Killen's Pond

Summer in Felton, Delaware meant swimming in Killen’s Pond. The area is a state park today but in the sixties Killen’s Pond was just a small rural lake surrounded by farm fields and forest with a big dirt parking lot and picnic area at one end. There was just room enough for a half dozen powerboats to pull water skiers single-file around the shore.

We didn’t have a boat of our own but Dad’s friend, Junior, had a wooden speedboat with an Evinrude twenty-five horsepower outboard motor, powerful enough to pull two skiers in tandem. I had learned to ski several summers earlier in Minnesota and considered myself pretty good on a single slalom.

Dad was a big man; not really fat but, after a decade and a half in long-haul trucks, he had that big belly and swayed back so many drivers develop after spending years behind the wheel. A love of beer on hot summer days only contributed to his girth. The summer sun made Dad hot, beer made him fearless and the water beckoned with a promise of cool relief until Dad could take it no longer and yelled out to Junior, “Bring the boat around, I’m going to ski!”

Dad had never skied in his life. I convinced him to ride in the boat just once to watch me demonstrate the basics; take off, maintain balance, cross the wake, swing out, drop the tow rope, dismount. As we made a circuit of the lake my misgiving grew. He ignored my example, instead laughing and talking with Junior as they finished another beer. I was skeptical at the end of the tow as I swung toward the beach and prepared to come in. Unconsciously, I made my usual dismount; racing toward the shore at high speed then leaning back suddenly to decelerate, stepping out of the skis and onto dry sand at the last moment. That must have been the one thing of which Dad took note, unfortunately.

We couldn’t find a safety vest large enough to fit him. “I don’t need that damned thing anyway,” he declared and settled back in the shallow water like I showed him while I held his ski tips above the surface and Junior eased the slack out of the rope.

“Hit it!” he yelled. There were a dozen false starts; some ending with a backward splash, others in a face-first watery explosion as the boat yanked him out of his skis. The last unsuccessful attempt nearly dragged the boat to a halt. He fell forward but kept a death-grip on the handle as he disappeared beneath the surface, plowing a giant wave before him until his head dug a crater into the sandy bottom.

“Give up,” I pleaded. He was not a quitter.

To everyone’s surprise he rose from the water almost gracefully on the next try and with a loud cowboy “Whoop” he and the boat disappeared from view behind a line of trees. It was exciting. I could hear him laugh and holler above the roar of the motor as they followed the curve of the far bank. When they came again into view Dad was steady on his feet and looked like he had been skiing for years. I was proud of him. He was fearless, adventurous. How many other middle-aged men would show the confidence and courage to try again and again, right there in front of everyone until they had achieved their goal and mastered a new sport? What a man! What a dad!

Junior was lining up the boat on its approach for a dismount. I hoped Dad remembered how to cross the wake and swing out toward the shore. I saw him make a couple of tentative moves toward the swell of the wake as they quickly approached. Come on, I said under my breath, make your move.

Suddenly, he leaned to the right and dug the edge of both skis into the water. Like a rocket he shot up and over the wake and was airborne in an instant. “Too fast!” I shouted. “Oh shit!” I heard him yell.

Everyone who witnessed what happened next did not stop talking about it for the rest of the summer. Even now, as I write these words, the scene unfolds before my eyes as though I am transported back to Killen’s Pond, standing knee-deep in water and watching in slow-motion horror.

Dad flies twenty feet beyond the wake, arcing three feet over the surface, landing upright on his skis at thirty miles per hour only fifty feet from the onrushing shore.

“Oh my God!” my mother screams from somewhere behind me.
“Oh shit, oh shit!” Dad yells over and over, knowing that this can not end well.
“Lean back!” I shout across the water, praying he will remember how I leaned back to slow down before stepping out of my skis.

He is hurtling right at me. I have no choice but to step aside, knowing it is impossible to stop his momentum. A collision would mean broken bones for us both. He zips past me heading straight for the beach.

“Lean back!” I shout one last time, but it is too late. His skis hit the slope of the sand in a sudden stop. Jumping out of the foot grips Dad hits the ground running. His legs and arms are a blur as they pump furiously, propelling him at a pace he has never run in his life. For an instant it seems he can defy the limits of human performance and remain upright, but ever so slowly he begins leaning further and further in the direction of his trajectory.

Knowing in his heart that the end is near he thrusts his arms out straight and braces for the fall. Impact is inevitable, but with what? Now he is beyond the beach and approaching the tree line. Directly before him stands a pair of maple trees, their trunks separated by less than two feet of space. Dad aims for the space between and hurls himself to the ground like a runner stealing home plate. He slides through the opening and beyond, now heading for the parking lot, his speed diminished only a little.

“Oh my God!” Mother still screams. Dad has fallen silent except for the sound of flesh scraping gravel. I run in his direction, wanting to be there when he finally skids to a halt.

From the corner of my eye I see a car moving across the parking lot on an intersecting course. Dad slides into the path of the vehicle, throwing up a cloud of dust as the driver stabs at the brake pedal.

I can’t look. Oh God, please don’t let this happen!

Mother stops screaming. The world falls silent. I open my eyes and see Dad lying motionless a foot in front of the car. They both stopped in time.

Slowly, Dad rolls over and sits up, his chest, stomach and hands scraped nearly raw and beginning to bleed. Strangers reach him before I do and help him to his feet. Mother and I join him and together we walk down to the lake to rinse off the dust and gravel. Eventually, Dad breaks the silence.

“Well,” he says, “that was fun. I don’t think I’ll water ski again for a long time.”

Thankfully, he never did.

Remembering Felton

When asked where I am from I simply answer “Delaware.” If pressed for a city I offer “Wilmington”. I was born there, but I lived in many different towns all over the state. If I had to choose only one of them to call my hometown it would be Felton.



Felton is a very small town, little more than a crossroad on US 13, the major highway running North and South through the state. The population was six hundred when I lived there in the early sixties. It hasn’t grown much since then. There was one gas station with an attached diner, and one grocery store. The store was a small market that featured fresh beef from a cow slaughtered weekly by the proprietor. I attended school with his son and have witnessed the slaughter, a grizzly business.



As far as I know Felton is known for only one thing. It is the boyhood home of actor Robert Mitchum. Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and moved to Delaware after his father was killed in a railroad accident in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Felton High School but quit before graduation, hitting the road to find adventure, ending up in Hollywood.











I also attended Felton High School. I lived in a bright yellow house across the road from the school’s front door, just down the street from the gas station, three blocks from the grocery. It felt like the precise geographic center of nowhere. When I heard the story of Robert Mitchum I immediately felt a kinship. We both had landed in Felton as boys and soon found compelling reasons to leave. He quit school at the age of sixteen and left. I lacked that opportunity. But, unlike Mitchum, I eventually found reasons to stay.



I call Felton my hometown because so many notable things happened to me in the year and a half I lived there. I made my first good friend, tasted alcohol, discovered girls, flirted with stage acting, and awakened a creative spirit. In Felton I grew from a boy into a young man. The process was sometimes painful but certainly memorable.

I arrived the summer before beginning the eleventh grade. The arrival of a new family in town was big news and when Jack heard it he sought me out. Jack was my age and lived on the other side of the schoolyard next to a parking lot filled with trucks that hauled live chickens. Constant exposure to feathers carried by the wind created an allergy that one day would exempt Jack from military service and, he believes, may have saved his life.

Jack became my first best friend. What made him special to me was that he thought that I was special. What made me special to him was that I was not from Felton, I was from a big city (Wilmington) and I was not a hick like everyone else in Felton. What Jack didn’t know was that Wilmington was not a big city (unless you were from Felton) and that I was a hick by almost anyone else’s measure. Jack wanted to hang around with me because he thought I was sophisticated. I wanted to hang around with Jack because his constant praise of me fed my ego and helped to fill the emotional void created by my inferiority complex. I don’t know if the relationship was good for either of us but it felt OK and we saw each other every day. Jack introduced me to the other kids when school began and it was comfortable to begin the year as the new kid having the endorsement of a local.


Throughout the school year my classmates were turning sixteen and getting a driver’s license. We were mobile. Evenings were spent cruising and sneaking beer. We were lucky to survive that first year on the road. We all were idiots; drag racing, driving while drinking, taunting other teens from nearby towns and challenging them to meet us for a rumble. What idiots we were!






For my sixteenth birthday my mother rented the VFW hall and invited my friends to a surprise party. It was sweet of her but embarrassing for me. She thought I had more friends than I really did, and that became painfully obvious when only about eight kids showed up. Jack passed the word around school but few people wanted to spend Saturday night having cake and Kool-Aid served by the new kid’s mother when they could be having real fun cruising country roads with six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.



Jack tried to salvage the bittersweet evening by fixing me up with an easy girl from nearby Milford. He brought her by the VFW and whispered that she wanted to ride in the backseat with me. I told Mom I had a date, thanked her for the party and climbed in the back of Jack’s car. Twenty minutes later she was insisting that we take her home and complaining that, birthday or no birthday, she wasn’t going to spend another minute with some goofy kid who didn’t have any idea what to do. That was the evening I learned that alcohol could drown feelings. It was a remedy I would seek often in the ensuing years.


There were good times, too. I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and Jack had a huge collection of 45-RPM rock and roll records. We spent many weekends in my room making recordings. We pretended to be disk jockeys; introducing records, doing phony commercials, news breaks, weather forecasts. Sometimes we would do interviews, pretending to be record producers or performers. Years later I would major in television and motion picture production, working at the local TV station as an announcer.




Felton High School was small, so small that the senior play required participation by juniors in order to fill the cast. The faculty drama advisor was Mr. Mason. He had a flair for drama, a trait that gave rise to whispered rumors in a town as small as Felton. Mr. Mason had always wanted to stage a musical. Somehow, he convinced Jack and I that we had the talent to make his dream a reality. I suspect he used flattery to wear us down. Suddenly, I found myself cast as a principle player in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado”, an elaborate costume musical set in feudal Japan. A reporter later published a review in the Wilmington Evening Journal that summarized our efforts as “Ambitious.” He was very kind.

The production was elaborate by small-town standards. We were costumed in elaborate garments fashioned from dyed bed sheets, hurriedly sewn by my mother who saved the play on the night of dress rehearsal when she stepped in for the costume committee after learning that they had completed almost nothing. A single piano served as our orchestra. We had a chorus of eight boys and eight girls in addition to the main actors. I played Ko-Ko, chief executioner of the town of Titipu. Jack played the Exchequer, Pooh-bah. We both had tons of lines and solo singing performances. The production played for three nights. It was crazy and amazing and frightening and fun. How we did it I will never know.

That year was the best of my boyhood. When my father later informed us that we were about to move again I received the news with regret for the first time. We had moved every year, changing houses and schools and friends. Usually, I was happy to make the change. But leaving Felton and the friends I made there would prove difficult and painful.

I returned to visit years later, attempting to rekindle old relationships. But, too much time had passed. Our friendships had been intense but had lasted only a short while. Time had eroded in reality what still existed only in my memory. I found Jack and reminisced about special moments from our past, only to discover that he had no recollection of some of my most cherished memories.

Memories are personal treasures, freezing moments in time that portray the world as we would have it be. They are fragile and need to be protected. Else, they may not survive intact to bring comfort and joy in later years when they attain their greatest value.

Stream of Consciousness (#3)

I was a cigarette smoker for twenty years. That was a long time ago. About five years ago someone gave me a cigar. I enjoyed it. I discovered a cigar store nearby and began dropping in occasionally to have a smoke. It isn't the cigars that keep me coming back; it is the cigar shop. Six big leather chairs are arranged in a circle and usually are occupied by a motley collection of people I find to be some of the most interesting I ever met. They range from gas station attendants to physicians. We meet regularly but only here. Together we have solved some of life's most pressing problems. A big-screen TV fills a corner of the room and the Fox News Network provides an endless stream of topics for discussion. Testosterone hangs in the air thicker than cigar smoke. Opinions fly like punches, sometimes intended to have the same result. Occasionally, someone brings in a bottle of whisky and the exchanges become noticeably less good-natured. When I was younger I avoided assemblies like these. I never thought I could hold my own in a gathering of men where so many vied for the alpha position. I don't feel threatened in the cigar shop. Life and experience have brought me a confidence I never knew as a young man. The smoky circle of chairs at the cigar shop is the place where I learned that I can be comfortable anywhere, if I want to be.

The temperature was twenty-four degrees when I started the Jeep this morning. I found myself checking the road ahead for ice as I drove to work. Winter will be here soon. Time to go to Home Depot and buy salt and sand for the driveway. I am the only one in the family looking forward to winter. I enjoy the snow and the vapor from my breath and the sound of ice crunching under my boots. I love clearing the driveway with my snow blower. I like the silence of the world when everything is blanketed in six-inches of powdery snow. I like seeing deer and rabbit tracks crossing the lawn. The family will huddle in the house with books and TVs for the season while I claim the yard as my own private domain until spring arrives and they emerge from their hybernation to begin making their lists of outdoor chores for me to accomplish.

When the computer is mine to play with for an hour I like to lose myself with Google. I'm like a kid in a candy shop. I usually begin looking for some specific piece of information but within minutes I am flying all over the internet, chasing whatever topic pops into my head. What did I ever do before the internet?

I love trucks. My dad was a truck driver. If you like trucks I have a website for you. Go to hankstruckpictures.com. Hank's site is a labor of love. He has pictures of trucks from the first ever built to the modern giants that fill the interstate today. I have spent hours enjoying photos of the trucks I used to see on the highway in the fifties and sixties; Peterbuilts, Brockways, Whites, Autocars. They are all there. Sign his guestbook. Tell him Roy sent you.



It's good to be writing again. I hate those funks that come over me sometimes.

Coming Around

I feel better today. I don't believe it is just because my sad mood passed with time. I think the reason is that I took action to resolve some of the problems that have been bothering me lately.

Problems are sometimes more than just a nuisance to me, they can REALLY get me down. When I get down (emotionally) I fall into a mode of inaction. Then, the problems just seem to grow larger.

I am a procrastinator; it is perhaps my most serious character defect. Things left undone become problems; problems grow; inaction (procrastination) sets in and the cycle becomes a downward spiral.

Thank you, Lorna and Little Brother, for your comments to my previous post. It's help to know tht I am not alone. Knowing that others are aware of my problems and my need to take action reminds me that I am accountable, to myself and to others.

One of the actions I have taken is to schedule a meeting with a professional with whom I can discuss my feelings and the character defects of which I am aware. Procrastination is high on my list of topics, along with the cyclical nature of my moods. I also plan to discuss ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder.) I have long suspected that it may be one of my traits.

Meanwhile, I feel a story coming on. I have to meet someone for dinner in a few minutes, but I will be back at the keyboard in the near future.

A Pause

It has been more than a week since my last post. It has been an uncomfortable period, there is much I could have written about but little of it was pleasant. I suppose I have been depressed.

I don't have to feel good to write. But, the feelings I am nursing now are not the kind that give birth to stories.

I will try to log on every few days and write something, anything, just to keep the process flowing. But, my heart is not in it.

I am wondering lately if my moods display a cyclical pattern. I don't know if it is the approach of winter that is affecting me or if I am just passing through a manic/depressive cycle with a long periodicity. Manic/depressive is probably too strong a term. Or, maybe it isn't, I don't know.

I remember that my Aunt Betty used to talk about our wonderful family curse of manic depression. She said that we were given a genetic gift enabling us to soar like eagles in our own minds. The only price for this gift was the necessity of enduring corresponding periods of sadness and dispair. I don't think I am experiencing dispair, but sadness is an apt description.

When I feel more desire to write I will try to explore these days after they have passed. In the meantime, bear with me.

Belated Advice

A friend is speaking to high school students next week for Career Day. He asked if I had any thoughts about what he might say. I responded with some things I wish I had heard in high school. I entered the adult world unprepared and with no idea of what to do.

So, here is advice to myself, forty years later.

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The skills you will need to succeed in any career are basic, so basic that they may not seem relevant at first.

· The ability to think (keep the mind focussed on a task or problem.)
· The ability to solve problems (to state them, research solutions, implement the solution.)
· The ability to learn new things (you have to keep up with the changing world.)
· The ability to work with other people (to share ideas without conflict and resentment.)
· The ability to communicate well (so others will clearly understand what you mean.)
· The ability to accept change comfortably (nothing in your life will stay the same, get used to it.)
· The ability to stay healthy (good nutrition and healthy habits enhance mental and physical endurance.)
· The ability to relax (not just sleeping, it is important to just kick back and recharge your batteries.)
· The ability to have fun (to play and laugh, especially at yourself. Having fun makes work worthwhile.)

In addition:

Find a purpose for your life; define it for yourself. Make that purpose something other than simply to make lots of money, to feel good or to gain a sense of self-importance. Choose a purpose that centers on something outside of yourself; like, to help ease the suffering of some less-fortunate person around you, or to leave your little corner of the world a better place than you found it. Then, each week do something that contributes to that purpose. Most importantly, do that thing anonymously. Let no one know that you did it. This will have two effects; 1.) You feel good about yourself without inflating your ego (a good thing) and 2.) The beneficiaries of your action will be living in a world where any one of the strangers around them just might be the person who performed that act of kindness without expecting a reward (also a good thing.)

Finally:

Accept that you are not the center of the universe. This will not diminish you in any way. On the contrary, it will make you a part of something much greater than yourself. To understand, contemplate this verse from the Desiderata by Max Ehrmann:


You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Gatorman

While attending the University of Florida I lived in an apartment just across the road from Lake Alice. The lake is a nature preserve, a wildlife refuge at the edge of the campus, peaceful and inviting in every respect but one; it is filled with large, menacing alligators.

Students congregate along its shore in the afternoon to feed the gators, hoping to catch a glimpse of the lake’s most celebrated resident, Big Albert. He is big, estimated to be between twelve and sixteen feet in length. One gator looks pretty much like another but Big Albert is easy to recognize when he makes his occasional appearance; he only has one eye. The other is clouded over like a pearl-colored aggie. All gators have a sinister appearance but when Big Albert silently breaks the surface and locks you in his glassy one-eyed stare your chest turns cold with fear and you experience an epiphany; you suddenly understand that your role in his world is only that of a morsel, a tasty tidbit.

Another celebrity stalks Lake Alice, not a resident but a frequent visitor. He arrives just before dusk on a rusted bicycle, dressed in cut-off jeans and tee shirt. He wears a white painted army helmet with his name scrawled across the front in hand-printed letters; GATORMAN. He never speaks to the people lining the shore throwing marshmallows to attract the gators in closer. He just lays his bike on the bank and wades slowly into the midst of the gathering reptiles, lightly stroking the rough hide between their protruding eyes as they drift within his reach. When the water reaches his chest he stands with his back to the shore, speaking in a voice too soft to be heard clearly.

Answers to inquiries about the Gatorman are inconclusive.
“He is a drop-out.”
“He is a biologist who never sought work after graduating.”
“He is crazy.”
“He is clairvoyant and communicates with animals.”

He is fearless; there is no doubt of that. He shares the lake with beasts that could snatch him in their jaws and drown him quickly, twisting rapidly in a death roll beneath the surface. He doesn’t appease them with food; I have never seen him feed the animals. He simply stands still in the chest-deep water, gently stroking any gator that moves in close, all the while speaking under his breath.

I don’t understand their relationship but the somehow the Gatorman and Big Albert are connected. Whenever he enters the water the giant gator appears within minutes. The other alligators herald his arrival by moving away, hanging still in the water several yards from the man. Only then does the giant appear, slowly emerging directly in front of the Gatorman. He never reaches out to stroke this gator. They confront each other in silence. It is reminiscent of the encounter between Captain Ahab and the great white whale, Moby Dick. I sense that these two share a guarded self-respect.

I wonder, do they also share some mysterious past? Was the respect they display for each other earned in conflict? Could the Gatorman explain the giant gator’s blinded eye? Might he himself hide angry scars beneath his tee shirt and jeans? I cannot answers these questions. Nor can I understand why a man feels compelled to repeatedly face mortal danger. I am sure he finds some fulfillment in these encounters but his reward must be a personal one only he can know.

Eventually, Big Albert disappears again beneath the lake and the Gatorman leaves the water. The final act always closes in the same way just before the sun sets like a falling curtain, ending the curious drama for another day.

You can witness this spectacle for yourself. Wander down to Lake Alice half an hour before sunset, where Village Drive ends at Museum Road. If a bicyclist in a white army helmet descends the hill from the direction of the law school, prepare to meet a legend.