Chapter 10

Blue Beams and June Bug Shadows

Sunday afternoon, sun’s beginning to dip

That handful of freedom is starting to slip

The weekend’s over, time to head back

Your mama’s calling, the streetlight’s on

“Weekend Runaways”

A bright shining star hovered in front of my house in 1977. Even when the more celebrated stars of the night sky disappeared behind thunderclouds, I could always see my personal beacon. The dozen or more streetlights mounted on top of telephone poles stretched like a constellation from one end of Starmount to the other. They were set to turn on automatically at dusk and turn off just after the first hint of morning. These beacons illuminated the darkened passages from the wild and back again. We kept an eye on them like ancient sailors gazing upon the North Star or the glow of a distant lighthouse. When these stalwart beacons disappeared from view, genuine danger existed, and that was often right where we wanted to be.

As the streetlights kicked on, casting a metallic-blue beam that made the summer June bug shadows dance, a constant dull buzzing sound settled over Starmount. That buzz was loudest when they first flickered on and then died away slowly. Most sounds were difficult to hear over the noises we made, but knowing how long those lights had been on by the particular frequency they gave off over time often proved useful in deciding when to head for home and how quickly, particularly when school night curfews approached.

Those streetlight warnings and the passage of time itself were less threating on weekend nights during the school year and on most summer nights. In those times, we used the fluorescent beam coming from the poles to continue our late-night games of Kick the Can, Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and every possible derivative of each. The streetlights transformed the nighttime shadows into arenas and allowed for great feats of athleticism and daring. The pools of light formed a border between endings and beginnings, between winning and losing, and between what we knew and what we wondered. There were times when it was important to stay within the light’s reach and other times when it was just as imperative to push well beyond it. Knowing that difference was a fundamental skill, one at which the Sons of Starmount were experts.

When we were not playing games or performing skateboard tricks while shooting off bottle rockets, we sat beneath the streetlight for hours. It was the asphalt version of a campfire. We would talk until we were as blue in the face as the color cast from those fluorescent canisters. We wrestled with the mundane and the extraordinary, the distinction never actually occurring to us. Conversations revolved around the mysteries of monsters, aliens, the best candy, and teenage girls. We were not yet of age, so, partly out of woeful ignorance and partly out of waning interest, our talk of teenage girls would quickly give way to our default discussion topic, the art of grand adventure. We spoke of our collective destiny, defined by great discoveries, epic journeys, unparalleled risk, and heroism. These were important subjects, worthy of well-lit deliberation, and fully enabled by the glow of the streetlight.

There were also discussions of weightier subjects, like the death of a pet and going back to school, as well as the ever-present threat of moving away from Starmount and each other. Occasionally, we even tackled the headier question of whether we could ever find or practice the loyalty of friendship later in life. But our friendship was unconditional, and anything less than that seemed a ridiculous notion to entertain for more than a mere moment.

Many expressions of commitment and genuine friendship were practiced under that artificial light, such as pinky swears, spit handshakes, and even full-on blood-brother ceremonies, all of which were exercised to further the bonds between us.

The act of becoming blood brothers, of sharing that which we all knew coursed through us, was serious business. Like most of our dangerous dares, the idea was seeded and sold by the older among us, with the younger ones only going along with it so as not to be left out of the brotherhood. None of us minded scrapes, cuts, burns, and bruises, and, within reason, all had a high pain tolerance. But we were not fans of purposeful pain, as there seemed no need to rush the inevitable. In our eyes, this was not an exercise in pain or injury, but one of honor and nobility.

We were outdoor boys, and we all carried knives. It was a mixed bag of blades, from the classic Swiss Army knife, with its fourteen attachments, to some fishing knives we used to fillet the bream and bass we caught, to a couple of semi-rusted classic “Old Timers” handed down from our grandfathers.

We pulled our knives from the depths of our pockets, careful not to spill out the other treasures: pennies, glass shards, Army men, and more than a few half-melted M&M’s. Each of us wanted our knife to be the official blade, but was keenly aware that we needed to use the cleanest and sharpest of them all. Though the collection of hand-me-down pocketknives and beautifully etched hunting knives was impressive, we unanimously chose the wood-handled steak knife from Jim’s tackle box. It had a ten-inch blade that doubled as a fillet knife and, thanks to the Steges’s older brother, Mark, it was as sharp as a diamond’s edge and shiny clean, other than the slight stain from an old bream’s innards.

Looking back, we clearly lifted our Blood Oath from some teenage angst or classic horror B-movie. We were ten-year-old boys after all, and drawn to loyalty pledges, brash displays of courage, and hyperbole-laced heroism, like the proverbial moth to the flame.

Deciding who would go first was an exercise in mixed messaging. We all needed to assert our bravery and leadership, while also doing our best to hide our inner terror. We did this by saying to one another, almost in sync, “Uh, I’ll go first. Unless you want to go first. I mean, it’s pretty cool, so if you want to go first…”

The great burden of being the idea guy is that it is almost impossible to be first with the thought and second with the deed. So, once I decided to go first, I saw no virtue in dragging it out. To do so meant risking the loss of both nerve and respect.

We all reached toward each other. None of our hands trembled, but we were ready to retract them at a moment’s notice. I took the long, wooden-handled knife and gently pierced the upper part of my palm, just as a broken Coke bottle, more than a few Eagle Claw fishhooks, and a thousand blackberry thorns had done before.

“Oh man,” John said, “doesn’t that hurt?” It was a caring question for sure, but it was also one of intelligence gathering. Given his age, John would go second to last, so he had time to compose himself.

“No, it’s not that bad,” I replied. “Hurts like anything else hurts, I guess.”

“Yeah, it’s nothin’,” Jim added, quickly grabbing the knife and creating a similar superficial tear in his palm.

The other boys followed suit with similar alacrity, and once we were all done with the knife, we squeezed our hands into fists, kneading the tiny droplets of blood from our punctured skin and down through our fingers. Similar to how our adult counterparts would clink cocktail glasses, we took turns grasping each other’s hands. You can’t sink a raft, pull each other through snake-infested swamps, fall from high branches, or get yelled at by parents together and not be brothers. As far as we were concerned, the blood just made it official. We didn’t know anything about germs or deadly viruses back then, but even if we had, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Sharing the DNA of Starmount meant that good sense could shut up for a minute and take a back seat to honor and camaraderie.

Deep in the discussions of friendship, the streetlight illuminated life at the outer edges of what could be seen in plain sight. Streetlights gave us a partial glimpse of the unknown, of the excitement of what lies beyond the shadows, and gave credence to imagination, dreams, and sometimes nightmares. The times we were living in, the parents we had, and the composition of the whole Starmount neighborhood all promoted freedom, exploration, and autonomy. The malevolent world of kidnappings, dangerous strangers, and other pitfalls undoubtedly existed in 1977, but it was not a significant part of our understanding and rarely an element in any of our childhood plots or fears. That was in no small measure a reflection of our parents’ skill at hands-off nurturing, and maybe at times, a little purposeful ignorance too.

By today’s standards, our unrestricted access to the world and our parents’ approach to supervision could easily be deemed careless. Parenting expectations in 1977 now look like laissez-faire leadership at best and outright neglect at worst. It may be easy to justify today’s parental obsessiveness and overreach as the most responsible reaction to a violent and dangerous world, but growing up without a significant measure of sovereignty brings a different and no less frightening set of perils.

Learning the art of negotiation and compromise and how to entertain ourselves without parent-manufactured playdates was the norm. Our parents did provide a reasonable safety net to catch our failed attempts at growing up. And some nets had larger holes than others, but we rarely fell straight through them. We learned personal responsibility because we had the opportunity to make choices; if we took part in any hell-raising behavior, we at least had to be responsible enough to hide it, mitigate it, or in some way protect our right to do it again. Many of us seemed to lose sight of that lesson in our later years.

During the school year, we were weekend runaways, out of sight between Friday after school and the last moments before Sunday supper. Our parents’ laxness toward a weekend world of wild abandon morphed into an equally impatient expectation of us being in the house at Sunday’s end.

The streetlight and its potential for turning on were of unique interest to us, and at times, the single-minded focus of our attention. Timing our arrival back on the street with the first flickering of those lights was more art than science. It was a difficult challenge to pull off. Seeing the streetlight begin to dance through the trees meant only one thing: we were late and had no time to waste. That far-off beacon would initiate a panic-driven run rivaled only by the hasty retreat inspired by a yellow jacket nest, or, of course, the ice cream man.

What lay beyond that chaotic transition from heaven to home, however, often left us feeling flat. We were faced with having to sit down to a well-mannered dinner, followed by procrastinated homework, the dreaded time-wasting bath, and then the all-too-familiar irritation of having a favorite TV show interrupted by bedtime.

It seems that our adult lives are controlled at every turn. We find ourselves bound by warning beacons, signs directing our travel and place in the world, and a constant stream of messages aimed at pulling us back like a tether from what our childhood hearts call out to be. Societal norms and constraints seem so tight that we are often unaware of our captivity. We can’t blame that on anyone else, though. We allow it to be that way. We find comfort in restriction, and then we bitch about it. As an adult, one trades freedom for safety on a daily basis. We spend outrageous amounts of money on all types of insurance and then define success by never having to use it. We dumb down, we underutilize, and we over prepare. We do all these things so we never have to admit we are vulnerable and that life can catch us off guard, or worse, we can be wrong. Ironically, as children, we rarely, and never by our own accord, allow that same sad trade-off to occur.

We know the frontal lobes of children and adolescents lack the executive function celebrated by the adult brain, which predictably results in crazy levels of impulsiveness and a penchant for unrealistic wonder. I wonder what part of the adult brain controls the random spark of dreams, the fulfillment of an unsupported vision, and the unalloyed pursuit of personal joy? I wonder if those parts of the brain recess over the years. Not all adults lose these valuable characteristics, but many do. Personally, I fear the loss of dream equity the most. It seems the older you get, the more you must fight against the slippage of dreams.

On Starmount Drive, we relied on the streetlight to show us that what lay beyond the edge of darkness was more than the milieu of monsters or the frightening unknown. We used the light to reveal good friends who were waiting and willing to take up even our most outrageous proposals.

Back then, the only lasting consequence of missing our calling or disappointing someone’s expectations was a loving home and a good night’s sleep. Oh, how sweet it would be if that were still true.