Adventures in Pukenag

Most of us probably have a treasured memory of a period from our childhood that was akin to magical. It could be characterized by any number of different elements that make it seem so special in retrospect, and it could have been a decade or just an afternoon, but it is a source of never ending joy to revisit that time in the theater of our minds.

During the summer before the Over and Out episode, my best friend and I had really begun developing our sense of collaborative adventure. Neither of us was worth a wad of spit as far as bravery or creativity on our own was concerned, but when we were together we formed a brand new person with creative inertia that would have scared the willies out of my parents had they known. One of our idols was Huckleberry Finn, the carefree, I-can-do-it-myself, disdainer of childish things with an appetite for exploration and avoiding responsibility. We dreamed of a thousand different ways we could emulate this Mark Twain character whose lifestyle seemed completely within our grasp if we could just break it into pieces and work out one part at a time.

It so happened that the year we were most enthralled with our boy Huck, Kathy was living in another town, no more than a few hundred yards from a river. If there is one primary ingredient necessary to becoming a Huck Finn, it is having access to a river. And to make that river even more appealing to us, there was a lovely neglected acre of woods between the river and the quiet neighorhood road that ran past her house. Because Kathy lived in a different town than I did that year, our summer overnights were more along the line of overweeks. My mother was glad to unload a kid from the herd that constantly stampeded through her house, and Kathy's mother was happy to import a friend for her only daughter who languished in a house dominated by boys. So it was a win-win-win-win situation. Both mothers and both daughters were happy with the arrangement, and tended to exploit those opportunities for all they were worth. And to these 9-year-olds, they were worth a lot!

Nearly every waking minute of those overweek days were spent in our special woods, which we delicately dubbed Pukenag. We would swing on vines for hours, perfecting our signature moves that best exhibited our skills at leaping and clinging with style. We bounced with screeching delight on strong flexible branches that would nearly rocket us upward into the forest canopy if we weren't careful. We rearranged the generous supply of fallen limbs endlessly, creating houses, forts, playgrounds, tunnels, monuments, and our favorite: bathrooms. How risque it felt to go to the bathroom outside in plain sight of my friend's house, yet adequately concealed from any eyes that might turn in our direction. This may have been common fare for boys, but girls simply did not do their business in the out of doors if they cared not to be viewed as pigs! And all the while we were swinging, and bouncing, and building, and peeing, that river was right there beckoning to us.

The lure was too strong to resist. From the day we first set foot in Pukenag, it was inevitable that the river would eventually draw us in. From our high perches in our favorite climbing trees we talked out our plan. There was plenty of available lumber right below our feet. All we had to do was figure out how to lash it together so we would have a raft that was river worthy, and then we would float on down to wherever Old Man River took us. Kathy knew that her father owned a hammer, and she was pretty sure she knew where he kept it. The nails she was less certain about, but if there were any they should be with the hammer. And if there weren't any nails we could always tie the tree limbs together with string and/or rubber bands. One way or another we were going to build our Huck Finn raft and push off to the adventure of a lifetime.

It was no easy feat getting those supplies from the house to Pukenag without getting caught. While Kathy's mother was not one to supervise her children's activities too closely, she couldn't be blamed for looking up from her book whenever someone passed through the house, and there was only one way through from the door to the back storage room and back out again. So we had to hide supplies in our pockets or however we could hide them in multiple trips with lame excuses for why we kept returning to the house. We weren't very good liars, so I fully expected that our stories would raise suspicion and lead to a parental investigation. However, the mother on duty was apparently too engrossed in her book at that time to be bothered with an inconvenient inquiry into our childish shenanigans, if indeed she had any suspicions at all. So we secreted a hammer, a few nails, and lots of twine and clothesline to our raft building headquarters. In addition to the handful of new nails that we swiped from her father's tool kit, we also found a jackpot of rusty nails in a pile of abandoned lumber which we were more than happy to pound out and put to good use. They may have been a little bent, but with our hammering skills they would have been bent by the time we were finished with them anyway, so what did it matter.

The next two days were filled with single-minded perseverance. We labored in the summer heat as if our lives depended on the success of this construction project, not realizing that in fact our lives might very well be in jeopardy due to the sheer foolishness of our plan. All we could think about and talk about and dream about was the ride of our lives down the river on our raft, and how proud we would feel when local residents would wave to us from the banks and wish us good luck. Every potentially useful dead limb and discarded 2x4 was scavenged, evaluated, and either incorporated into our vessel or tossed aside where it would not crowd our work space. The only breaks we took from our labor were to pay visits to our fabulous stick-wall outdoor bathroom, or to run to the house and straight back to Pukenag with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Kathy's mother could see how deliriously happy we were each time we appeared, and if we were happy she was happy. Happy, happy, happy, everybody was happy!

Our excessive excitement, however, drew the unwanted attention of one of the older brothers. In typical snoopy big brother fashion, he was determined to find out what we were so blasted happy about, and no amount of distractions, whining or threats would shake him off. Ultimately we decided that we would never be able to see our dream come to fruition unless we welcomed The Brother into our plan because he would expose us out of spite if we continued to deny him what he wanted. So we made him promise with a blood oath that he would not tell anyone, and within minutes he was close behind us as we made a mad dash through the cover of brush and fallen limbs to the secret place in the middle of Pukenag where our proud vessel waited for its maiden voyage.

With a mixture of excitement, doubt, envy and condescension The Brother peppered us with annoying questions, but we weren't in the mood to be bothered with irritating queries like, "Can you swim?" We had worked hard and were ready to push off on our clandestine journey with our hobo sticks tied and packed with enough rations to last at least half a day.

Being of reasonably good will in spite of his doubts and his attitude of superiority, The Brother agreed to help us transport our gorgeous raft to the water's edge. Once we made it through the obstacle course that is the floor of an overgrown and undertended miniature scrub forest, we eased ourselves down the bank until one end of our floating cruiser was actually in the water. We watched it bob and sway for a few moments while we drew out our exhilaration with fast shallow breaths in preparation for the moment of launching and boarding. Our strategy was that the raft would be eased all the way into the water, after which we would climb aboard and then The Brother would hand us our hobo sticks with our survival rations safely wrapped in an old handkerchief. The first part worked out exactly as planned. The raft was eased completely into the water. The second part was made a little trickier than anticipated by the fact that the current of the river tried to pull the raft out of our grip before we had a chance to climb on. But with three of us holding tight to some handy sticks poking out one side, we managed to steady it enough that I was able to maneuver my scrawny body onto the surface and lie there on my belly until I calmed my pounding heart and was ready to sit up and make room for my partner in this grand adventure. The part where my partner was supposed to join me never happened, because the moment I put my knee down to shift into a sitting position our glorious raft instantly disassembled itself and I found myself surrounded on every side by murky water. Only then did I have the conscious thought, "I can't swim!" The part where I was dragged out by the condescending Brother who had sense enough to keep his feet on land and grab my leg before I was swept away remains unclear in my memory. Maybe because my lungs were filling with water at that moment, or my mind was filling with fear, or my best friend was screaming, or The Brother was calling me a name I'd rather not recall. Whatever the reason, my recollection of being rescued from sure death is vague. The only thing I'm absolutely sure of is that I was rescued, with the added realization that if The Brother had not obnoxiously wormed his way into our secret plan I probably wouldn't be here writing this blog. I guess that's why parents pray for their kids, which reminds me that I have some grandkids that need praying for right now.

Over and Out

It is trendy these days among the baby boomer crowd, of which I am a certified member, to blow the dust off their old Super 8 home movie reels and pack them off to some high tech digital world where the memories can be rescued from oblivion and mysteriously transformed into dvd's which then have the potential to make their grandchildren howl with laughter. This is all good family fun which I wholeheartedly endorse, although I myself haven't yet braved the depths of the storage closets where such dusty reels of youthful memories may be found.

In spite of the clarity that a dvd will suddenly bring to the hazy memories of childhood birthday parties, babies' first steps, and Junior sharing his ice cream cone with Fido, some of the best memories are those that were never captured on film of any kind. Those are the spontaneous moments that burst from our creative youthful psyches, demanding their release in some form, often referred to as foolishness by the parents. I can't speak for what others do with such memories, but I find myself playing them over and over with great delight in the halting, cloudy, imperfect manner in which they were originally stored in the gray matter file labeled "Life was Good". Since it is rare that anyone besides myself will ever view these files, it is of little consequence that some scenes are blurred and most of the sound track has gone missing. What matters is the warm feelings that are evoked when the worn tape is run again, taking me back to a time when the biggest concern of a summer day was whether to spend my dime on a popsicle or save it until next week when I would have two dimes and could purchase an ice cream sandwich.

On one such day, of which there seemed to be no end until suddenly they were over, my best friend had invited me for a sleepover. My mother seemed to be as excited as I was whenever I got such an invitation. Perhaps it was her shared joy in my happiness, but more likely it was her secret relief to have one less child under her roof fighting over whether to watch Bugs Bunny or Lassie on the one television set shared by eight of us. Grabbing a paper grocery bag and quickly stuffing it with a few things a ten year old tomboy would consider necessities, I raced out the door, jumped on my bike, and after five minutes of pedaling through the village I was there. Really there. Overnights with Kathy were the open doors of my childhood when anything was possible, and I threw myself into these opportunities with the careless abandon that adults rarely experience and barely remember.

In typical fashion, we sat among the clutter on the floor of her fabulously untidy bedroom, petting her cats, rearranging the rocks and twigs in our woolly bear aquarium, smoothing and braiding the colorful hair of her troll dolls, and squishing the occasional flea we picked off our legs. And, predictably, a plan began to hatch for an adventure.

Being normal kids, our adventures generally broke some rules of social conduct or personal safety, but we were not being rebellious, just allowing our childish dreams and fantasies to be our guide to fun. On this particular evening we thought it would be great fun to play outside after dark. The obvious obstacle, however, was the parents. How to get around that obstacle? That was the challenge to be solved, and solve it we did. Kathy's family lived in an old clapboard house with three bedrooms downstairs and one very large bedroom and huge closet upstairs. Since she was the only girl in the family, she was given the coveted upstairs bedroom as her personal kingdom, and rarely did anyone venture up the stairs other than Kathy and her best friend. If we could just figure out a way to reach the ground safely from the porch roof we would be golden.

In the next several adrenaline driven minutes we stripped the bunk beds of sheets and proceeded to tie the ends together with big clumsy knots. Two sheets from each bed produced enough length to reach from the window, across the roof, and over the edge to within five feet of the ground. Perfect! We were both good climbers on the ropes in our school gym class, so we were confident we could climb down the sheet rope and easily drop to the ground. I volunteered to go first while Kathy stood on the roof watching the window to make sure it didn't slide up and let loose of the knot that would be holding my life in its grip. In mere moments I was on the ground whooping a silent victory cheer while gradually becoming aware of a deep insecurity rising up within me as I gaped into that vast sea of darkness. My urgent whispered pleadings for my friend to hurry down and join me were finally rewarded, and together we jumped around and celebrated our success, confident in the security that each provided the other.

So there we were. Two little girls in their pajamas standing in a once familiar backyard in the dark, not sure what to do next. These were the days when children in small towns were allowed to roam freely during the day. Parents didn't concern themselves about a child's absence for hours, because the whole village was a playground and when they got hungry they would come home. We were familiar with every street in the village, and our curiosity to experience our well-known world in its darker version propelled us out of the backyard and down the block. Wow. Everything looked so different. It was like looking at negatives of photographs, where the normally dark colors were light and the light colors were dark. Windows that were dark during the day were lit up, many uncovered, revealing bits of private lives that we knew we were not entitled to gaze upon so boldly. But with a defiance we believed the darkness would hide, we gazed and gazed. There was a fascination with seeing a man move across a room toward a television, or a woman standing with her face to the window in what appeared to be a posture of dishwashing, knowing that these individuals had no idea they were being watched. It was the naughtiest thing we had ever done in our lives and we crept through the town looking for uncovered windows to gawk into until we began to get cold. We had had our fun and we were ready to call it a night.

Not until we stepped back into Kathy's backyard and saw that white sheet rope dangling five feet above the ground did it occur to us that we couldn't reach it to climb back up. As panic threatened to devour us we held each other, shivering, and devised a new plan. We would simply have to wait it out. There was no habit of door locking in those days. What was the need for locking a door when crime in our village was almost unheard of? So we figured if we could just be patient we would be able to enter the house through the back door once her parents had gone to bed and they would never be the wise. For the next hour we did what our exhausted bodies could do in an effort to keep ourselves warm in the damp, rapidly cooling night air. We were rewarded with the amusing scene of her teenage brother staring at his reflection in the kitchen window, apparently admiring what he saw. But for the most part the wait was long, cold, boring, and a little frightening as silence magnified the night sounds of unidentified creatures.

The house had been completely dark for some time and we decided this was our chance to sneak back in, creep up the stairs, pull the knotted sheets back in through the window, and snooze the rest of the night away in the guilty pleasure of a successful adventure. The factor we hadn't taken into consideration was that an old house has more creaky spots than our grandmothers' arthritic knees. From the first step inside the door our presence was announced loudly by the tattletale floor boards. Before we had made it halfway across the kitchen our deception was exposed by a flood of light when her father, unashamed in his underwear, flipped the wall switch. Busted.