by compound complex 730 Replies latest social entertainment
Books I read early on ... hmmm ... the Bible, of course.
Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Ted Scott, Bobbsey Twins, Shakespeare, ancient Roman, Greek, and Babylon mythology.
During Negro History Week, precursor to African-American History Month, any and all Black authors to which I had access, especially those of the Harlem Renaissance.
Anything I could find concerning Africa, which was slim pickings.
I read and read and read!
Can you tell?
Sylvia
Yes, Syl!
Thanks so much ... off and running to feed the kitty ... 30 minute walk....
CoCo
Oh Coco! "The Secret Life of Bees" is one of my favorite books of all time. I gave it as gifts. If you get a chance to hear the audio you might love it as well, spoken in a child's voice.
xx
Thanks, Dag ...
Just saw you! I appreciate the tip.
CoCo
OOOOoo, "The Egg and I"! I remember that book! Loved it as a kid; don't think I have it anymore. I think it stayed with my parents when I DA'd; that's one thing I DO miss about not being able to connect with the ol' JW zombie parents - they had a decent collection of books.
Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft: Thor Heyerdahl" Oooh! Ooooh! I remember those! Used to have paperback copies of those, too! [Or obtained them from the library...]
"As child I languished somewhere between unsteady ambulatory and down-and-out sickly.... I sort of milked the "illness" for all it was worth to make a point (literary license)..."
Yeah, I was sickly too as a child - asthma, in addition to the sinus infections and ear infections. I used 'illness' to duck out on meetings, especially when "Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea" was on...
I was excused from gym class due to the asthma; later on in life I learned that medical researchers had discovered a connection between certain types of family dynamics and the ailment of asthma. I personally got rid of my asthma when I was 16; I took off on my bicycle on a cold, wet, miserable day here in Colorado - just the sort of day that would usually generate an asthma attack (we don't have many days like that - more often cold and DRY, so I took advantage of the one that was immediately available...)
[I was fortunate that my asthma was never severe enough to force me to be on a respirator or anything like that.]
I had developed, by that time, the ability to 'tell' my throat to not snap shut, so I could keep breathing - a sort-of 'biofeedback' mechanism - this was in the late '60's, so I don't know whether 'biofeedback' had been described at that early date.
I rode my bicycle for the first hour, alternating between breathing thru my nose and my mouth, forcing my throat to stay open as I drew that cold air into my lungs. After the first hour, as I kept riding, I could feel the cold air rendering my throat raw. I kept riding. Eventually, when my throat was numb, too scarred by the cold to feel anything, I headed home.
I had successfully scarred the sensitive areas of my'brachial' tube. I never had another attack of asthma after that. When I discovered - a few years later - that I was drastically allergic to refined sugar, and cleaned that out of my diet, along with most refined flour, rice, and potatoes - the sinus infections and ear infections disappeared, too. I still have to make sure my ears are covered if there's a bitter cold wind, but who doesn't need that kind of protection under those conditions???
Whew! that was way off-topic... Zid
Hello Zid:
As it was actually I who brought it up, you're not off base at all.
Interesting account regarding the deliberate scarring of your innermost respiratory works. My, what a prescient gamine you were!
Within a storyline a writer - who I am to tell you this? - might take a childhood incident [singular] and embroider a trifling cough into the tentacles of Marguerite Gautier's invasive, debilitating consumption. That, I confess, I have done. Yet, my pulmonary issues to this day are in parallel course with what were/are yours.
I appreciate reading about your reading material, which is, it would seem, a common reading amongst us.
Three times for emphasis ...
Much appreciation for supporting the glass seen through darkly....
CoCo des Tenebres
Billy Tobias is a scarecrow of a 12-year old boy, with lank blond hair that's always in his eyes. Freckles dot his pale but clear adolescent face, and he has that can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it type of cuteness that doesn't go unnoticed by the blossoming Marys and Jills and Shirleys of the neighborhood that the Vincents inhabit. He possesses a keenness of spirit that transcends his chronological age. That attribute, in its turn, does not go unnoticed by his teachers, his friend's parents and much older but far less astute grownups.
It's been a wild game of dodge ball this early evening, played in the middle of quiet, tree-lined Hernandez Terrace. The occasional automobile cuts through the frenzied game, momentarily putting the rag-tag band of urchins on the sidelines. Effie Watson hums by in her '51 Nash Statesman Custom, Rose Packard motors through, from the opposing direction, in majestic elegance, enthroned high upon reversible cushions, in her rose '56 Packard 400. George Spalding has returned from a long, tiring day at the tax bureau, pulling his green '54 Chevy sedan stodgily into the carport.
It grows darker, the sweaty band of dodgers/throwers breaks up, and pesky but adorable Sally Anne Tobias pouts her bruised way home to 236 Hernandez Terrace. She wanted to play (Billy begrudgingly gave in), and it seems she was the ball's principal target. A conspiracy of sorts? Sally dashes up treads and risers of New York style carpeting to her frilly bedroom. Once plopped firmly and unmovable upon her four-poster, she pours out her heart to a little girl's one true confidante: Raggedy Ann.
Billy stays behind as his pals go their separate ways, home to scrubbing up and supper. "Bobby, come and get your supper" is routinely wailed out each evening through a battered screen door by Maggie Reese, beckoning her only child to come home and put some more meat on his stout bones. Mrs. Tobias hasn't returned home yet to fix the family dinner; she's chairing this or that committee to raise funds for this or that worthy cause du jour. Sally falls asleep, exhausted but secretly overjoyed that this time her creepy big brother relented and let her play, even if she is bruised and battered. Raggedy Ann keeps a button-eye on the alert for interlopers.
The young man Tobias drops to the grass in the only empty lot on the block. It is a plum orchard, a very well tended plum orchard, owned by cranky old man Peters, whose home fronts the next street over, Wraight Street. Though clearly a jock in the making - kick-the-can- kicker-into-the-middle-of-next-year pro, expert dodger of the meanest kickball in town, and slugger par excellence of a routine softball - Billy is deeper on the inside than the simple and commonplace boyish bravado that the outside would suggest. Lying serenely and strangely camouflaged in a high but maintained carpet of green, Billy, lying on his belly, chin cupped upon his thumbs, and fingers interlaced like the proverbial church of human digits, looks intently across the asphalt toward 248.
He's thinking about his best pal, whom he doesn't see outside as often as he would like. As they both would like. The two boys formed a bond instantly when the Tobiases moved in down the street some 8 years earlier and the boys looked upon each other for the first time. They continue to look at each other, and at this moment they are looking at each other ...
Separated only by a pane of glass.
I awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed.
I was dreaming ... perhaps I still am. There is no doubt about the house, however. That house. At this present moment are set before me the orderliness and tidiness of Mr. Clean and Jeeves himself. I am home. My own home. Yet the smell and disarray of a dwelling long neglected persists in my nostrils and before my disbelieving eyes. Those who held title to this sinister house could not have known they would never be welcomed here. Not truly. I have no idea why I said that; perhaps it's just a feeling. Why I should think it, much less say it ... Like I said before, I could still be dreaming. Scenes from my dreamscapes make sense like visions of Alice in her little world of wonder make sense.
Whatever this all purports to mean, I am certain of what I heard, what I saw. Something at the top of the stairway was moving. I was finished, at least for the moment, with taking inventory of the large container addressed to my mother. Time to investigate. I'm past fear. Well, we'll see.
Grabbing the banister - not unduly concerned about its filthy state - I pulled myself upward, slowly, as though my legs alone could not adequately perform the climb. However dark the upper landing might be, there was a sensation of movement that my gut picked up on, let alone my eyes straining to discern even what should have been the most obvious indicators of a presence. Atop the landing - at long last, it seemed - I clearly saw what had been moving, though I heard nothing but a muffled sort of cry. A door was swinging open, swinging partially shut, ever so slowly, gently, back and forth, from what could only have been, to my way of thinking, some draft. Perhaps an open window in the room behind the door. I hesitated momentarily, not initially from fear, but because that muffled cry broke sharply into a cutting sob. I felt myself blanch. A tingle shuddered noisily up the spine.
The door, of its own accord - so it would seem - opened fully before me. I looked cautiously into the spacious room, a bedroom ...
A young woman was sobbing, her shoulders quaking violently. Some control over her near hysteria was maintained by the firmly draped arm of a tall blond man around her shoulders. He was quietly weeping, wiping away the tears with the back of his free hand. I could not determine at first who this young couple was and why they were so cut up. They were oblivious to my entry and even much more so despite my letting out a piercing cry of my own ...
There, on the bed, was a life-size doll - Raggedy Andy - but with the face of a young man.
The face of Elizabeth Vincent's son.
I throw my back against the wall, as though this act alone will steady me, saving me from collapsing to my knees. Hopeless. Helpless. Now it is I who am shaking violently, my stomach doing several flips of its own, eventually to land in a heap only God knows where. I force myself to look up again and see nothing, nobody in the immediate foreground ... Who were they ... why Raggedy And ... my fa...?
I stated at the very outset that I do have a colorful imagination, but this? Who in his right mind would or could conjure up this nonsense? If not, then, in my "right" mind, my "wrong" mind? It's the only mind I possess, and I really wonder if I'm losing it. All there is before me now is an empty room. An open window. Tattered curtains swooshing to-and-fro in the light breeze that seems to me the only vestige of reality, one of Nature herself, that I am currently linked to.
Composed - hardly - but needing to get out of here, I run down the stairs and make for the door. My mind (whatever's left of it) signals my feet to an abrupt halt though I want only to bolt out the front door. I turn in robotic fashion, my head cocked to the side in anticipation of another shock to body and senses and my eyes come to rest in a fixed stare upon Elizabeth Vincent's box of items. Stuff mostly known to me but of downright unknown sendership.
Upon the container is one manila envelope, crisply brittle, fragile with advanced age. I recall handling a slew of envelopes as part of the inventory but not placing any of them outside the box. Picking up the stuffed packet with trembling, I read slowly and with incredulity words that may just as well have been in a foreign tongue for all the sense they did not make:
The life of Andrew J. Vincent: 1944 - 1975
ooooo, now this just gets better and better...
We want more! We want more!
You're goooood at scary stories!! Zid 
