for a while. We were a bit---rambunctious...)

The store I loved the most was called Cricket’s Corner, on the corner of 20th and Beech Street in Longview, Washington. It was a candy store / soda shop, with basically everything a kid could possibly want: a huge display of 5 and 10 cent candies, ice cream, and video games (like Frogger and Donkey Kong. Next door was 20th Avenue Grocery, where I would sometimes go to play Tempest, another one of my favorite quarter eaters from "back in the day.") My brothers and I would meander towards Cricket's Corner, play a couple of games, then load up on candy cigarettes, wax lips, wax soda bottles (which were these weird little molded wax blobs that looked a little bit like tiny soda bottles with a few drops of some sugary liquid inside---but you could chew on the wax for a while, like gum, if you wanted), or small boxes of Lemon Heads, or a pack of “bones” in a carton shaped like a little plastic coffin, or Chick-o-Sticks, or Atomic Fireballs, or Charleston Chews…. There were a lot of choices back then… And for something like a dollar or two each, we’d be entertained for a while and walk out of the store with a little bag of goodies, or maybe an ice-cream or something, and then start our long wander back to the house, sometimes taking hours to get home.

We often walked down alleys, throwing rocks at people’s windows or stealing stray pieces of wood that we’d use to build bike ramps. (Jumping our bikes over ramps was the height of joy back then, and the possibility of crashing upon landing and bloodying your elbows or hands was an acceptable risk compared to the thrill of flying (several inches) through the air---and NOBODY that I knew even owned a helmet… I knocked myself unconscious crashing my bike at least once---that I remember... I seem to have trouble remembering things---for some reason...) Speaking of throwing rocks, one of our favorite games was “rock fighting,” in which everyone would grab a metal garbage can lid to use as a shield, then we’d throw rocks at each other! The person who got hit in the face and went home crying first was the loser.

Writing it out, it almost seems like I had a brutal childhood---but I remember it rather fondly! Playing Atari and wearing terrible corduroy pants (in colors like baby-poo brown or baby-poo green) and listening to things like Paul McCartney and Wings and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts and J. Geils Band on the radio… (Don’t get me started on music…he said to himself…so he wouldn’t get started on music…) Yeah, they were some interesting times…but there was also some trauma!

The family had a dog back then, a poodle, and one lovely, sunny day, I watched it bolt right into the road and get run over by a passing station wagon. (The old guy that was driving felt terrible, and I don’t think I ever blamed him…) I was pretty upset, and some friend of the family (I can’t remember if it my aunt’s boyfriend or my mom’s) buried the dog under an apple-tree right outside my bedroom window---and my mom says, “Now, he can watch over you while you sleep…” It was meant to be comforting. (I think my mom believed that people, and animals I guess, died and then became “angels” or something like that… I took the thought of a dead dog watching me while I slept in a different direction, though…) It wasn’t too long before I started having a recurring nightmare about a whimpering, skeletal puppy scratching at my window at night wanting me to let it into the room… I slept with the lights on (or a t.v. or something) well into my teenage years.

It’s funny, though, how we get to choose which memories we focus on, and I prefer to remember things like fun trips to the beach (Long Beach, Washington, or Seaside, Oregon, usually) and driving go-karts on my 14th birthday at this place called Malibu Grand Prix (in Portland, Oregon) and playing with the glow-in-the-dark Tyco racetrack that my brothers and I got for Christmas one year and going swimming with my dad when he was in the country (he spent several years working as an electrician in Saudi Arabia after he and mom divorced) and reading Mad Magazine and Ghost Rider comics and watching Ray Harryhausen movies and bad, old science fiction films on VHS from the local Video Hut and shoveling quarters into video games at various arcades and making up songs and skits that I recorded on a portable tape deck that one of my brothers got (and I permanently borrowed) and skateboarding at the skate-park that was right across the street from one of the houses we lived in… (We moved A LOT when I was young…) But yeah---there were tons of fun times while I was growing up. Not EVERYTHING was wonderful (we had our share of tragedy---divorces and deaths and feeling uprooted and never feeling truly "at home" anywhere because of the constant moving), but I try to focus on the good stuff! It’s what keeps me (at least a little bit) sane!

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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