October 16, 1958

October 16, 1958

We moved from Beaumont, Texas to Columbus, Georgia when I was six. Beaumont was a great place for my first six years. Experienced and lived through a hurrycane, remember our first console model Motorola with doors you could close when the set was not turned on (I don’t remember the doors ever being closed), got in first big time trouble when the ice cream truck came by and I borrowed a dime from the man that lived across the street (hint, if your parents say no when you ask for ice cream money DO NOT come back to the house eating a popsicle), told Dad I didn’t need those training wheels on my first bike (trainers removed my new bike and I immediately joined the parade of kids chasing the DDT fog truck through the neighborhood every evening (hmmmm, could that explain my “limitations”?). Ah, the halcyon days of ingnoran…(ummmm, innocent!!!! That’s right)…innocent childhood.

Well, as a certified Texas Ranger it was with some regrets that I agreed to accompany my parents to this strange new world called Georgia. I figured I owed it to them to be sure they got there safely and make sure they didn’t get in too much trouble. I mean, did they have ranch houses on every block? What about elderly men with box cameras and a pony walking door to door offering to dress up the young boys and girls with leather chaps, a cowboy hat and six guns then sit them on the back of this wild bronco to take a picture? Most importantly of all, did they have ice cream trucks???

Nope. No Texas Rangers (not even on TV!), No hurrycanes. No DDT fog trucks. No pony men with a box camera. No ranch houses (everything was made out of red clay, not wood). Okay, there were still ice cream trucks, but no more borrowing dimes from a nice neighbor man (Mama didn’t raise no stoopid babys).

I found a quiet little two bedroom brick house on a dirt road just where it turned off the highway that went into town (location, location, location). Figured the dirt road gave that homey, country feel with the convenience of the highway to get into town quickly. Down the bottom of the dirt road was a jungle swamp full of 40 foot high bamboo (remember, when you’re seven years old anything over 6’3” had to be at least 40 foot high). Tarzan and I spent many hours hacking through the bamboo jungle back in the late ‘50’s (this was before Jane and that dumb “Boy”. Not sure where he left Cheeta.)

Between 1956 and 1958 a funny thing happened. That no training wheels bike kept getting smaller and smaller and pretty soon I couldn’t hardly sit on the seat and pedal without kneeing myself in the jaw. I never remember pointing out this phenomenon to my parents but, because I was such a special, super good, exceptional, wonderful boy and I had done such a good job taking care of Mom and Dad since we came to this Georgia place they noticed (with very little childish manipulation) the incredible shrinking of my first bike (apparently I didn’t raise no stoopid parents, either).

Well, along comes October 16, 1958. Some of you may well remember the national celebration of my day of birth that year. The parades, festivals, fireworks and the closing of school (it was a Thursday as I remember) were all appreciated. I hadn’t really expected quite that much fuss, but everybody was just so insistent that I didn’t want to deny them. I even got ice cream right from the ice cream truck as he drove past!

Little did I realize that, in addition to all of the usual fanfare and falderal noted above, I was about to encounter my second step into a fully formed human person that day.

That was the day my parents presented me with their token of appreciation for my contributions to the well being of our little family. That was the day I received my big, bright, red, chrome laden, double headlight, jet taillight, full size, big boy, JC Higgens FLIGHTLINER bicycle to replace the no training wheels bike of my childhood.

Sitting in our condo in Bellingham this afternoon having eaten only blueberry muffin cake that I baked this morning, Diana and I were becoming fairly hangry. Having endured a few sharp nips and bare clawed whacks I felt discretion would precipitate a judicious visit to an eatery of Diana’s choice. For some unfathomable reason she chose a dive bar sitting over an arm of the Puget Sound down in the seafaring section of town.

After and hour and a half of delightful gorging on fried oysters the size of my glutenous maximus and an exquisite crab salad sandwich we waddled back to the Saab and started the journey home.

Two blocks into our arduous journey I slammed hard right to the curb just outside the glorious emporium Diana has through the years trained me assiduously to never pass without entering. There was a dilapidated, old, rickety two story wood frame with the magic word displayed magnificently across the slowly collapsing façade. ANTIQUES!

The two of us gleefully skipped (okay, grimly slumped) our way through the front door and entered a world of promise and discovery only old junk can evoke in these jaded bones.

At first it just looked like another afternoon seeing the same boring crap we had stored in our basement for 38 years and only just managed to harangue silly people into relieving from our possession prior to our move to Bellingham.

But then, past the loft of worthless old wooden radios that hadn’t been touched in 28 years and didn’t work even then, over in the corner, past a pseudo wall of chotskies and whatchacallits, next to shelves of baseball mitts, Tinker Toys in their original cans and readerless books, there she sat! My October 16, 1958 step into human awareness and existence. There was my big, not quite as bright, still red, chrome laden, double headlight, jet taillight, full size, big boy, JC Higgens FLIGHTLINER!

For those doubters and Missouri residents (yes, I know you’re out there telling everybody what a big, fat liar I am) just feast your eyes on the beast below. Eat your poor hearts out and sit there in utter awe and despair that you had to endure such mundane, deprived lives without a JC Higgens FLIGHTLINER anywhere in your sordid pasts.

My heart aches for each of you, but, NEENER, NEENER, NEENER!

Btw, those of you that just can’t go forward without your very own JC Higgens FLIGHTLINER, I think the price tag was in the range of a mere $ 575.00! Hurry down. Now that the story is out there is bound to be a stampede commensurate with the 1849 rush to the California gold fields.