Racing Through Childhood
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union RACING THROUGH CHILDHOOD by richard j. margolis And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with...
...Two deer by the river meandering near...
...and I've been jotting down these mild recollections in a notebook, hoping they may arrange themselves in ways that will please children and not bore adults...
...We couldn't see the river but we knew it was there, and that pleased us...
...We knew their schedules, the precise moments they were supposed to whiz by, and also their stops between St...
...At night the trains beneath our window seemed to pull us, to induct us into their own swift glow...
...Right from the start, I understood that the race wastotheswift...
...Wait for me...
...It was the year that Jesse Owens struck a blow for democracy by beating all the Aryan runners in Berlin, and probably the only moment in my childhood when, among all my fantasies, I pretended to be a black man...
...He looks a lot like you...
...The half-century mark is hell on pejorists...
...The passengers, they're in bed, too, wondering if we're watching...
...In my brother's bed we watch the Hiawatha glimmer down the long valley...
...When my parents wanted to enjoy nature, they took us on polite picnics in Como Park, where we could water-bike upon the glassy waters of a perfectly round, artificial lake...
...Paul and Chicago, towns like Red Wing, Winona, La-Crosse, New Lisbon, Tomah...
...I even raced myself...
...It was, to judge from my notes, a regrettably conventional childhood, circumscribed by hearth and family, lacking both drama and trauma...
...He is leaning against a black tree...
...But looking back, I'm astonished now at how patient my brother was and how willing he seemed to include me in his games and affections...
...We were not what you would call an outdoorsy family...
...Camping was not our style...
...The only "identity crisis" I suffered back then was a comically literal one, and it lasted three seconds...
...My brother's new radio, the one he got for all A's, shines green and red in my eyes...
...I go to the window and watch the boy...
...When my tongue found the hole, I started to cry...
...Suddenly we were all one...
...Disappeared by the river disappeared forever my two deer...
...I've been remembering some random scenes from my early childhood, small happenings that occurred at our house on Linwood Avenue when I had seen but six or seven Springs...
...Then I thought: To knock out a tooth you have to be very fast...
...What we liked best in the room, though, was our radio, a small, black contraption that we kept on the nightstand between our beds...
...Let me time you...
...Once in a while the darn thing got on my nerves...
...The fear of being left behind, and therefore alone, is certainly a small-brother curse...
...Once I ran like blazes into a clanging green lamppost, and something small fell on the grass...
...The Hermes reference comes nat-turally...
...Brother's got a Mickey Mouse watch that ticks off seconds with a red needle...
...At dusk we would sometimes go outside and tie wagons to our bikes—in my case, a trike—and recapitulate the entire Hiawatha itinerary, clattering up and down Linwood, even going as far as Avon Street, our "Milwaukee...
...She bought wallpaper splotched with anchors, a lamp with a shade that looked like the sail of the Santa Maria and another lamp featuring a ship's wheel for a switch...
...We race out back...
...Exactly forty-nine seconds...
...Occasionally, though, we would venture as far as the woodlands of Wisconsin, where we would build a fire and roast "wienies" on pointed sticks...
...Croix River...
...It was there, 44 springs ago, that I spotted two deer gamboling near the St...
...He managed to confer a kind of romance on my small, humdrum life that I appreciated even then...
...Hose breaks...
...get set...
...That new boy across the street, Gram says...
...brother...
...I kept chasing my future, in the person of Phil, and I thought I would never catch up...
...A pink blob of light floats through my head, right to left, right to left: New York...
...Barefoot on the hot sidewalk, I sulk homeward, toppling anthills...
...Near by the river they romped and reared...
...then I think of the bedroom we shared, of the dark that filled our room and of certain lights that penetrated our common nights...
...Brother and friends run out of sight...
...So many of my memories seem to be from the indoors looking out...
...Here by the river I found two deer...
...Our bedroom became part of that romance...
...E. Housman Housman, to be sure, was always a bit dotty—at age 13 an avowed pagan, at 21 a faithful atheist and from that point on a self-confessed "pejorist" (he believed things were getting worse all the time...
...Hot day...
...Reared by the river and disappeared...
...It's New York...
...He's not me...
...We lived in a land-locked town, a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, yet our bedroom sported a nautical motif...
...Tin pumping down the driveway, hands clenched, eyes squinched, the pavement a gray blur...
...Closer by lay the rails of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St...
...but I felt close to him on one occasion when the mother of a gentile friend of mine, thinking to praise me, told my mother that I was "a credit to the Hebrew race...
...Wait for me...
...Brother and friends run to someplace else...
...Listen," he hisses...
...Brother and friends run to hook up sprinkler...
...It wasn't any wonder that by age 50 Housman and his poetry had taken to wandering through snowy woodlands, glorying in the grimness of it all...
...For myself, the approach of a 50th birthday has prompted a more cheerful senescence...
...States of the Union RACING THROUGH CHILDHOOD by richard j. margolis And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow...
...It was Mother's doing...
...I remember very clearly thinking they must be brothers...
...AII morning I churn out new records...
...Thanks to my brother's athletic imagination, he and I staged our own Olympics, just the two of us, by the side of our house...
...Like the wing-footed Hermes, more boy than god, 1 was a compulsive racer...
...In the middle of the night loud trumpets awake me...
...Neither Phil nor I cared about boats, but we appreciated the loving decor just the same...
...Actually, it belonged to my brother, and he played it with his customary romantic zest...
...You 'II break the watch...
...We kept to a tight schedule...
...Can't chase...
...I picked it up and spit blood...
...I never identified with Joe Louis—perhaps because he was too stereotypically "colored...
...Mostly what I recollect are the thousands of hours spent with my brother Phil, four years my senior, who seemed always close by...
...What I have here, then, are the ramshackle beginnings of a work-in-progress...
...We are all moving...
...finally, I recall running running running, always running...
...Paul, and these were plainly visible, as were the orange and silver trains they carried—the Hiawatha and the Pioneer Limited...
...I duck under the pillow...
...Oh, for Pete's sake...
...Get ready...
...We are all night eyes...
...But being a small brother, 1 wasn't always able to cash in on the insight...
...Legs shaking, side aching, I hold out a hand...
...I stomp the running ants...
...It overlooked a wide, green bluff at the bottom of which wound the mighty Mississippi...
...Never mind, they said, it's just a baby tooth...
...Wait for me, brother...
...I crouch down by the garage...
Vol. 62 • April 1979 • No. 8
