21
The previous Summer, when Paul was still around, we had fallen into a
new Saturday routine. We'd get together late morning for fun at his
place, have lunch, then walk to another kid's house just a bit down
the street. Also named 'Paul', we'd then visit while we killed some
time until the ''Creature Double Feature'' afternoon broadcast hit
the air. The advantage was, other Paul had his own T.V. in
his upstairs bedroom where we could watch the two movies back to back
without parental interruption. It didn't matter that his T.V. was
black & white as the movies themselves were black & white
classics from the nineteen forties and fifties. Along with the
typical monster movies were the occasional freaky ones with giant
ants or rocks that would spring from the ground and fall on people or
buildings to crush them flat. We would usually only watch the first
movie, then spend sometime outside with other Paul before we
had to go back to our respective homes for dinner. Once in a while,
when it rained, we'd stay in and start the second movie...
But in the Summer of Nineteen Seventy-Four, soon after we got back
from Wyoming, I had Pete over to tell him about my trip and show him
the jumping beans. He was impressed by the trip news, but more so by
the jumping beans as he hadn't thought they were real either. Though
only about half of them were jumping at the time.
Sure enough, the hayfield was short from haying but I checked with
Marcus Giacomo to see if they needed any help on the deliveries.
They didn't but they were going to be doing a follow-up harvest by
mid August, so I planned on that.
I made sure to get in a visit to see Jonathan and fill him in on my
trip news, though I forgot to bring the jumping beans to his house
and show him. When his mother returned me home, he rode along so I
could quickly bring him into my house and show him the beans. Only
about a third of them were jumping, and I had to hold them under the
light for a bit before they did.
By the middle of August, my father had decided to clean-up around the
yard a bit. In the previous years my sister had done this as part of
getting ready for her annual Fall bonfire, but as she'd now been gone
for a few years, first disowned, then out west, the yard had declined
a bit. This caught my interest and I was helping him. Then to my
surprise, the other Paul from the previous Summer came walking
up my driveway. It turned out, with Paul having moved away, in my
usual out of sight out of mind fashion, it hadn't occurred to me
to return to the previous summer's routine of visiting with the other
Paul and catching the monster movies with him. Thus with both
Paul moved and me forgetting about him, other Paul had felt
abandoned. As we had always met at his house, he didn't know my
phone number and even though he hadn't been to my house either, he
knew generally where it was and had walked the half mile until he
found the driveway into the woods.
I apologized to him and we visited and played for the rest of the
afternoon. I don't remember if I showed him the jumping beans, I'm
sure I must have. And then my mother gave him a ride home and I made
a commitment to keep in touch with him going forward and visit the
following week...
I didn't. Pete's father was taking his family to a small plot
of coastline land he'd bought on the Northeast edge of Maine.
Somehow it had been arranged between my mother and Pete's parents
that I would join them on a week long camping trip to there. This
was news to me as I hadn't been in the loop at all and found myself
having to get together a bag of clothes and sleeping bag for the trip
the night before.
Pete's parents took the front seat of their sage green Dodge Dart and
Pete and his sister took the back seat. My mother brought me over
early in the morning and we packed my stuff in and I squoze into the
back seat. The trip from home to the plot of coastline took a full
day's drive. We chatted for a bit in the back seat, Pete's father
would toss in the occasional travelogue point of interest. We
stopped a couple of times to visit one of these, a memorial to
someone involved in a witch trial or the such that had taken place in
Maine's early history. We took another driving break so we could eat
our bagged lunches. This was a bit of a novelty for me as I had only
associated bagged lunches with school and work routines, not trips.
We finally got to the plot of coastline in the evening with the
twilight glow even darker as the land was woods that directly touched
the coast.
The place had a picnic table, a small cooking area made of some
cinder blocks, I think, and a hole in the ground a few yards away
where we were to 'do our business.' Given the lateness, we pretty
much unpacked and grilled some hotdogs for dinner. Pete's parents
had the largest tent, his sister had a tent of her own and I got to
share Pete's tent, the smallest of them all. Described as a
'Pup' tent, it gave each of us about two feet wide for our sleeping
bags, meaning we pretty much got to sleep only on our sides. We
would chat for a bit before falling to sleep.
In the morning I found that there wasn't much more to this plot of
land than what I had seen that previous night, except for the actual
coast. We walked through the woods until they broke at the ocean
side. About three feet down from the edge of the woods was a thin
ribbon of water rounded rocks, of various sizes, though mostly
pebbles. Activities included digging through the rocks for clams at
low tide, and hiking through the surrounding woods at other times.
Unlike the woods around my family home which had rolling hills in
them and patches of small clearings where you could glimpse the sun
for a bit, these woods were flat and uniform. We had brought along a
couple of games to play which we did at the picnic table, often with
Pete's sister joining in. By the middle of the second full day
there, Pete and I needed periods of apart time and I
would roam the surrounding woods on my own or take a lie down in the
pup tent and count how many days were left until the trip back home.
As I had a long history of not eating fish, for clam bake dinners
they would ration out a couple more hotdogs for me. Lunches would
include various canned items, including beans. By the end of the
trip, there was a spare hotdog that evening and Pete got a surprise
treat. The drive back home was quieter, as we had long since been
talked out, though this time it included a stop at a restaurant for
lunch. Everyone seemed to revel in that moment of variety and
choice.
Unlike the day driving out where I had been delivered to his home, I
was dropped off at my home the evening back. Dinner had already
passed at my house, but I didn't mind as I just wanted to take a
long, hot shower and crawl into a comfortable bed with a pillow. By
morning I discovered that the second haying cycle had taken place
while I was gone. I consoled myself that there was always next
summer, but I think even then I had my doubts.
School was the next week and I took my Mexican jumping beans with me
to show all the kids. But even with some time by a hot lamp, they
just sat there in the little plastic case. Pete vouched for me that
they had actually jumped when he first saw them. I concluded that I
would plant them the next Spring and hopefully grow some more.
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