Here's a little nostalgia piece I wrote a while back and haven't found a home for yet:

HOME IS WHERE THE HEATH BAR IS

Nostalgia is defined as a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time, home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends. It is a sentimental yearning for the happiness of the past. There is something so universal in this yearning that we identify with the remembrances of others, although they be far removed from our own history. When memory is faulty, invention fills in the blanks, true to the spirit, if not to the reality. Sometimes, however, pain must join with pleasure to give perspective to a nostalgic journey. This is a remembrance of a youth of post-war (WWII) Midwest. (It might have been me.)

Doc W____ wasn’t the only dentist in town, but he was certainly the oldest. We speculated that he was at least one hundred and two, and his dental equipment was even older. I seem to remember that the drill was powered by foot pedals. Or hamsters. Doc W____’s office was on the second floor: a walk up a high staircase with windows overlooking a narrow, left-over sort of space between buildings where, it was said, a maniacal monkey lived. Although no one had ever seen the monkey we were sure of its existence and that it ate headstrong children thrown there after disobeying the dentist.

The waiting room had hard wooden chairs and old creased and stained comic books we had read a hundred times. Doc would poke his round balding head into the waiting room, smiling his most demonic smile, and would announce, “Next!” in a loud voice that could evoke ripples of terror in the bravest of us. We were almost willing to be fed to the monkey rather than be subjected to the ultimate horror that awaited us.

Entering the room containing the chair and its evil accoutrements was tantamount to visiting a medieval torture chamber, only everything was white. The chair itself was animated by Doc W____’s series of secret switches and would magically tilt, raise and lower itself, rendering you prone, helpless and baked by the brightness of the dentist’s lamp, a device borrowed from some police department’s “third degree” room. A most demonic assortment of gleaming, sharp, and pointed objects were arrayed near by.

The cotton jammed into the cheeks, the sucking tube under the tongue, the cold flat surface of the dental mirror banging against the teeth, the “Hmm,” the “Ah Hah!” the electric jolt of metal probe finding a cavity, the stale smell of Doc’s breath: all were nothing compared to the “This may sting a little,” and the needle’s thrust. Prolonged and excruciating, being pinned against a wall of pure pain by the syringe as the plunger pumped its bitter contents into bulging gums, this particular agony trumped even the drilling that was to come. The deadening numbness brought blessedly to jaws wrenched widely open still could not quiet the scream of the drill.

The Novocain wore off a little before the drilling was done. Doc seemed to lean on your jaw with all his weight as he stuffed the silver filling into the enormous crater he had dug. Then you sat forever with the cotton in your lips and your mouth sucked dry by the gurgling tube. All the other kids were out in the park playing ball or tag or home watching Flash Gordon if they were lucky enough to have a TV. The ritual torture would be repeated again. And again. And again. By my high school years all the fillings Doc W____ had done had fallen out or had to be replaced. A new dentist would come into my young life. With worse breath.

R____’s Emporium was on Main Street, one of the last remaining wooden structures dating from the previous century. We were warned never to go there by our mothers, making an expedition to this forbidden place even more desirable. Devoid of paint outside, the inside was a long dark room with a low ceiling that smelled of mold, incense and stale cigarette smoke. There were rows of tables heaped with exotic goods not seen in the more respectable Ben Franklin’s Five and Dime or B_____’s Department Store. Madame R____ herself was usually squirreled into a corner, a hazy, out of focus figure with long dirty hair, draped in strange clothes like a street vender from a far-away land. She seemed to pay no attention to us, but we knew with a certainty, followed our every move with her all-seeing evil eye.

Some coveted, some actually acquired, the items arrayed on the tables including the Chinese finger trap (a woven bamboo cylinder that tightened when you tried to remove your fingers from both ends), the pea shooter (a plastic straw complete with a paper sack of dried peas), skeleton keys (which wouldn’t open anything—we tried), the joy buzzer (a spring-wound metal disk you hid in your hand that produced a buzzing noise and a vibration when you shook hands, simulating an electric shock), extra-large dice (which we believed were “loaded”), and, of course, fake vomit and itching powder, rubber spiders, snakes and rats, and useful non-joke items like the bamboo back scratcher (many things in the Emporium were fabricated from bamboo), the Las Vegas style deck of playing cards (not like your mother’s bridge deck with its card backs illustrating Paris, cute little dogs or monogram initials, no—these were genuine Bicycle decks with an intricate and incomprehensible pattern), musical instruments like the Kazoo, the Jews Harp and the Sweet Potato, Yo-yos of every kind, the balsa wood glider, the long cigarette holder (not made from bamboo—probably Bakelite), the cheap ring, bracelet or necklace (which usually sported oversized gems made of colored glass), and candy.

Candy! What candy! Jawbreakers, Wax Lips, Atomic Fireballs, Licorice Pipes, Tootsie Rolls, Mary Janes, Sugar Daddies, Candy Buttons (stuck to a long roll of paper and bought by the foot), Black Jack Gum, Three Musketeer Bars (that really broke into three pieces), Candy Cigarettes, Necco Wafers, Jujubes, Bubble Gum Cigars, Root Beer Barrels, the Charleston Chew, the Bit-O-Honey, Horehound Drops (nobody liked these), Lemonheads, Red Hots, Tootsie Roll Pops, and Pez!

It was at R____’s that I bought the Rosary. I didn’t know what it was. I just thought it was a pretty necklace, with beads and a cross. I had fallen in first love with a little blond girl named Linda. We had sat in the same pew at the Methodist Church one Sunday. Being terrified of speaking to her I thought the perfect way to show my undying love would be to present her with this necklace, and that the cross would remind her of our romantic time together during the church service. I don’t know how, but Madame R____ knew who I was and called my mother to tell her I had bought this, forbidden for me, religious item. I was marched back to return it and it was explained to me that since Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary, they were wrong people, religiously speaking, so any artifacts of that false belief must be shunned. This put a damper on my romantic intentions and I don’t believe I ever entered R____’s again. I also became less fond of going to church. What strange relationship there was between my mother and Madame R____ remains a mystery.

One summer when we were quite young, my brother, Jimmy, and I invented a game. If it had a name, I don’t remember, but the object of the game was for me to prevent my brother from gaining entrance to our house by slamming doors. He would run to the front door, I would slam it shut. He would run to the back door, I would slam it shut. He ran to the side door. It was the kitchen door and had a full pane of glass, not tempered or double glazed as it would be now-a-days. I pushed it closed and continued on through the glass, sending shards in all directions, and colliding with my brother, whose shocked expression remains forever fused in my memory. I had deep gashes along my inner arms and blood was everywhere. Jimmy received a bad cut on his palm. Our mother heard the crash and rushed to us in a panic that struck me as unusual for her normally level-headed mothering demeanor.  A neighbor, our “Aunt” E___, was summoned, my arms were rapped in bloodying towels and we were whisked to Doctor K_____’s office.

Doctor K_____ was the archetypical small town family doctor. He birthed us, removed our tonsils, injected us against small pox, treated our chicken pox, measles, and mumps and was pretty much the authority on everything medical my parents needed to know. I remember him always with a black cigar in his mouth and once when I was going into the operating room for a tonsillectomy I asked if Doctor K_____ was going to sterilize his cigar before he operated. His office was on the first floor in the same building as Doc W____. He had the same comic books in his waiting room. And wait, I did—bleeding into my towels, while Jimmy was treated for his (relatively) minor cut. When you are the oldest, I guess, you get to go first. But I was pretty faint by the time I watched in horror as Doctor K_____ stitched up my wounds. I still have the scars and the memory of that traumatic event. But it was only one of many near-death occurrences of my youth.

The first time I almost died was a lazy afternoon in the summer of 19__ when I was walking along A_____ Avenue where it bent graciously and sloped gently as it entered town near its terminus at W_____ Street. I was not on the sidewalk, preferring instead to shuffle along in the gutter where I might spot the occasional treasure: a lost marble or a discarded and broken watchband, or maybe even a pair of sunglasses not so destroyed by nature as to still be wearable. A car came careening around the curve of the street.

A car! It was a ’32 Ford Coupe whose rancorous rumbling sent a murder of crows flying from the nearby maples and caused several unchained dogs to scratch at screen doors in a futile attempt to escape. It was one of those raked, souped-up chariots we called a “hot rod” and it was driven by a misanthropic entity who we called a “hood.” This particular hood—sorry, I don’t remember his name, let’s just call him Dale—was a legend among we younger boys. Dale was a high school drop out of indeterminate age, rarely seen but always avoided. Dale was skeletally skinny, most likely the result of some incurable malady like polio, and it was said that he hated the world—and especially us. “He’d kill you soon as look at you,” was the usual comment. “Don’t ever…ever mess with him!”

I heard the blast furnace sound of the glass-packed muffler and squeal of the worn rubber tires against the low curbing. I glanced over my shoulder to see the charging behemoth driven straight at me, wheels aligned with the gutter. I could picture my battered and broken body flung high into the air and landing in a nearby Box Elder tree where it would hang, dripping, like a wet wash rag, unnoticed until it became food for turkey vultures. I leaped, sprawled on the parkway grass trembling, but lucky to be alive.

Another nearly lethal escapade happened to me as a teenager, walking along a favorite short cut. A gravel path ran between the river and the old swimming hole. There was a chain link fence on the beach side and a steep bank down to the river on the other. Blocking the path and chugging like an angry dragon was an electric pump pulling water from the pool and spitting it into the river. Not wanting to back track around to the other side of the fenced-in beach, I valiantly placed one foot on the massive rubber hose, steadied myself on the fence and grabbed onto the pump to pull myself up and over. I succeeded in grounding myself and a jolt of who knows how many volts surged through me, tossing me like a rag doll into the air and back ten or so feet to land limply on the gravel. I came to several minutes later and, trembling, back tracked sheepishly the long way around. It felt like I had been struck by lightning. I experienced a subtle shaking for nearly a week. But, being embarrassed by my own stupidity, I never told anyone about the incident and consequently avoided a trip to see Doctor K_____.

Then there was the time we took my father’s car for joy ride. It was one of those warm, sunny, summer days when the world seems a wondrous place, but the stupid little town you live in seems the most depressing prison ever invented by adults to plague teenagers. It was getting late and nothing seemed able to relieve our ennui. We were bored to tears. And, of a sudden, there is was. It sat there in the driveway, the greatest temptation known to boykind, a shiny, gleaming sentinel to adventure, a forbidden vehicle as alluring as Rocky Jones Space Ranger’s rocket ship to the far reaches of the universe—Pop’s new car.

And so I sat proudly behind the wheel of my father’s amazing automobile, a brand new 1957 Chrysler Windsor. Beside me sat my friend J____ in what they called the “suicide seat.” I was only 15 and had just gotten my learner’s permit, but J____ said, because J____ was 16, it was legal for us to take the Windsor for a drive. I wasn’t sure that my good friend actually had a driver’s license himself, but I wasn’t going to quibble when an adventure of this potential was in the offing.

The car had a gapping front grill like the mouth of a shark and tail fins that made it look like a Flash Gordon’s rocket ship. This car was pink, embarrassingly pink, a concession, my father had said, to my mother, who had wanted a more conservative car for driving to church, school and the grocery store. Perhaps a station wagon…a Buick, of course. But Pop, urged on by a hidden wild streak, had purchased the futuristic looking chariot with its big V8 engine, and still drove it to church. Pinkly.

The interior was also sickeningly pink. The dash board was a round fish bowl-shaped globe with lighted orange tabs like miniature grave stones sticking up to indicate oil pressure and the like. That completed the spaceship motif. Except for the color and the fact that it was an automatic, J____ approved.

J____ had been one of my best buddies all throughout our school years and I looked up to him as if he were my big brother. It was J____ who had taught me to play draw poker, and had shown me how to mark my father’s whiskey bottle before stealing a slug so it could be watered to its previous level. It was J____ who had given me the courage to climb the fire escape at that old hotel downtown to toss water balloons at passing cars. And it was J____ who now persuaded me to ease the big car out onto the highway, out toward the country roads south of town.

It was on a strip of straight-as-an-arrow country road about five miles long that we now found ourselves parked, sipping cokes and relishing the outstanding, if temporary freedom of our summer vacation. As the late afternoon sun cast golden shadows across fields of corn that bordered the road, J____ was possessed of a singular idea: why not see if the car could really go 120 miles per hour as the speedometer said it could.

“There are no other cars on this road and you’ve got plenty of space to top it out on,” J____ said. J____ had never steered me wrong.

“Oh, It will do 120,” I said.

J____ nodded. “Take it easy now, don’t tromp on it, you’ll flood the engine.”

I gripped the pink plastic steering wheel and pressed lightly on the accelerator. The car started down the blacktop. 30 mph, 40 mph—I began to increase pressure on the pedal. 50, 60—the car handled beautifully, even with an inexperienced driver with a tendency to over-steer at the wheel. 70, 80, 90, I couldn’t believe the rush I was getting as the big car roared compliantly down the straightaway. I glanced over at J____, saw the wide grin.

“OK, now goose it.”

I goosed it. 100, 110, the automobile trembled a little but didn’t complain. The road was flat and smooth and only a slight vibration of the steering wheel betrayed that our speed was anything but normal.

“It’ll do it! It’ll do it!”

The needle, glowing red under the glass-globed dash, inched toward the coveted goal: our Holt Grail of 120 miles per hour! We were flying through space. They were Haley’s Comet, sprinkling stars in our wake. We were a pink flash across the black macadam road.

“You should start slowing down now.”

“Just a little more.”

The road was straight as an arrow, but like many country roads it had a sharp right-angle turn at the county line. I heard J____ yell at me…something indistinguishable, but obviously communicating panic. We were sailing at 120 miles an hour toward the right angle turn.

I stomped on the brake pedal and jerked the wheel. The car, an engineering miracle of Detroit, stayed true, though there occurred a bit of a wobble. The evidence of marks of heated rubber on the macadam would testify to the near tragic event we had narrowly avoided. We stopped at the angle turn where a stand of elm trees formed a sort of barricade should anyone foolishly fail to make the turn.

We sat, panting, sweating, then: laughing that nervous laugh one voices in the most embarrassing manner after a stupid action has come to a risky, but life-saving conclusion. Yet as we sat there, happy that the county sheriff’s police were not cruising the county roads today, and that the Chryser wasn’t piled up against the elms, I blinked up a vision of an alternate ending to our adventure:

I had missed the turn. The Windsor flipped, flew through the air, hitting upside down and rolling—one, two, three times—the pink top and black undercarriage alternating—pink, black, pink, black, pink, black—across the green of the field and the darkening blue-gray of the afternoon sky. The driver’s door popped open and I was thrown from the car as it continued its pink, black, blue, green pirouette. I heard, rather than felt bones cracking and saw a curtain of blood drawn over my eyes. I bounced between consciousness and the blackness of oblivion. Red, black, red, black.

When I forced my eyes to open I saw a strange pink shape, convoluted and jagged. It no longer looked like a car but like some giant, squashed bug, its pink guts streaming out onto the green field. What is it? Where am I? I can’t feel my legs. J____? Oh no, J____! I’ve killed J____! A crow landed next to me, curious, black against pink and green. The blackness grew and enveloped me. There was no time, no dreaming—only a sudden awakening and a muffled, hallow sound like a voice. I know that voice. Eyes open. Someone standing over me. J____? Is that you, J____? Are you an angel? Black.

The only waiting room that didn’t have worn out old comics was the one at the barber shop downtown. It did have some men’s magazines which we tried in vain to sneak peeks at and some old copies of Field and Stream. The fascinating thing about the barber shop, though, was the clock. The drive gear for the second hand was missing some teeth. The hand would climb normally from the 6 up to the 12 and then plummet down from 12 to 6, remaining there, swishing like a skinny pendulum until the gear caught up with it 30 seconds later.  It was good entertainment while you waited.

The first time I was allowed to choose what kind of haircut I wanted I opted for a flattop. This bizarre haircut (many years before Bart Simpson) was popular in the late forties and early fifties and was possibly inspired by GIs returning from World War II. It was like a crew cut, but grown longer on top and then clipped to a level flatness. There was a greasy green gel that came in a small jar that you had to comb into it to force the front to stand up straight. I later abandoned the flattop for a hair style of my own creation, with a curl like Bill Haley’s. Other kids claimed to be cultivating a DA, (duck’s ass in back and pompadour in front), but mostly their mothers nipped that in the bud.

Mothers were always nipping things in the bud, but sometimes they were intimidated into withdrawing their motherly protection from us. My mother was a substitute teacher in the public schools as was my aunt. The school authorities took great measures to insure neither woman would have us in her classroom (to avoid favoritism, they said). Actually, my mother and my aunt would have been much harder on us than on the other children.

I think I was in fourth grade when one of the teachers noticed some initials carved into one of the wooden desks: B. G. My initials! I hadn’t done any desk carving and certainly wouldn’t have been stupid enough to sign it if I had. It didn’t occur to the authorities that there might be other kids with those initials, so it must have been me. My mother was called on the carpet and, consequently, she reprimanded me. Despite my pleas of innocence, I obtained one of the first black marks to go on my “permanent record.”

Was there such a thing as a permanent record, or was that a sort of academic boogie man used to frighten us into behaving? Teachers always seemed uncomfortable around us, especially as we started to enter adolescence. I remember in seventh grade there was a girl we all thought was “pretty hot” who wore short shorts to the last class of the spring term. Our teacher, a large, ungainly but mild-mannered man who had never raised his voice in class became a Mr. Hyde to his usual Dr. Jekyll. He shouted that such a wanton and disrespectful act could not be tolerated. She would have to stay after class. We wondered about that.

Our mothers signed us up for ball room dancing class. It was taught in many of the Midwestern suburban communities by a fellow who, it turned out, also had a Jekyll/Hyde personality. He often turned us loose to practice the four-step while he took one of the girls off to the side for some special instruction. This involved his adjusting her posture with one hand on her back and another on her chest. We wondered about that. Many years later he was convicted of being a pedophile—which wouldn’t have surprised us had we known what that was. The dance class was a milestone in our social development, though, allowing us to close dance when the teacher wasn‘t looking. He did, however, teach us to “jitterbug,” and I have vivid memories of P____ doing the “rubber-legs” to Bill Haley’s “Rudy’s Rock.”

Most of all I remember the sidewalks. Sidewalks covered with spring’s first maple seeds or the crisp dried leaves of fall. Sidewalks crunching underfoot with the shells of 17 year locusts. Sidewalks icy in winter so you could slide in slippery street shoes but not in buckled rubber boots. Sidewalks fresh with rain puddles and writhing earthworms, confused by their new cement world. Sidewalks with cracks you couldn’t step on for fear of breaking your mother’s back. Sidewalks incised with the trademarks of “Goodwin Cement Contractors, 1951.” Sidewalks of brick, of octagonal tile. Sidewalks that bent around trees grown too close and too large like the Alligator Tree, an ancient maple with roots exposed like a great reptile waiting patiently for an unsuspecting child to pause on the way home from school. School neighborhood sidewalks littered with candy wrappers or melted ice cream dropped from cones carelessly held. Tiny ants swarming over the ice cream or erupting from cracks in angry waves of some ant-centric ritual dance. The fragile blue shell of a fallen robin’s egg or the occasional dead bird of squirrel carcass blocking your passage. The memory of tricycles, bikes with training wheels, then the first two-wheeler you triumphantly maneuvered down the sidewalk in front of your home. Metal skates clipped to your shoes catching edges where settling raised or lowered sections of sidewalk. Chalked squares and numerals of hop scotch. Names and dates, hand prints and dog paw prints pressed into wet cement to forever immortalize a moment, a place once lived, a passage. Sidewalks that ended inexplicably as the nostalgic wanderings of these stories must end. Sidewalks that led home.