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

aboard!"

I hit the train transformer's whistle button and turned the speed
lever up to get the bull of a locomotive going. Like a big, black Bison
snorting smoke and gathering speed, the Flyer started to move down
the tracks and one couldn't help but notice Two-Jay had never looked
more alert or alive since his ill-fated rescue. I hit the speed dial hard
and the Flyer bucked under my electronic command, whipping
around curves and switchbacks, hurtling down a grade hot and
heavy, roaring into town with whistle blaring as little people waved
and cheered and the Big Blue Bastard Jaybird rocked gently back
and forth with the cant of the tracks.

I had the big night-train at full, runaway speed now, and there
wasn't anything that could stop it. Two-Jay winked as he roared past
me towards the mountain range, his beak raised defiantly in the air
like a beautiful black sword, his fledgling wings fluttering as he
chirped loudly, his black eyes bright with excitement, shining like
translucent coals. He looked marvelous!

I hit the whistle for all it was worth..."Whooo, Whoo," cried the
train, "Chirp, chirp," went my bird. "Whooo, Whoooo; Chirp, Chirp;
Whoo, Whooo; Chirp, Chirp," they alternately sounded.

"Tunnel down!" I screamed. The Frenchman slammed the tunnel

down over the tracks and with one long, last proud chirp, Two-Jay
lifted his beak straight into the air, hit the tunnel and....and went out
like a trooper. The Jay Bird was dead.

Year’s later people still ask me about that day. How could I, a
known lover of animals, have "done that" to the blue jay? Done that?
The blue jay was more than intimate with the Grim Reaper when I’d
taped him onto his electronic coffin; he was gonna’ die; let him really
live a little! How many blue jays on the face of the earth had a ride
like that before they died? Other than this story giving someone the
idea, does anyone really think in the history of humankind another
blue jay went out with such panache and singular style? In response

1
to this I simply say, “I think not my friends, I resoundingly think not!”
Two-Jay knew, as sure as the crow flies, me and the Pack gave him
two things no other bird ever enjoyed: A ride into eternity unlike any
other and a Railroad Engineer's Union card.

Trouble Brewing

An integral part of our team effort that many of The Pack’s

ground breaking projects featured was the "Mud Daubers". These
were collectively the drones, or worker bees of my neighborhood
gang. Comprised of younger and weaker (and probably smarter)
boys and girls of all shapes and sizes, their one common trait was
blind obedience to my orders. I wasn’t sure if it was really blind
obedience as opposed to sheer fear, but for whatever reason, they
were very good at following my orders.

Originally named after the Mud Dauber Wasp for their ability to
"collect" things (not mud, however) as instructed, they worked like a
crew of convicts bagging litter on highways under the mirrored,
watchful eyes of an armed deputy. Their expertise at "collection"
became evident one summer when I decided to make a "Brew" in my
parent’s side yard.

Driven once more by a lull in our sports-playing schedule and

boredom, we'd dragged a huge cast iron pot from the old barn ruins
into my parent’s side yard. Hefting it atop a circle of stones that
surrounded the Acker family's "bonfire area", we stared in sooty
silence at the gaping cast iron mouth. The big empty pot was
screaming to be filled with something, but what?

2
ABOVE: The barn from which the Brew kettle was salvaged stands
behind my sisters Ann (left) and Marilyn Look how happy they
appear to be…What actresses! By the time Marilyn was eight and
youngest sister Gina was seven, all three of them would huddle in a
corner and take turns sticking a darning needle into one of their dolls
that had been crudely painted to look like me. Voodoo was no lost art
in our house. The old barn was in the process of being torn down; I
still wish I had that kettle!

"Let's hose some water in there and start a fire under it" I said.

That's how it started; pretty tame with some boiling water and
some spit, a few dead worms and the dregs of some cans of pop.

3
This was nothing more than a tepid “bum’s stew” warmed over a can
of Sterno and hopelessness. I wanted a hearty stew, a gob-stopping
"goulash" as it were. Anyone can make a pot of boiling water with a
few lung-oysters floatin' around, but I wanted something with some
bite and substance to it. It didn't take long before inspiration struck
like lightning and I hurriedly told the boys to gather the mud daubers
ASAP. This pot needed to be filled with a brew, a real honest-to-
badness witch's brew.

"We're gonna' make a brew, people," I said. I began handing a

trash bag and putty knife to each of the kids as Craig and Wayne
stoked the fire under the pot.

"I want you guys to go up and down Bell Road and start picking
up every dead animal you can find. If they're smashed you can
scrape 'em up with your little scrapers, bigger stuff just grab it by the
tail and peel 'em off the road and chunk 'em the bag. Don't worry
about maggots or flies or anything, everything goes into your goodie
bag and just remember to hold the top closed tight so nothin' crawls
out."

Some of the mud daubers looked a little hesitant and I continued

to ease their fears saying, "Nobody ever got sick by scraping up road
kill, so don't worry and come back with your bags full." As they
somewhat nervously fanned out heading towards the "Road of
Perdition", I further encouraged them by yelling out: "The fullest bag
gets a free can of pop and a Heath bar!"

Forty minutes to an hour later me and the boys had the "Baby
Brew" at a nice rolling boil and the first wave of the younger, weaker
mud daubers were straggling in. Pulling their death bags behind
them, they were like little beardless Santas, reeking of road kill, their
little hands and arms streaked with dried blood, bits of fur and black
skin, I was so proud of them! “Little” Billy Troutwig (although the
biggest, strongest dauber) was the last to arrive back at home base,
and looking at the pregnant bulge of his scrap-sack we knew why.

"Whatta’ you got there Billy?" I asked. I couldn't help but notice
he also held something in his other hand.

4
 Dropping his sack of plunder like a seasoned "Road Pirate", Billy
gleefully stretched out his arm at the end of which dangled a fine
looking, albeit dead possum.

"I thought for a minute he was just playin' possum Master Jack,
but you can tell he's dead; he ain't breathin'!" Billy exclaimed. The
possum, other than being dead, looked to be in perfect shape. It
must have been talked to death by Dinky Don Schmelt, or caught a
glimpse of Miss Stonebeak (you’ll meet them both later) as she drove
by and was literally scared to death. Whatever, this was one prime
possum and assured Billy a full can of pop and a refreshing, re-frozen
Heath bar.

I gently brushed a few maggots off the lad's filthy forearm with a
twig and gave him a clap on the back. "Billy," I said, "you've really
done yourself proud! Not only do you win the prize for the fullest
scrap-sack, but I'm gonna' let you drop that possum carcass into the
brew yourself!"

You'd have thought he’d won a case of bubble gum. Dashing

excitedly over to the seething, steaming cauldron, Billy plopped his
prize possum into the roiling liquid as the other daubers looked on
with ill-concealed envy.

This started a frenzy of scrap-sack dumping that was so violent

we had to keep the daubers at bay with burning sticks and brute
force. Smashed and rotting carcasses of frogs, snakes, coons,
rabbits, birds and even a snapping turtle were unloaded into the great
kettle. Me and the boys had already made a "base" brew of paint
thinner, old paint, June bugs, caterpillars, doggy turds, nightclawlers,
sour milk, rotten fruit, nail polish, outdated lunch meat and a bucket of
stagnant pond water with a couple of dead bluegills we'd hauled out
of the Dismal Swamp.

Belching and puckering with blisters of popping putrescence, the

"Brew" was starting to come into its own. You could actually see
teeth,
paws, bones and some leathery, shriveled tails of assorted species
rolling around in the big boil. At this point in time the odor wasn't too

5
bad, but we had no idea what ageing and condensing could do to the
contents of this great "Brew" kettle.

Our unwatched concoction simmered through the night, and

sunrise found us stoking the fire and feeding the monster once again.
A little more of this and a little more of that; between games and
chores we'd intermittently feed and stir the oily, black elixir. The
smell of the brew was beginning to intensify with each passing day,
and we began noticing the sticks and branches we stirred the brew
with kinda' dissolved, and we took this as a good omen.

"Hey, if you guys get permission, you wanna sleep over tonight?”
I asked C-man and Wayne. It was Friday night, the Brew was in its
fifth day and Ghoulardi would be on the tube later with some "Z-rated"
horror movie. Sounded like a plan to me.

Permission was granted and after a perfect late summer evening

of shooting baskets and bullshit, we stoked the fire beneath the Brew,
watched Ghoulardi and egressed to my parent's front porch to retire
for the evening. Just before crawling into my sleeping bag I snuck a
look at the Brew in the side yard. I could barely hear its low, guttural
growl as it simmered and burped away like a pot of molten mortal
sins in the Devil's kitchen. When I looked out into the darkness I
couldn't believe my eyes.

6
ABOVE Left: “Bond, Jack Bond”…That’s me disguised as a
successful adult in 1996. ABOVE Right: That’s me dressed up for
Halloween in 1958. I believesIe was dressed as “Gerald McBoing
Boing”, whoever he was. This is the porch me, Craig and Wayne
would sleep out on. Years later the Brew was bubbling in the side
yard 70 feet to “McBoing Boing’s” left.

"Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus," I swore. Craig and the Frenchman

followed my stare, and C-man softly utterered, "What the hell is that?"
Wayne was dumbstruck.

A large tongue of blue-white flame hovered above our Brew,

flickering ominously in the moonlight. About as big as a softball, we
watched it slowly expand and contract as if it were breathing.

"You know" I whispered, "I read about this happening out at sea
on ship's masts and even on the horns of cattle during
thunderstorms, but it's dead clear out. I think it’s called St. Elmo's
fire." We watched the flame dance and coruscate, mesmerized until
a slight breeze came up, and like a ghostly wisp of earthbound aurora
borealis, it vanished. We weren't sure we'd even seen it, but later
surmised it must have been "burn-off" from the highly volatile mix of
combustibles we'd poured into the maw of the kettle. We crawled

7
into our sacks and were awakened next morning when the wind really
picked up and shifted big-time.

The stench slammed into us like a blast wall from a huge

explosion, crawling like malodorous, microscopic millipedes of stink
into our noses, eyes, ears and even our mouths. It was a suffocating
miasma that had substance and taste, and we actually tried to push it
away like a deployed airbag after a car wreck. This was no air bag,
and it sure as hell couldn’t be pushed or even washed away by
anything.

The Brew had hit its stride just before dawn and was now a
living, breathing, malevolent beast whose strength was matched only
by its ubiquity. Invisible, yet indivisible, when the Brew cloud hit the
pastured cows across the street they began frantically lowing and
mooing then stampeded in fear as flocks of birds parted like the Red
Sea as the stench cut a swath through the neighborhood. Unripe fruit
began
falling from trees and small flying insects dropped from the sky,
pinging onto my parents cars in a flurry of winged, multicolored hail.

My father burst out the front door, and doing a slow burn turned
to our intrepid trio and said between clenched teeth, "Jack, I want to
know what the hell that smell is, NOW!"

"I can explain!" I cried. Wayne and Craig stood still as statues,
hoping against hope their silence would somehow equate to
invisibility.

"Does this have anything to do with that cast iron pot from the
barn you guys been foolin' with?" he asked. I nodded mutely and
hung my head.

"We made a brew," I offered lamely. "We must have put some
stuff in it that didn't quite react right."

My Dad’s dad's face was now a mottled red, white and purple, so
contorted with anger and nausea from "Brew inhalation" he didn't
even appear himself. He was a double synaptic jump away from a
nervous breakdown, murder or suicide; possibly all three in that

8
order.

I could hear my mother, overcome with brew fumes, weeping

softly in the dining room, while one of my brother's dogs whimpered
and gagged under the porch.

"REACT RIGHT!? Just what in God's name do any of you know

about what 'WOULD ' make it ‘react’ right?" he bellowed.

“What are you, scientists? React right my ass! You three dump
whatever's in there ASAP and clean up that bad area around that fire.
Your mother and I went out to roast a marshmallow the other night
and we tripped over a turtle shell. I don't have a need to know what's
really happening out there, but I keep seeing dogs diggin' up bones
and parts and stuff. I want it cleaned up and I mean today; you
follow?" We followed.

There were about 15 or 20 gallons of liquid to dispose of, and the

pot had to weigh 60 to 80 pounds. Combined, they had to come in at
close to 220 pounds. How were we gonna' move it?

"We're going to have to" jar" some of this brew, you know," I said
to the boys. "There's no way we can move that hot pot with the brew
in it very far, if at all. We've gotta’ tip it and fill jars or something to
lighten it up."

"Why don't we just pour some out on the ground?" the

Frenchman asked.

"Wayne," I began, "the smell alone may linger for months, and
for all we know the brew itself could explode from the dying fire or
vaporize into some kind of toxic bloom. We have to can it or jar most
of it and take it down to the legal dump."

By "dipping and tipping" we filled 14 paint cans that we took to

the dump, saving one for "posterity". The remaining sludge was a
mix of skeletal remains suspended in an unidentifiable paste the
consistency of motor oil. Just for fun, we decided to pour this onto

9
the road at the entrance of our subdivision, Gopher's Grove, and
watch cars drive through it. What could happen?

What happened was that three or four cars in the Grove

sustained extensive paint damage due to an unknown substance that
had also partially eaten through the asphalt of Gopher's Glen Drive.
We only knew this because the only town cop had called every family
on our street to inquire as to any heretofore knowledge of said
substance being poured onto the roadway. Luckily, I had answered
the phone at my parent’s house and fervently denied any knowledge
of the crime, committing yet another un-confessable sin by lying
through my teeth with an expertise that shocked my soul.

This was just another ignominious end to another adventure;

except for one footnote. A couple years later, taunted and teased by
a group of impeccably dressed rival lads from the rich side of town,
we felt it necessary to defend our turf by any means. I knew one of
these kids father’s name was actually the aforementioned “Lord
Plover”, and was so famed for wearing clothing festooned with duck
logos and figures he’d earned the nickname about town as “The
Mallard”. Pitiful. My father had been bugging me to get rid of the can
labeled "Memorial Brew, '64" and I decided now was the time to
ground “Mini-Mallard” and his pals.

Suffice to say that the Big Three were armed with mason jars
filled with carefully poured "'64 Brew" and we were hot on the trail of
four fleeing rich kids in the cornfield next to my house. One lucky
trespasser split off from the group and escaped, but our Pack
cornered the other three inside the foundation walls of a new house
that was being built. Showing no mercy and being careful not to hit
their eyes, we doused the little scions with the last of the Memorial
Brew.

The screaming started low but grew to a crescendo and an

acrid smell (go figure) filled the air along with a hiss and crackle
reminiscent of frying bacon. With smoke trailing from their Brew-
bombed legs and parts of their torsos, the rich kid's designer's clothes
were disintegrating before our eyes! It was major awesome.

Lurching about like figures from "Night of the Living Dead", we let

10
them scurry past us like burning wraiths in a Stephen King novel,
secure in the knowledge they’d learned their lesson well.

Night of the “Sod Balls”

I still can’t recall whether I’d been “semi-grounded” for repeatedly

shooting a twelve gauge shotgun into the basement walls or staging
“gladiator fights” that featured the entire neighborhood battling in the
back yard. At any rate, I’d been told to stay within the geographical
boundaries of our yard the entire weekend. Bummer.

Me and the boys had planned on sleeping out down by the creek
(about a hundred yards past the brew area) in a little valley bordered
by an apple orchard. Wayne’s cousin Vinny was staying the
weekend and we’d really been looking forward to our outing.

Relentlessly begging and swearing not bend, spindle or mutilate

my younger brothers and sisters, my parents somewhat reluctantly
gave me the OK to at least have Craig over to sleep out, as long as
we stayed on the front porch.

Craig came over and as the shadows grew longer we watched

enviously as Wayne and Vinny, carrying a rake and shovel to make a
fire pit, as well as sleeping bags, satchels of foodstuffs and stolen
beer, waved to us before descending into the Fertile Crescent.

They were FREE, unfettered by arbitrary parental chains and

geographical constraints. Oh, to run with the pack! Sleeping under
the stars with a real fire and sinking your teeth into a sooty, sizzling
Oscar Meyer wiener cloaked in yellow mustard; does it get any better
than that?

Craig and I sat forlornly on my front porch, a couple of ex-cons

under house arrest with GPS ankle bracelets. No open campfire for
us; we took turns jabbing stale graham crackers into a jar of rancid,
salmonella ridden generic “Chunkee Peenut Budder” purchased at a
“private-label” garage sale. I was sure it was purchased at the same

11
joint I secretly referred to as “The Hobo Hut”.

This was an old milk cottage dump of a house with an adjoining

garage (as it were) that some good old boy named Fred Cuttshaw
sold veggies and assorted foodstuffs out of. A spindly-legged table
festooned with fruit-fly buzzed goods was his trademark. Every
month or so he’d have a special “buy-one; get four free” dented can
sale. He dubbed it the “No-Label Sale” and only God knows where
he acquired these dented cans of stuff, but we’d be there every
month or so; shaking the piss out of unlabeled cans trying to figure
out from the “sound” whether it was soup, creamed corn or
succotash.

It was a very inexact science and at a later date when we all took
guesses and opened the can, it was with bated breath we hoped a
streaming jet of botulism laden clam chowder or Dinty Moore beef
stew wouldn’t find its mark. We always pointed the depth bomb “tin-
missiles” away from each other, but man, I once saw a can of rotten
asparagus spears fly across the kitchen and bounce off the cabinets
like little green arrows onto our plates of “Spam-a-ghetti”. A culinary
Armageddon, that dinner was not soon forgotten, nor forgiven.

Quashing my rancid memories of last suppers gone by, I bit

down on a hunk of petrified peanut the size of a gerbil that was
probably harvested during the Ice Age. I spat out the peanut pellet
and swore softly under my breath, all the while envisioning the
Frenchman and Vinny washing down tube steaks with stolen beer.

I could feel the envy and jealousy clog my throat like ropes of
coagulated blood. They probably even had that canned “Cheez
Whiz” stuff that came out in squiggles for the hot dogs. Rich
bastards.

The least they could have done was bring me and Craig a “sorry-
sack” of charred dogs that had fallen into the fire along with a foamy
Rolling Rock or two. Damn, if there was one thing my mom and dad
had taught me and the whole family, it was to” think of the other guy”.
But noooo, our pals were too busy selfishly hogging all the fun while
Craig and I languished on my front porch prison.

12
 We crawled into our sleeping bags shortly thereafter and I fell
into a troubled sleep; dreaming of driving aimlessly, then running over
a deer with Wayne’s antlered head staring into my headlights
seconds before impact. There was a horrible beauty to it.

I woke with a start around 2:30 AM and quickly roused Craig

from his untroubled sleep.

“C-man,” I whispered. “Get up big boy, we have some stuff to

do.”

My spider web encrusted mind was trying to formulate a plan, and

like it or not, Craig was along for the ride. I figured my mother was
sure to be asleep, as she’d done 27 loads of laundry that day in
addition to spraining her wrist trying to scrape the family dinner of
overdone fish sticks off a warped cookie sheet. Pop Acker was sure
to be exhausted after rebuilding the engine of the family car whose
“engine block” I’d had accidentally cracked the week before.

Consider this old saying from Transylvania: “Even a man who’s

pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when
the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright”. The Pack had
a full moon, it was close to autumn, wolfbane was in bloom
somewhere, and my hair looked perfect. It was time go. Lions and
tigers and bears my ass, I thought; this was Rolling Rock, Cheez
Whiz and wienies.

As we approached the crest of the ridge overlooking the valley

where Wayne and Vinny slept in the lap of luxury, my plan coalesced.
Stealthily moving forward in the soft, marsh like soil, I stumbled and
grabbed a stalk of weeds that pulled completely out of the ground.
Looking down at the end of this bristle of weed, I couldn’t help but
notice the heavy, globular root ball at its end.

I looked excitedly at Craig and said, “Let’s start pullin’ these sod
balls out and put ‘em over by those boulders.”

It didn’t take long to amass about three or four dozen sod balls

13
with perfectly formed softball-sized root balls.

It was time to get the party started and I thought it would be a nice
touch to roll a few boulders down the hill towards Wayne and Vinny’s
campsite. We peered over the hill and could see their sleeping
bagged bodies next to what had been pretty large fire that now was a
mass of glowing embers.

We loosed a few boulders, gave a shove and the great stones

started tearing down the hill like giant baked potatoes. It was music
to our ears as their heavy, dull thud contrasted nicely with the snap,
crackle and pop of twigs, bushes and small trees that were easily
obliterated. That got their attention.

I moved four feet to my left and grabbed a sod ball by the stalk
and began twirling it like a lasso.

“Craig, just grab and twirl, grab and twirl, get the right trajectory
and smother ‘em in sod balls,” I hissed. “Hit ‘em with everything we
got!”

Like flag twirlers gone berserk, our arms cranking like little Ferris
wheels, we arced sod balls into the moonlit sky that rained down on
the boys like stringed buckets of dirt from an angry heaven. We
witnessed a direct hit to the fire pit and watched with glee as hot
coals erupted in a geyser of red-hot confetti.

Wayne and Vinny had popped out of their now burning sleeping
bags quick as spit watermelon seeds and were jumping around like
fleas on a hot griddle. Craig and I watched the holes burning into
their sleeping bags began to expand like orange ripples in a pond as
the fire fed itself.

“Pour it on, C-man; Pour it on!” I urged.

With a furious final fusillade of sod balls, our arms tingling with
exhaustion, we watched as Vinny and Wayne desperately tried to
elude the deadly root ball /fire combo. Wheeling about like an ugly
ballerina, his little flannel jammies throwing sparks off like a Roman

14
candle, the Frenchmen was valiantly trying to stomp out the growing
conflagration while dodging dirt balls falling from the night sky.

Wayne continued dancing about like a beheaded chicken, and

when his foot stomped onto the upturned tines of the garden rake it
sent the handle flying directly into the center of his forehead.
Sounding like a long triple to right-center off Mickey Mantle’s bat, the
“crack!” actually echoed throughout the small valley and we watched
the Frenchman fall backward into the fire like a two-legged bowling
pin.

His screams rolled over the crest of the hill, a siren of human
misery. Dogs began barking and Craig and I watched in horror as
every home in Gopher’s Glen lit up like a strand of Christmas lights,
one after another. A true domino effect, lights continued to string
together relentlessly climbing up Gopher’s Glen Drive.

The euphoria of our brilliant victory was beginning to wane and

the adrenaline that had fueled the attack was spent. As Craig and I
watched Wayne thrash about like a mummy in burning bandages, we
saw Vinny scrabbling up the hillside in smoldering underwear with a
can of Cheez Whiz clutched in a blistered fist.

Then I heard it, and so did Craig.

“Jackie, Jackie!” It was my mother’s unmistakable “commando”

voice and, Jesus H. Christ; here she came over the crest of the hill
with flashlight in hand like a Predator drone. My own mother had
become my personal Enola Gay and I was Hiroshima.

“Is this what you call the front porch young man? Craig, do you
think I should call your mother now, at 3:30 in the morning and tell her
where you are?” I learned later these are referred to as rhetorical
questions, best left unanswered with no explanation offered. Craig
was a bent and broken man at this point, and I knew I had to come up
with at least a fairly plausible explanation for what we were doing in
the middle of a field at 3:30 AM with the smell of napalm in the air and
the enemy retreating fast.

“We were chasing some hoboes that tried to steal our peanut

15
butter,” I blurted out. I heard Craig whimper in sympathy at this lame
excuse. There may have been one hobo within a hundred miles of
us, but two? Since my mother had graduated Magna Cum Laude
with a double major, I knew this missile of deception had missed the
mark by a huge margin.

“Jack,” my mom said, “Any hobo in his right mind would throw that
peanut butter into the trash. We only gave it to you in hopes it would
weld your mouth shut for a couple of days. The only hobo around
here may be you, sooner than you think. Now get home and back
onto that porch. Craig, your mother and I will have a talk about this,
believe you me.”

I’d always hated that “Believe you me” crap. What was that? I
didn’t even know what the hell it really meant but it sure sounded
ominous and final. Man, all we boys wanted to do was sleep out and
roast our little wienies. Some things never change.

A Tree in the Forest

16