Burning Rubber

It's been a busy couple of weeks at the Polygon with world events. So busy, actually that I have found very little to mock apart from my usual inner monologue of epithets to people who cut me off, piss me off, or otherwise blow me off, but to whom I, heeding the sage advice of my wise father, just nod and smile sweetly.

Having been under the weather most of this past week, I worked from home, causing me to feel more in touch with my cavorting Boson Terriers and neighborhood wildlife than the goings on at the Polygon.

Down the street from us, there is an older man who owns a loud motorcycle. He took it out today just for a spin around the block – which is all of six tenths of a mile. Actually, I don’t know if that is only how far he went. Maybe he was just trying to get his sea legs, so to speak. All I know is that I heard him fire it up before I left the house and shortly thereafter when I was on the next street up, he came whipping around the bend. Funny it was to me. I chuckled to no one in particular.

It reminded me of an older gentleman who lived on my block when I was a kid. His name was Mr. Kramer, Henry Kramer, and he was always the gentleman dressed in tweed, politely inquiring about my mother and her flowers. Daily he walked a pair of Welsh corgi dogs. Over the years, the dogs got old and probably died, but the Kramers always seemed to have two corgis, never puppies, so it seemed; just two yappy dogs. Whenever my brother, sister or I would sell things door-to-door, for scouts or some sort of fund-raising, the Henry and Janice Kramer would only open their door a crack, so there was still a catenary in the chain that held the door to, safe from intruders. They’d conduct whatever business or conversations needed to be had in that rectangle of safe space. And that was the way it was.

Every so often, on warm, clear evenings with soft skies, Henry would cruise around on his mo-ped. Janice or the dogs or the tweed must have gotten a little too much for him and he had the need for speed. Around the block he’d go, and we kids would just watch in wonder. Mr. Kramer on his moped.

When people ask me where I grew up and I tell them New Jersey, the question that inevitably follows is, “Which exit?”

Fact is, I didn’t live anywhere near the NJ Turnpike or even the Garden State Parkway – which I think are the roads that the joke refers to.

Although my zip code said “Somerville,” I grew up in a little town called North Branch, named after the north branch of the Raritan River. There were 13 houses on our U-shaped block and across the street there were acres and acres of farmland. The farms there raised beef cattle and as far as I knew, grew no crops other than corn and hay.

Through these farms, though, there was a dirt road, blocked to cars but a public right-of-way nonetheless – my dad looked it up. This road – known to us kids on Village Way as ‘the dirt road’ – was our pathway to adventure. At one end of the dirt road was Burnt Mills Road, the road that closed the “U” of Village Way. After crossing Burt Mills Road, we could ride our bikes all up and down the dirt road, making jumps, kicking up dirt, never worrying about cars. Best of all, it connected to another road, called Vanderveer Avenue - named for one of the founders of the town and owners of one of the farms along the road (a boy who came to be my brother’s best friend ended up living there later on in our life, but not yet at the time about which I am writing)… where was I? Oh yeah, best of all Vanderveer Avenue dumped right out by the North Branch General Store. At the General Store, back in the ’80s, a dollar could buy a kid a lot of happiness.

This happiness was not cheaply purchased, however. We kids had to undergo a lot of trials and tests along the way to earning the cold soda, neco wafers, and licorice waiting for us at the end of the line.

The most fearsome obstacle was for us to pass the Sutton’s house unscathed. The Sutton’s house was the second one we came to, at the bottom of the really steep dirt hill that I was famous for wiping out on. Before we’d get to what we thought was the property line, we kids would stop our bikes and line up abreast across the road. Then, we’d lean forward with our foot on one pedal, the other on the ground. Hunched over our handlebars, we’d look left, look right, stare each other in the eyes, then launch and scream, “Burn Rubber!!!!”

We’d pedal, pedal, pedal as fast as our little legs could carry us, spurred on by snapping dogs – German shepherds, Dobermans, and the meanest junkyard dogs imaginable – straining at their chains, lurching towards our throats like we were trying to steal the Hope diamond.

As we got older and braver, some kids would bark back at the dogs. But deep down inside we were always fearful. The only way we could get through there and to the treats on the other side alive was to stick together and to BURN RUBB-BER!!!

As the Polygon Turns (Episode 26): Send-off

The send-off ceremony was held at a typical New England fairground that looked, well, typical, except that it was January. Corn dog and cotton candy booths buttoned up tight, as if to guard against the cold like their summer patrons would be; and where summer would have seen straw and livestock, we saw snow banks and snow drifts. In poetry, it’s called the pathetic fallacy – that nature commiserates with man, shares our joys and our sorrows in the form of weather, sunshine and rain. In this case it’s bitter, bitter cold. And snowing.

So it’s January and citizen-soldiers are being sent off, deploying away from their loved ones, families perhaps less used to long absences than, say, the regular or even the Reserve Forces. But somehow that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t make it any better on any one who has to give someone up today.

Inside the exposition center: nearly a thousand people – soldiers and families – comingle on the vast cement floor. Many rows of chairs face each other, askew from the stage that’s dressed in its finest red, white and blue. Looking at the crowd from above, the soldiers in their combat camouflage stand out like chocolate chips would in cookie batter. They are dispersed amongst their families just as our National Guardsmen spend most of their days, citizens first and most often, soldiers second but always truly.

These are no “weekend warriors.” These are patriots all, dedicated men and women who keep down “real” jobs and, since early on in these wars, have augmented our Active Duty and Reserve Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq so America’s military can continue the luxury of an all-volunteer force; so America doesn’t need a draft. Something to think about…

As the time for the ceremony draws near, families hold hands tighter, hug more often, and find it harder to hold back tears. Two minutes before 0930, the camouflage coalesces in the center, between the askew chairs, facing the leaders – statesmen, generals and an admiral. The soldier-citizens are upright, their families downcast, our leaders optimistic.

They deliver speeches about duty, sacrifice, and support. How the soldiers know the mission and never really worry about the mission. The leaders know that the stoic soldiers worry only about their families. Every thing they do, they do for the ones they love.

When the ceremony is over, the soldiers file out, to do their duty… for their families, for their country, and for whatever else I imagine they may believe in. The space they vacate leaves the askew families facing only each other.

They must be sad, I think. Obviously they are sad. It starts snowing harder.

I wish I could let them know that their heroes are doing what they love for the ones they love. I wonder if it would make a difference. It might. The snow may let up soon. When the soldiers return it will be another winter of another year. It will be snowing then, again.