What a great place to hide with a good book and a flashlight. (photo right)
School was different in those days. Billy was the only kid I knew who drove his own car to grade school. He was Fayette’s special pupil and she was determined not to let him out of the eighth grade until he could read, write and do his numbers. I think he was seventeen when he finally had enough “larnen” to satisfy her. Billy was well over six feet and graduated along with me. He sat in the front of the class and was head and shoulders taller than anyone else. Billy married Judy Eagar and, as far as I know, retired few years ago from the gas company and still lives in town. I heard he got up to about four hundred pounds and doesn’t do much of anything these days. For a guy who the world might judge as “slow,” Billy knew the names of every plant, flower, tree and all the birds and animals that lived in the woods, rivers, and swamps around Island Heights. So, I guess that shows you, don’t label people, he learned what he was interested in and Chaucer and Shakespeare just weren’t his bag.
Anyway, back to the swamp rodents. After skinning them, I put their little hides on metal stretchers and hung them on the basement water pipes… when they were semi-cured I‘d pack them up and mail them off to “Monkey Wards” who paid $1.50 each and used them for God knows what… maybe liners for Gloves? Hey, come to think of it, Billy taught me how to trap and skin the Muskrats in the first place. Billy would trade me a shotgun shell for every skinned muskrat, he called them swamp chickens and swore they were good to eat………I never tried.
ISLAND HEIGHTS STORIES
THE POINTED END
I was reminded of the story of, well let’s just say a boy I once knew, who became the only person I ever heard of to shoot himself in the head with a bow and arrow...a remarkable feat when you think about it. Many years later I did know a night guard who was working for me in Nigeria…this fine gentleman in fact did shoot himself in his foot with a crossbow… so, I guess such things are not so terribly rare after all. … I doubt that they were related but, one never knows… the universal human gene pool being so remarkably diverse… but, I digress.
Our young genius lived in the small house just to the south of ‘Bogger Ayer's’ General store (on the corner of Ocean and Central.. During his twelfth year, one clear summer day, he was in his back yard with his Dad’s deer hunting bow... thinking naturally of where to shoot it... the yard is today as small as it was then and, opting for maximum distance, he decided to shoot straight up and see how far it would go....
This was a classic mistake as even he soon realized ... the arrow streaked into the hot blue sky, higher and higher, until he almost lost sight of it...then, as he had belatedly figured out, it slowly reversed direction and came earthward faster and faster, pointed end down. Joey, panicked, running in small circles trying to hide. He was hugging a large tree whimpering like a kitten when the arrow entered the branches...thankfully somewhat slowed, implanting itself directly in the top of Joey's crew cut blond head.....
He ran screaming to the back door and his mother, seeing the arrow protruding like a TV antenna, screamed and fainted... ....Now, in a complete panic.... figuring he had likely killed himself the clever lad ran to Booger Ayer's store... Booger who had polished off his usual bottle of Old Grand Dad before noon was behind the counter when Joey ran in crying with the arrow sticking insanely out of the top of his head.....
Booger just reached over the counter and pulled it out... The Genius ran home where his Mom had recovered...and never went to the doctor... his Mom put a patch over the hole and his life went on.. like before... That's one of the old Island Heights stories.... I thought you might like to know .. in case you ever drive through the town it’s something to remember.
SUMMER DEATH
It was on that day in 1954 just before school got out for the summer.. always the first day of June and we were free for three whole months…but, this was a school day… albeit the last one and we were standing around outside for lunch break…when…
The old Ford station wagon that had been turned into a makeshift ambulance by the Island Heights First Aid Squad, pulled up in front of the tiny green cottage across the street from the school. My best friend’s Mom and her neighbor got out wearing white painters coveralls with a red cross sewn on the back and carried a black bag up the stairs…
Miss Slimm, our teacher and sixty-five year old spinster “schoolmarm”, had called them because the beagle had been howling all morning. The dog belonged to the old man who had lived in the little house for many, many years… We all knew him, just to say hello… the way the very young know the very old... casually, if at all.
Standing there, under the clear early summer sun, with the tall oaks shading half the street, the kids of the last one room school house in America bought ice cream from the truck that jingled to a stop…and we waited… not knowing for what…and certainly not for death…
We all were oddly silent… hearing the “ thumping,,, bumping , thumping” .. as “something” was being dragged down the narrow stairs The door opened and the ladies came out with dust masks over their noses, dragging a long black bag…and, backing the station wagon that passed as an ambulance and in this case a hearse, under the stairs wrestled the bag into the back and drove off… We knew.. this was how death visited us at the start of that summer…..
Licking Popsicles under the tall oaks and blue skies, we watched the wagon disappear around the corner…silently ,strangely, we all understood and the beagle, who had always known, stopped barking … looking at us and back at the empty, open door…I don’t know who took care of the beagle… That was my last year at grade school - after that day I didn’t return for many years… The little house is still there but the old school building has been replaced…you really can’t go back, can you?
Why they call it “Island Heights”
Once, long ago, the town really was an island. My Grandfather used to say so at least. He said that the river ran through the part of town that is today and has been in all of my memory, just called “long Swamp.” And in fact, was and still is today, a swampy wetlands.
THE RACING TURTLE
Gilford Park, the next small town to the north was separated by a shallow warm stream that emptied the swamp into the bay. I was to get to know a strange guy named Ed Feaster who lived in that town but, at that time, that summer, I had never heard of him. Later, years later, in high school, we met. Ed became locally famous for owning a real “racing turtle” Ed’s racing turtle once set the speed record for land based turtles.
The poor critter, which had probably been the biggest snapping turtle in the swamp, was imprisoned in Ed’s garage for weeks. Ed had forgotten about it. The starving beast had eaten every mouse and insect in its prison. When he finally remembered it was down to a trim shadow of its former glory.
With a green stripe and the number 10, which had no significance whatsoever, painted on its black shell, we were ready for the tortoise land speed record. The problem was how to get it to run in a more or less straight line and not to have it chasing us for dinner.
The schoolyard on this cold November Saturday morning was
