I leaned against a tree in the school yard and watched her, using the tree as cover and pretending not to be looking. I don’t think she noticed me, which was both a relief and a disappointment. When the bell rang, I waited for her to pass and followed her into the school like a detective tailing a suspect. I found out her homeroom and over the next week or so, I learned pretty much her entire schedule. I also followed her home. By the end of the week, I thought I was pretty damn good at following people.

It was close to Christmas. My friend Joey, who was a sophomore in high school was throwing a party. Besides a brand new house, he had a driver’s license and a 1954 Ford that he had “improved” into a hot rod. He was a member of a hot rod club that was ironically named “The Pacemakers.” I sometimes think that if he is still alive he’s still in a club with that name, but it’s got nothing to do with cars.

It was in the era of phone books and you could actually figure out the right number if you knew the address. So it came to pass, after many, many anxious moments, fraught with fear of rejection, that I called her up and invited her to Joey’s party. To my amazement, she accepted.

On the eve of this momentous event, I got my father to drive me to her house and chauffeur us to the party. It was embarrassing.

The party was pretty much a dud when it came to the required elements. Joey had crappy music. The food was sodas and chips. I was one of only a couple of the guys with a date. The rest of the kids were just the same bunch who I hung out  with on the street all the time and with whom I got into miscellaneous trouble.

Then, fate entered the picture. I got a stomach ache that wouldn’t quit. Did Joey have a hand in it? I’ll never know. But he was quick to volunteer to drive us home. Being concerned with my medical condition, I’m sure, he took me home first. And that was my first and last date with my crush. From that day onward, she could be found in the front seat of Joey’s Ford scootched up so close to him that he had trouble shifting from second to third without his hand winding up in her accommodating lap. I think they call it a crush because when stuff like this happens, you get crushed.

And so, he married this girl after high school. And the last time I saw them was at a funeral and Joey had gotten extremely fat.  So I guess, she was getting crushed too.

“I’m getting into the grocery business,” the billionaire revealed with obvious pride.  “People are tired of news, but they still want to eat. In fact, you only have to look at the guy seated next to you on a plane to see just how voracious for food the people are.”

Standing in front of a giant backdrop with the logo of “SCORTCHED EARTH FOODS” in a flambeau motif, Murderaxe told the blondies that all the food he intended to sell in his market chain would come from unsustainable plant and animal species. “When you know that you’ll soon be running out of something, you rush to buy what’s left,” he pointed out. “And that really jacks up the prices. How much would you pay to eat the very last polar bear? It’s nearly priceless. “

Asked who their target customer base was, Murderaxe’s wife, Ho Li Cao said, “We’re going after the one percent. The ostentatious eaters. Do you know that recently someone consumed a dessert costing $35,000? We’ve consulted all the experts in climate change and they’re unanimous. The more things change, the more food is going to cost. Extinctions promise to produce bigger profits than illicit drugs and it’s a whole lot safer than wiretapping has become,” she said with a wave of her infamous pie-blocking hand.

The dump’s amenities included a house — a flat-roofed, two-story stucco affair the color of peanut butter, or feces, depending on your point of view. A gravel parking lot separated their home from the dusty marsh road. The rear and sides afforded views of rusting mounds of detritus. Here, remarkably enough, dump-side romance produced Cheryl and Bernice — plump, pale, dumpy things with hair the color of the house and limpid eyes reminiscent of oil sludge.

One summer evening, Sylvia invited me for spaghetti and meatballs. Flies probed the screens for opportunities to enter. Mosquitoes whined a background rhapsody. Smells of salt marsh mingled with decomposing petrochemicals leaking from Giovanni’s inventory. It wasn’t long before Cheryl and Bernice were covered — lips, chins, hands and tee shirts — in gooey red sauce.

Sylvia shot them a disgusted glance. “Where are your manners?” she asked, grimacing. “You look like you were brought up in a dump.”

With a bunch of fresh scientific meat on the scene, the gill-man, who looked a lot like a humanoid amphibian dunked in used motor oil, got the chance to kill some more. Conveniently, the girlfriend attracted the attention of the randy creature, allowing the hero to rescue her, which he did by shooting up the place in an exciting finale. It was The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I was among the hundreds of rowdy and sugar-dosed kids stampeding from the summer matinee as if it were the last day of school. Some got rides from waiting parents but the rest of us were simply loosed on the downtown. Pretending to be that creature, or the hero or the damsel in distress, we bumped into pedestrians, relishing our delinquency, the rebukes, the eye-rolls and disgust of the Saturday shoppers as we careened our way toward the bus stop. Little did I know that in just a few weeks, I would be cast into a more realistic version of the Creature, to the utter destruction of a dining experience.

It happened in late August. Hurricane Carol had just decimated the east coast of the United States, battering the North Shore of Massachusetts, where I grew up, with winds up to 110 mph and extremely strong storm surges. The spire of the Old North Church (Remember Paul Revere’s Ride?) was blown down. Most of the coast was left without power.

My parents decided it might be fun to check out all the destruction. So with my friend Donny, we hopped into our car and drove up the shoreline from Revere to Gloucester, dodging all manner of windswept detritus: broken tree limbs, parts of roofs, shattered glass and dislodged power lines.

The ocean was luminescent. Roguish waves pounded the shores. The smell of sea salt permeated the air. Clouds swirled in the stormy gray sky. Boats of all kinds, broken free from their moorings, were awash, aground or drifting aimlessly. We stopped at a beach strewn with seaweed and flotsam. I scavenged a heavy brass porthole attached to a piece of superstructure from a sailboat that had been dashed against a cliff and smashed to bits. (As I write this that porthole is barely an arms length away.)

After a while, we became hungry. We searched in vain for an open restaurant, but with the blackout most were closed. Finally, we came upon The Big Wheel, a Formica and Naugahyde joint in Manchester, MA where the food and décor were in sync. Its red neon sign was happily blinking on and off. Its lot was full. The Big Wheel was open because it had its own generator.

The kids’ meals came quickly. The adult meals took longer. Relishing the opportunity to dine in peace, my parents released Donnie and me to our own devices. We were both nine— wild, troublesome and unruly.  Odds were better than even that we’d be up to no good within minutes, but nevertheless, they took the chance. As we saw it, they’d just given us a green light to make mischief.

We soon began pushing and shoving. I got the better of a shove and Donnie came after me. Both of us laughing, I began to run down the slope behind The Big Wheel, through tall, wild weeds. It was nearing dusk. Ahead, there looked to be a black paved path parting the weeds about three feet wide and forty or fifty feet long. I never considered its reason for existing. I wasn’t processing improbabilities. I was intent on outrunning Donnie. A few strides along this clear path, I thought, and I’d get enough acceleration to blast up the slope on the other side of the restaurant. I’d be way ahead of him by then. He’d never catch me.

I raced onto the path. Plop. Oh! Oh!  Plop. Plop. Ker-plop. In three steps, I was up to my neck in black slop. It wasn’t a path at all but some sort of un-fenced grease pit, or maybe, and I don’t like to dwell on this, a cesspool. So let’s call it a “grease pit.” But it was as opaque as the Black Lagoon and as thick as roofing tar —or a latrine full of shit. I was barely able to keep my mouth shut as the goo sloshed up around my face.

I don’t recall how I managed to extricate myself from this muck, but, according to memory, it was instantaneous. On moment I was nearly submerged, the next I was back in the weeds, covered, head to toe in dripping black gunk. When I held out my arms, foul pitch-like stalactites drooped all along their length. Others formed under my chin. Still more hung from my ears. My sneakers squeaked with the suction from this foul concoction.

Donnie fell on his side, rolling in laughter. “Wow, you really stink,” he reported, lest I couldn’t smell it for myself. “You look just like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Well, I guess we ought to tell your parents.”

I trudged up the embankment, trailing ooze, with Donnie, behind me at a safe breathing distance, providing a Greek chorus of snickering. Once at the front of the restaurant my reflection in a window, backlit by the flashing red neon Big Wheel sign, revealed the truth of his assessment.  I was The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I had but two choices. I could wait outside in utter disgrace and embarrassment, totally humiliated, or I could play it up big-time. I chose the latter. What the hell.

I entered the restaurant dripping muck as thick and dark as crude oil. Inside, the smell quickly proved overpowering. Waitresses blanched. Customers’ eyes popped. Some held napkins to their noses. Kids ceased their jabbering and stared with disbelief. Babies cried. An exodus commenced.

“I am the creature from the black lagoon,” I roared, gesturing with my goopy black limbs.

My parents’ faces melted to the floor.

“What the hell happened to you?” my father growled.

When I explained, my father turned on the proprietor. “What kind of place are you running here?” he yelled. “You have some kind of un-fenced cesspool right behind your restaurant, where a kid could get killed! What are we supposed to do now? There’s no power. No hot water at home. My son could come down with meningitis or something.”

The dispute went on for a while as I stood near the cash register, foul of odor, dripping of cesspool contents, whatever it might have been. There seemed to be no resolution. At last, my parents found a beach blanket in the trunk and with a flourish or outrage, bundled me up for a long and smelly ride home, windows all open.

Fortunately, our home was a bit behind the times. We still had a back-up water heater that used coal and once the thing got cranking could do about five gallons at a time, every twenty minutes or so. They poured bucket after bucket onto me for what seemed an eternity until the smell was gone. Incredibly, I never got sick.

Donnie did his utmost to make sure the story lingered on. For years kids in the neighborhood would jump out of hiding playing The Creature from the Black Lagoon to remind me of my greatest cameo role.

When it came to leading parades, there was no one who could do it better. He’d get right out in front in his fancy, braided uniform and tall hat. He’d carry a big, sparkling baton. He’d cock his arms and start to march. Up, down, up down. Always in time.

The very tiny man controlled the marching with a whistle. It was kind of like a bird-call. Tweet, tweet. The band, which was right behind him, would begin to play. A long tweet and a brisk short tweet meant the band would stop playing. And behind the band came row after row of large men in business suits and ties. These men loved that the very tiny man lead the parade because he was so small, and so much of a show-off, that he got all the attention and people barely bothered to look at the group of large men in suits who were behind the band. And so, over the years, the very tiny man began to collect a chest full of medals in recognition of the excellent work he did leading parades.

Soon enough he had so many medals that he had to stuff a pillow in his tunic to make his chest large enough to hold all the medals. And, he sometimes had to use his baton as a cane to keep from falling on his face. The very tiny man didn’t like this situation at all, although he liked the medals very much. He wanted to appear dignified, but sometimes he suspected that he was actually being laughed at.

It was his little whistle that first gave him a hint that people, or I should say birds, were laughing at him. The very tiny man lived in a city where there were lots and lots of little birds, you see. And whenever the little birds heard that very tiny man toot his parade whistle, they came in flocks to watch. Soon, there they’d be by the hundreds and thousands flying about, strutting like the very tiny man himself. Tweeting and whistling just like he was doing, and frankly, having a grand old time trying to copy everything that the very tiny man was doing. And these were not just your drab everyday brownish kinds of birds either. These birds had pretty fancy feathery uniforms themselves. They were the reddest of reds and the bluest of blues. They had pure white or golden breasts. They had crowns on the tops of their heads that made the very tiny man’s hat look second-rate in comparison. These were good-looking birds. No question about it.

Now the very tiny man didn’t like what the birds were doing one bit. Why, they were stealing his show and mocking him at the same time. At first, the very tiny man wasn’t sure what to do. But finally, he just struck out at the birds, swooping and cackling and strutting around him, using his baton. Of course, he missed the birds. But then one day he happened to hit one with his baton and he hit it hard. The pretty little bird got knocked right into the side of a building and kerplunk, fell down cold.

The other little birds stopped all their cheerful playing around and went to their injured friend. Was he dead? they wondered. Well, no, he wasn’t quite dead but it wasn’t good either because it turned out that the little bird got a broken wing out of the deal. And you know that broken wings aren’t good for little birds because then, they can’t fly. So all of his little bird friends had to help him home. They put him in his nest so his mother could take care of him.

But his mother wasn’t a professional nurse or a doctor, and to tell you the truth, wing-fixing is an expensive thing to treat. It is so expensive that some bird insurance companies don’t even cover it. And sadly, most birds with broken wings don’t make it, so a lot of birds wonder whether even trying to fix a broken wing is worth it. But not so, this little bird’s mother. She was determined to do everything she could to fix her baby’s broken wing. She got books from the library. She went on www.birdcall.edu and spoke to experts. She tweeted and twittered. And over time she managed to fix her baby bird’s wing.

I won’t tell you she did a perfect job. She didn’t The little bird soon discovered that if he didn’t pay a lot of attention while flying, he’d end up flying around in circles, because his wings were not ever again going to be the same shape or size. But at least, thanks to his Mama, he could fly again. And so he set about learning how to pay attention. This, by the way, is really hard for a bird, because they have a habit of moving their heads a whole lot. They don’t focus well and so they are always seeing something different. That makes their minds race first one way, and then another. But the little bird persisted and eventually overcame this bird disability, most of the time.

Meanwhile, the very tiny man discovered that he liked bashing birds with his baton. The more he did it, the better he got at it. And the better he got at it, the more he liked doing it. It made him feel good about himself to be good at doing anything, even if it was bashing birds. And of course, the men in the suits were happy because their very tiny man was happy. Also, I should mention that they were happy because they thought the birds were a nuisance. So they gave him even more medals. But pretty soon, the birds just stopped coming to his parades. And when the birds stopped coming, the fun stopped happening. Then people stopped coming.

Now there is no fun at all when you give a parade and no one shows up. You begin to wonder why you’re even bothering. And as you march down those streets that were once full of cheering people and enthusiastic birds, but now they’re empty and all you get is an occasional glance of disgust, you begin to ask yourself: “Is there anything we can do to spruce up these parades?” That’s what these men in suits were beginning to ask. Unfortunately, it never crossed any of their minds that everyone, people and birds alike were just fed up with the same old show.

So, the men in the suits had a meeting with the very tiny man. They told him they were worried because no one was coming to his parades anymore. They weren’t going to ask him to stop bashing birds, because, as I mentioned, they didn’t like little birds either. But they all agreed that they would have to come up with something.

“Well, one thing we can maybe do,” said one of the men in the suits, “is find a new bunch of people who haven’t seen a parade yet.”

“Great idea,” said another suit.

The very tiny many liked this idea a lot. He especially liked the idea of whole new audiences who would admire his prancing and strutting, his baton twirling and his whistle tweeting. And he also secretly hoped that if he expanded his territory, he’d find a whole bunch of new little birds he could bash. “But where are we going to find this new audience?” he asked.

Right then, one of the largest of the men in suits pointed to a very tall building in the middle of town. “Take your binoculars up on that building,” he said to the very tiny man. “Look around. North, South, East and West. Look high and low. Up and down. Somewhere out there are people who have never ever seen a parade. You’ll know them when you see them.”

So the very tiny man did as he was told, just as he always had done. First he took the elevator up to the seventieth floor. He stood on an observation deck. He looked in all directions. And whenever he saw a bunch of people he pointed them out to the men in suits. But each time he did, at least one of the suits shook his head sadly and told the very tiny man that he knew all those people had seen parades before.

After a while someone suggested that they go to the one hundredth floor, the top floor of the building. There, they could see further out. And so they did. But when they all got to the one hundredth floor, the same thing happened. It seemed that people everywhere had already been introduced to the idea of parades and very few of them were still interested.

It was then that another man in a suit pointed to the flag pole at the tippity-top of the building. “Maybe from up there?” he shrugged.

“Look,” said another man. “There’s a contraption that can hoist you right up to the very top of the flagpole. They call it a boson’s chair. Get in. Well hoist you up.”

The very tiny man didn’t like this at all. He was very much afraid of heights. But he was also kind of afraid of his friends, the big men in the suits. He was afraid that if he didn’t go up to the top of the flagpole they wouldn’t let him lead parades anymore, and then where would he be? Just a very tiny man with a uniform that had a chest full of medals. That didn’t sound at all as much fun as prancing at the head of a parade. So he heaved a sigh and stepped into the boson’s chair. He had his binoculars in one hand and held on tightly to the rope with his other hand, while men in suits hauled him to the top of the flag pole.

When he got to the top, they all yelled up at him to stand on his tip toes and take a good look around. But the very tiny man was so high up by now that his head was in the clouds and the wind was very strong. Though he held on as tightly as he could, he was still swaying pretty violently. He looked through his binoculars, left, right and center. Up and down. Far and near. And while he was doing that, suddenly a little bird came flying out of the clouds.

The little bird couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was the very tiny man who had bashed him with the baton! It was unintentional, because the little bird was not mean. But nonetheless, the little bird forgot to pay attention to his flying and veered off course. He bumped into the very tiny man. And although the little bird was small indeed, the very tiny many was also quite small. And with him swaying in the wind, and with that chest full of medals already unbalancing him, the bump turned into a very big deal.

The very tiny man lost his grip on the rope. His binoculars tangled his other arm. He tumbled right out of the boson’s chair and began falling, falling, falling. The men in suits watched as he dropped passed them. They looked down at the very tiny man growing smaller and smaller as he dropped. Down, down, down, he fell. One hundred floors. And when he finally reached the ground, he was so very tiny indeed that they couldn’t even see him go splat.

The men in suits looked at each other and shrugged.

“I guess we’ll have to find another very tiny man,” one said.

A reader recently asked me: “Hey Barry, are you related to the people who own the Willdorf Aircraft Company in Germany?”

The specific answer to your question is that I don’t know for sure. “Funny you should ask,” I told him. “As I was doing my research recently on the state of the world in general I found out some pretty revealing facts that bear on your inquiry. I  learned that my great-great grandfather Zsigmondy Rhomboid under den Dumkopf von Willdorf invented the paper plane about eight years before the Wright Brothers took off. He was awarded the Golden Heal of the Hobnailed Boot by Otto von Bismarck himself. And as luck would have it, World War One broke out just in time. The Germans needed lots of paper planes and fast. Old Ziggy came to their rescue and provided the Kaiser with all the paper planes he needed to win the war. It’s just too bad the Kaiser had a bum arm and couldn’t make them fly right.

“So, Barry what did Ziggy do after the war?”

Well, he just kept making those paper planes and for a while he had a pretty good thing going. But then along came this shmuck Hitler who apparently had a maternal grandmother who was Jewish. And when she saw his little fat baby face with that ugly little mustache hanging under his nose like a bar code she was repulsed. Hitler never got over his grandmother’s rejection. He tried to rebel by being a watercolorist but he was lousy at it and quite frankly, he wasn’t much of a paper-hanger either. So he set out to screw shicksas but he was always getting shut out by sexy Jewish men who looked much better than him and were way better at getting the girls. To improve his relative appearance he hooked up with this very fat man who happened to have a thing for paper airplanes. The guy probably had the biggest ass in Europe and boy could he cut loose. Pretty soon everyone was calling Germany the Farterland, and Hitler began to look great in comparison.

But they stunk up the place so bad that they had all of Europe gagging. So Hitler, who wasn’t much of Christian anyway, decided he’d do better creating a Caliphart. And he set about writing a book called the Protocols of Rectaltude. Not a lot is known about the ultimate plan and it was thought that the book burned up in the firebombing of Dresden. But Kurt Vonnegut happened to stumble upon it. He read it and was said to be repulsed. Indeed he was so disgusted by it that one day he just dropped it in J.D. Salinger’s urinal.

As legend has it. Salinger had a habit of draining his bladder on this very same literary work and it laid in the bottom of that urinal for many years while Salinger contemplated dining upon it. But just as he was about to do so, his prostate expanded like a hot air balloon and his stream shut off. Along with that he lost his appetite. So this artifact ultimately dried up.

The next thing we know, Salinger’s literary executors sold the dried up thing to Rupert Murdock, who whisked it off to the bowels of his News Corp. building in Hymietown U.S.A. where he is said to cackle over in the early morning hours by candlelight.

“So, Barry, do we know anything about the contents of the elusive work,  I mean the actual plan?”

Not much I’m afraid. Just the general outlines of the idea. It seems that Hitler had a plan to get all the Jewish bankers and brokers together in a couple of very tall buildings. But there was a catch. They’d only hire non-Jews to work for them in those buildings. On a given day, the Jews would declare a special Kabala holiday and take off for Miami, while they hired a bunch of undocumented workers to hurl paper airplanes, doused in paraffin and alit, into those buildings, thereby causing pandemonium and chaos.

“I’m not sure I understand, Barry. Just what was that supposed to accomplish?”

Well, the way I understand his thinking, this Hitler, being a wily son-of-a-bitch knew that minorities and especially Jews, have historically benefitted when pandemonium and chaos reigns among the cowed and timid majority. And he also knew that he could pin the blame for the debacle upon my great-great grandfather, Ziggy and the rest of his origami-conniving crew. It was a dastardly plan and we have much to thank Rupert Murdock for since he has done so much to keep it to himself. But I say, the circles and arrows are all there, plain as day. All we have to do is connect the dots people.

I leave Kettle Cove, heading southwest beneath a cloudless sky. The sun is hovering over my shoulder. I’m on a port tack with a moderate easterly wind and rolling swells. I’m abreast Singing Beach when I see her heading my way. She’s flying a massive Genoa that conceals her entire deck and most of the mainsail. She’s heeled and showing little freeboard. A neat bow wake, sparkling like mother-of-pearl glistens as she slices the cerulean blue in the shadow of her sails. She is coming on fast.

She passes close by to port and my insignificant, twelve-foot fiberglass Aqua Cat flops in her wind-shadow and then is rocked by her wake. She’s sixty-six feet long and carries nearly 1900 feet of sail. I carry less than a hundred. There’s a big 12 US-18 on her mainsail. She is Easterner. The local papers call her the “belle of the ball.” She’s on a shakedown run, up from Marblehead, where she was born four years earlier. In a week or so, she’ll be in Newport where they say she’s sure to win the America’s Cup that eluded her in ’58.

It’s maybe a half hour later. I can’t tell exactly. I don’t carry a watch. She’s come about and is bearing down on me. I can see the foredeck crew manic at their grinders and the helmsman listing to starboard, perpendicular to her sloping deck. As they close, I see amusement in their faces. They’ve got me in their sights. They intend to roar past, rocking me silly. I’ve just opened a can of beer. I’m seventeen and had a hard time acquiring that brew. I don’t want to risk getting swamped — losing it.

Screw them. I trim my dinky sail, catch the breeze on a broad reach, my fastest heading, and lean out over the windward pontoon to keep that hull from flying. I take Easterner’s measure over my right shoulder. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the gap isn’t closing like it was. Maybe it’s not closing at all. We’re like this for a while. I’m drenched in spray. Sailing Aqua Cats you get wet.

Finally, I luff into the wind, breaking off. Easterner blows by. I get no wave of recognition as they head back to Marblehead. I’m too insignificant to acknowledge, and maybe they’re in denial that for a short while, I held them off. But now I know a cat can beat that boat — even single-handed and skippered by a kid with one hand on the mainsheet, his other around a beer and his bare foot working the tiller.

Back in Kettle Cove, I tell everyone. A cat can kick ass against a 12-Meter. I get condescending nods. A few weeks later, the results are in. Easterner fails to qualify for the Cup finals. She got trounced in every race. After that, there’s not much point in telling my story — until now — when multi-hulls are racing for the Cup.

GLEN

Glen knew better. “Always stow a throw-rope,” he’d caution when he was teaching river rescue. He made money at it, and knew what he was doing. But sometimes there’s a big difference between knowing and doing. Sometimes, you’ve got to give up the doing because you know. And that’s hard. Especially when you’re on vacation ten thousand miles from home and some little shit has stolen your throw-rope.

It was only after Glen unpacked his gear in the jungle campsite that he noticed it was gone — along with some other stuff: his river knife, first aid kit and a new quick-dry top guaranteed to wick and keep you warm in cold water. He cursed after he laid his stuff out on the tarp and saw what was missing. He fumbled and fumed, at first thinking he’d just misplaced it. But no, his buddy, Mike, was also missing some gear.

Thank god, Glen thought, somewhat relieved as he looked at the enticing river flowing past, that they didn’t steal his kayak, spray skirt or paddle. Though it was a bit late in the season there was still a lot of power in it. And he had confidence in Mike, a skilled Class 4 plus with rescue experience. Everything would be okay and when they got to the take-out, he’d replace the stolen equipment. He’d come for the rush and he meant to get it.

Just as they put in, he noticed clouds forming in the mountains behind them and heard the distant rumble of thunder. No problem, he told himself. We’ll beat any surge. As a precaution, he, as the more experienced of the two, decided he’d sweep. Mike would go first.

All went well during the morning run. They pulled up on a sandbar, ate lunch, waited for it to digest and then took off again. There were three major rapids to come, and only one of them involved a serious drop. They scouted it. “There’s an undercut rock. Eddies into that cave,” he pointed out. “Stay way left. Even if you don’t make it, you’ll flush right through.” He noticed that the water had gotten pushy, maybe from the rainstorm upriver, but said nothing about it, not wanting to cause undue concern.

Mike took off; plunged nose first, avoided the undercut, stayed left, dropped again and ended up in a calm emerald pool fifty yards below the rock. Glen watched it all, nodding before digging his paddle into the current.

Looking up from the pool, Mike saw him charge into the first drop. And that was all. After many minutes, he pulled his boat up on the river bank and walked back to check. He heard Glen yelling for help. He’d been swept right at the undercut, into the cave, and was trapped inside by a deceptively strong eddy. With the new rainwater,the temperature was plummeting. Glen was becoming hypothermic. He could have been saved if they had a throw rope.

MRS. GATES

Mrs. Gates was in her eighties. My grandmother, no spry youngster herself, once told me that Mrs. Gates was the widow of a Civil War veteran. Looking at her, you could believe it. She was bent over like a question mark. She wore white lace bonnets that covered the few thin strands of grey that lay across her scalp. Her prim dresses hung limp from shoulders as insubstantial as a wire coat hanger. But despite her infirmities, she was able to maintain a foul mood — and for good reason. The times had passed her by.

Her single family house— pristine white clapboard with louvered shutters, and Victorian ornamentation — was all that remained of what once was a gentile pastoral neighborhood. She kept an antique swing on her front porch, in perfect condition, though unused. An elderly black gardener maintained her yard three times a week, cutting lawns, trimming hedges, and planting colorful annuals along the home’s field-stone foundation.

On either side of Mrs. Gates, newer, odious buildings hemmed her in like overweight passengers on an airplane. We lived in one — a five unit monstrosity with non-code additions poking from every wall like the unruly erections teenagers get. Instead of clapboard, we had the latest in asbestos siding, saving us the inconvenience of slapping on paint every other year. Our front yard, where the locals pitched horseshoes, was a micro-dust bowl that blew her way. Out back, nettles, burrs and thorn bushes in various shades of shit brown, sprouted from the ruins of an old chicken coop, fouling her view. The Fitzpatricks, Clearys and McDougals shared a rundown three-decker on her other flank. They cursed in public, drank until you could smell their sour presence down the block and sometimes liked to shoot BB guns at passing birds, just for fun.

We played ball in the street — using ten-cent high bouncers and broomsticks, counting on Mrs. Gates’ picket fence to stop the long ball, for if one made it over, she’d be our bane. We’d never see it again. She’d rap on her window and wag a finger, making sure the black man got to it first. Whenever one of us dared to hop her fence, she’d call the cops, demanding that the miscreant be sent to reform school.

Finally, we fashioned a plan. We loosened a picket so you could slide it to one side, like a pendulum, crawl along the wall beneath her window where she couldn’t see us, retrieve our ball, and then retrace our route, replacing the picket. This did her annuals no favors. After a few months, the black man caught on. He reattached the picket using many larger nails. We were working on loosening another picket when Mrs. Gates died and her yard went to hell with the rest of the neighborhood.

It was in the spring of 1958 that the four of us (for we were obliged to shlep along my little sister) with my father, whose personal opinion on all of this was that “it was a crock of shit” at the wheel, invaded the hills and hollers of West Virginia in Dad’s spanking new, black and chrome Mercury Turnpike Cruiser with its all-leather interior, electric windows and Massachusetts plates.

Consulting her AAA maps, Mom scrupulously avoided the busy red roads. Reluctantly settling for blue when all else failed, she took every opportunity to direct us onto the dotted lines — the so-called “improved roads” — which meant that in some spots they’d put gravel over the dirt.

But as we bounced along from rut to rut, as we penetrating into the heartland habitat of the endangered American serf, Mom’s bravado began to fade. Gone was her self-assurance. In its place was anxiety, evident in her looks of concern when I strayed more than a few paces from the car. Soon she was passing up opportunities to browse roadside stands, though they were laden with enticing ciders and native produce. She was prodding us to hush whenever we settled into the worn-out booths of the area’s dilapidated “whites only” diners. And she was scolding us to remain invisible when my father negotiated for one of the region’s ubiquitous accommodations, a kerosene-lit cabin cum outhouse.

The days passed and though, from the back seat, I got to see ramshackle dwellings roll by, elders rocking and gumming on sagging porches and their smudged-faced, barefoot offspring frolicking in yards that looked like pig slop, the trip devolved into a something akin to a Disneyesque amusement ride where one never actually comes in contact with anything. Sure enough, the scenes whizzing past confirmed that there were indeed people in these United States that looked like the Yokums of Dogpatch. But what did they think? Were they the besotted mindless hillbillies that populated Al Capp’s comics or were they actually mighty revolutionaries simply biding their time until they got “The Party’s” call to assault the citadels of power? I began to have my doubts.

Then, despite her best efforts to insulate me from an in-depth inquiry, the hermetic seal was broken and the bitter pill of reality poked its ugly head right into our comfortable vehicle. My alternative rite-of-passage bore unexpected fruits.

The sun was already dipping in and out from behind a series of steep, denuded hills when my father rolled to a stop beside the pumps of one of those last-gas-for-fifty- miles service stations. “Couple bucks of hi-test,” he grunted in the direction of the proprietor while attempting to mask his thick Bronx accent.

The gaunt codger to whom my father directed this order squinted in an attempt to read our plates, making his nose curl into a hawk’s beak. A cheek bulged with what I knew ballplayers called “chaw.” He pushed off from his rocker in the shade where he’d been fanning himself with some newsprint and shuffled over to our shiny vehicle, scrutinizing its contents as if we were a box of chocolates and he was pondering his selection. “Two-a super,” he confirmed, taking the opportunity, now that his mouth was in gear, to squirt a brown gob of tobacco juice out of its corner.

It was then that my father noticed an ancient red Coke machine sputtering away on the fellow’s porch. He squeezed himself out from behind the wheel to investigate, returning a few moments later to report with evident delight, “They’re still a nickel down here.”

Indeed, he’d discovered a backwater Shangri-La of pricing. In New York and Boston the nickel Coke was a thing of fading memory. How, I wondered, could they keep the prices so low here in Hicksville? It certainly wasn’t volume.

Euphoric at this discovery, my father’s generosity was exceptional and he sprang for twenty cents worth of the elixir. Moments later all four of us, little sister included, were in reverie, nursing our very own bottles of Coca Cola — savoring that pause that refreshes — so that even after the bumpkin had pumped out those eight gallons of his highest octane fuel we still had plenty of soda left in our bottles.

But lurking within our dalliance was hidden peril. The wholesale pricing had lifted my father’s spirits to the point where he couldn’t resist the urge to wring additional considerations out of those two bucks. Heedless of the “know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em” rule, he insisted the fellow check the oil, then the water levels in the radiator and battery and after that, the air in the tires. And still, when the proprietor appeared at our window, palm up, wanting to be paid, we’d not finished our drinks.

Dad peeled off a couple of bills and as the man shuffled off to ring up the sale, hit the gas. The next thing I heard was something that sounded like a rebel yell — and then some more of the same. I peered out the back window where I was just able to make him out —running through the cloud of dust and gravel the Turnpike Cruiser was kicking up – a strap of his overalls flapping. Had we left something behind? Was this old codger attempting to warn us of an unknown hazard? As my father slowed and the dust began to settle, the answer was revealed –no, it was nothing like that. His face was grim. His jaw was set. He was charging toward us like an infantryman, with a double-barreled shotgun cradled across his chest.

I looked in the rearview mirror to see perspiration spreading over my father’s brow. His fingers were gripping the steering wheel tightly. There was fear in his eyes — the fear of the Jew in Gentile-land since time immemorial.

Was this curtains for Manny Willdorf? Would he be wacked with a load double 0 buck like his boyhood hero, the Bronx mobster, Dutch Schultz? Or were we in for a necktie party —a West Virginian version of the murder of Leo Frank, the Jew famously lynched in Georgia forty years earlier?

He rolled down his window and waited until the yokel came abreast of him, then gave the fellow a nervous shrug. My mother, uncharacteristically, had nothing to say. But the owner of the gas station was not similarly tongue-tied. “Now jus’ hole on ther’, Yankee,” he drawled, “hole dem gol-darn hosses.”

My eyes were drawn to the gun. I’d seen these double-barreled affairs before on TV. The guy who sat next to the stagecoach driver always had one. Enthralled, I noticed the old fellow’s thumb resting on the hammer behind one of the barrels as he contemplated cocking the weapon. “Ahah,” I thought, not fully in touch with the delicacy of our predicament, “here at last is the real Appalachia. He must be one of those revolutionaries willing to pile up corpse upon corpse to unseat the capitalists and seize the reigns of power. Here’s the real McCoy Mom’s always talking about. We’ll straighten this out in no time. All Mom has to explain is that we’re socialists and revolutionaries just like him. No problem. Go ahead, Dad. Tell him that even though we have this new four-door black car that looks almost like a limousine, that you’ve got a college education and work as a white-collar engineer, tell him that we’re his comrades.”

But such was not in my father’s game plan. Instead, he could only summon a sputtering, “What’s wrong?”

“You run off without payin’ no deposit on them colas you got. That’s what’s wrong, Yankee,” the hillbilly snarled. “You owe me eight cents, two each for them four bottles you lit out with. So you jus put them bottles back in the rack or gimme eight cents right now.”

My father sighed with relief. He wasn’t getting lynched. “Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Just a misunderstanding.” But there was a hitch in his voice that I knew well. The buckshot-riddled ghost of Dutch Schultz was calling. I recognized that old deep-down reluctance he always had to part with a penny, especially urgent here, as this demand came from a yokel wanting eight cents in hard currency. “Try something,” the Dutchman whispered, and my father began to feel for an angle. “Look,” he said, “I got some empties in the trunk. How about I give you four of them so the kids can finish their drinks and we’ll be on our way?”

The old man scratched the stubble on his chin while he considered the proposal. He didn’t quite like it –knew he was dealing with a fast-talking Yankee bottle thief — but he couldn’t sniff out the game. “Les jus’ see them bottles, Yankee.”

“Sure, sure,” said my father as he hauled his butt out of the car. He popped the trunk and there, to one side, was his wooden crate filled with coke bottles, a few of the large five-cent deposit kind and a slew of smaller two-centers.

The hillbilly peered inside and spat again. He knew the moonshine business all right and this smacked of something like it. He fretted with a hammer on his gun. He squinted. He frowned. Obviously not a man of words, he looked to be turning over in his mind the ones he intended to use. “Now I know what you been doin’ down here, Yankee. You been thievin’ our Coke bottles.”

I snickered. Could this backwater yokel really think that my father had actually earned a brand new Mercury by stealing empties from gas stations? But then, except for his exaggerated idea of the profit involved, the hick had struck pay dirt as to the truth of the matter.

The air was redolent with the tang of gun oil. My father stared at the weapon. The glaring sinister voids that were its pair of muzzles. The carved cross-hatching of its walnut stock, polished to the sheen of a recruit’s boot. The dust-free ebony barrel that sparkled like river rapids at sundown. If that gas station jockey loved anything in this world, it was that piece. It brought Dad to his senses. “Take some of the big ones,” he gulped. “Your choice.”

Not a greedy fellow, the West Virginian satisfied himself with a couple of the five-centers.

After we got home my father began telling everyone that he was so moved by this downtrodden worker’s distress, he gave the fellow an extra two cents, and everyone believed him.

While my “socialist bar mitzvah” didn’t teach my much in the way of Torah, I did manage to bring home some useful observations: You don’t have to be educated to be smart. Schooling is not an inoculation against stupidity. If you bullshit well enough, there are plenty of people out there who won’t be able to distinguish it from the truth. And, it doesn’t hurt to keep your shotgun well-oiled.

Witnesses claimed to have seen him leaning over the railing with his binoculars. They speculated that he must have been coveting the lush vineyards and pregnant orchards that had not yet succumbed to subdivision sprawl. At some point, he must have turned toward the casino’s new garage as a single shot struck him dead on in the forehead. No one admitted seeing or hearing anything amiss. His coffee was cold by the time they discovered him.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO KILLED THE RABBI, YOU’LL HAVE TO GO TO: http://www.jewishmag.com/126mag/story_pincus/story_pincus.htm

*Bidat Azitmay is the 109 year-old founder and grand master of Neoga (“What anti-matter is to matter, so Neoga is to Yoga.”) Azitmay’s world-famous philosophy can be summarized, and indeed has been summed up brilliantly by none other than himself as: “Live outside the moment.” Unlike Yoga, where practitioners merely pose themselves, Azitmay recommends that its practitioners go for the gold and X-pose themselves. This is an excerpt from his new autobiography: “What I Choose To Remember.”

The other day, I was reading an article about Romaine Lotus, the yoga supermodel who was a recent cover-girl for Yoga Urinal Monthly™. She was describing a recent shopping trip to Bolsters, Blankets and Beyond™, where she had scored a weave print Nike Guru™ Sports Top, black Kembali™ yoga shoes, and earth tone Prana Sutra™ pants. There was a picture of her carrying a lime-green, sticky-mat bag slung over her shoulder. Her long blond hair reached the drawstrings on her Chi™ pants. She was hyping Baba Lou’s Artichokasana™ diet. It made me shiva so badly I nearly spilled my double decaf latte Grande™ onto my Crocs™.

So I was well-prepared when my Shar-Pei™ puppy, Feng Shui, (who was reading and drooling over my shoulder) dropped her Gourmet™ Doggie Bone and asked me the question that is surely on the mind of every downward facing dog: “What is Yoga turning into?”

I explained, in her native Mandarin — she’s not that fluent in English; she’s only a puppy. — I saw this coming in 1899 when, at fourteen months of age, I was doing a headstand in my crib. A traveling Yoga supply salesman dropped by and sold my mother, Jess Azuare, a non-stick, Teflon™ mat, a Yoga Bustle™ and a year’s supply of Power-Cocaine Lum-Bars™.

Right then and there, I came out of my headstand and gave up Yoga all together. It had no entrepreneurial future for a fourteen-month old. It was evident that it was going commercial; complete with designer products, glossy magazines, TV specials, celebrity practitioners and Yoga-themed vacations and that all the stalls would be occupied before I got old enough to use that men’s room alone. I mean, what’s the point of becoming a wanna-be participant in a fad? It’s like being the last investor in a pyramid scheme. I decided that I’d need to get hopping and start something new, and fresh — something where I could own all the ™S.

Subsequent empirical observation only confirmed my infantile prescience. For example, just the other day, I went to our local deli and asked for a turkey on rye. The waitress told me that they no longer sold that kind of food and suggested a hamstring sanscritwich. I left and went over to McDonalds™. That’s when I found out that their marketing department had retired the old Golden Arches™ logo description and was now claiming it was actually an abstraction of a pair of Yogis in back-bends. I told them they ought to rename the place “Golden Genitalia.” They said that I had a lot of Nirvana.

So I decided to try the Colonel™. When I walked in, an old guy in a white suit and spats strutted up and said “Vishnu?” “Not much,” I replied. Everything was going fine until I asked for fried chicken and he said that now all he served was chickenasana.

They had me up against a wall. The only places to eat in town were these fast food joints so I headed for the train station. I figured I’d get more choices in the big city. There was only one train running that afternoon and it was going to Chataranga and the stationmaster persisted in calling it the Chataranga Choo Choo, even though it ran on electricity.

I headed over to the bus terminal looking for a Greyhound™, but they had renamed the company Downward-facing hound.

Disgusted, I hitched a ride to the airport. The only flight I could book was on Inner Peace Airlines. At airport security TSA (Which now stands for TadaSanA) took away my shoes, saying that they were no longer allowed on airplanes, but not to worry, the floors were covered with sticky mats. When I got on the plane, I saw that they had removed all the seats. The stewardess handed me a bolster, four blankets, an eye bag and a belt and then set me up in Queen pose for the entire flight. When we landed and I was leaving the plane she told me to have a Namaste.

I needed to rent a Karma so I tried to find Hertz™. I was sent over to the Informeditation Booth. “We don’t have Hertz™ here,” said the woman behind the counter. “Not if you properly warm up and don’t attempt something beyond your skill level. But we do have Burns.” I had no choice but to rent from Burns. They offered me two choices, a stretch limo or a Mazda™ Vanyata, which came with floor mats that rolled up.

By this time, I was totally exhausted and went looking for a hotel. I was able to get a room in the Shivasana Inn. (You know; the place where they leave the enlightenment on for you.) But there was no bed in my room. Just a plank. The only other furniture was a headstand.

It was really hot in the room so I tried to turn on the air conditioner. It took a long slow breath in; then started sputtering. I called maintenance. Two yogis came to my room. The older one told me his name was I.N. Gar and then said “I’d like to introduce you to my son, Salutations.” They suggested that I try OOOMing. It didn’t work. Mr. Gar handed me a Bik-ram™ and told me to hit the machine with it, but that didn’t work either. “Try saying a sutra,” his son, Salutations urged. “That’s our last chants.”

I couldn’t sleep so I rolled over onto my side, pushed myself up and went looking for a place to eat. The only thing close was a place called Rodney’s Yee Olde Brew Pub. What they brewed was Chai™ tea. I asked the guy next to me how he liked the food and he started complaining that he couldn’t touch his tofus. The waiter suggested he try calf muscles or a hamstring. I stuck with the tea.

After a pot of Chai™, I needed to take a leak and was directed to a wall lined with Yoga Urinals™. A sign proudly informed me that they’d just installed a brand new pelvic floor and suggested that this was a good place to X-pose oneself. I had to say, I was delighted to find that the proprietor of this restroom was a Neogi. But before I went into my first X- posé, I looked around for undercover Yoga cops. (They’re easy to spot because they are always in a wide stance, barefoot and seem to want to bend over until they can stick their head in a toilet bowl.) Seeing none, I went for it. It’s called Ground Sloth X-pose and requires a sink with hot and cold running water, two hot air blowing hand driers and a soap dispenser. I can’t say anymore until you take an oath and sign a confidentiality agreement.

The X- posé made me feel very restored so I went for a walk. The sidewalk was crowded. A panhandler asked me for money. I could see his problem. He was strapped. Down the way, at a photo studio, proud parents were trying to stand their kids into poses but it didn’t seem like the children wanted their pictures taken. They were heavily invested in their tantrum yoga.

I was getting a little bored so I went into Back Bend Bookstore™ and picked up a copy of the latest best seller. Be Proudayomama! By Vera B. Drasana. I thought it was a little over the top. But it did strike home. My own mother, Jess Azuare was a pretty good mom to me, except when she put on her damn Yoga Bustle™ and did backbends while trying to feed me. (I was still too young, she claimed, to cervical myself.) I remember tearing off her eye bag and screaming “Enough with the Yoga already!” But the Power-Cocaine Lum-Bars™ were pretty neat.