Up Against the Wall

BETWEEN A ROCK

&

A HARD PLACE

     When I was 14, we lived in the area of Phoenix known as Paradise Valley. Now an enclave of the wealthy, or at least the semi-wealthy, then it was a largely unpopulated area outside the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, with homes widely scattered over the desert floor. Our home was a small wood-sided house that sat high on the mesa near where the developed area of Phoenix ended and the vacant desert began. Our nearest neighbor was a half mile away, farther up the dirt road that lead to our house. I remember the desert was cut with a grid of dirt roads like ours, but houses were few and far in between. A few miles to the north, a subdivision of tract homes clustered together, but for the most part Paradise Valley was wide open and sparsely settled. It wouldn't last.

     Our home was only about 10 years old, but we had to haul water. A water tank stood on a 10 ft tower behind the house, holding maybe 200 gallons of water. My dad made weekly trips to haul water with a trailer that was provided with the house. Sometimes we would run out of water in the middle of the week, and he would have to make a trip to get a load of water, after working a long day.

     I also remember watching an afternoon TV program aimed at teens. It featured cartoons, live action shenanigans, the Top 10 list every Friday, dancing and record "reviews" by the dancers, and live music, covers of Top 40 hits and gag songs, by a band called Hubb Kapp and the Wheels. It was sort of a cross between American Bandstand and Where the Action Is, on a local level, typical mid-60's zaniness. Years later, I would recognize, beneath the makeup, the same singer I had previously known as Hubb Kapp, in his new incarnation as Alice Kooper.

     Living where we did, with the houses so far apart, there weren't any kids nearby, so I spent much of my time outside, exploring the desert. The mesa rose behind our house, sloping upward for several hundred yards before shearing off in a cliff face that overlooked the cut where Cave Creek Rd passed through on its route into the Paradise Valley. The cliff just suddenly dropped from the sloping desert floor, falling in a nearly vertical face some 60 ft before it meeting the talus slope to continue down to the banks of the road. A gas station, a Flying A if memory serves, occupied a wide spot in the area south of the talus slope. The cliffs, a reddish-brown escarpment of basaltic rock tailed off on the west end, dying into the desert a few hundred feet away.

     I scrambled down the side and looked up at the cliff face; from the bottom it looked even more impressive, presenting a nearly smooth face, broken here and there with cracks and small protrusions of rock. I began by climbing at the edges, following an obvious and easy path, testing each foothold to know I could trust it, each handhold before committing my weight to it before reaching for the next. I soon reached the top, feeling like Sir Edmund Hillary when I rolled over onto the top and sat, legs dangling into space, contemplating the empire at my feet. I was the king of the world; far below toy cars moved through the cut. I knew I had found one of those secret places where fun and adventure met to create something special.

      Soon, I was climbing everyday after school. I would leave the bus, race to the house and drop my books, then head out the back door toward the scarp, whistling a merry tune. Those were some of the happiest days of my youth, lasting a mere three months, but encompassing a world completely apart from any I had known before. I had a tiny transistor radio, hardly the size of a pack of cigarettes, with an earphone that I plugged in, rocking out to the Spring 1964 Top 40, the Beatles, Peter and Gordon, Billy J Kramer, Chuck Berry's No Particular Place to Go, a musical world exploding across the airwaves. I would tuck the radio into a pocket, the earpiece in my ear, and set off across the rock face, looking for new challenges and rocking to the hits, growing bolder with each successful climb.

     Soon, I was climbing down to begin my climb up, searching for evermore difficult routes across the rock face, for the climb had developed into a challenge of epic proportions for me, as I grew more skilled and confident. Before long, I had traversed every path, up and down, even across the face, looking for ever more difficult paths to climb, never stopping to consider that I was perched on tiny outcropping of rock mere inches wide, clinging to equally small knobs with clenched fingers, high above the busy road below, where at any given moment dozens of cars where speeding by. A misstep, a broken foothold, a handhold suddenly breaking away from the rock face, and I would be plunging straight down, rolling down the steep talus slope and into the path of oncoming traffic before I could stop my fall. Assuming, of course, I was sufficiently conscious to be able to stop.

     Such thoughts really didn't cross my mind, I was certain of my immortality and supremely confident of my ability to climb any route up this cliff. It was this self-delusion that nearly brought me literally crashing down. I followed a twisting, tortuous path up the cliff face one afternoon, selecting the hardest holds, looking for a way I had yet to travel, making choices based on difficulty. I finally ended up on a section I hadn't climbed before, because it was almost smooth. No cracks, nothing sticking out to step onto, the face was a blank. I reached up as far as I could, for a tiny handhold, and left my last solid foothold for a tiny projection that barely allowed enough purchase to keep my foot on. Suddenly, there I was, face pressed up against the rock, hanging on for dear life. There was no way to get back down to where I had been, and nothing presented itself for me to move onto, in the way of a hand- or foothold. I was stuck, some 60 ft up in the air, looking down at the cars as tiny as Hot Wheels rushing through the pass below. I was well and truly stuck, with no place to go, no way to signal anyone, because my position was so tenuous I could not risk taking a hand away to signal my distress.

     Panic began to well up in my chest, I could just imagine my mother's anger and sadness over my broken body (I could easily visualize black tire treads criss-crossing my body!). I knew she would be saddened, but I also knew how righteous her anger would be. I did NOT want to be the object of that ire, so I began an intensive study of the rock face, looking at it from mere inches away, because I couldn't pull my head back very far. There didn't seem to be any options, as I carefully reversed the direction of my head against the wall, turning to look the other way. I desperately sought any hand hold, any crack or cranny, any place I could lodge my hand or rest a foot to give me leverage to move to another. Nothing appeared to be close enough, and my panic grew, my heart beating like a trip hammer, threatening to burst out of my chest from the sheer intensity.

     I swallowed hard, pushing the fear down, and again looked at the rock face for an escape. I had gone over it enough to be able to memorize it, when I noticed a small vertical crack above my head, slightly out of reach. I looked to see if there was any place to put my foot, and saw a tiny outcrop that was too high to step too, and too low to hold on to, and too far away in any case. I studied these possibilities and finally decided if I could get my hand into the crack above, I could swing to the foothold, and there would be other handholds near enough to reach from there. I would have to launch myself from my already tenuous foothold, up to jam my fingers into the crack and then swing onto the foothold, a series of feats worthy of an Olympic gymnast, but I had no other choices.

     I set my set ready to go, gathered my courage, such as it was, and focused on the tasks necessary to accomplish what I wanted. Saying a final prayer, I tensed my thigh muscles and leapt up toward the crack. I managed to jam my fingers just barely into the crack, taking the entire weight of my body on them as my feet left any purchase on the rock. I hung there for a moment and then swung over to get my foot on the tiny ledge of rock and pulled my other arm over my head to get a grip in the crack. This allowed me to pull my abused fingers out of the crack, flex them to get the blood back into them and then reach up for another handhold above. By this manner, I crabbed up the smooth face, reaching for each succeeding hold as it became available, until I finally was able to pull myself over the edge and lay on the flat ground at the top once again. As I gasped and gathered my scattered wits about me, I looked down at the face, and at the drop I would have taken, at the traffic rolling by oblivious to my recent peril.

     I knew I had been spared a horrible fate, and I gave thanks to whatever guardian angels had been sitting on my shoulders that day. I sat with my legs dangling over the edge, a stupid grin on my face. I plugged the earpiece back in and twisted the volume up, Dave Clark Five's Bits and Pieces rocking out, as I gazed out over my realm. I knew I couldn't tell anyone about this, lest it get back to my mother, and besides, who would believe it anyway? I didn't half believe it myself. A few years ago, when I finally told my mom about this escapade, she wasn't amused. I knew then I had made the right decision to spare her the worry this might have caused, and myself the punishment it would have generated. It might have been worse than the fall....

Distorted vision

1.  Another Star Turn:  As the star turns, a new world emerges.

2.   Birds of a Feather:  Admiring the plumage.

3.   Happy Feet:  The dance of the happy beagle.

4.   The Rooster Crows:  Just strutting his stuff.

5.   Man the Barricades:  Radical chic in passion's play.

6.   A Star For You:  A starflower grows in the crannied wall.

With A Little Help

A   L i t t l e   H e l p   F r o m  

M y    F r i e n d s . . .

You know me well, oh so well, you think. I was in the corner with L______, the first time you remember seeing me, and you wondered what she was doing with me. Later, after L______ had moved on and left me in the wake of her destruction, just another piece of flotsam left to wash up on the shore, you saw me with K______, and wondered, what does she see in him, he being me, of course. K_______ left like L______, another storm passing, leaving jetsam behind where once you thought was an otherwise unremarkable landscape. Next was M______, whom you believed to be a force of nature in her own right and there she was, lingering over my every word and glance, offering up her flawless cheeks and lips to frequent caresses by my own, to your utter mystification. She, too, like her sisters in spirit, departed in a flurry of sea squalls and blowing winds, leaving a trail of wreckage that dwarfed her predecessors by an impressive factor.

You didn’t see me afterward and, naturally enough, I didn’t cross your mind in the least, not even enough for you to note my absence or remark on who I wasn’t with this time. When next you did take notice, and I was in the company of an attractive someone you did not even know, what occurred to you on that occasion ran more to “how does he get so many otherwise interesting and intelligent women to go out with him?” It must have galled like a tiny pebble in a tight shoe, to see me blissfully unaware of your animosity and ill-will. Of course that wasn't to last, either, if you had anything to say about it, and you always did, unbeknownst to me.

Time has its way with us all, though, dealing the cards we must play, calling a new hand and dealing out jokers with aces, deuces with jacks, in an unending display of possibilities, as we wait patiently for the wheel to make its way around again. Sitting idly by, it occurs to me that some of you have had three or more marriages, none of them happier for longer than it took to wear the new off the wedding presents. Could it be jealousy that so drives you, rather than any concern for the ladies in question? They certainly proved more than equal to the task of trashing my emotions upon their departures, although I shortly picked myself up, dusted myself off, and got on with my life.

When in the dark of night, alone, I think of one, or another, wondering what it would have been like to have a history longer than a TV sitcom. I know it to be a waste of time, for didn't you, my friends, do your best to make sure nothing of the sort would happen? You couldn't see the lady in question wasting her life with so unworthy a match as I might prove to be. This is why you made certain each knew of any indiscretion, in lurid detail, never concerning yourself with such trivial matters as truth or reality. Imagine my surprise to find I had such good friends, who spared no effort to ensure my unhappiness. I only wish there were some way to repay the unkindness, to let you feel what it is like to have such friends as I.

How is it I have been so fortunate at to have such diligent friends, so intent on ensuring my unhappiness and lack of stimulating companionship? People who have gone miles out of their way to assure themselves of my singularity and solitude, without asking any other reward. Is it any wonder I do not trust much or well, and do not care if someone likes or dislikes me? It has often been cited, by those who have infringed on my personal life, as the reason, the fact that I do not seem to care if I am liked or not. I see it as a defense mechanism, they see it as a red flag. Who knows which is right, although I still fail to see the rationale that makes it OK, but then Ihave always been myopic that way, when it comes to my own comfort and happiness. Call me crazy.....

 

Don't ask me where this came from. We were sitting down to dinner one evening, and the waitress mentioned it might be a few minutes before she could get back to us, so I turned over the placemat and started writing. I wrote out almost the entire thing before the food came to distract my attention. Not necessarily autobiographical, but I have had "friends" who have gone out of their way to "protect" various young ladies whom I had romantic feelings for....

Sometimes I Dream

In Dreams We Wait

  One foot firmly in the past, eyes on the future,
I must go ever on because I cannot go back.
The future beckons, a bright and shining lie,
promising pleasures only dreamt of, never seen.
The past lingers, with memories of good times
and those best forgotten, each pushing ahead,
crowding like children, for a share of attention,
while I make my way through each passing day.
When at last a fitful calm finally descends,
creeping in like the night, on tiny cats paws,
stealing into the crannies of my consciousness,
and letting the day's cares slip into oblivion.
I let go of the known, accepting the failure
of another day, falling far short of perfection,
once again, no matter how hard I might have tried.  

Each day brings its own challenges, a new chance
to work on the mysteries of life in the fast lane,
another opportunity to raise the balancing act
to a fine art, fooling some people all of the time
and myself only some of the time, to my chagrin.
The day starts when the dreams end, the alarm
shrills its siren song, calling me to shower and shave,
forcing me out of the cocoon of comfortable bed
and into the cold morning, ill prepared for the day's
coming battles, confrontations and consternations.
The dreams of the night fade in the morning light,
dissipating in the harsh reality of cold, sharp steel,
and after-shave splashed on freshly razored cheeks,
in preparation of another day in paradise found
and lost, in the spaces between awake and asleep.