The Time of My Life (21 page)

Is it impossible that Americans who aren't numbered among the fundamentalist faithful and/or the political conservatives might also be concerned that the country has problems—domestic and foreign problems, legal and moral problems, private and public problems? Is it impossible that a feminist, a homosexual, a union leader, an environmentalist must have a conscience? Is it impossible that a liberal might be moral? Or patriotic? Or religious? Or a person of goodwill?

These things seemed impossible, sitting in Reunion Arena. There the fate of the country boiled down so simply, so neatly, so symmetrically, to the “liberals and humanists” versus the “good people” on the domestic front. And on the foreign front—in the words of retired Air Force Major General George J. Keegan, Jr.—“the Judeo-Christian coalition of civilized peoples” versus “the forces of the Antichrist, who reside in the Kremlin and in Peking.”

Crusaders' slogans, calls to holy war, religio-military allusions abounded throughout the day, answered with hearty amens. Hardly a speaker could rise without describing George Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge. Vietnam, according to General Keegan, was “the most honorable war in history.” The forces of God need the Bi bomber. The people gathered at Reunion were, according to Congressman Vander Jagt, “the Paul Reveres of this election coming up in November.”

Ah. An election.

It was Vander Jagt who brought the purportedly nonpartisan National Affairs Briefing out of the clouds of pious generality down to brass tacks. What, after all the evils have been enumerated, can right-thinking, religious, moral, conservative Americans do to save our country?

Well, a change in the Washington leadership, the congressman said, will “release the greatness and goodness of our people.”

“It takes the involvement of good people,” he said, “to elect good legislators.”

“It isn't going to take Ronald Reagan three years,” he said, “to recognize the godless aggression of communism.”

“Wake up, America!” he said. “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching off to the political wars with the cross of Jesus going on before!”

Oh, there was a cause, all right.

August, 1980

The Only Bad Thing About Summer

“T
HE
ONLY
BAD
thing about summer is that it ends,” Ted said.

He and his little brother Pat were just off the plane from Saint Louis and back in Texas, a place they love. The heat wave already had hung over Dallas for weeks and was still building toward its zenith on that day in June, but I knew what he meant.

When I was ten-going-on-eleven, summer was beautiful and glorious for me, too. Waking on the first morning after the end of school was the most delicious experience in the world. Stretching ahead—almost without number, it seemed—were days of sun and outdoors and staying up late and no homework and freedom to follow the whim of mind and body without reproof. Summer was the reason we lived. It was the fulfillment of nine months of wishes. It was golden and succulent, and our knowledge that it wouldn't last forever only increased the sweetness of its days.

During the years since Ted and Pat and I stopped living together, summer has held even more significance for us. Deprived most of the year of the daily rituals and routines that give family life both its monotony and its meaning, we've tried to win back our losses in the summer.

I suppose there's some logic in our patterns of migration—the trip to the Gulf Coast, the weeks in the Davis Mountains with grandmother and great-grandmother in the old house, the few days in Dallas at each end of the visit. Logical or not, the packing and traveling and the familiar destinations and the unpacking have become a ritual that belongs to us and a way of measuring our meaning and worth to each other.

On our first trip to the coast, only two years ago, the boys were still small enough to travel comfort ably in an un-air-conditioned Volkswagen full of a summer's worth of gear. On their first day ever at a beach, they stood in awe of the sea for a minute or two, then built sand castles and captured twenty-four hermit crabs and later incarcerated them in a hotel dresser drawer. The creatures crawled and scratched throughout the night.

On the evening of the second night, they played tag on the long veranda of Port Aransas' old Tarpon Inn and made friends with the fishermen preparing their tackle for the morning.

They were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in the Davis Mountains that summer. They captured garter snakes and bugs and built hideouts. We played Frisbee and Uncle Wiggley, and they were young enough to read to. The wounds of our broken family were still new and raw. The question “Why?” was asked often, and none of the answers seemed good enough. Sometimes there were tears in the night.

The second summer was different. The car was bigger, but not big enough for a newly married husband and wife and a cat and two pairs of brothers who had never met each other to be comfortable. The destination was South Padre Island this time, and the visit was longer. Two sets of individuals, strangers to each other, slowly made adjustments. There were things we all had in common, we discovered, and things we didn't.

We trekked again to the mountains and a family reunion of twenty-five—grandmothers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nieces, cousins, and in-laws. Some of them hadn't been born when we last got together. It was good to be a part of something so large.

This year, returning to the same South Padre condo was like going home. Our memories of the beach and the fishing and the swimming pool and the previous year had given us a common past. The two sets of boys who had been strangers began calling themselves stepbrothers.

We hiked the mountains together, too, and when the stepbrothers went their separate ways, there was affection in their goodbyes.

Ted and Pat are growing tall. Pat is no longer a baby, and Ted's face is beginning to shape itself into the man he's going to be. They've begun to dream of careers and ask for Christmas presents that aren't toys. They shone like gold and copper when we packed the car for the drive to the airport.

As we sat at the window and watched the loading of the plane they would take, the gloom of departure was descending. I touched Ted's shoulder, and he looked at me with more love than my heart could hold.

It's Labor Day. Summer has ended again. But for just a while.

September, 1980

Love Story: Man Meets Bicycle

I
HAD
OWNED
several one-speeds as a child, and as my youth was waning, a three-speed. Then I gave up bicycling, parked the thing in the garage, let the tires go flat, and finally sold it to the kid next door. That was years and miles ago.

From time to time since then, cyclists have passed my house, their legs tan and lean, their faces beatific, free of the pain that contorts the faces of the joggers who puff along the same street and the boredom and frustration that stare through the windshields of even the fanciest cars. The happy people are riding ten-speeds.

“If I ever exercise again,” I've sometimes said, “I'm going to get myself a ten-speed bicycle.” There have been cool mornings and evenings in the spring and the fall when I actually wished I had one. But wishing was as far as I got.

Then one day my lady asked me, “What would you rather have for your birthday—a new chair or a bicycle?”

“A bicycle,” I said, and we went shopping.

The only bicycle decisions I remembered making had to do with price and color. I had picked out my old three-speed in about three minutes. Choosing a ten-speed shouldn't take more than ten, I thought.

But bicycle shops had changed since I last had been in one. I was faced with questions of nationality (American, Italian, French, English, Japanese, or Austrian?), of price (150 bucks, say, or sky's-the-limit?), of purpose (touring, sport, or racing?), even of metallurgy (steel or alloy?). The clerk rambled of sidepull and centerpull brakes, of downtube shifters and stem shifters, of cottered and uncottered cranks, of front and rear derailleurs. There was one Japanese model that God meant especially for me, he seemed to be saying. He refused to show me any other.

We fled.

The next store was less intimidating. It had a big sign in front advertising a sale, and the salesman was patient. He showed me the models on sale and even let me touch them. I couldn't concentrate, though, because a certain bike kept whispering, “Psst! I'm the one! Buy me!”

It was a sleek, metallic gray Peugeot with the best of everything. It was standing in a rack across the room from the sale models. Inconspicuously it stood, but I was drawn to it as to a lodestone. Each time I tried to focus my mind on the sale bikes and be sensible, it beckoned: “Psst! Ride me home!”

“Tell me,” I said to the salesman, who used to make his living racing bicycles, “which bike in the place do you consider the best buy for the money?”

He said the sale bike was the best for the money.

“How about this one?” I asked, indicating the gray Peugeot.

“That's a fine bike,” he said, “but it isn't on sale.”

“I'll take it,” I said.

Spurning my lady's offer to haul the Peugeot and me home in the car, I leapt to the saddle for the inaugural ride. All went well until I left the shopping center parking lot and entered one of those North Dallas speedways we call streets. The Peugeot and I weren't welcome there. Although we hugged the curb as closely as we could, the mad machines bore down on us like torpedoes, snarling, honking, squealing, spewing carbon monoxide. The faces in their windows were full of loathing, mouthing words I was glad I couldn't hear. My confidence failed. The front wheel of the Peugeot began to wobble. I saw visions of my bike and myself crushed under large wheels and a crowd standing around my carcass saying, “It served them right. Who did they think they were?”

“You're a little rusty,” the Peugeot said. “Push me awhile.”

Later, I took my bike out for its trial run on the weekend-empty residential streets. I shifted gears constantly, trying to find uses for ten. I couldn't. I was riding a ten-speed bicycle with a three-speed mind.

“You have no idea what I can do,” the Peugeot said. “Learn me.”

I returned to the store for a book about ten-speed bicycles. They had several. I asked the former bike racer which he recommended. He was patient. He explained what was in the books and asked me what I needed to know. I told him I wanted to learn how to shift gears. He sold me a book called
Understanding, Maintaining and Riding the Ten-Speed Bicycle
, and I read it all. I learned that what I needed was understanding, that understanding increases pleasure.

Now the Peugeot's wheels purr on the pavement. The wind sings in the spokes. We climb long hills without getting tired and fly down them like Pegasus and Bellerophon. “See what I mean?” the Peugeot said. “You just had to know me.”

“I wish I'd met you years ago,” I said. “We could go anywhere together.”

“Except into the traffic,” the Peugeot said.

September, 1980

So We Went a Little Prematurely Crazy

O
NE
COLD
SNAP
doth not an autumn make, but it was impossible to resist the promise. The summer had been so long that few could remember a daylight temperature lower than ninety, and we were eager for something—anything—else.

Then, after the new heat records had been established and kept soaring day after day, after the Texas Rangers' customary slump had plunged to uncustomary depths, after the lawn had browned and the zinnias had grown leggy and awful, after the mockingbird had died of heat stroke or departed for a climate more conducive to song, after the farmers had spoken direly of Dust Bowls and Depressions, the rain came.

It arrived in typical Texas fashion, barely sprinkling some regions, flooding others. Then it settled down—in Dallas, at least—and became a record rain. Four sweet nights and days of falling water. Water thumping on the roof, water tapping at the windows, water dripping from the eaves, water plunging down the gutters, wetting the pavement and sending Dallas drivers into the panic that always grips them whenever something—anything—falls from the sky.

We could hear the plants breathing, see them greening again before our eyes. The morning glories stayed open all day after months of folding their tents by mid-morning. We turned off our air-conditioners, opened our windows so we could hear the rain and feel the damp air, rejoiced at the low digits displayed on the time-and-temperature signs, slept under blankets. The aroma of wood smoke rose in our neighborhoods. Women wore boots to work. One, a newcomer, wore a corduroy dress and knee socks. “I love winter clothes,” she said. “I'm probably rushing the season.”

She probably is. She may not need her socks again until January, for people play touch football in shorts and T-shirts on some Christmas Days here. But not all Christmas Days. Predicting winter in Dallas isn't at all like predicting it in Anchorage or Buffalo or Minneapolis, and it isn't like predicting summer here, either. Our summers are always predictable, our winters aren't.

One cold snap doth not an autumn make. Not necessarily. Not often. For a while now, summer can return at any moment. Maybe not July, but certainly June is possible. June in October isn't at all unusual. Neither is April or May.

Texas lacks the more obvious signals of the arrival of the equinox, you see. Texas poets rarely get to write of the glory or melancholy of autumn, since most of the regions of the state have few trees, hence few leaves to turn. Blazing fall foliage is almost as alien to our experience as those sleigh rides depicted on the Christmas cards we send each other, pretending we have something in common with Dickens and Currier & Ives. Our few trees try some years to squeeze out a splash of yellow or red for us, but most years their leaves simply turn brown and fall off. Overnight, it seems.