Clothesline

From my usual spot on the screened porch in Oak Hill, I watch the shifting light and shadow of afternoon, the fall of leaves loosened by the breeze and the gentle sway of moss in the trees. I cherish this hour when all around me, apart from chair and porch are uninfluenced by human hands. The perfect whisper of quiet but intense life flourishing at the height of spring.

Puttering about in the front yard earlier (picture below) I met a neighbor from 200 yards down the road. Except for short times in Missouri, Manny has lived here for eleven years, deeply attached to the quiet and isolation. He told me stories of a large black panther living in the woods across from my gate, and of her cub and their fondness for chickens. He described a 400 pound wild pig that he and a couple of friends bagged one night, and of the good fishing in the lagoon at the end of the road. I enjoyed the stories but am not certain I want to join the night hunts or fish for trout in the lagoon.

I asked Manny if he could connect me with a local high school kid who might want to earn some money cutting grass. The house did come with a riding lawnmower, but the thought of mowing an acre of land with a couple of dozen trees in a hundred degrees of summer heat is daunting. Without the least hesitation Manny told me not to worry, that he would take care of cutting the grass. I didn’t have to study the man to know his price for that work will be more than reasonable. Something about Manny tells me he is not Beverly Hills. 

Still no sizable furniture in the house but it grows nearer day by day to something like inhabitable. There are now dishes and bowls, napkins, soap, toothpaste and a few items in the refrigerator apart from ice. Hope I can remember to bring some new clothespins tomorrow. The house is equipped with a washer and dryer but when possible I want to use the clothesline in the backyard. Nothing like the smell of freshly washed clothes dried in the sun. And I have to add, there’s something kind of nostalgic and good about having a backyard clothesline.

Colors of Youth

Without warning and totally unexpected a soul rocking-blast from the past-package turned up in the mailbox this past Thursday. The ordinary 8 X 11 envelope contained a manuscript—a copy of the 1966 Master’s thesis written by a good friend in my youth, a friend dead from diabetic shock not a great many years later. I was unaware even of the existence of this friend’s thesis, and to find that he had written on a topic so very close to our youth, of our years between junior high and college…it was a profound surprise.

In the last year of junior high a gang of us got involved with a civic organization devoted to the enrichment of theatre arts among teenagers in our city of just over 200,000 people. The program had been carefully planned and included the construction of a building and facilities especially geared to the enhancement of youth activities and city parks. By the time we joined the fun, the building and program were three years old and by most measures a thriving, if not economically, then at least culturally vibrant operation. The goal of the program was certainly nothing new or innovative, but simply the hope that young people would learn, through the guidance and assistance of a professional leader how to put on theatrical productions, doing all the work themselves apart from direction and financing.

Phillip was one classmate involved in the program, and with everyone else worked long hours after school and during the summer to put on full scale productions of such plays as Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, Oklahoma, Thieves Carnival, Tom Sawyer, and Bye Bye Birdie among a list of others. For all of us those were golden days of fun, committed purpose, learning and wide-eyed discovery of live theatre. As noted in the conclusion of Phillip’s thesis, ‘a number of the youngsters moved on to work in little theatre organizations, fifteen or more pursuing professional careers in theatre and related fields, and others becoming teachers of speech and drama in schools and universities.’

No question that many, many others also participated in similar youth programs during junior and senior high school, but the impact of having those times, those experiences suddenly brought back on detailed pages written in colors, places and names almost tactile—to use an old hippy expression, it’s a trip!

After the first semester of college friend Phillip and I went in different directions, and though I got occasional news of him from my distant hometown, the details were skimpy. He married so and so and they were living in one place or another, both doing well. And then one day a letter said he was dead from either insulin too late or too much, details unclear. I was left with vivid memories of Phillip, ones that year by year receded into a dim recess. Until last Thursday and the mysterious receipt of his Master’s thesis on our days at Teen Town Theatre.

I read his thesis from cover to cover in one mesmerized sitting, once more awash in the memory of Harriet Tomlin belting out “I Cain’t Say No,” of Dianne assuring everyone that “Dogs are sticking to the sidewalks and the whole world is at sixes and sevens,” and Ruthie saying ‘goodbye to Mama’s butternut tree.’ Here was a document I didn’t even know existed an hour earlier reminding me of a dozen forgotten names and all the youthful exuberance of knocking stage sets together and putting on plays and musicals.

Phillip’s old thesis came to me from a close friend of those days, one of several copies he received from an old Teen Town acquaintance with access to graduate school files at the University of Southern Mississippi. I called right away to thank him for what I consider a crown jewel in the record of our youth.

The second photo above is one I have no memory of. The boy on the left is a forgotten name and face, but the one in the barrel is me wearing a Huck Finn straw hat. The bottom picture is of the program for our summer musical, Seventeen.

Can’t Shake it Loose

Despite great strides made over the past six months toward acclimating to a different, and in part less familiar culture, there are things I miss almost daily about Tokyo, my city of twenty-eight years. A look at the calendar tells me that 184 days have passed since arriving in this little Florida town on the beach. Half a year, quite a lump of days, but even still, few days pass when I don’t say to myself, ‘Wish I could run out to Tower and pick up a Monkey Majik CD.’ Or maybe, ‘Sure would like to have some ebi tendon at Futaba.’ ‘Maybe I’ll go to Maruzen tomorrow and check out the new Sailor ink.’

I wrote to a friend in Tokyo yesterday asking if she would mind sending something I badly need and can’t find here. Leaving Tokyo in late April, I packed six of the notebooks long used for both journal and first drafts of writing projects. Guess it’s because of more free time here, but now all but the last pages of the last Life Noble Note notebook are filled.

Been unable to find in my area here, a café or coffee shop where I can pass an hour or so doing a John Lennon—watching the wheels go round, scribbling in my journal and occasionally blotting errant drops of iced coffee from the pages. I miss the sunbright third floor of Doutor Café in Kugayama…miss that late afternoon coffee hour.

Think too about the numbers of young Japanese boys and girls I so often passed among, those of the green hair and pierced lips, the boys in skirts, the girls in hot pink hightop Keds. The hooked-up youth nose down in cell phones, plugged into iPods, draped in chains and dragging bushel-sized tote bags. The college kids on trains locked into comic books, wearing boots big and heavy enough to cross the Amazon jungle. I miss them all.

Shimizu-san was for years my regular supermarket checkout cashier at Peacock near the Kugayama apartment. She sent a New Year’s card each January first, and never a Valentine’s Day passed that she didn’t give me a box of chocolates. Now I think of her as I stroll the aisles of my beachtown Publix, remembering a faithful friend and wondering about the cost of soy milk at Peacock these days.

I had my hair cut last Friday, and not a bad job either, but it will take a lot to erase from my wants a few more haircuts from Hikaru at Minato 3710. Hardly a time that I look at my hair in the mirror and don’t miss the skill and caring service given by my Japanese barber. I wonder often enough what color Hikaru’s hair is this month. He pretty much switched colors once a month, from black to yellow, and then to orange and maybe the next month the ever popular favorite tea-brown chapatsu.

These Florida days continue to be crowded with thoughts of the daily, weekly sights and sounds that soothed and jangled my long passage through Tokyo and the whole Japan experience.