Chapter 6

Trash and Trashy Down the Ditch

I’m diametrically opposed, genetically predisposed

To lay face down in the gene pool, kicking like a damn fool

And blowing bubbles out my nose

“Jackass Family”

Whether it was a short summer shower or a powerful thunderstorm, rain was always a great temptress for the Sons of Starmount. We never missed a chance to kick through a deep puddle or tear up the muddy turf, sliding down the embankment between Jim Maples’s house and mine. If the rain was hard enough, we’d sneak down to the drainage ditches to raft the powerful torrent that raced through the woods.

One particular rainy day turned out differently from all the rest. There was no rule-breaking sod-sliding or rafting that day. Instead, the rain brought new and curious revelations and questions, no doubt a prelude to the obsessional adolescent era to come.

Several of the boys and I sat on the curb in my front yard with our bare feet in the street. We laughed and kicked water at each other as we watched the rain turn the gutter first into a rushing stream, and then a muddy rage of soupy runoff and debris. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, we had no inkling of the importance that curbside river would soon play.

The first objects to wash our way were benign enough: scraps of paper, twigs, sweet gumballs, and broken toys, like the right arm of a G.I. Joe, a discolored paddle missing its rubber ball and string, and a few miscellaneous metal pieces from an Erector set. It was all treasure for the taking, and we applied the “Finders, keepers; losers, weepers” philosophy while fishing through the trash.

Being boys, we of course turned the whole thing into a competitive sport, complete with a mixed bag of envy, gloating, and appropriate amounts of wide-eyed wonder. It was like a twisted version of the carnival game, Duck Pond, where you select a rubber duck floating in a plastic pool and win the prize written on the underside of its yellow butt. But this was no placid pond; it was a mud-obscuring, hydro-rage field of play. The goal was to acquire the richest prize and lord it over the heads and lesser fortunes of your friends. We all took turns winning and losing and were equally content with the progression of our personal luck.

Things were going along swimmingly when suddenly, everything changed. In what seemed like the opening of the gates of curiosity heaven, Playboys and pills began spilling down the ditch in a rain-soaked revival my friends and I would not soon forget.

It was trash day and someone far up the street had apparently cleaned house in more ways than one. Those black Hefty bags had been ripped open by the gully washer, and in turn, they ripped open our eyes to a world where Hide-and-Seek, Cowboys and Indians, and Army seemed, at least for the moment, completely uninteresting to us. I’m curious to know whose trash that was, but “whose it was” didn’t seem to matter to any of us back then. We were more captivated by the “what it was.” The risqué maturity that cascaded before us that day was most certainly beyond our years, but for one fleeting moment, well within our reach. One by one, objects floated by with a meaning and a message that only seemed to intensify. We pulled out at least a dozen Playboy magazines and one Hustler, whose pictures overwhelmingly diminished the soggy centerfolds of its competitor.

Eventually, far more mysterious and disconcerting treasures bobbed past our perch along the curb. There were bottles filled with brightly colored pills of all shapes and sizes. I can only guess at the street value of the narcotics we let go by that day. But at that point in our young lives, drugs were medicine, medicine was for sick people, and we were far from sick.

Even more menacing were the little plastic baggies filled with variously sized syringes, known in our simple vocabulary as “shots.” Every ten-year-old boy comes pre-loaded with a syrup of ipecac-like reaction to even the remote possibility of getting the dreaded shot. We avoided that insult at all costs and never yielded to it without the fanfare of a full-sized fit. In keeping with that philosophy, we let those little baggies wash on down the street without a second thought.

There were also several impressive phallic-shaped objects that made their way down the ditch. We discussed what they could be at great length and ultimately came up with the only plausible explanation: “They’re fossils,” I announced.

“Yeah, they’re donkey-dick fossils,” replied Jim.

I laughed and added, “Yeah, ancient dinosaur donkey dicks.”

That explanation stood for the next few years. In fact, it would be well into high school before most of us knew the correct name for those statue-like pieces, let alone what someone might do with them. Yet as tempting as it was to add the “donkey dicks” to our already bizarre cache, we somehow knew enough to eventually return them to their erect journey.

It was hard to imagine that anyone, especially an adult, could experience the rush we got from candy bars and Cokes or the dangerous thrill we felt when tempting death by serpent or gator. But someone up the street had clearly wandered knee-deep into their own dark swamp, full of thrills and threats; a realm that was, until that moment, beyond our ten-year-old gazes.

The rain and its fantastical flood eventually ended, but not before my mom yanked us away from the water’s sinful edge. It began, innocently enough, with a half-hearted scolding from the house: “Mark, Jim, boys, don’t you know it’s raining? You’re soaked; come inside.”

Understanding that ten-year-old boys belong in the rain and assuming her order would most likely be ignored anyway, she didn’t push the issue and decided to walk back in before she got too wet. But before she did, something caught her attention. “What’s that you’re playing with? Be careful with all that junk! If you get cut, you’re gonna have to get a tetanus shot.”

That last word got my attention enough to utter, “It’s fine, Mom, we’re not gonna get cut.”

Trying not to cut himself on a piece of metal, Jim added, “Look, it’s not even sharp.”

We rebuffed my mom’s orders without even turning around, so we had no idea that she was making a beeline through the rain for us and our pile of treasure. Next came an onslaught of questions, realizations, and orders: “Seriously, you guys are soaked. You boys come inside right this…what in the hell is that? Oh no, no, no, no, no. Put that down! That’s…that’s just gross! And put that down too while you’re at it! In the house! Now!”

Being pulled away and told we would not be keeping our bounty or continuing our search, was maybe the only time we regretted letting any of those more unusual objects float past us. Forbidden fruit is as powerful a metaphor as it gets, puberty or not. We couldn’t get the thought out of our heads: If we would have just kept those damn ancient dinosaur donkey dicks we could have sold them to a museum. And who knows, maybe it would have made us rich and famous.

The memory of that day and of the things we saw and pondered over quickly gave way to more innocent activities. Flashlight tag, campouts, and swimming trips to the Killearn Country Club pool soon re-flooded our young RAM memories. Despite the seventies’ reputation for decadence and permissiveness, life in the cradle of Starmount was, for the most part, safe and protected. But the rains had fallen and the dye, cast. The world had seemed to grow ever impatient waiting for us to lose our veils of naïveté. On that day, adult images challenged our guiltless minds, and the countdown from innocent to not, had begun.