After not hearing from or talking to my two
cousins in Houston, I've recently gotten the e-mail address of the older of the
two, Jay, and started conversing in e-mail. It's brought back a lot of memories
from my childhood that have lied dormant in some dusty corner of my brain...
My folks and I moved to Laurel in June of 1975 which just about killed
me. I never was a kid who had a bunch of friends, and my grandparents, my aunt,
and my two cousins we're everything I knew outside of my parents. Suddenly I was
450 miles away in a little town at the tender age of eight and it wasn't fun.
Pop had to move since he got a much better job, but we all sacrificed a lot for
it, including my parents. Houston to Laurel was a big upheaval.
Every
summer, though, Aunt Carole (AC), Jay, and David would come to Laurel for a
week-long visit. Those weeks were, to rip off Dickens, the best of times and the
worst of times. The cliche phrase "two's company, three's a crowd" has never
been better-proven than during these visits. The shifting political structure of
our association changed on an hourly basis and would have made the current
Washington in-crowd hang their heads in shame at their sophomoric attempts at
emulating what we achieved in pre-adolescence.
At the same time, the
idea of having my two cousins visit was a thrill like no other. More like
brothers than cousins, I've never known life without them. Jay is one day older
than me and David is two years younger, but we all grew up together...at least
until my folks and I moved away in 1975. After that, seeing them was both a
reunion and a reminder of what I once had. As a kid, I'd wait until the day they
were to arrive and I'd spend the afternoon sitting in our living room picture
window (it has a big ledge) and wait to see their car come around the bend in
the road just down the street from our house.
It was party central when
they got there. Usually AC would have some kind of toy to occupy us so she and
Mom could go off and not be bothered with us. One year it was water pistols --
that was the visit where we all soaked each other with green Colt .45 pistols
until AC stomped David's into pieces in the driveway for continuing to zap us
with water after she told us not to. Another year the toys were plastic swords
in scabbards -- that was interesting to say the least. Yet another year the toys
were cap pistols my father bought -- that was the time when I shot Jay with my
TG&Y .38 Special in close quarters on the echo-friendly back porch, almost
deafening him. Yet another year the toys were cheap plastic walkie-talkies --
they finally learned to get something that wasn't a weapon but we made them into
ones by extending the antennas and using them as fencing swords. It was during
those times that AC and my parents would usually wonder why they didn't have
daughters instead...
Needless to say, three kids in a wooded area with
nowhere to go and a lot of time on their hands was probably difficult for Mom
and AC to handle. So we got some really inventive things to do when we acted up,
which happened about every half hour. At first, we got introduced to the idea of
using my little red wagon as a bobsled. This wasn't a punishment duty, but
something designed to drain the energy out of us. The house in Laurel is on the
top of a massive hill which is on something like a 30 degree grade, so the
backyard is about 100 yards deep and starts off level but then goes down this
massive hill and levels out again by Interstate 59 about 35 feet lower than
where it started. Well, we'd pair up and ride the wagon down the hill, using the
handle as a rather pathetic steering mechanism. Once the ride petered out, we'd
then have to walk up the hill to do it again. Man, that was some exercise. I
think we'd make 4-5 trips each and then we'd just collapse in a heap at the top
of the hill, panting and lying down so our burning leg muscles could have some
relief. It sure was fun, though.
Now we also had to have punishment
jobs, which were also designed to work us hard so we'd not have the energy to
act up. My father's idea was the brickpile. For some odd reason, he had acquired
this huge pile of bricks, maybe 4 feet on a side and 3 feet high, that just sat
behind the garage. For their amusement and our torture, we'd get to move the
brickpile from spot A to spot B. Then, when we acted up next time, the brickpile
would go back to spot A again. Sometimes we got to share this wonderful job and
sometimes only one of us was privy to its delights. After the brickpile became a
regular punishment, those bricks would see more action in one week each year
than any brick deserves.
Another punishment job in later years was
raking what Pop called the "back forty", our yard that stretched back and down
into oblivion. He'd mow the back forty before the visit so we wouldn't get
bitten by snakes in the high grass, but he'd leave the grass down there. We got
the job of raking it up when we got out of hand. Every summer, we'd be down
there in the blazing sun at least once or twice a day with the rakes, working
our butts off for 15-20 minutes at a time. And we had to work because AC would
walk to the edge of the hill and make sure we weren't slacking off or else she'd
reset the clock on us. Don't you just hate it when you get outthought?
When we weren't getting punished for acting up, which was about half of
the time we were awake, we'd invent things to do. I remember that one year we
decided to dam the drainage ditch in the woods near our home. An idea of truly
moronic proportions, had we been successful we'd have flooded the ditch and
caused several people's yards to become swampland on the next big rainstorm, but
fortunately our ability to perform civil engineering tasks wasn't any better
than our brainstorming ability at the time. We decided that a good dam would be
created with branches, old crunchy leaves on the ground, and the like, so we
wound up spending an entire week emulating a beaver. We did actually affect the
flow of water, which was difficult to determine since the ditch was 4-5 feet
deep and we were in the middle of a drought, but the modest trickle of water --
akin to a sink turned on halfway -- was being slowed down if not actually held
up. This may explain why none of us are currently employed as dambuilders in our
day jobs.
When my parents and AC realized that they couldn't work us to
death and be rid of us, they had the great idea of shipping us off to the
municipal pool every day for 3 hours. It was cheap, we were supervised, and
there was nothing for us to get into except the water. We also got stuck in
summer camp one year at the local park. All I remember from that was that we
made containers out of Band-Aid cans covered in masking tape and colored with
brown shoe polish. What a waste of time -- the beaver dam idea wasn't that
lame...
We also went to Camp Tiak one summer with Terry, the son of some
folks my parents knew. Terry was about 16-17 at the time and took all three of
us to this camp for something like 2 or 3 days. It was really cool, even though
I wouldn't take my swimsuit off to take a shower and got heckled becuase of
that, but we all had fun. If you've never camped with male kids before, one word
of advice -- never feed them anything gassy. The farting at lights-out became a
thing of legend and has probably earned all three of us Grand Master awards for
creativity, volume (both definitions) and duration.
There were occasions
when my folks and I would head out to Houston for a visit, but that wasn't the
same since we spent a lot of time with my grandparents as well. I loved my
grandparents dearly and was excited to see them, but it was a different feeling
than being cut loose with my two cousins, a water-filled Colt .45, and a huge
backyard.
We all went to Gulf Shores one summer, which was another event
of note, but the water and the long beach walks to the local arcade helped to
tame us. We were also older then, so we didn't act up as much.
In later
years, it became more and more apparent that our geographical distance caused
distance in our relationships with each other, and with college in 1985 we more
or less lost touch completely except for a 1987 summer trip (which was a bummer
because my grandparents were gravely ill and in a nursing home), and a Christmas
1990 trip where I spent more time on the computer than with them -- shame on me.
I saw AC and my cousins briefly in August of 1999 and then again at Christmas
when Julie and I were guests at her house, but we then went our separate ways
again. So my making a connection with Jay again after 4 1/2 years really brings
a lot of memories to life. Things that were, things that weren't -- and
regrettably, things that will never be and things that are and can't be changed.
We've grown so far apart we barely even know each other anymore, which is a
tragedy which may or may not have been unavoidable due to other complications,
but is a tragedy nontheless. Still, we have a lot of history together and,
despite the distance and the years, still have a bond that can't be broken.
