Those early years of my life were indelibly marked by attendance

at the "Baby Center", which continues to serve the area with a fierce
pride and a cruel determination not seen since the final days of World
War II. Ramrod stiff in their commitment to teaching children "what's
right" and not being afraid of meting out a bit of physical punishment
was and is "what the Baby Center" is all about.

What I found hard to believe was Miss Jan and my “Baby Center”
days occurred about 50 years ago, yet they seemed just like
yesterday. With this rich and tawdry history to draw from, it was
pitifully ironic that I’d lived this long only to realize I had a fake wife, a
fake son, a fake daughter, a fake life and REAL problems. I ruefully
understood my future was now in my past; I could reach behind my
back and feel my blown future’s cold, white rhino horn about to
impale my present. More about that later.

Abdicating any semblance of maturity long before my innate

immaturity reached full bloom, my greatest strength was knowing my
weaknesses, but my greatest weakness was the blissful ignorance I
had of my strengths.

I stood awash in a bitter reminisce that enshrouded me in a cold

loneliness as blinding and numbing as snow. This cascade of angst
and regret rolled over me till I broke from this fugue of self pity and
realized how fairly lucky I was. But I could've been a lot luckier.
Everything seemed to be Yin and Yang, hot and cold; no time to
breathe and relax, just a mad dash towards a finish line that was
never defined and never, ever seemed to get closer. Why couldn't I
have been just a nice, semi-normal rich kid? The type of person who
could walk into any given situation with an air of confidence and élan
that screamed "The world is my oyster" because it was.

Looking back to my adolescence, I was surrounded by rich kids.

Walkin' around in nappa leather dress shoes with soles as thin as
Communion wafers and slinging open the doors of convertibles that
cost more than my parents house, I was almost certain they didn't
even have blood pressure, and quite possibly no blood, just silver and
gold running through those aristocratic veins. Living on "estates" and
"compounds", you'd float down driveways that went on forever,
ensconced in a corridor of perfectly trimmed hedges that rose like
green tsunamis on either side of an island of wealth.

Many of these people lived in "gated communities" and

subdivisions named after birds and animals that were driven away by
the construction of the very subdivisions and developments named
after them! Considering my family was there before the "Bulldozer
Glacier" disposed of eons of flora and fauna, the cruel irony wasn't
lost. "Quail Hollow", "Elk River", "Bass Lake", "Fox Glen" and
"Pheasant Run" were epitaphs. The closest anyone who lived on
"Pheasant Run" ever got to a pheasant was when it was under glass,
undercooked, and totally devoid of feathers.

I recalled having dinners at some of my friends homes whose

parents or grandparents were introduced as “Lord Plover”, “The
Mallard” and other rather bizarre, cruelly boyish nicknames that
smacked of an immature self importance and utter disregard for the
flora and fauna of less “intelligent”, “disposable” animals and
environment. But come dinnertime there they were, hovering over a
small fowl with knife and fork in hand, ignorant of the bird's beauty in
full plumage, living on a street named after a dinner you couldn't even
lament; the effrontery was incendiary. But God, I thought, I may
have been pretty poor but I sure had fun growing up, or at least older.

Caught in this enigma of ineptitude, brilliance, latent wisdom and

underachievement that was galactic in scope, I was a would-be idiot-
savant gazing vacantly into the warped mirror of my past, present and
future. I sighed in relief in the knowledge I was just barely stupid
enough to live this lie of incompetence and just barely smart and
competent enough to understand that. Ignorance is only bliss if
you’re really rich or truly ignorant. One out of two ain’t bad.
ABOVE: (Circa 1968) The car on the left, a Plymouth Sport Fury,
before I totaled it; the car on the right that I loaned Wayne and Craig
that they were kind enough to total for me. I happened to look out the
plate glass windows of the grocery store as they were walking in to
tell me, and I knew, I just knew it was curtains for the big Olds.
Gopher’s Glen Drive is in the background.

Boredom, Blue Jays, the Brew

and "The Dryer Drum Dummy"

The 1960's roared into our lives like a psychedelic Pop Tart that
took seconds to eat, years to digest and decades to understand.
Lesley Gore was cryin' about some party, The Beach Boys were
pickin' up Good Vibrations, Sonny was still with Cher and Jan & Dean
were rippin' around every Dead Man's Curve in America. The Cold
War was hot, Viet Nam was not, global warming was what you
aspired to do with your girlfriend’s breasts, gasoline was virtually free
and a quart of beer cost about 37 cents. Who needed Oprah or Dr.
Phil?

"Environment" was something your mother tried to do with

interior decorating on a shoestring, neckties were as thin as belts and
a 1964 Mustang convertible rolled off Ford's assembly line at about
$2,400. Suntans were "in" and totally harmless, cigarettes were like
a sixth finger on everyone's hand and like all teenagers around the
world, me and my peers were scared shitless.

Didn't matter. We’d still bounce out of bed ready to grab another
summer day by the throat and shake it like a bag of hot popcorn. I
awoke every morning hearing that achingly beautiful, discordant trill
of redwing blackbirds and I could actually smell the sunshine. When
spring peepers started singing their siren’s song from the creeks the
gang and I knew spring had arrived and we couldn’t wait to taste the
dirt our mother’s would be washing out of our clothes.

We spent so much time playing in the grass our sneakers turned

green, like the envy our parents had for our youth. Time was stopped
for us, a static phenomena that couldn’t touch us – wouldn’t touch
us… we were forever young. But, as someone much wiser than most
of us once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Maybe so, but we
sure had fun wasting it.

From a vast, incalculable distance, only God knew what

adventures each day held for “Jack and the Rat Pack”, but many a
night would find half the neighborhood running around my back yard
catching so many fireflies it looked like “lightning in a bottle”.

Bedtime found us ready for dreams that could barely rival our
real lives, and we welcomed sleep with an untroubled honesty and
purity only the young enjoy.

We lived in the Garden of Eden. Creeks were so clean and

clear one could drink from them without fear of growing an extra ear
or stubbed limb, and by the fifth grade my visual butterfly and moth
collection consisted of 27 species. Goldfinch would roller-coaster
through the summer skies like black-winged, yellow darts in
exuberant celebration of summer, and the birds and us boys never
wanted the day to end and tomorrow could never arrive soon enough.

We were all just emerging from the true innocence of life when
summers lasted forever, weeks were like years and days actually had
a beginning, middle and end. Every summer day was an era unto
itself and in retrospect was. Christmas vacations were like a career,
Halloween, Thanksgiving and New Years were events, birthdays
were anticipated and actually celebrated, and all our parents wished
we ran on batteries so they could pull 'em out of our backs at night
and get "some peace and quiet."

When one of my best friends, Wayne French claimed he saw

"Reddy Kilowatt" (an electric company's lightning bolt-man logo) after
peering into and breathing deeply of the vapors emanating from his
brother's motorcycle gas tank, I knew we were impervious to any
threat, save ourselves. Isn't that always the rub?

Totally ripped on gas fumes, stumbling around his parent’s

garage like a drug-addled ape, the Frenchman snapped off his family
car's rearview mirror, then, on the recoil, kicked over a couple cans of
white paint.

ABOVE: Wayne “saw” this guy after inhaling gasoline fumes before
falling into the puddle of white paint in his parent’s garage.

Already high as Ben Franklin's kite, he was now swirling among

fresh paint fumes, blinded with petroleum distillates, ethanol, pigment
dyes and oleoresins that had killed many a lab rat. Slipping and
sliding in the widening pool of paint, the "big cat" went down hard but
somehow scrabbled to his feet, looking like a spotted, streaked
hyena.

Panting like an over-laden burro, his tongue a blinding "Sherwin

Williams" white, the Frenchman careened wildly into the garage door
opener (in this case closer) and unceremoniously shut the door on his
foot. Howling with rage and pain, we could hear him punching blindly
about, trying desperately to re-hit the "magic button" that would free
his foot. Unfortunately for Wayne, we were all outside in the driveway
shooting baskets.

I realized that looking at the sneakered toes of the Frenchman

protruding from the garage door was rather eerie, yet arousing in a
way. The front of Wayne’s foot seemed totally disjointed from the
fury and tumult on the other side of the door.

Standing there with a basketball in my hands but unable to help, I

yelled "Hey Wayne, shut up! We're shootin' hoops out here!" Finally
hitting the correct button, the garage door slowly raised and Wayne
collapsed onto the asphalt like a staked vampire. Rolling in slow
agony, smeared with white paint in a bizarre random pattern, Wayne
looked like a fairly large Aborigine in cheap war paint.

Craig Woodrich and I (our mutual best friend), looked down at

our fallen spotted owl and I opined, "Geeze, it seems he may have
soiled himself." Hoping that's all that happened, we pulled him up
and within half an hour, rejuvenated by three pieces of bologna
(compressed inside a Wonder Bread dough ball) washed down with a
stolen (his dad's) Rolling Rock, the Big Aborigine was good to go. A
slight drizzle had set in along with an ennui that had to be addressed
immediately. Boredom always seemed to bring out our group
creativity.
This picture was taken in the Acker’s back yard looking North up
Gopher’s Glen Drive, From the look of mirth on Pop Acker’s face, he
must have just heard young Jack had fallen off a cliff. Just kidding.

Birds of a Feather

"Let's go down to the creek by the floodplains from the other day"
I suggested. One of the worst floods in the last 60 years had torn
through the area three days ago, and even now the crick was running
high and limbs, silt and other detritus still rimmed the banks. A truly
devastating spring flood, it took its toll on both flora and fauna, and
we saw many dead animals and birds as a result.

Walking over a rise I almost stepped on a dead blue jay, and

when twenty paces later we raised our faces to the frantic chirping of
three baby blue jays, even we could figure it out. With craning necks
and ridiculously huge beaks and eyes, these boys must have lost
their parents and their future wasn't looking too good. Their feathers
spiked like they were still wet from the storm, they kinda’ looked like
Rod Stewart, but we carried them back to my parent’s compound
anyway.

I told the boys to catch some grasshoppers, crickets etc. on the

way back so they could begin the trio of jays rehab process
immediately. Grabbing a bird cage out of the basement, we soon had
the Baby Blues set up in a beautiful new home. Naming them "One-
Jay", "Two-Jay" and "Three-Jay", the Blue Brothers looked
resplendent in their straw-floored bachelor's pad

ABOVE: Triple Threat. From left to right, Jack Acker, Wayne and
Craig’s high school graduation pictures. I was class of 1967 while
Wayne and Craig were 1968 graduates. Wayne actually signed the
back of his picture “Dryer Drum Dummy”. Don’t let that dazed and
confused look on my face fool you; I was every bit that dazed and
even more confused, I rather desperately hid it well. That’s a lotta’
hair, baby!

With Easter just around the corner, I quickly had my sisters (as if
they had nothing better to do) weaving the boys tiny "Easter Birdie
Baskets" out of long grasses plucked from the fields. I couldn't wait
to see their beaks gaping with awe and appreciation at the bounty of
insects, larvae and nuts crammed into their Birdie Baskets Easter
morn! I retired that evening with blue birds of happiness flitting about
the horizons of my dreams.
 ABOVE: Left to right, Ken, Dave, Ann, and Jack; circa 1956. All
clutching Easter baskets like the ones the Blue Jays almost lived to
enjoy. The look on my face tells us my chocolate bunny “Mr. Bigby”
was too furry to ingest… Look at those baskets, filled with future
tooth decay! Kenny (far left) looks like Jimmy Cagney in Yankee
Doodle Dandy. One must assume Marilyn and Regina weren’t born
yet.

Checking on the boys the next morning, I recoiled with horror from
the cage when I spotted Three-Jay down flat in the straw. With great
trepidation I reached in, and as I removed my arm, it was a lifeless
form cradled in my hand. There was no doubt the period without his
mother's providing food and shelter had proved fatal. I’d noticed
since the rescue mission none of the jays had eaten very well and
seemed somewhat listless and disaffected. My concerns now were
with the remainder of the avian trio.

With no small degree of apprehension I approached the cage the

next morning. My worst fears were realized when I espied only Two-
Jay on his perch. Two-Jay cast a doleful look at me as I gently pulled
One-Jay out of his circumstantial tomb. I took another look at Two-
Jay and realized he was lookin' pretty crummy too; his death was
imminent as well. This was serious shit and I glumly sat down to
assess the situation.

The idea came to me almost like divine revelation. This was a

Blue Jay - a Sky Pirate whose piercing cries were as unmistakable as
his brilliant, flashing blue, black and white plumage. With a crest on
his head that made him look absolutely regal, I was determined that
Two-Jay would leave this mortal coil like a champion and a warrior,
not a beaten, slack-winged lump of feathers. I called Wayne and
Craig, broke the bad news of the dual deaths as gently as I could and
told them an emergency meeting was being called and time was of
the essence. Meeting them with cage in hand at the entrance to my
parent’s basement we immediately went underground.

"I'm not gonna let Two-Jay here go out like his brothers," I said.
"We're gonna do something special for this bird, something I'm pretty
sure no bird has ever done before." C-man and the Frenchman
looked at each other then back at me, knowing full well this would be
something special, all right.

"This Blue Jay is part of the Crow family," I continued. "Great

Indian tribes were the namesakes of his relatives, and for all we know
other great social institutions, like a Canadian baseball team in
Toronto, may be named after him in the future. With your help, I'm
gonna send this magnificent Blue Bastard into the hereafter in a
manner befitting his exalted position in the hierarchy of avian history!"

I strode briskly over to my American Flyer electric train layout that

featured a big, black locomotive with a working headlight, train whistle
and a real, puffing smokestack. Though we were pretty poor, me and
my bros had a helluva nice train layout. About eight by twelve feet,
filled with tiny to-scale houses, buildings, post offices, train stations,
rivers, mountains and a town filled with tiny people; it was really
fantastic.

Looking back, I couldn’t figure how we could've had the money

for all this train stuff. I knew Pops had bought the train in downtown
Cleveland for my Christmas present one year, but all this other stuff?
I knew for sure we didn't have any disposable income for this frivolity.
I guessed we must have stolen most of it - either from stores or our
rich relatives. I knew in my heart we didn't want to steal, it just
happened.

"All right, get Two-Jay outta that cage and bring him over here," I
said. "Craig, gimme that adhesive tape, and Wayne, start that train
up, turn on the lights of the town to high and kill the basement lights."

One of the coolest features of the layout was a fake mountain

range about two and a half feet long and sixteen inches high, with an
eight or nine inch tunnel hole bored through it. Placed over a section
of tracks, when that churning locomotive whipped into that tunnel
pullin' all those cars with the sound of the whistle "whooo-whoooing",
its headlight piercing the darkness and smoke billowing out of the
smokestack to trail along the length of the Great American Flyer -
well, it almost gave you a woodie.

Above: This is the train that gave Two-Jay the most memorable (and
final) ride of his too short life. These trains really did have working
lights, smokestacks and whistles. This artist’s rendition hardly does
justice to what occurred in the basement that rainy day. Just imagine
Two-Jay taped to the engineer’s area atop that massive, churning
engine! Oh to have been there... Magnificent!

"Wayne, get over there and pull that tunnel-mountain range off the
table and expose those tracks," I directed.

"What are we gonna do,” asked Craig.

I looked up and said "I'll tell ya' what we're gonna do. We're
gonna give Two-Jay the final ride of a lifetime, literally. I want him to
remember this day and the fact that he went out proud with a
distinction no other Blue Jay has ever imagined." Hell I thought,
without a divine revelation of sorts, I could barely believe I’d imagined
what was about to take place myself and in some perverted way
envied Two-Jay and his historical ride.

I gently taped Two-Jay's little black legs to either side of the

engineer's compartment on the locomotive. Realizing the enormity of
this sacrosanct occasion, I heard C-man and the Frenchmen clear
their throats. No Rhodes scholars, they knew me well and were
plenty smart enough to figure out what was comin' down.

"Wayne, get ready with that tunnel and do what I tell ya' when I
tell ya', but keep it clear of the tracks for now. C-man, in case of
derailment save the bird first and worry about passengers and
townspeople later," I said. We all looked at each other in the ghostly
glow of a lit-up fake town, with fake little people, tiny trees and
houses and a real bird whose ticket was punched for the final
destination.

I wiped a tear from my eye and yelled into the gloaming: "All
aboard!"