Dreams

Dear readers: Six vignettes follow. Five are renditions of dreams, recalled by Mr. Tommy. One of the six is a report of an actual event. Can you guess which one was the “reality?”

Good for it

Having finished changing his diaper, I picked the baby up from our bed, jostled him until he giggled like he does, and set him down on my dressing chair.

As I turned away to reach for my socks, the baby suddenly took a sideways tumble from the chair, to the side away from me.

He did a full flip as if diving sideways from a board into water. Then he promptly landed on the thick padding of his fresh diaper. Plop. No damage. Big giggle.

But Laura, watching this from across the room, was alarmed and came running, reaching down for the poor baby boy.

Looking back at her, he shook his head side-to-side. He had learned the word lots of babies learn first: “No.” And he turned away from her, rejecting her offer of comfort, preferring me.

He reached his pudgy hands up to me in a gesture that meant I was to pick him up, and looking back at Laura, he said, in plain grown-up English, “He’s good for it.”

Foundation

Laura and I had driven to southwest Boulder to visit acquaintances there, another married couple.

After lunch, our hosts invited us to retire to the balcony, outside their dining room, which had a marvelous view of the rock formation known as The Flatirons.

There were climbers negotiating the nearly-vertical rocks. Safety lines crossed back and forth, and the climbers’ progress was painstakingly slow. But there was enough action to hold our attention for some time.

Eventually, our hostess brought cups of coffee out to the balcony. We stood on a long, narrow slab of rock which had been used as part of the structural material in the house, one story above the lawn below.

At each end of the balcony slab a huge egg-shaped boulder had been placed. I took my coffee, turned to my left and leaned against the rock nearest me.

As I leaned, I could feel the huge boulder move. Yes, move. Unbelieving, I leaned again. Sure enough, the five-ton rock would actually budge a fraction of an inch when I put my weight against it.

This made me uncomfortable to the degree that I pleaded for retreat into the house. The breeze or something, I said, not wanting to mention this architectural anomaly, this obvious hazard.

We went back inside, but my uneasy feeling prevailed and we didn’t stay much longer. In the car, on the way back to Greeley, I turned to Laura and said, “The foundation is crumbling there.”

Desert bomber

I had ridden my motorcycle to La Junta just for the fun of it, and had stopped at Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site.

Once inside the fort, I climbed the rustic ladder into the lookout tower at the southeast corner.

I bent over to look through the window, the opening where a rifle would have been aimed at marauders – if this had been the original fort, not this mere reproduction.

As I looked, a huge olive-drab military airplane, a modern jet-propelled bomber, flew by at an incredibly slow pace, and at a very low altitude. The craft looked as though it might be low enough to cause ripples in the waters of the Arkansas River just below it.

I stood up to look again, to look over the wall of the fort instead of through the gun port. The plane was gone.

The list

A woman accompanied by several children disembarked from a van outside. They all came noisily into our store and spread out, like children do here in our special place.

The oldest child, a boy who appeared to be about 12 or 13, came over to me and asked, “Can I give you a hug?”

I didn’t resist, so he reached his arms around me and did the manly bear-hug thing, his head turned sideways against my chest. He held on tightly for the longest time.

Taken aback, I asked the boy, “To what do I owe this display of affection?”

The boy looked up at me and answered, “You’re on the list.”

At that, the woman in charge of this group of youngsters began searching through her belongings.

“There,” she said, pulling a tattered piece of paper from a billfold. “This is the list.”

The boy took the paper and unfolded it, running a stubby finger down a number of handwritten names, addresses and phone numbers.

There, in my own handwriting, was my phone number, my address, my signature. “See?” said the boy, “You’re on the list!”

Then, in a sort of non-sequitur aside, he said, “My favorite holiday is Halloween. We get to dress up like saints.”

The devil

There was a knock on the front door of the stucco house on Seventh Street in Fort Lupton.

Mrs. Yandell, who was babysitting me and my brother, went to the door and opened it.

There he was, looking just like the demon on the label of a can of devilled ham. He was naked, had bright red skin-flesh, and a long tail with a spear point on the end.

He was carrying a trident which was red like him. His goatee was red, his little horns were red. “Is Tommy here?” he asked.

Mrs. Yandell said, “Shoo. Shoo Devil. Shoo.” She shut the door.

Instantly, there was an insistent knock around the house, at the back door. Mrs. Yandell didn’t open the door this time. She just said, “Shoo. Shoo.”

The straw man

Dad and I were out on the deck behind the house where Laura and I lived briefly in Fort Lupton.

Dad said something rude to me, critical, harsh. Insulting. I got up from my chair, went over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

I shook him forward and back. Then straw came spilling out, out of his sleeves, out of his shirt front. Soon there was no straw left, and I stood there with his shirt in my hands.

-0-

Word of the Week: Schmoo. Not in your dictionary? It’s Al Capp’s inventive, funny name for his wonderful little cartoon animal. Schmoo are only friendly and accommodating. Schmoo only smile, never frown. They exist only for the benefit of man.

They’re shaped like bowling pins. You can screw off the tops of their heads and drink the milk inside, about a quart. You can spear one with a forked stick and roast him over a campfire, and eat him all gone with no bones left over.

He tastes like hot dogs until you’re nearly done with him, then he tastes like marshmallows.

If you get sleepy, a group of schmoo will lie down and form a perfect mattress. If you are cold, they will gather over you as a blanket. If you need a ride . . . well, you get it.

Schmoo. Sometimes the word is misused to mean an oaf, a goofy person.