Tough Skins and Skippies

"Tough Skins and Skippies..."

The inventory of my wardrobe was spoken to me by a pretty, little, curly-haired girl as I stepped up into the school's granite doorway. It was intoned with a sense of pity. She, the unofficial greeter for the recently named Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School; me, the country kid turned city kid on my first day of school. We were meeting for the first time, and I think, the last time.

Tough Skins were the economically-priced nameplate brand of dungarees offered by the Sears and Roebuck Company and to my bumpkin eyes they were a big step up from the Outlet basement "rivet" pants that used to chafe my knees into white powder. Skippies were the canvas sneaks with the rubber toe caps that you prayed no one would be mean enough to notice before they had a chance to like you. The combination of the two items, shit-brown jeans and clown-red shoes, marked me as the kid somewhere between the white boy who had pooped his pants in first grade and the black kid with whose hair was dusted with DDT on a weekly basis in order to control his head lice outbreaks.

Such was the cast system of my public school days. It is a wonder I learned anything at all.

Wheels

I was driving my van through a city park recently and I noticed what looked to be a homeless man, walking a beautiful chrome bike. I asked myself why he wasn't riding the wonderful bike to wherever he was going. Then it occurred to me that maybe he wasn't in a hurry to go nowhere.

For a brief moment, I felt as though I knew that world.

At any phase of my life, one of my most prized possessions has often been whatever wheeled vehicle that most fit my style. It began with a tricycle at age three. It was a small, ruddy-red thing with a white bib leading up to the handle bars. I never really rode it in the conventional way. I preferred to stand on its back step plate and kick-ride it like a scooter. I could really make the peddles blur. For what seemed like hours I would ride it down to the far end of the driveway near the road, look back at the house for reassurance, and then rid it back.

I graduated (much later) to a hand-me-down bike which I bought from my cousin for five dollars. To be clear, it was a hand-me-down of generations. It was an American made, post-world-war beast with 20-inch wheels. It was stable and rugged enough that you could release it at the top of a hill and it would roll with its invisible rider to the bottom, collide with whatever, flip, tumble, crash, and remain rideable, time and time again. I called it the "Bomber."

Around the age of twelve I became interested in building bikes. I would scour the neighborhood on trash night with my box of tools and return home with a cache of chrome treasures. There were a variety of off-spring from this venture, but the most successful one was a five-speed, low-rider that the neighborhood kids dubbed "Coo-Coo-Kenievel." I could ride this Frankenstein of salvage down stairs, off stonewalls, and on several occasions, into parked cars - it never failed to roll away. It was a fun ride and with it I began my lifelong, love of exploring.

I was alone most of the time in my early teens. My main companion was a tireless, smooth-coat collie name "Brutus." He and I would ride for miles a day in any direction that would brings us to woods. Once there, he and I would set up a camp. He would keep watch, while I made a circle of stones, and swept out a sitting area. When the work was done we would sit together, quietly, hidden away in our camp, absorbing the peace. Before leaving I would often remark to myself that this would place be a fine place to live and back then there were plenty of days I thought I might have to.

As I graduated into motor vehicles I maintained my salvage arts by mending a variety of cars into brief, but functional conveyances. The most well know and demanding of this period was a 1967 Mustang Coupe, dubbed ZIGMOP. It belonged to my sisters and was used by them to get back and forth to college. Fortunately for me, their boyfriends made sure their feet didn't touch the ground much on the weekends, which gave me almost unlimited access to the pretty, yet fragile car. (I discovered recently that Ziggie featured prominently into memories my friends had of high school nights. Ironically, I didn't.)

Once again I have a vehicle that incorporates much of the ingenuity and comforts needed by the American explorer. I have a refrigerator, water, a bunk, and the company of a terrier. I enjoy it immensely and use it to navigate out to the fringe of my current world, where the dog and I can explore and restore ourselves. I drive the speed limit as a general rule because I find it a more relaxing, less stressful way to go. Sadly the people behind me on the road seldom share my philosophy.

Whatever the shape, make or model, the effect has always been the same. The wheels take me away to someplace I didn't really know I wanted to be and when I am ready, they take me back.

And like the man in the park, most days I'm in no hurry.

Moonie

"The key is on the post." read the note.

When we arrived at the chain across the steep dirt road we found the key precisely as indicated and it took just a few tries and two shots of WD-40 for the lock to finally relent and let down its guard.

At the top of the hill we arrived to find the fire pit and wood stack pretty much as we had left them 45 days earlier. The only difference was the crop of green grass growing through the ashes and the stones of the hearth. We setup camp and enjoyed the solitude of the wide, bald peak as the sun sailed across the sky on a collision coarse with Monadnock. As the dome darkened, the wind shifted to the east and when we turned to study the sky in that direction we were surprised to discover another inhabitant of the hill - the full corn moon.

When the fire finally died down and the cool air closed in on us, we set off to bed and were rewarded to a quick, deep sleep. But as it often happens in my years I awoke again at 1am, too rested and resolved to fall back a sleep anytime soon. So, I stepped outside into the blue moonlight and I stood listening to the grassy accent of this New Hampshire plateau. As my head filled with scents of hay and willow, I admitted to the moon the uncommon peace these late-night rendezvous have brought to me.

He remembered with me the best moments: Nantucket, Lake Ontario, Saint Maarten, and the long night we passed over the Pacific Date Line. And then we mused about how different this night would be. It was, after all, the first meeting to occur over such a landlocked place.

"Then this must be a very special place indeed," I heard myself say aloud. The moon smiled, but could not deny it.