Chesterland, Lynbrook, and Chappaqua - by Bob
The earliest memories, they say, begin with scent; the smell of your mother’s milk, of your father’s freshly shaven face. Of biscuits and dust in the little room where they kept your crib, of your blanket and diaper poop.
Mine begin with a song. My mother taught me Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, fuzzy wuzzy had no hair so fuzzy wuzzy wazzunt fuzzy wuzzy when I was just shy of three, in Chesterland, outside Cleveland. She said her mother taught it to her along with a little tune when she was a little girl in Kansas. I was in short pants, humming fuzzy wuzzy on a hot summer day watching the county road crew patch the highway with shiny black tar. A hairy guy loomed over me. "You ever try this?" he said, scooping a groove of hot tar, rolling it into a ball and popping it into his mouth. "Better than chewing gum."
I squatted down, smudging my scuffed, lace-up brown leather shoes which I had almost learned to tie. I could tie one loop, but I was months away from doing a full bow. I wasn’t supposed to be outside the split rail fence that marked off our front yard, two acres of acorn squash. But there was always good stuff in the ditch that ran along the road, like bottle caps, road kill, snakes and frogs. The tar chewed ok once it cooled down but the flavor had a kind of tractor tang, like the old barn behind our low, log front, house. I wanted to taste everything.
Weekday mornings began with driving Dad to the end of the trolley line for his ride into the city. The Squibb toothpaste logo looked just like the row of concrete Greek columns at the end of the tracks. Every time I brushed my teeth with Squibb’s pink toothpaste I thought, that’s Dad’s station.
One weekend we drove out to a small airfield on Lake Erie. My dad and my brother Bill, who was 8, climbed up into single engine plane and it trundled down the field, turned around came toward us and took off. I had seen birds fly, but this was completely different and completely impossible. But the plane went up and up and disappeared. Very worrying.
I was hugely relieved when my father came back . My brother, on the other hand, could have stayed gone and that would have been fine. But as every second sibling learns from the get-go, you can’t have everything.
Uncle Bill came to visit in his new sky blue Air Force uniform. He was tanned with a crew cut and an aviator’s grin. He gave me a toy bomber painted olive drab with white windows. I liked it and it occurred to me that if I spun the propellers and flung it hard enough it might fly. So I took it out on the lawn, spun the propellers and threw it as hard as I could. Whooof. Gone.
I was looking for my plane in the bushes at the edge of the lawn when, huge and loud, my olive drab bomber rose overhead in the bright blue Ohio sky, and was gone, on its way to bomb the boys in Germany. Sure, I knew the plane overhead couldn't be mine. But there was always that doubt. I never found the toy.
The next song I remember learning was Mairzydoats* and Dozydoats (years later I learned the real lyrics; "Mares eat oats and does eat oats, etc.") from Patty, Shirley and LaVerne, the Andrews sisters. They were singing to keep our wartime spirits up on our big mahogany Magnavox radio, an important piece of furniture in our living room in Lynbrook, Long Island. The day the Magnavox broadcast news of President Roosevelt (and Miller’s dog’s) death, my mother kept bursting into tears.
I loved comic books and even better than GI Joe and Superman stories, I loved the stuff in the back page ads. The first thing I ever sent away for was a magic flashlight. A flat piece of cardboard arrived with instructions. You folded it into a pyramid, held the white grit surface to a light, pounded down the stairs into the basement and it would glow in the dark for a little while. Probably radioactive. Next I sent away for a book titled "How to be a Witty Talker." Needless to say, it never showed up.
Sometimes I would drag my mother into the shoe store in downtown Lynbrook where they had an x-ray machine. You stuck your feet under it and looked into a scope to see your neon green foot bones glow and wiggle inside your shoes. I loved that. Probably explains the lumpy knuckles in my toes.
I had asthma and my parents took me to Dr. Ratner in Manhattan. I went twice a week for two years, going by myself after I learned how to do it. In the back of my mind I can play a whole carousel of Fifth Avenue snapshots, shot from knee level, and from the top of an open double decker bus. The really good double deckers were the old ones with cane wickerwork around the top deck. For the crime of being allergic to ragweed, pigweed, dust, dogs and cats, Dr. Ratner sentenced me to a year of cod liver oil, corn flakes, bananas and sweetened condensed milk.
Mom decided to nip my Brooklyn accent in the bud and we moved from "Lon Guyland." to Chappaqua.. My parents told me the teachers were some of the best in the country. And they were. In the middle of first grade I went to Miss Garby's class in the basement of the King Street School. She was a kind and patient woman with grey hair in tight curls around a face full of pouches. She wore dark red dresses that looked like upholstery. The kids in Miss Garby’s class were smarter, faster and better looking than the kids in Lynbrook. I had a lot of catching up to do. Joe Molner, for example, routinely won all my marbles. I made a peach colored plaster cast of my hand, drew pictures of fire engines with crayons, made lurid messes with finger paint. The whole class read aloud, chanting, "Run, Spot, run."
The best part of my new school was the field out back. There was a secret place, way out back behind some bushes where Brian and I solemnly buried a dead bird. Closer to the old concrete school there were monkey bars, a sand box and a slide on one side. And on the other, a see saw and a worn and faded red wooden carousel with bent steel pipe to hang on to. The trick was for everybody to get grip on the handle and push it as fast as you could run. The next trick was to see if you could get on before you fell down. Typical Chappaqua. Love to you all, Bob
(Editor's note - all hyperlinks & photos added by editors)
MAIRZY DOATS
I know a ditty nutty as a fruitcake
Goofy as a goon and silly as a loon
Some call it pretty, others call it crazy
But they all sing this tune:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy"
Oh! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you-oo?
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
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