Childhood Memories of Summer

When I was a kid, no one in my family declined the invitation to take a car ride to get gas with my father. Particularly on a scorching day in late July or mid August.

Not then.

Not now.

Not ever.

We’d all pile into the family mobile, one by one. Dad. Mom. Brian. Little brother Mikey. Myself included. “Hail, hail! The gang’s all here,” or so my father would. It was he special way of saying everyone was included, from the chief straight on down through the file and ranks. I wonder if that was a quote from a movie or television show from his childhood long since past. The reference was lost on me. Despite that, it had a ring, like the bell to Pavlov’s dog.

I guess it was his catch phrase or something. He had quite a few of them, “Let’s get gas,” included.

The temperatures inside that vehicle could pull Hell to shame. I’m certain of that. The windows on that Chevy suburban didn’t exactly roll down. Rather they swung open, barely a few centimeters, on a hinge that was just as likely to pinch fingers as it was to mysteriously shut mid travel. My brother and I never bothered with the windows anyway. Too much trouble for too little travel. This created a wicked green house effect not even a tropical plant could endure.

Sweat cascaded down. Backs of legs were singed by pleather seats. We chocked on stale air. Who cared anyway. The sacrifice was well worth the immediate discomforts. After all, we were on a family outing to get gas.

The “gas station” (I guess that’s what you would call it in this context, though my father never used that word), was an ice cream shack off to the side of the highway. I never understood how my dad conjured the metaphor of gas equals ice cream. Probably some attempt at a corny joke. He was always cracking a pun or two any chance he could get. I guess this was opportunity to expand his repertoire of humorous expressions. No one dared question this comparison, especially not when ice cream was involved.

Like my dad’s jokes, the ice cream shack had a certain cheesiness about it. Classic hot rod cars and jeeps were parked around the perimeter. That might be pretty badass hadn’t the proprietors loaded these vehicles with oversized stuffed animals; the same ones you might expect not to win from the spin-the-wheel game at the Jersey boardwalk. Imagine a huge, plush Bugs Bunny driving a Mustang. The place was aptly named Campies.

The place was hokey to the max. Cheesy lawn ornaments, namely of the pink flamingo and garden gnome varieties. You could ride the mechanical pony for a quarter. Or, if that was to feminine, there was always the mechanical rocket ship for the more masculine. Their ice cream Sundays were named after popular TV shows. Note— the name had absolutely nothing to do with the actual flavor. Imagine walking up to the counter and ordering a “Bart Simpson,” or a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle”, “Fred Flintstone”, or “Al Bundy”.

I never ordered an Al Bundy… or a Quick Draw McGraw for that matter. Spiral upon spiral of soft ice cream was where it was at. My brothers and I would order the largest size offered off the menu, covered in sprinkles or coated with a candy shell.

Note—eating an ice cream cone of this magnitude required a fair amount of skill. Enough balance to prevent the cone from tipping over. Dexterity to lick the ice cream into shape, averting a dripping mess. And enough constitute to weather the occasional brain freeze. We had to finish the cone right there on the spot. To get back into the sweltering van would be sudden death. Game over.

Funny enough, for all the times we went out for “gas,” my dad never ate ice cream. He would just sit back on a fluorescent-colored park, smiling all the time. Satisfied. I suppose there are some things even better than ice cream. My father knew that way back when. Looking back over my childhood, I now know what he knew then.

Tags: Campies, Blackwood, NJ, ice cream, soft serve, summer, summertime, father, dad, memories

The Moment (Ireland)

“Ireland” is a vignette I wrote as part of NWP’s Invitational Summer Institute two summers ago. The story is autobiographical in nature. It describes the very moment when I proposed to my wife during one of the last nights in Ireland. After having reread this story, I was shocked that this experience was portrayed in the third person perspective. Deep emotions are much more accessible in the first person; I tend to overuse this writing approach.

In this piece of writing, the third person gives a more balanced treatment to both characters. Like the poem “The Feeling of It”, this story attempts to capture one moment in time; an emotional landscape sculpted by the surrounding environments. Peculiar enough, the story’s original title “The Moment,” was also the title of another vignette that was finished this past summer. I am only starting gain a sense that this theme runs throughout my stories and poems. That will be for you to judge.

Although psychologists, educators, and philosophers alike could debate this point, our environment is a shared experience. For the most part, a group of people could agree upon what information their five senses detect. We take in those senses, and make our own personal meaning based on memories and feelings- our own personal interpretation based on the outside environment and experience. It is our personal perception, our personality, which isolates people and makes us individual. We then try to reconnect with other human beings by expressing these internal ideas through language (both spoken and written), art, music, math, etc. This is one of the prevailing ideas in American education; this is my fascination.

Dear Caroline,

Can you remember Kilkenny: the medieval city; the Irish drum circle, all two of them; hostel in an old guard tower; Frank, the dreadlock proprietress; obnoxious Americans from Connecticut; a walk in the woods; moonlight, and the moment; going to the local pub; announcing the event; townsfolk, including those Americans; buying us shots; meant twice for me because you don’t drink; drunk Irish brogue; foosball; those Irish love their America, especially Disney and Florida; the drunken bartender was also the taxi driver for the night; stumbling up all those spiral steps; sleeping in separate cots, in a one room hostel. After all those years, the memories are still fresh. This is my gift to you on our wedding anniversary.

With love,
Joe

(Ireland) The Moment

It was the second time that week the clouds parted to reveal the sky. Even if it was only for a moment, the view was stunning. A realist would have reported that a full moon looked no different in Ireland than it would have appeared in New Jersey. A true romantic would have argued differently. The moon appeared inexplicably huge, and save a young couple, nothing else competed for space on that horizon.

The picture presented itself as gentleman and lady sitting atop a fieldstone wall. This wall stretched onward for miles in either direction, rolling softly over green hills as far as the eye could see. Occasionally another wall would meet at a perpendicular, forming an odd grid. In other places the wall had collapsed where stones had loosened from the agents of time and weather. The walls and fields blended into the horizon where land meets the still night. Only the stones and moon gave audience to this couple. How could it not be romantic for the couple?

This was a moment of isolation and intimacy; somehow life outside of their sphere did not exist. Perhaps a countryman may have walked by with his dog, or a brook rippled over worn-down rocks. They would never have noticed. Save the fieldstone wall, any trace of humanity was removed. Was it possible to be alone in the world and truly hear silence, let alone these two shared in that experience?

She was cold, and slightly frightened. Midnight, middle-of-nowhere, full moon, foreign country- this was ripe material for her inner fears to take hold. A rustle in the field or a howl should have distracted her from the moment. Rather she drew further into that sphere that was their shared space, and shut out the world . . . all save that full moon. Intimacy was a feeling of warmth that spread throughout the body, originating somewhere deep within her. It was a feeling of serenity and safety invested in their state of togetherness.

Inside the gentleman’s pocket was a secret waiting to be revealed. He nervously thumbed the object over and over, rotating it in his sweaty palm. The heaviness of the object weighted down any courage he could muster. “Could she know my innermost desire,” he thought as that that desire revolved around his pinky finger. What if she knew? Would she have given him a sign, a signal, some message of affirmation? He stared deep into her eyes, unable to read the moment. Even though his palms sweated profusely, his throat was parched. A word struggled to produce itself, but lost itself somewhere on the tip of his tongue. The silence maintained.

The full moon, true intimacy, the feel of her breath on his neck, his secret yearning to be set free- this moment was certain not to last. This was an experience to be savored, made precious; never to be lived again. He removed the secret from his pocket and slid the diamond ring onto her finger. Silence . . . stillness . . . shock. She tilted the diamond toward the moonlight as beams of light danced within the many facets and reflected back toward her eyes. The corners of her mouth drew upwards into a soft smile of affirmation.

Tags: Ireland, National Writing Project, personal memoir, proposal