Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

by Jean Shepherd

  As you have no doubt deduced, there was a period in my life when I was an implacable foe of crime. Every week I listened intently as Warden Lawes of Sing Sing intoned on the radio: “Attention! All citizens be on the lookout for Harry Rottenstone, known as Harry the Fink, wanted for armed robbery in Oklahoma. He is five feet, eight and one half inches tall, usually of mean disposition, a diagonal scar running from left ear to jaw, steel-blue eyes, tattoo on right forearm of red heart: MOTHER. This man is armed and presumed dangerous. Notify the police. Do not attempt to take him singlehandedly. Notify your local law-enforcement office. This is Warden Lawes saying ‘Good night.’”

  Every day after that, I coolly surveyed all passing strangers for telltale scars. Eventually it had to happen, and it did. I spotted a thickset steelworker getting on a bus and ten minutes later reported him to the big cop who helped kids across the street in front of Warren G. Harding School. The feeling of stark righteousness and bravery that I experienced at that moment, coupled with my natural fear of cops, is still fresh in my memory.

  “Officer! I just saw Harry the Fink! He got on the Island Steel bus!”

  “Harry who?”

  “Harry the Fink! I heard about him on the radio. He robbed Oklahoma!”

  “Oh, for God sake! You’re the ninth kid today that’s seen Harry the Fink! Last week it was Iron-Lip Louie. They oughta make listening to that damn Sing Sing program against the law. I’ll Harry-the-Fink you! Get in school. You’re late.”

  Between Warden Lawes and Mr, Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons, the cops must had had their hands full night and day. Mr. Keene was always announcing about how somebody had wandered away from his wife and seven kids in Minneapolis and was last seen wearing a blue suit and driving a black Plymouth with the name “Bubbles” written on the trunk. A population with its eye peeled for runaway husbands and escaped embezzlers did not make things easy down at the old precinct house.

  I knew that somewhere under this pile of junk must be my FBI in Peace and War Official Fingerprint Kit, for which I had sent in two Lava soap wrappers. You needed Lava soap to get that crummy, sticky black ink off your fingers after you got the kit. I remember running the rubber roller, loaded with ink, right up the back of my kid brother’s neck, a dismal incident that could well have been one of the contributing factors that led directly to World War Two.

  A flash of red caught my eye and another trophy of another long-lost afternoon confronted me, a battered, bright-red plastic fireman’s hat bearing the motto: ED WYNN TEXACO FIRE CHIEF. For one brief, feverish season, this Fire Chief hat was an absolute must for every right-thinking kid. Ed Wynn came on the radio with that big old siren, with the fire bells banging, wearing a hat exactly like this beauty. They gave them away at the Texaco station to anybody who could afford gas, and also at the World’s Fair.

  Gingerly, I placed it atop my head to see if it still gave me that old feeling of pizzazz. I arose, walked to the window and, for reasons that are obscure to me, raised the glass and stuck my head out, high over the roaring canyon of the Manhattan street. The sun bore down weakly as I said to myself:

  “You are absolutely the only guy in all of New York that is wearing an Ed Wynn Fire Chief hat at this minute. You are unique. Hurray!”

  At that instant, a gust of frigid wind struck me smartly on the left side of my cranium. I felt the Fire Chief hat lift slightly, and in an instant it was gone. I stared as it turned over and over, drifting down toward the traffic jam, a tiny, red, uproarious Ed Wynn horselaugh volplaning down to the sidewalk.

  In a panic, I rushed into the kitchen and pressed the button on the phone that connected me with the doorman far below. His voice filtered up through the hum.

  “Yeah?”

  “MY FIRE CHIEF HAT JUST FELL OUT OF THE WINDOW!”

  “Yer what?”

  “My, uh—” I suddenly realized what I was saying.

  “My, uh-my Fire Chief hat.”

  “Fire Chief hat—out the window.”

  “It’s red! It says Ed Wynn on it.”

  “Ed who?”

  “WYNN! ED WYNN!” I was shouting.

  “Don’t he live on the third floor? In 3-C?”

  “NO! ED WYNN, THE FIRE CHIEF!”

  “You got a fire? You want me to call—”

  “LOOK, GODDAMN IT! THERE’S A RED FIRE CHIEF HAT ON THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF THIS BUILDING, GET IT AND BRING IT UP TO ME!”

  There was a long pause, until finally: “OK. If you say so.…” He hung up. I rushed back to the window to peer down. Sure enough, I could see the midget figure of the doorman far below, looking up and down the street. My God! A tiny kid had my hat on his head! Without thinking, I shouted down 16 floors:

  “GIMME BACK MY HAT, KID!”

  Instantly, dozens of passers-by peered up, hoping to see another suicide. I saw the doorman tangle with the struggling kid far below. A few shadowy faces appeared at apartment windows across the avenue. Stealthily, I pulled down the window and hid behind my madras drapes. What am I doing? Skulking back to the sofa—my Jack Armstrong Pedometer clicking, the cockamamie on my left hand glowing brightly—I sat down and tried to get a grip on myself. I know what I’ll do. I’ll wrap all this junk up, throw it in the back of the closet, get dressed and go down to P.J.’s. The hell with this. I’m a grown-up man. What do I want with an Ed Wynn Fire Chief hat?

  It was no use. I couldn’t kid myself. I wanted my hat back. For years I had never once thought of my hat and didn’t even know I still had it, and now I wanted it more than anything in the world. Even my cutout cardboard Grumpy mask, which I got from Pepper Youngs Family, didn’t seem to help. I stuck my nose through the cutout hole in the mask and snapped the two cracked rubber bands over my ears, my eyes staring bleakly out through the slits in Grumpy’s map.

  I sat for a moment, wanting to go back to the window to see how the doorman was doing but afraid they’d spot me across the way. Suppressing the thought, I returned to the box and resumed my excavations. Rummaging about, I next rediscovered my old blue-steel bicycle clip for my pants. I snapped it on the left leg of my pajamas to see if my ankles had gotten fatter. It was then that I noticed my old canvas delivery bag from the time I had a magazine route: COLLIER’S, LIBERTY MAGAZINE WAS emblazoned in red letters on the side. Tucked in the bag was an old Nabisco Shredded Wheat Color Card. I could see where I had badly colored Niagara Falls with Crayolas. I pulled the shoulder strap down over my neck and was amazed to find that the bag came up under my armpit It used to hang down around my knees. It must have shrunk. I was attempting to adjust it when my doorbell rang.

  He’s got it! I leaped to the door, flinging it open. Al, the Ukrainian doorman, stood in the hallway, holding my Ed Wynn Fire Chief hat.

  “You got it! GREAT!”

  “That kid sure put up a fight.” He extended his paw, holding the battered plastic helmet.

  “He can get his own hat!” I hissed. I noticed that Al had an odd look on his face.

  “How come you’re wearin’ that mask, mister?”

  I had forgotten completely about my false face, which I was still wearing. I figured I’d better play it cool:

  “Oh. that’s Grumpy. I’m doing a little work here this morning.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, backing off a bit as he noticed my bicycle clip and my Collier’s delivery bag.

  I reached out for the Fire Chief hat and knew immediately that I had made another mistake. The screaming yellow Jap on my hand, his blood gushing forth, lit up the entire hallway. Al started slightly and said:

  “I never knew you was in the Marines. I was in the Navy. You oughta see the tattoo I got on my backside! Gung Ho!”

  “Oh, that. I was just doing a little painting around here.”

  As I took the precious Fire Chief hat from his grubby claw, he noticed the Jack Armstrong Pedometer that hung from my right knee.

  Retreating hastily—clicking with each step—I mumbled my thanks and slammed the door. There was no doubt about
it. I knew I would have to move. When the doorman told this story around, I would be cooked.

  Pouring myself a neat brandy, I began to straighten up the joint, ruffling through the still-untapped drift of effluvia that remained in the box. What further horrors lay here entombed? What as-yet-unrealized embarrassments? There was my Joe Palooka Big Little Book, my Junior Birdmen of America Senior Pilot’s License, even the four-color Magic Slide Rule Patented Piano Lesson that had guaranteed to teach me to play in just seven minutes. There was my Mystic Ventril-O, with which I had unsuccessfully attempted to mystify my friends by throwing my voice into trunks, hollering in a comb-and-tissue-paper voice: “HELP! Let me out!” There was my Charles Atlas Dynamic-Tension Muscle-Building and Chest Expanding Course, my periscope, my match-cover collection, the magnifying glass with which I had set Helen Weathers on fire. It was all there.

  Gingerly I tilted the huge box over onto its side. A tinkling, squeaking, musty avalanche spilled out over the floor-and my benighted youth lay shimmering before me like some surrealistic collage of adolescent dreams: my Tom Mix Whistling Ring, which never whistled; my Captain Midnight Photomatic Code-O-Graph badge and Secret Squadron Bomber Wings, which lost their pin the very first instant I tried to attach them to my pullover and caused a fit of hysterics that has become legendary in my family, a fit that resulted in my mother banning Captain Midnight listening in our house for almost a month. Rolled in a sad little ball were the tattered remains of my Jack Armstrong pennant from Hudson High, a school that, by an odd coincidence, flew the same colors as the orange-and-white Wheaties box. I thought for a moment how well it would look over my desk at the office, and then sadly dismissed the thought. Lovingly, I fingered my Huskies Club pin, an athletic organization sponsored by the people who manufactured Grape-Nuts, a cereal that I remembered chiefly for its ability to crack false teeth. For a moment I stared off into the middle distance, seeing with stark clarity that dramatic instant when my grandmother’s dentures shattered with a loud report on a mighty spoonful of that nutlike cereal, known for its gentle laxative action. Grandma was never quite the same after that. Lou Gehrig, who was the president of the Huskies Club, maintained in many a comic-strip advertisement that it was because of Grape-Nuts that he was able to follow Babe Ruth in the Yankee batting order.

  A tiny, shriveled square of cloth next caught my eye. Great balls of fire! My Sky Blazers Arm Patch, which proved conclusively that I ate two slices of Wonder Bread every day. Tom Mix Straight Shooter premiums, long forgotten but never forgiven, emerged; and a Tom Mix Special Sun Watch, to be used when lost in the jungles of Yucatán, a place I have always half suspected I would end up in, anyway. If you’re lost in the head-hunter-ridden jungles, you’d better know what time it is. My pulse quickened as I extracted from the grisly array a device that could come in even handier: my Tom Mix Periscope Ring. I dusted it off and slipped it on my pinkie. Holding it up to my eye, I could see in hazy outline the bathroom door—behind me! The uses for such a device are obvious, especially around an office filled with ambitious, bushy-tailed young executives on the make.

  Did mine eyes deceive me? No. Beneath a pair of Tom Mix spurs lurked my most occult treasure, a genuine Mystic Voodoo Skull Ring, with genuine simulated emerald eyes—a ring designed to put curses on your enemies. There is no doubt that such a ring could still have its uses. I slipped it carefully into my pocket, already formulating plans. Next came an objet of such poignant personal meaning that instinctively I turned my eyes away from it Its very presence brought back an afternoon that even today rankles in my soul as one of those really terrible things that happen to all of us. My Uncle Ned had given me a dollar bill for my ninth birthday. Crisp, clean, of a beautiful green color, I held it for an all-too-brief time. Minutes later, I stood in front of a diabolical machine at the candy store, a machine filled with such tremendous bonanzas as Brownie cameras, wrist watches and cigarette lighters embossed with naked ladies; flashlights made in the form of tiny revolvers, all floating in a sea of multicolored candy BBs. All you had to do to get one of these treasures was to skillfully operate two chromium handles, which in turn maneuvered the claw of a tiny steam shovel inside the case. Nickel after nickel I poured into this monster, growing more nervous and sweaty as each time the claw didn’t quite grab the Brownie. Finally, after 85 cents had gone down the drain, it threw me a contemptible lead watch fob bearing the likeness of Myrna Loy.

  I sucked moodily on my long-lost Dr. Christian Bubble Pipe. An angry wind laden with sooty ice crystals banged briefly at the windows of my apartment. It was getting colder. Sadly I returned it to the dusty magic mountain of illusion—lost and gone, grieved by only the wind. I had had enough. Back into the box I stuffed Brownie, Wimpy, Grumpy, Ed Wynn, Roscoe Turner, Jack Armstrong, Melvin Purvis, Buck Rogers—the whole teeming throng of them from out of the past. Over this communal crypt I laid the Dead Sea Scrolls—carefully smoothed newspaper fragments bearing the faded face of Harold Teen, and Perry Winkle’s round sailor hat, and the yellowed headline “DAYLIGHT RAID ON NORMANDY PORTS. B-17S BOMB COAST.”

  Replacing the cover, I twisted the wires back together, binding the whole thing in place. For a fleeting moment, I considered shoving the whole sorry mess out onto the garbage landing. But I chickened out Staggering under the load, I dragged my childhood to the hall closet With an enormous effort, I got it up to the top shelf. Mysterious rattles and tinkles and squeakings continued for a few seconds. Then, silence—except for the muffled, jaunty quackings of my old rubber duck. I read the lettering on the box again: LIFE—THE COMPLETE CEREAL. I wondered whether my mother had picked that box purposely. You never know about mothers.

  Outside, the long December afternoon was darkening into night. It wouldn’t be long before the crowds of Christmas shoppers and Rockefeller Center holiday rubes would give way to the big-time, out-on-the-town crowd. Across the avenue, Christmas trees glowed through Venetian blinds. From the apartment next door drifted the nasal tones of a12-year-old protest caroler singing Jesus Don’t Love Me Anymore, but I Got You, Babe, the current spiritual smash, to the accompaniment of his electric tambourine.

  I sat for a long moment in the gathering gloom and then suddenly noticed the huddled form of my little green aluminum Japanese Christmas tree. On impulse, I fished around in the rubble on my coffee table and came up with a thin, dime-sized copper disk with the faded inscription POPEYE SPINACH EATERS’ LUCKY PIECE. Cradling it in my sweaty palm, I picked up the Christmas tree and gingerly unscrewed the fuse that I had twisted to death. With my forefinger, I carefully inserted my old badge of spinach addiction and Popeye fandom. Magically, the thin but unmistakable notes of “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” filled the room and the tiny tree began to pirouette, its hidden mechanisms working flawlessly, its miniature red and green, blue and yellow candles sending out a dazzling rainbow of soft Christmas cheer. Lovingly, I place it on the window sill for the world to see. Popeye had saved the day again.

  Puberty rites in the more primitive tribal societies are almost invariably painful and traumatic experiences.” I half dozed in front of my TV set as the speaker droned on in his high, nasal voice. One night a week, as a form of masochistic self-discipline, I sentence myself to a minimum of three hours viewing educational television. Like so many other things in life, educational TV is a great idea but a miserable reality: murky films of home life in Kurdistan, jowly English authors being interviewed by jowly English literary critics, pinched-faced ladies demonstrating Japanese brush techniques. But I watch all of it religiously—I suppose because it is there, like Mount Everest.

  “A classic example is the Ugga Buggah tribe of lower Micronesia,” the speaker continued, tapping a pointer on the map behind him.

  A shot of an Ugga Buggah teenager appeared on the screen, eyes rolling in misery, face bathed in sweat. I leaned forward. His expression was strangely familiar.

  “When an Ugga Buggah reaches puberty, the rites are rigorous and unvarying for both sexes. Difficu
lt dances are performed and the candidate for adulthood must eat a sickening ritual meal dining the postdance banquet You will also notice that his costume is as uncomfortable as it is decorative.”

  Again the Ugga Buggah appeared, clothed in a garment that seemed to be made of feathers and chain mail, the top grasping his Adam’s apple like an iron clamp, his tongue lolling out in pain.

  “The adults attend these tribal rituals only as chaperones and observers, and look upon the ceremony with indulgence. Here we see the ritual dance in progress.”

  A heavy rumble of drums; then a moiling herd of sweating feather-clad dancers of both sexes appeared on screen amid a great cloud of dust.

  “Of course, we in more sophisticated societies no longer observe these rites.”

  Somehow, the scene was too painful for me to continue watching. Something dark and lurking had been awakened in my breast.

  “What the hell you mean we don’t observe puberty rites?” I mumbled rhetorically as I got up and switched off the set. Reaching up to the top bookshelf, I took down a leatherette-covered volume. It was my high school class yearbook. I leafed through the pages of photographs: beaming biology teachers, pimply-faced students, lantern-jawed football coaches. Suddenly, there it was—a sharply etched photographic record of a true puberty rite among the primitive tribes of northern Indiana.

  The caption read: “The Junior Prom was heartily enjoyed by one and all. The annual event was held this year at the Cherrywood Country Club. Mickey Eisley and his Magic Music Makers provided the romantic rhythms. All agreed that it was an unforgettable evening, the memory of which we will all cherish in the years to come.”

  True enough. In the gathering gloom of my Manhattan apartment, it all came back.

  “You going to the prom?” asked Schwartz, as we chewed on our salami sandwiches under the stands of the football field, where we preferred for some reason to take lunch at that period of our lives.

  “Yep, I guess so,” I answered as coolly as I could.