Flying!

When I was a kid I used to dream of flying. In those dreams I'd just leap up and go flying. I'd be up there in the clouds looking down on the street where I lived, on the school I attended, on the house where I lived. All alone up there above it all.

Over the years I would ask other kids if they dreamed of flying. I thought maybe it was because of all of those superhero comics I read. But, no, just about every other kid I asked also had dreams that they could fly, whether they read comics or not.

When I ask women if they had such dreams, they usually look at me funny. "Are you daft?" So I decided to look that up and found that for some reason girls (and women) don't dream that they can fly. It is supposed that it has something to do with self-esteem issues and male-dominated society. That sounds reasonable, but it also may have something to do with the the idea that there are fundamental differences between male and female psyches. I can only shrug. I don't know such stuff.

As I got older I began to dream less and less of flying. I will assume here that as the realities of life are loaded onto adult shoulders one by one, the less likely even the dreaming mind can cut loose enough of those burdens to allow a man to believe he can fly. Not even in dreams. Finally, sometime in my early 20s I stopped having such dreams. They no longer came to me.

However...there are still similar dreams for me. I have them to this very day. Instead of flying, I dream that I can jump. Higher than anyone else. Generally I'll find myself in a building with a vast ceiling twenty or thirty or even one hundred feet high. And I'll brace myself, then bend my knees, and jump high enough to reach up and brush that ceiling with my hands.

No more open skies leading up to space, now. Instead I am greeted by ceilings--but sometimes those ceilings are so high that it's almost like the sky, and I can scrape them with my fingertips. Perhaps there's still hope for me in my old age, I reckon.

Mort Weisnger Superman stories! Every kid's dream!

Light fantasy.


Now it's dark.

Eclipse

When I was a kid, and very excited by the impending Moon missions being launched by NASA, I was fascinated by our planetary companion. I learned all that I could about it as a small child, gazing up at it in the evenings and using the reflector telescope that my parents had bought me so that I could see the volcanic flatlands and the monstrous craters and the ragged highlands. I imagined the frail Apollo spacecraft flying to Luna and the spider-like Lunar Excursion Module touching down on the surface to deposit its crew of two.

Those were great days to be a kid interested in nature. To look up at the moon and to know that men were heading there. To read science books and understand how it was being done. To watch the news and see it happening. I'll never forget sitting in front of the television set to watch the launches of the various spacecraft as the USA painstakingly went through each step along the way. There were the Mercury shots, the Gemini missions, and then the Apollo spacecraft with the enormous Saturn V boosters.

I never forgot the feelings of pure amazement of how things worked, both in the turning of the globe, of the orbit of the Moon, of our own journey about the Sun. I would look up at the night sky and marvel at it all.

Last night, my son and I watched the total eclipse of the Moon. I've seen such events many times since I was a kid. I'd seen so many that I actually found myself missing them from time to time, despite the opportunity to witness them. But last night my son and I set up my digital camera and tripod and we took photos as the moon slowly vanished behind the enormous shadow of the Earth.

And there, for a moment, I felt a little of the awe over such an event when I was just a kid. It was nice.

Pulver-ized.

Wayne Pulver
By
James Robert Smith

Wayne Pulver was my best pal
in the third grade.
Wayne was a mutant.
At the age of eight he was taller
than our teacher.
He was 5 feet 6 inches, and huge,
a belly like an ape’s.
He was happy, and friendly, and smiling
and jolly.
Wayne lived one street over.
I had to go through my back yard
past the apple trees
climb the steep hill in the neighbor’s yard
to emerge on Wayne’s street
two houses up and across the road
from his place.
Wayne had a mom
who was a lousy cook,
crunchy grits!
but a sweet lady,
an absent dad claimed by divorce.
But he had an older brother who was
cool as shit;
he built all
of the models I didn’t have—
Dracula, The Creature, Godzilla, The Old Witch,
all of the Ratfink models,
the Big Daddy Roth rods,
the Weird-Ohs
and custom stuff he created from
castoff parts he got from other
kids.
Wayne and I spent a lot of
time looking at his brother’s models;
his brother didn’t mind.
One day, we were in the front yard at
my house.
A new kid in our third grade class
walked up; a jackass,
a bully
named phil.
He was a pissant next to Wayne,
but he was aggressive and mean and bound by
CRUELTY to pick a fight with smiling, kind
Wayne.
I stood by, did nothing
and watched.
Wayne tried to avoid fighting,
but the little shit phil
insisted.
Huge, heavy, unfortunate Wayne was forced
to fight.
It was a very, very short fight.
When phil picked himself up
had fled, bloody nose, bloody teeth, fat lips,
it was Wayne who was crying.
He looked at me.
“Why didn’t you do something?”
he asked.
“Why didn’t you stand up? He would have
backed off if you’d stood up
with me.”
I could have said,
“I was scared.” But
it wouldn’t have mattered, because I’d done
nothing, either way.
So Wayne left,
And other than in class,
I never saw him again. By year’s end,
they had moved
away
forever.

Hail Mark Martin!

Featured here is the latest addition to my somewhat jumbled attempt to reclaim the toys of my first childhood as I enter my second childhood. Years and years and years ago I had tons of plastic models kits and toys and giant piles of comic books. Of course I destroyed and lost the toys as I got older and sold the comic books for food money when I grew up.




Slowly, and haphazardly, I began to reassemble both the toy and comic book collections of my youth. Recently, at the web log of noted funny man/comic book creator/graphic artist Mark Martin, I saw a collection of classic Universal monster toys he’d found in a dump. I expressed some interest in the figures. As he had an extra Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the heart of a young boy (which resides in his chest and not in a jar on his desk), he mailed me the inert menacing orange critter. Out of kindness.

Mark Martin, King of Funny Books!

At Seven

At Seven
By
James Robert Smith

At seven years old
Your room is full of comic books
And Famous Monsters
And Creepy and Eerie
Magazines.

You gaze in wonder at
Creatures
Wrought by
Ditko
And Wood
And Frazetta
And Torres
And Crandall.

You wait for
Films from
Hammer,
RKO,
Universal.
Creatures that dwell
In darkness
From lost islands
Strange places
Other days.

And then.
At night.
Things come out.
October Country things.
That slither like
Fine silk
In the closet.
That crinkle like
Old pulp
On the shelves.
That blow
Not quite silently
Across your brow.

But there are rules
That keep you
Safe
You Seven-year-old.

Cover your eyes
And that which you
Cannot see cannot see
You.

Keep your fingers
And feet
From hanging over the
Abyss below your mattress
For they cannot
Invade that cotton
Territory.

And whatever
Whatever
Whatever you do.
Do not get up
In the night
In the dark
In the silence
Until first light
Brings dawn.

Only then is it safe
To read again
Tales by Archie Goodwin
Stories introduced by grinning
Ghouls and smiling zombies.
Only then is time
To watch
Wolfmen
And vampires
And Creatures from
Black Lagoons and
Things from Another World.
And time enough
For October Country
And tales etched on an
Illustrated Man.

Strike Me Down, Big Man: A White Trash Vignette

Strike Me Down, Big Man

by

James Robert Smith

There were seven of us: Scot, Robert, Brayboy, Tina; and Brayboy's sister, Reddog. And there was Phil, a garbage scow of a guy we all called Fat Bastard when he wasn't around to hear. At nineteen, I was the oldest, so I had dropped into the liquor store and bought the rum. The rest had brought coke; and me and the other braves were gulping the cheap, shitty rum and chasing it with Coca Cola. It tasted truly awful, but we were feeling good and drunk. I wasn't as high as the rest of the boys, since I weighed in at better than two-fifty, so I held my rum pretty good, and Phil didn't drink (the pussy). But Brayboy weighed one hundred thirty pounds, and even though he was only sixteen years old he was already a boozer who loved the stuff. He was going to make a sloppy drunk. Some of his teeth were rotting from too much booze and not enough food. He was drunk enough that I think he'd forgotten how much bigger I was than he, so I'd already had to tell him to shut up a couple times.
The girls weren't drunk, at all. Maybe a little. They were fifteen year olds, but they had plenty of experience when it came to males chasing after them. They well knew we were hoping to get them drunk enough so that we could talk them into lying down for us. Reddog wasn't a problem. She loved dick and everyone but her brother and me had had a taste, and I really wasn't so sure Brayboy hadn't had a go at her. But I just didn't think she was attractive with that pale skin and all that red hair. No thanks. Tina, though, was another matter. She was short, maybe not even five feet, but she was well built. She had great tits, and her hips flared out from a narrow waist and her legs weren't bad, either. If you bothered to look, she had a cute face framed with short, brown hair. All of us wanted to fuck her.
Earlier that day, I had stopped by the Brayboy house, and Reddog and Tina had been in the back yard. I went back to talk to them, and noticed Brayboy's barbells sitting in the dirt. Sandspurs had started to sprout around the concrete-filled plates; it had been so long since the little guy had used them. I bent down and picked them up, figuring he had about one-twenty on the bar. I was wearing a tank top and began to curl the weight easily, pumping up my biceps.
"My gosh," Reddog said. "Look at his muscles!"
I smiled and curled the bar a few more times, getting the desired result. But Tina looked up for a minute and said nothing. Shit.. I tossed the bar back to the weedy ground.
"How did you get so strong," Reddog asked.
"Heck. I'm not that strong," I lied. I was as strong as a fucking bull. I was so strong that nothing less than a gun scared me. Truly, I loved beating the shit out of other men. I had the lackonooky disease, so I walked around pissed off all the time. Tina was standing there wearing a halter-top and very short cutoffs so my dick was hard just looking at her. I did my best to hide my erection. I’m a gentleman.
"Where's Steve," I said. I rarely called her brother by his first name, but since I was on Brayboy property, I figured I should show some respect. I liked Mr. Brayboy, the father. Too bad his daughter was a slut and his oldest son was a rummy in training. He had four other kids stuffed into that five-room house, but they were all young ones and I didn't even know their names. Didn't give a damn, either.
"Him and Scot are off doing something," Tina said. I knew she really liked Scot. If any of us was going to get any action from Tina, I figured it would be Scot. She seemed to perk up a little at the mention of his name. Damn.
"Well, when they get back, tell them that I want to get up a bunch and go to the cemetery tonight. We can all smoke weed and get drunk and raise hell. You tell em for me, okay?" And I vaulted the chain link and trotted to my pickup.
So. We had all ended up in the Port City Cemetery, right in the middle of it at eleven at night. The rest of the boys were too drunk to notice the mosquitoes eating us alive, and I was too intent on trying to figure out how to get Tina alone and on her back to worry about the little bloodsuckers. We had come to the cemetery in a brand new 1978 Chevy pickup, just purchased by Scot and Robert's dad. It was a beauty: shiny white with four wheel drive and lots of polished chrome. I hadn't asked them how the hell they had talked their dad into letting them drive off with it. He must be out of town, I figured. Right then, it was parked out on Mane's Bluff Road, in a little turnaround area shrouded in by a couple of old live oaks and a line of scrub. The cops hardly ever came down there because the washboard road was hell on your suspension. Cops do love a smooth ride.
"Let's go look at that mausoleum Brad keeps sayin he gonna bust into," Scot said.
"God, that's one crazy fucker."
"He scares me."
"He scares you? You mean you ain't fucked him yet, Red?"
Reddog made a savage grunting sound and clawed at Scot. But he was too quick and danced away from her, bounding lightly over half a dozen graves. I could see his blond hair, even in the dark.
"You shouldn't do that, Scot." It was big, fat Phil. He stood, as usual, behind the group, watching us.
"Shouldn't do what?"
"Walk over the graves like that." Phil pointed, his fat paw kind of pasty looking in the half moonlight.
"Why the fuck not," I asked him.
"You should have more respect for the dead. You should fear God, man."
I laughed. Scot laughed. "Fuck that!" Both of us.
Scot hopped to a granite slab all polished and carved with the names of some family. We couldn't read it in the dark. He began to do a jig. "I'm dancin' man! I'm dancin'." He hopped about while I laughed. No one else was laughing. "Strike me down, Big Man. Strike me down!" Nothing happened, except that Scot and I began to laugh: big belly laughs while we made fun of everyone's religious beliefs.
"Hell," I said, pointing to the starry sky. "He ain't even got a cloud to pop some lightning out of." Scot looked up, thought that was especially funny, and laughed some more.