With the house filled to capacity with practically everyone from the block, and the harmony of Leon Redbone reverberating throughout the living room, I couldn’t help but stand in a corner and marvel at everything, as if my vision was like a movie camera taking in all the activity in slow motion. How everyone was smiling and laughing in their small groups, nibbling on snacks, or taking sips from their drinks while the kids darted in every direction. I had always sensed it, but now, within hours of my departure, I discovered the secret of Duinsmoore. It wasn’t simply a block with rows of homes nudged next to each other, but a neighborhood that became its own family. And family was the single thing I had craved since my crazed, alcoholic mother had exiled me from my own household years before I was removed and placed into foster care. And I appreciated all that my foster parents did for me, but because of my constant placements—being moved from home to home—I felt I truly couldn’t bond. But that was the gift that Duinsmoore gave me, that sense of belonging I so yearned for my whole life.
As the party began to peak, The Doc Savage of Duinsmoore took center stage. “While this may appear to be a going-away party for America’s newest inductee of the armed forces, it’s really a celebration that we are finally rid of you…”
“Damn right!” Mr. Ballow sarcastically bellowed.
“However, in all seriousness, I can state as Chancellor of Security of Duinsmoore that upon your initial arrival the block has never been the same, and may not likely recover from what can only be described as excessive psychological damage. My case in point being our good neighbor Mr. Brazell,” Dan suddenly curtsied to the howling crowd, “who has become so deranged that he has taken up cross-dressing for what would surely be because of hiding his emotional scars that you and your band of merry men have instilled to him.”
“Hear, hear!” a small group chanted.
“As taxpayers, patriots, and veterans, it is our fond hope that if there is another shooting war, that the air force in all its wisdom will have enough sense to drop you behind enemy lines and have you promote chaos against the said enemy at will, as you have against us. God forbid if they hand any utensil other than a spatula; for if they do, I will commandeer my family from the Golden State, and it is my intention to hide them in the remotest part within the mountains of Bolivia.
“But in all seriousness,” Mike continued while maintaining a grasp on his frothed beer, “for those of us whom have dared to know you, we realize you’ve been through a lot, and in some aspects we are proud how far you’ve come and am hopeful of your future. Now,” Mike stopped to clear his throat, “does anyone here have any parting words of advice for our young Airman Extraordinaire?”
“Keep your mouth shut and learn to become invisible,” someone yelled.
“Never volunteer for KP duty,” another boomed.
“When you go overseas, don’t drink the water.”
“Stay away from all brothels, bordellos, and geisha houses.”
“Always wear your raincoat.”
Suddenly Sandy Marsh blushed at the next comment, which I didn’t understand: “That’s right, Airman, always remember,” The Sarge thundered, “keep your gun clean at all times. Travel to exotic places, take in the sites, and explore your world. You’re in the thick of it now, son!”
Minutes later, when I realized it was the first party that anyone had ever thrown for me, I cried inside. I slipped outside and stood near the same spot where I had first introduced myself to Paul and David such a long time ago. And, as if on cue, both young men stumbled from the party to meet me. Paul, with his shoulders slumped, seemed upset. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
Before Paul could reply, David interjected, “Oh, he’s just pissed ’cause Dan wouldn’t let him strap on his gun for the party.”
“The .357?” I swallowed.
“Yeah, it would have been cool. Then if someone got out of line, I could’ve blasted ’em,” Paul emphasized, as if his hand were the Magnum revolver.
With raised eyebrows David and I looked at each other. “Why do I get this sinking feeling I’m leaving, only to find out that one day you’re in some tower shooting at people. You know, Paul, we really have to work on your attitu…” But before I could finish my lecture, Susie Neyland materialized. With gaping mouths the three of us stood perfectly still. No one dared to breathe. When she made eye contact with Paul and David, Miss Neyland stopped in stride for a mere nanosecond to give the boys a wave. Susie may have gestured to me as well, but by habit, and stupidly, I snapped my neck down to avoid gazing at the Princess of Duinsmoore, thus avoiding the near-certain possibility of making a jerk of myself for all to enjoy. Yet for the briefest of moments, with my eyes closed I could see Susie again strutting down the same street, only now in a short skirt, and a clingy white blouse tied at her tan waist, while all the while smiling at me, as if I were the only person on the planet. Then to the dismay of everyone from the block who lined both sides of the sidewalks, The Princess stopped in front of me, stood on her toes, and planted a deep, long passionate kiss on me, while we both held each other. Afterward, with glistening eyes, my Susie purred, “Come back in one piece, soldier boy.” But, after opening my eyes back to reality, Susie sauntered past, commenting that she was looking for her father. Paul leaped at the chance to volunteer his services. David and I again stared at each other in mock confusion before simultaneously chanting, “Paul and Susie sittin’ in a tree… K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Paul with the baby carriage!”
“Man,” I commented when the effects wore off, “she is such a fox.”
“Then go up and talk to her.”
“Why, so I could show her how well I can stutter like the village idiot? Besides, she doesn’t even know I’m alive.”
“Oh, yes she does,” David commented. “Remember Amy’s her baby sister. They all know you quite well. Besides, I thought you had a thing for Paul’s sister, Dori?”
“Definitely.” I shook my head. “I lust for Susie, but love Dori.” David shook his head, indicating he didn’t follow. “Okay, here’s the plan: Even though Dori doesn’t know me either… though she did say hello to me once… no, maybe twice… anyway, I eventually woo her…”
“Woo?!” Howard laughed.
“Shut up, man. This is it. This is, like, my master plan. Eventually, Dori likes me enough to get married, I buy a place for her on Duinsmoore. Dan could be, like, my dad, and you, my pimple-infested friend, not Paul, marries Susie, and Paul ends up with your sister, and we all live here and, you know, live happily…”
“…ever after,” David finished. “But I thought you told me you wanted to find your real dad and live at the Russian River?” Howard stopped to have his thoughts catch up with him. “You’re just kidding, aren’t you, about all of us living here with the girls and that living happily ever after stuff? You’re pullin’ my leg.” I smiled yes. “But it was a cool idea,” David grinned back. “Man, I’d give anything to see Paul’s mom put her arm around you at your wedding and call you ‘son’!”
“Can you imagine our genetic offspring running amok on Duinsmoore? A generation of chaos and calamity,” I said in perfect rhythm and timing.
“You are definitely sounding like The Sarge.”
“I didn’t when I first moved here, but every once in a while I have my moments.”
Seconds passed while David and I stood in silence. “This is it?”
I looked up at David, squinting my eyes from the sun’s descending glare. “Yep, I reckon. But not to worry, you’ll still be my bud,” I joked.
“You aren’t gonna move back here, are you?” David asked in a serious tone.
“Nope,” I shook my head. “It’s just the last of a childhood fantasy. Susie, Dori, Dan, the Marshes, Paul, you, and I, living here forever was something to keep me from stepping out there,” I pointed toward the horizon, “in the wild blue yonder. I know sometimes I say stuff and do things that are stupid, but I always knew what I had to do. I was just
too afraid to do it.”
David’s face softened, “I don’t want you to go. When you go… I gotta grow up, too.”
“Come on, you still have a couple of years before the big one-eight,” I consoled. “You and Paul are gonna have a blast.”
David shoved his hands in his pockets while shuffling his feet. “Mr. Marsh says Iran’s gonna explode. Says the Middle East, that’s gonna be the next big thing.”
I shook my head in disagreement. “Listen, the last thing the air force is going to do is give me a gun. Can you imagine that? Spaz Boy, the Barney Fife of Duinsmoore with a gun? Come on, man, you know me, I’d probably screw up and shoot myself in the foot or get my squad captured or killed. If they ever become that desperate, then we’re in some serious trouble. Besides, the air force flies jets and drops bombs. They’re not the rangers or the marines. I’m gonna be fine.” I paused to gaze back at my friend, who seemed less apprehensive.
“And that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” I said as David shot me a puzzled look. “That’s the one thing you, your mom, Paul, the Marshes, Dan, and this neighborhood gave me. You all taught me to live and not to agonize about every goddamn thing that may or may not happen to me. As asininely stupid as this sounds, all the crazy stuff we all did together taught me to be less robotic and step out and take a chance. But the big thing, the one thing you two gave me…” I stopped to take in a breath of air and to make sure I didn’t break down. “…Paul and you gave me a second chance at being a kid…” I stopped midsentence, surprised at my own revelation. “…And for that I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am. Thanks, David. Thanks for being my friend.” I turned away before he saw me cry. “Before I met you guys, I never thought I was going make it to twenty. Maybe that’s why I worked myself to death before I came here. This place represents everything that’s right in the world. Thanks for always being there for me.”
The next morning after spending the night on the Marshes’ sofa, I said my good-byes to Mike, Sandy, and the boys before they scrambled out the door. Strolling down the street to the Howards’, I repeatedly knocked on their door, but no one answered. With a quick sigh I ambled up the block to Paul’s home to pay my respects to my friend and the man I regarded as a father, but the Brazell family had also left for the day. Standing in the middle of the street, I closed my eyes and leaned back spreading my arms toward the clear blue sky. Opening my eyes, the scent of jasmine didn’t seem to fill my senses as before, and now the block seemed more like an abandoned town from the Wild West than the Disneyland utopia it was for me the evening before. Reluctantly, I walked over to my car, half praying it wouldn’t start, half praying that I wouldn’t have to transcend into adulthood. As excited as I was for the adventures just hours away, part of me wanted to slither back into the Marshes’ abode and burrow myself within a thick warm blanket and never come out. To my surprise the Mustang fired up on its first try, as if wanting to take me to my next journey. As I slowly drove down the street, a small stream rolled down my cheek. With Duinsmoore in my rearview mirror, I said a prayer for all those I loved so deeply. I then thanked God for showing me a piece of heaven on earth and for allowing me the absolute time of my life.
Epilogue
Within weeks of my departure, the spirit of Duinsmoore faded. By Indian Summer of 1979, The Doc Savage of Duinsmoore and his family had had enough of the Bay Area’s overcrowding, while barely making ends meet, so they packed up and fled to the great region outside of his home-town of Denver to reside in a bigger, modern house. No longer did they need to struggle as much as they had for years in California’s rat race.
The Suburban Park Association never recovered. While I was on military leave that Christmas, visiting Paul, David and Dan, the afternoon garage gatherings seemed almost lifeless. At first I thought that I may have been one of the reasons for the monotony, since I was—through the baptism of adulthood—now tolerated within the fold. And, by sheer coincidence, I had just completed military training school in Denver, allowing me to spend my weekend time with the Marsh family, and because I had all the “Intel” on The Sarge, I instantly became the narrator for Mike’s information-starved friends. It was then that I began to develop my individuality, conveying with drama the happenings of the illustrious Marsh clan.
During my more solemn times of that visit, I noticed the gap widen between Paul, David, and me. While I still felt the occasional urge to erupt and “do something,” it was now tempered with a sense of military discipline that helped sustain my impulsive cravings. David, still the lovable goofball, after school worked part time as a plumber’s apprentice, then devoted any free time remaining to any classes on plumbing at night school. But it was Paul who worried both David and me. By then Paul seemed more aggravated and withdrawn than ever before. When I discovered he had skipped school the majority of the time—the same school David was attending—part of me wanted to go ballistic and rip him to shreds, but, with hardly a word of concern or disapproval, I’d smile at Paul, hoping in time that things would somehow right themselves. As hard as we tried, David and I could not decipher Paul’s enormous life-altering quandary. I only knew that Paul, like most teens his age, had problems getting along with his parents, had missed Michael Marsh terribly, and still craved to perform outlandish feats, yet maybe, like me, Paul simply didn’t want to advance to the next level of adulthood and final independence. David and I agreed that whatever Paul’s dilemma, it hardly justified the cold, sarcastic, cancerlike chip growing on his shoulder with every passing day. Yet whenever I’d gently probe, Paul would go into his “It’s me against the world” routine, and I’d retreat by nodding my head while hoping not to sock him into orbit. Unlike David, who advised and at times berated our friend because he loved him, I never offered the slightest critique against Paul in whom I saw all the limitless opportunities—that he could easily pluck like fruit from a tree and that now were slipping from his grasp. What gnawed most at David and me was that our Einstein, Jr., had opportunities as vast as the stars above, things that David and I could never obtain, but he only seemed to linger in his own mire. But, yet, no matter how Paul was living his life, my affections for him rarely waned. He was still my friend.
I had returned to Duinsmoore many times since then. The most devastating of my visits was days after my biological father—whom I had seen less than a dozen times while in foster care—lost his long bout with cancer of the neck and throat, and who died in my arms without ever stating the three words I had so longed to hear. So it was Duinsmoore I fled to and Dan’s support I longed for. After attending Sunday Mass, with Dan kneeling beside me and after having locked away a torrid of mixed emotions for so many years, I broke down in front of Mr. Brazell in his backyard, realizing Dan had provided me with more devotion and guidance in those few years than my own father in his lifetime. Years later when I became a proud father, Dan was one of the first I phoned, and in the months to follow I’d constantly bug him and mail him a small arsenal of photographs of my growing son. In April of 1991 when I returned home from the war in the Gulf, serving as an air crew member—I was a midair refueler for the once-coveted SR-71 Blackbird and the once-mysteriously-shrouded F-117 Stealth Fighter—the Duinsmoore neighborhood converged at Mrs. Howard’s home, as I proudly held my five-year-old son, Stephen, in my arms while chatting with Dan. By chance someone snapped a photo of that magical moment. To the casual observer the picture holds nothing special: just a child with wide, glistening, smiling eyes while in the arms of a father sporting a short military crew cut hairstyle, gazing back at a man of respect who places his hand on the shoulder of the young father. I have since dubbed the framed photograph Three Generations.
Though many years have passed, David Howard and I continue to remain in constant contact with each other. After running down the usual checklist of the families’ status, we spend the majority of our time conversing about Paul and our concerns for his happiness. When time permits, we relive the era of our youth and amplify the exploits, w
ondering with laughter how we were never arrested, flogged in public by the neighborhood, or didn’t end up dead from absolute ignorance. These talks with David, and on my rare conversations with The Sarge, which are as natural as breathing, without any thought or hesitation we’d end our discussions with those three most important words, vowing to talk soon and possibly making plans to see each other in the near future.
Like everyone, I find my life way too busy and, at times, chaotically out of control. I have promised myself dozens upon dozens of times that this is the year I will slow down. This is the year that I can, that I must block off some time and spend a few days with Mike, or have David and his lovely bride, Kelly, come for a visit. I have broken my pledge more times than I can count. And now I am middle-aged and realize I am on the “back nine” of the game called life and am left wondering how many more opportunities I have left.
In all my years and seemingly lifetime of worldly adventures, Duinsmoore Way has been and remains an essential part of my everyday life. With limited mechanical skills, I’ve applied myself in the area of gardening. Fulfilling a lifetime dream of having lived amongst the redwood trees in Northern California, even if I returned home at two in the morning, after being on the road for well over a month, I’d spring out of bed like a child on Christmas precisely at five o’clock, race downstairs to make a pot of freshly ground coffee, before stepping outside to gaze in awe at the sun rising against the backdrop of a serene transparent Russian River. Then, while sipping my brew, as Dan had done all those years, I, too, surveyed my work area in which I would plant hundreds upon hundreds of bright impatiens flowers in a precise arrangement—which I had blueprinted in my head while on the road—only after toiling the soil. At times whenever neighbors dropped by for a chat, they most likely talked to my backside, but as stoic as I may have appeared, I always greeted everyone with a long, mellow hellooow. And, like Dan, I’d apply myself non-stop, wrapping up around three o’clock, initiated by cleaning every tool with a fresh rag, dusting off every shelf, then sweeping out my tiny workshed with my heavy-duty broom, before proudly hosing off the entire driveway.