Written in the Summer of 2003, thirty-something years (over a billion seconds) and counting since I was a teenager…
Mostly, I remember the nights...
Boca Raton [Florida] in the last half of the sixties was the time
and place I was a teenager. A hard
time for most of us then, with the turmoil of the world of the 60's and the
ever-present turmoil of our teenaged bodies and minds--we are talking constant
turmoil, here...
Mostly, I remember the nights... Sometimes I feel like Billy Pilgrim [Kurt Vonnegut’s
"Slaughterhouse Five"], and I have come unstuck in time.
...Boca Raton. The
beach at midnight, the stars in the sky.
I have always loved the dark, the stars, the planets, the sky. Space. The night represents relief from the heat, I suppose,
although that is not all it is relief from. It is 1967 and I'll soon be 15 years old. I lie back on the sand looking up at
the stars--I do that a lot. Late
spring--a good time to be at the Boca beach around midnight, since you can see the
top three stars of the Southern Cross and sometimes imagine the bottom one if
the air is clear and the city glare from Miami/Ft Lauderdale isn't too
bad. Mars is almost overhead. Back in 2003, I check on the Internet
[Google search for Virtual Planetarium], and see when Mars would have been
nearly overhead at midnight, and I see it must have been mid-April, 1967. That I could check this in a few
moments in 2003 would have been no surprise to me in 1967 (Science Fiction had
predicted that and more before I was even born, after all), although I'm not so
sure the 1967 me would have believed that I'd still be alive in 2003, with the
Cold War and WW III seeming so inevitable and all...
...Back in 1967, Mars is in Virgo--not one of my favorite
Constellations, being mostly sprawling dim stars, but Mars is bright and
red. I wonder, as I always do
(will do? have done? I am unstuck
in time, for sure!) when I look up and see Mars in the sky--when will humans
(or our successor sentient beings) set foot on that planet? The 2003 Steve Welch is proud to have
contributed in a small way to making that inevitable step happen. Again, I am pretty sure the 1967 Steve
wouldn't be surprised to hear that from his very ancient 2003 self (with his
salt and pepper hair, and a beard, finally! I didn't start shaving until I was about 20). In a couple of years, Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin will step out onto the surface of the moon--that already seems
real to me, here in 1967.
Many years after his first steps onto the surface of moon (in
1988, maybe?), I will spend a few afternoons with Buzz, and we will talk and
brainstorm about Mars and when humans will go to Mars. I'll ask him (at a urinal in the
Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, but that is another story ;-) about the last
time he got together with Neil and Michael Collins. As he tells me, I'll understand that I really don't have the
foggiest notion of what nostalgia really is--this man has walked on the moon,
for crissakes! As Buzz talks, a
bit wistfully, about Neil and him "drifting apart", I am acutely
aware of what an honor and responsibility it is to be a human at this time in
our history. As we take these next
steps out on our exploration of the universe... Mars Beckons!--this was the name of a sci-fi book I read,
way back when.
...Back to Earth in 1967, there is the smell of seaweed and
salt-spray... I am alone on the
beach. I may be what is later
called a nerd or a geek, but being an avid amateur astronomer gives me license
to spend all night out on the beach, if I like. If some adult comes down to the beach late at night, I point
out the planets, constellations, or maybe just tell them a bit about the Milky
Way. Their eyes soon glaze over,
and they go away. There are some
advantages to not being cool, I guess.
I own the beach after midnight, at least on school nights--sometimes
that is cool enough for me.
A warm (not-hot) breeze, coming off of the ocean. It had been a hot day, but then, all
the days are hot, aren't they?
After all, this is Boca Raton, and it is not winter. There are two seasons in my growing-up
Boca, spring-summer-fall (hot), and winter (sometimes not hot at all).
Suddenly, I get up and run to the water and dive in. I surprise myself--I never run in the
daytime--it's too hot after all, and it makes me think of Coach Bennett's 7
grade PE class (torture and pain, and sweat, sweat, sweat). The water feels so cool, and I swim,
feeling safe in the water. Safe
from the heat, safe from the racism of my peers, safe from the war in Vietnam,
safe from my awkwardness, my shyness, my insecurities. The water is safe. It's good to turn
off my brain for a few moments, to live in my body instead of my head, and just
swim and feel the stillness of being underwater. I smile underwater and water gets in my nose. I surface in a minor sneezing fit--I am
unaware that "a moment" has passed, I realize back in 2003. Maybe I felt the magic though, even if
I was *mostly* unaware--otherwise how could I remember it "now"?
...Later that morning perhaps, or maybe another morning in
1967... The beach at dawn, the
gritty feel of salt on my skin after a night at the beach...
The surfer girls and the surfer
boys, arriving with the dawn--I feel the dull ache of the longing to be
"cool" like them. The
beautiful people. The beautiful
dawn. The coral sky. The oval, orange ball of the sun makes
its glorious appearance--even a fifteen year old boy can't help but be moved by
the common beauty of the Florida sunrise.
The warmth arriving with the sunrise. With the dawn, the ocean has become so calm that the surfers
will not stay, I predict. Nodding
off with the sunrise, though, I don't see them leave. I wake up hot and sweaty a few hours later, and I walk a
mile or so south in the soon to be hot sand to get to the Pavilion, where I
shower to get the salt off. The
water is cold, and it wakes me up--I feel so aware! Everything seems so important to me. I'll miss that sense of importance or
significance later in life, most of the time. I get on my bike and I ride home.
...A couple of years earlier, now. Waking up at 4AM to do my paper route. I step outside the door of the 8th
Street House (across the street from Greg Beard's house), looking up at the
stars. Getting my bike out from
next to the garbage area, with overhanging Guava trees. The smell of rotting guavas, and
slightly more distant, rotting citrus.
Mars is in the morning sky, and I think I should call my friend Philip
Massey at Saint Andrews, and get together with him to look at Mars through his
new telescope, a 4 1/4" Dynascope reflector! Another Mars opposition is coming up soon (they happen every
two years, a fact I've known seemingly forever--two years, I guess ;-). This will be the first Mars opposition
since Philip and I have had this "real" (expensive!), much more
powerful telescope. It should be
cool. This weekend, I'll get my mom
to "spring" Philip from St. Andrews, where he is a boarding student,
and if it is clear, we can observe all night. I smile in anticipation.
Deserted streets... the cool damp. On my way to pick up my newspapers, there is the almost
choking smell of night blooming jasmine, and then gardenia. Too strong, too sweet... Later in life, I'd classify this
morning as being *unbearably* muggy, but now it is just what the Boca morning
is like on my paper route.
...Just a few cars, mostly doing before-the-start-of-business-day
duties like me.
As I ride on my route there are more smells of Boca. From the street on my bike in the still
morning air, only the strongest smells impinge on my consciousness. Rotting citrus. Ripe, juicy mangos freshly fallen on
the yards. Ah, mangos--the smell
of ammunition! I've never been in
a snowball fight, but I bet those kids who know what winter is (Northerners, we
transplanted Floridians call them-the true natives call them Yankees ;-) have
never been in a mango fight--I smile.
As I get closer to the Royal Castle at 20th Street and 5th Avenue,
I catch the decomposing swamp smells off the Intercoastal, and I remember (a
long time ago--last year, maybe?
Time is so relative and subjective...) playing with my friends and
family (brother Jeff, and cousin, Rob Ghiotto) in the quicksand (or, more
accurately, quickmuck) in the swamp behind the sugar cane field behind (beside
of?) Publix. I smile again, and
then I wonder if the quicksand is still there? Paul Avery, my former next door neighbor from Second street
hit puberty before me, and is now on his way to becoming a surfer dude, so he's
probably too cool to want to play in the quicksand now. ...Well, quicksand is pretty cool,
though... Maybe he would, and
maybe he would bring a girl, if he did!
Girls... Thinking of
girls... The houses I drive
by--there are girls sleeping in those houses! Girls, Girls, Girls...
The not so dull ache of my adolescent sexuality (luckily, in 1965 I was
unaware that this adolescence would go on for several decades ;-)... Will I ever figure out this girls
thing, I wonder?
...Almost 40 years later, the answer is at last clear to me: No, I
will never figure it out, but that's okay with me, finally. ;-) I have come to terms with the fact that
even a know-it-all like me doesn't *really* know it all. ;-)
Mildew, and more rotting smells, and the ever-present
mosquitoes. I time my paper route
so I can get to Royal Castle right when they open (5AM, maybe?), and I wolf
down a couple of their wonderfully soggy hamburgers (with pickles, please! They keep the ones with pickles on them
in a separate drawer--Mmmm...). It
is all white inside Royal Castle--chairs, walls, floor, countertops, and I
smell the wonderful, intoxicating smell of coffee--I started drinking it a
couple of years earlier, about a year after I started my first paper route at
age 10 1/2. However, I know the
Royal Castle coffee is not up to my sophisticated 13 year old palate. ;-) Only
vending machine coffee is "real" coffee (it's called the baby duck
syndrome, and almost 40 years later, the finest gourmet coffee shop can't give
me the satisfaction that a vending machine can ;-), and I've already had a
couple of cups this morning.
Enough caffeine to bring me to life (not all drug dependencies are bad,
see?). I inhale deeply, and enjoy
the smell of the coffee here, where it combines with the grease-burgers and the
cigarette smoke from the cook, who is smoking over the grill again--maybe that
is where that special Royal Castle flavor comes from, I think. I smile at my joke, and go back to
basking in the complex aroma.
...I go home, and nap for an hour before school, waking up hot and
sweaty in my bed. It's always hot,
and I complain (I like to complain, after all, I'm a teenager now!), but hot
and muggy is all I know. After
school, I bike to Smitty's Driftwood (just north of the Pavilion Beach at the
end of Palmetto Park Road--it would burn down a year or two later, and never
get rebuilt), where I am taking the Red Cross Junior Lifesaver certification
class. I love to swim--it is
escape from the heat.
...After class, rather than swim boring laps (we had to swim a
couple of miles every day for the Red Cross certification), a fellow classmate
of mine (a couple of years older than me--I was the youngest in the class)
joins me in the short walk to the ocean (why did Smitty's have an Olympic pool
less than 100 yards from the ocean, I wonder?). Soon we are swimming out from Smitty's Driftwood to the
Gulfstream, and back. Better than
laps, my classmate told me the first time we did it, and it is exciting and fun
to do something that might be forbidden (we didn't ask). And, it feels good to be accepted in
some small way by an older, possibly "cool" kid. Maybe some of his coolness will rub off
on me? Thinking about this a few
years later, I'm pretty sure he picked me to go with him because I was a
stronger swimmer than he was, and he figured that he wouldn't have to rescue
me. Close enough to acceptance for
me! ;-)
All these moments of my life... Perfectly preserved, "forever" in space-time...
...Back to the present--I woke up at dawn this morning,
remembering for some reason watching the sunrise from the Boca beach with
Penelope some 30 plus years ago.
Early 1970, I think--about three years after I met her (she was visiting
Boca High from St. Pete, and sitting in on classes with our mutual friend, Sam
(Mary Margaret) Reid--I met Penelope for the first time in Algebra II class, I
believe it was). It is three years
before Penelope and I will marry.
...This morning in 2003, I smile again, realizing in my morning
stupor that the memory was triggered by my writing down these recollections the
previous night. I drift off again,
and dreaming or remembering falling asleep after watching the sunrise on the
beach: a special time, with a special person... (We remain married, and more importantly, we remain best
friends to this day.) In my dream,
my memory, or in actual space-time (there is no distinction between these three
in my "reality", after all), I fall asleep in Penelope's arms--I feel
her breast pressing against my cheek--sensuously erotic. Waking up a few hours later--hot,
sweaty and squinting in the too-bright sun, with the gritty feel of fine salt-spray
crystals and sand on my face--I watch her sleep, feeling content and at peace
for a while. Maybe even a bit
"cool", after all those years of longing for coolness, because I am
with her. I marvel at that for
more than a moment--why would she choose to be with me, I wonder? Some things can't be explained, I'm
just beginning to realize in 1970.
Then I wake up again in Colorado, in the present, and it feels so
good to have the sun on my face, but NOT be hot and sweaty, with no salt grit
on my face. My blinds are up, and
the sun is shining on my face through my east-facing open bedroom window. Waking me along with the sun, the
still-cool Colorado breeze is blowing over me. About an hour has passed since the sunrise woke me the first
time this morning in 2003, it is about 7:00 AM.
Penelope isn't around, though, except in my mind...
I feel myself gradually settle in, back to the present time,
present place. "Does Anybody
Really Know What Time It Is?", as the Chicago song (from their first
album--they were Chicago Transit Authority then, right?) goes through my head,
and I smile yet again, but let's not get started on the music of my
memories--too much to do, too little time, and I need to finish writing these
remembrances before... Well, let's just say that writing about the music that
has accompanied our lives and the significance of same would take hundreds of
pages, not just these few.
I sit up in bed and email Penelope (mostly I sleep with my laptop
these days, sadly ;-). I thank her
for loving me, and allowing me to love her all these years... It's true I don't often appreciate how
lucky I have been and what a wonderful life I have had. ...Today, however, I know.
Oh, yes--I know. And
I smile in the knowing.
Steve Welch
Niwot, Colorado USA
31 July 2003
---
Postscript/Futurescript--1 August 2003:
I printed this out and read it over the day after finishing it--to
polish it up a bit, maybe? Hmmm...
I see that the planet Mars is a thread through my life as I have described it
here in these few pages. I guess I
knew that...
I daydream again while waiting for an oil change in my Saab on
this sunny, warm day in Boulder, Colorado (yes, I am yuppie scum now, but I'm
not "normal", right? At
least I still have the long hair. ;-).
I left my laptop at home (no WiFi at my Saab mechanic's, yet), so I am
experiencing the extremely unfamiliar feel of pen on paper. A novelty, to be sure.
Mars, Mars, Mars...
Less than three weeks from now, I am (will be) in Flagstaff, Arizona at
the Lowell Observatory. My
life-long friend (we met in Boca at age 11), Philip Massey is now a semi-famous
and distinguished Astronomer who works at Lowell (he's been on NPR a few
times--that's famous enough for me! ;-).
He has used his position and influence somehow to get us a private night
of observing on Percival Lowell's 24” Clark Refractor at Lowell Observatory,
less than a week before the upcoming Mars opposition. This will be cool!
Way Cool, to be precise! (I think Philip just asked, and they said,
"Sure!", but we non-professional astronomers are still impressed and
especially we are grateful. ;-)
This telescope is the one Percy (as we who are his friends call
him ;-) used to observe and make detailed drawings of the “canals” on Mars in
the 1800's, during oppositions not nearly as favorable as the one this year. Perhaps we will see canals too,
tonight, do you think? I am
excited. We are outside the dome
before midnight (some other group is using the telescope until midnight). Percy is here tonight, as he is every
night--he asked to be cremated and his ashes kept here in a mausoleum next to
the dome of his favorite telescope.
This opposition (on 27 August, 2003) is the closest approach of
Earth to Mars for 50,000 years, I explain probably for the 10th time, to my
15.75 year old daughter, Ariel, her friend Rachel, Ariel's other Dad Starley,
Penelope's partner Mike, and the rest of the crowd. Philip (the professional Astronomer) defers the lecturing to
me and Carter Emmart (a "new" friend and fellow Martian we have only
known for 24 years ;-). We are the
real Mars experts, when it comes to astronomical facts, after all--Philip is
"only" a stellar astronomer, studying hot stars in other galaxies
mostly these days, I think.
In addition to the near-spiritual experience of being in the
presence of this special telescope on this significant night, I feel an
overwhelming sense of family here in Flagstaff tonight. It's a weird, extended, non-nuclear
family, to be sure, but I know I am at peace, and happy to be with them. In my mind I am so far (so very far)
from the hustle-bustle of my modern life--I am content, like I was for at least
those few moments back in Boca as a teenager. I will remember this moment and this contentment forever, as
I remember those other moments. I
only hope that my daughter and the other members of my rag-tag tribe will feel
this and remember it, too...
I am (have been, will be) so lucky--so very lucky, so
fortunate. A tear runs down my
face, as I transcribe this afternoon's chicken-scratch handwriting, back on
August 1st, 2003, and I smile once again.
I tell myself here: I must remember this feeling of contentment when
life gets hectic and mundane, as it will in a few minutes, no doubt.
...I will remember. I
promise myself...