URANIUM MINE And Other Stories by Jed Linde.
From birth to old age, these seven “Charles” stories chronicle a daunting childhood; an adventurous and painful adolescence; a survival saga in Mexico City; learning from a Zen master; and benefiting from mystical experiences, contact with Mother Nature, and a host of life-changing situations.
150 Pages Published 2-7-23
URANIUM MINE And Other Stories by Jed Linde.
From birth to old age, these seven “Charles” stories chronicle a daunting childhood; an adventurous and painful adolescence; a survival saga in Mexico City; learning from a Zen master; and benefiting from mystical experiences, contact with Mother Nature, and a host of life-changing situations.
150 Pages Published 2-7-23
SOUTH, FOREVER; c. 1951
Charles kept his head down most of the time, conditioned by the chronic tension in his home. His keen disinterest in family matters began the previous year when his mother—-after another episode of domestic violence-—asked him to decide about getting a divorce. She emphasized that he give it serious thought because he would not have a father if he chose to end their marriage. Before he could say anything, she told him to come back with his answer in a few hours.
Just hearing her question scared him to the point of nausea. What if his father found out he was making this critical decision? Moreover, what if he did not do exactly what Mom ordered? Either way, he would suffer.
Nevertheless, he decided to comply.
That his mother had put him into an impossible situation did not seem to faze her, or perhaps she did it on purpose. She enjoyed watching animals make futile attempts to escape from discomfort. One of her favorite "games" was tying paper socks on their cat's paws, and laughing uproariously as it stumbled around, attempting to shake them off.
Charles rejected going to his room to decide; he did not want either parent to show up unexpectedly. His immediate objective was somewhere safe and secure. Leaving by the driveway door, he trudged across the street in the dismal rain, avoiding as much of the slush as possible. Going between two houses, he walked hunched over into "The Woods."
––––––––
For him and his friends on the block, "The Woods" was their refuge. An undeveloped area full of trees, four or five blocks wide, it stretched a mile or so to the East River. Free from adult supervision and prying eyes, they went wild at times. After building a small town out of scrap lumber, each "house" just big enough for its owner, they created a feudal society. With pieces of lath, they engaged in sword fights, or had "castle sieges," throwing dirt clods over a small embankment at each other.
A few years before Charles was old enough to join in the fun, a local boy lost one eye when they were tossing reed spears back and forth. Charles' parents used this accident as a warning so often that he became unreasonably fearful of going blind.
Then, alone in the woods during the knighthood phase, he attempted to start a small fire to warm himself up. The wooden matches were damp, and one after another fizzled. Exasperated, he pressed even harder until one lit. The head snapped off and flew into his eye. With tears gushing down his cheek and in excruciating pain, he could not tell if he was blind or not. Closing it seemed to make it worse, so he rapidly walked home, holding his eyelids apart. The cold air precipitated even more tears. By the time he arrived, he was convinced he was blind.
His mother, seeing that the match head had burned into the white of his eye, did little to calm his fears. Instead, she told him sarcastically that he had gotten just what he deserved for playing with matches, adding her favorite admonition, "Serves you right! God never sleeps!"
Charles went to bed in shock and slept until the next day. When he awoke, his eye felt much better. He was greatly relieved to discover that he could still see with it.
The match-head-size brown scar remained on the white of his eye for years.
––––––––
When he went into the woods to make his decision, he was not surprised that none of the gang was around. They had moved on from the roundtable; girls were now the object of their fantasies. Besides that, it was a miserable day. He sat on the edge of a ditch near their abandoned "village" and pondered his mother's question. Wearing a hooded parka, he ignored the frigid drizzle.
As soon as his mother asked him, despite his fears, he knew his answer. Before he could say anything, though, she had insisted that he take sufficient time to think it over. She emphasized that it was up to him, seeming to ignore how inappropriate it was to ask a twelve-year-old to decide the future of a marriage and a family.
Nevertheless, "Yes!" was his instant answer.
Upon reflection, though, he worried about his father's reaction. He knew Mom would tell Dad it was Charles’ choice, just to hurt him as sadistically as possible. Besides the times when Mom goaded him, Dad's rages often exploded without any discernable cause and, more than once, Charles had feared for his life. Giving Dad a reason to go berserk seemed like suicidal folly, while not having him around would be a blessing from all the saints in heaven. Going back and forth in his mind like a metronome, he dithered anxiously about his answer. Memories of Dad's outbursts came like waves in a storm as he considered his answer.
A year or two earlier, all three of them crammed into their second-floor kitchen/dinette—-the first floor and the basement of their home rented out—-he and his father were at the table eating a salad while his mother was still cooking at the stove. There was no conversation, but the atmosphere was calm, and Charles felt relaxed. As they ate the salad, a piece of lettuce fell out of his father's mouth onto his plate. Fooling around and with no intent to ridicule him, Charles let a piece of lettuce fall out of his mouth.
In an explosive move that paralyzed him, his father grabbed his hair, pulled his head back, and put a steak knife to his throat, ready to cut it from ear to ear. His mother's hysterical screaming jig at the stove stopped him, and he let go of Charles. As with similar outbursts, no one said anything about it, and they continued the meal in silence. If Charles reacted or said anything, there was the unspoken threat that something worse would occur. It was as if nothing had happened.
Imagining his father's potential retaliation to his decision precipitated overwhelming terror in Charles. After more than an hour of anguished contemplation, he decided to get the divorce, regardless of the risk. At least that way, it offered the possibility of living in peace and safety.
When he returned home, he encountered his mother and father standing at the kitchen sink, hugging, kissing, and fondling each other while giggling like kids.
The unexpected scene precipitated an imploded cloudburst of emotions in Charles—-the principal one, anger. All that inner turmoil about making a family-changing decision, the one she had instructed him to work on diligently, and it was for nothing.
"Why the hell did she send me off with that question if she wasn't going to wait for my answer?" he asked himself in frustration and resentfully went to his room.
Mom never inquired about his decision, even though he was supposed to cast the deciding vote. Perhaps she did not want to know his answer. Given his fears, he avoided complaining about the pointless discomfort that she had caused him. He would have to continue living unhappily with Dad's unpredictable explosions and her eternal martyrdom.
After his useless “decision,” though, he felt sadder and more anxious than ever. He could not understand everything that was going on, which made it worse. His mother protected and threatened him, and his father frequently scared him with just the look on his face. Charles constantly worried about making a mistake or doing something wrong, but that did not seem to help. His mother was never satisfied with anything he did, and his father would scream at him with little to no cause.
In contrast, if anyone criticized his family, his immediate response, often heated, was that his parents were OK and his family was better than normal, if not great. He did not feel OK about himself, but he would never admit that to anyone. Without deciding to do so, he avoided thinking about his life, because it made him feel even worse. He told himself that everything was OK. His favored coping mechanism, which was not a conscious choice, was to live in his imagination, where he was a hero and everything was just fine. Since early childhood, he had told himself stories and had an imaginary playmate, Dobby. Even though his fantasies helped him feel temporarily happy, it was a shaky adaptation. The unexpected often left him feeling sorely vulnerable, because even small changes in his daily life could signal a catastrophe.
––––––––
When his mother told him they were moving to Florida, Charles realized he had paid little attention to his parents’ recent flurries of activity. Two months into the seventh grade, he stood silently, his mouth slightly agape. The news felt more like an earthquake than a hurricane. When the shock began to fade, he experienced a doom-like panic. He was going into the unknown, which simultaneously seemed exciting and deadly. Everything and everybody he knew, was familiar with, and cared about would stay behind.
They lived in a spacious and somewhat elegant two-story house. Dark red brick with brown trim, it stood out from the other brick houses on the block because of a buttress-like arch over the driveway. It had a basement and an attic, cloaked in cobwebs, devilishly hot in summer, and full of what seemed like junk to Charles. It was dark, smelly, and, to him, scary. The basement, in contrast, remodeled in knotty pine and varnished to an attractive sheen by his parents, was his playroom. Having installed a wet bar, they held their infrequent parties there.
His earliest memory was his third birthday in that room, with about twenty kids—toddlers to teenagers—-running, screaming, and getting into fights. His mother, overwhelmed, served as the referee. For years afterward, the kids on the block named it the best birthday party ever. Not unexpected, his parents had other labels for it.
Now that they no longer rented the lower floors, he had a much better bedroom—-the first-floor living room, which overlooked the front garden. It had a mock fireplace (more on that later) and French windows facing the hallway and staircase, which allowed him to see if trouble was coming. It was his haven when his parents, whose bedroom was upstairs, got into another explosive row.
Charles did not know at first the full details of the move. He imagined they would drive south, buy a house, and then have everything shipped to them in a moving van. One day, though, he came home from school and was surprised to find a small house trailer in the backyard. He had never seen one up close before and looked inside. He discovered it was empty, its walls and ceiling covered with a thin natural color wood veneer.
His parents informed him that they were going to build the interior, which was even more surprising. The trailer, eighteen feet long and painted to look like aluminum, had a thick exterior shell that did not appear to be wood. Later, he learned it was Masonite, and that aluminum trailers were much lighter and easier to pull. Most of the available aluminum, though, had gone into the recent war effort.
With plywood, his father skillfully constructed a double bed in the rear of the trailer. Hollow on the inside, it provided ample storage space. In the front, he built a similar single bed for Charles that became a couch during the day. He installed a swing-out table attached to the wall, a large closet near the center of the trailer, and a refrigerator and stove facing it. With all its "furnishings" in place, the interior was as roomy and comfortable as the earliest space capsules.
What transpired at this point became a not-so-divine comedy. Already in escrow, his parents began choosing what to take, sell, give away, or put into storage. This task was fraught with many volcanic arguments, screaming, tears, and, finally, subterfuge.
The house sold quickly for almost three times what his parents had paid for it fourteen years earlier. This was a happy event for them and the "good times" phase lasted longer than usual. They had a grubstake for the move to Florida. The trailer, however, was overflowing. It would be a daunting challenge for functional human beings to move from a two-story house, with a full basement and an attic replete with "important things," into an eighteen-foot trailer, and his parents were only marginally functional.
One of his vivid memories from that time was his mother giving him the mock fireplace's andiron, grate, and toolset—-weighing at least 40-plus pounds—-and telling him to sneak it past his father and find a place for it under their bed. Dad, of course, caught him and went ballistic, but the fireplace set stayed in the trailer.
His father's quite cogent argument was that the trailer's frame was already on the axle, the leaf springs flattened by the weight of it and its contents. This meant nothing to Charles at the time. In retrospect, however, it was terminal folly. He still wonders why they took a fireplace set to Florida when they could have stored it. Ironically, over half a century later, it sits in his garage, one of the few items he inherited from his parents. As difficult as it has been for him to let go of it, it was even more difficult for his mother, and she never owned a home with a real fireplace. Charles managed to use it for almost two decades until he moved into a house with a matching set for a much larger fireplace. Now, probably an antique, he thought he should sell it online.
––––––––
In early December 1950, they departed for Florida, his father at the wheel of their trusty 1941 Nash, which he had purchased new and cared for as if it were a royal infant. Underpowered, with an 80-horsepower six-cylinder engine, “it got good gas mileage." As an adult, Charles realized he would not have towed the overloaded trailer around the block with any vehicle, much less to Florida behind the Nash. Mom was nervous and had stopped driving, but she gave the orders from her co-pilot's seat. He did not believe she knew much about cars or trailers, but they were going to travel the way she thought best. He does vaguely remember his parents testing their rig once on a short drive.
Not long afterward, they left Queens on its maiden long-distance voyage. The Nash was a two-door, and Charles had the back seat to himself. Not knowing any better, he thought they had a great car.
"It always gets us to Jones Beach and back; it must be OK," he told himself.
His father, however, a machinist, had to know they were going beyond any conceivable envelope, especially towing a dangerously overloaded trailer without brakes.
Just before they entered the Holland Tunnel, a car came across the median and almost hit them head-on. His parents both screamed hysterically and cursed the driver.
"What in God's name did he think he was doing?" his mother yelled.
His father gripped the steering wheel ever tighter as they headed for the toll plaza. In the back seat, Charles did not see the errant vehicle and said nothing. Perhaps he was dozing; they had left in the pre-dawn hours, and it was still dark.
When they stopped at the tunnel's entrance, the tollbooth worker asked if there was propane in the tank behind the trailer's hitch.
"Yes," replied his father.
"You cannot enter the tunnel with pressurized gas in a tank," the toll taker stated authoritatively.
His father pulled to the side and began to vent the gas. To Charles, this was one more example of adult insanity. The gas was blowing into the tunnel. Besides that, all the other vehicles carried gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel. As the gas hissed, the tank turned into a refrigerator and began to frost over. Soon, no gas came out; it was too cold. Dad gave up, closed the valve, and they drove off, both parents with silent, frozen stares. In many ways, the head-on driver and the tollbooth man were omens of what was to come.
"We are on an adventure," Charles told himself, though, and relived, half-asleep, the heroic challenges depicted in the Bomba of the Jungle books he loved. With storm clouds ahead, they headed south into uncharted seas on a "boat" that could sink at any moment. The captain and first mate were drowning in a sea of fear, and he imagined himself as Bomba saving the day. He became much happier about this dangerous voyage into the unknown, feeling confident and capable of handling whatever confronted them. In the back seat, he could daydream just about anything.
––––––––
For anyone not having had the pleasurable experience of towing a house trailer, conventional wisdom recommends a sturdy and horsepower-rich vehicle to do so safely, preferably a pickup or a large SUV. The Nash, Charles found out years later, was modern with its “Unibody” construction, which made it light but strong. However, it was underpowered to a laughable degree, except if you were pulling a Masonite trailer without brakes, packed with four stories of "stuff." In that case, it was, at best, moronic and suicidal.
Although there were other travel incidents before they reached Baltimore, Charles remembers Baltimore quite distinctly. At a stop sign in the middle of a hill, his parents once again commanded him to jump out and place a block behind the trailer wheels to prevent the caravan from going backward. Then, just as his father floored the engine, he would push at the back of the trailer until it started forward. Picking up the block, he would then run and jump into the back seat, his mother leaning forward to let him in. During these "events," his father hollered orders while the Nash's overworked engine screamed with him in a panicky duet. The driver and motor sounded like they were going to explode.
Mom and Dad seemed unconcerned that he might be in danger during these "chock-placement-and-push episodes," but he does not remember being fearful, only hating it. He was thirteen and intensely embarrassed each time he had to go through another of the ignominious block-the-rear-wheels-and-push-the-caravan drills. People on the sidewalk ridiculed, snickered, or laughed at his efforts to help the convoy get moving again. There were multiple such situations before they reached Baltimore, where Charles balked. He refused to get out of the car. His father bellowed at him, and his mother ordered him to obey with all her almighty right. He still refused to budge.
"You do it,” he told her.
He could not believe what he was saying. Mom made no gesture of opening her door. She was not about to make a fool of herself on the streets of Baltimore or anywhere else. Screaming and cursing at him, his father gunned the Nash, and, like the little engine that could, it climbed the hill. Charles never got out of the car again to chock the wheels and push like Sisyphus. Perhaps it was a coming-of-age experience. In any case, he survived it.
Not far south of Baltimore, they went over an elevated bridge, one that had long, steep segments at each end and a high flat middle section. His parents groaned when they saw it in the distance. Dad accelerated as much as he could and, halfway up, downshifted into second gear, the engine sounding like a sewing machine overdosing on Benzedrine. As they came closer and closer to stopping, he shifted into first, grinding the gears, and floored the engine. The Nash came through again; they inched their way onto the top section of the bridge.
From then on, his parents obsessed about this bridge. What would they do if they ever went back to Long Island? Finally, months later, caught in their panic, Charles lay awake at night, visualizing them stopped dead on the hateful bridge, his father screaming at him to get out to lighten the load, block the rear wheels, and push as if his life depended on it. His mother, in his fantasy, would be screaming at him too, saying it was all his fault the car had stalled.
It is not surprising that there are blank spots in his memory of their exodus. Sometimes, we forget the traumatic. There was one incident, however, still harshly implanted in his mind.
In Georgia, or perhaps north of that state, they were cruising through gently rolling hills. There were no shoulders, or railings on this section of the two-lane highway, providing precarious drop-offs on both sides of the road. The forested countryside was charming, and Charles was happily ensconced in the co-pilot's seat—his first opportunity to be upfront—while his mother slept in the back. Unexpectedly, at the crest of a hill, the downhill section became much longer and steeper, with higher and exceptionally precipitous drop-offs on both sides of the road. The Nash and trailer began picking up speed.
"Yeah, this will be like a roller coaster ride," Charles thought. "This will be fun."
They continued to accelerate, his father's foot off the gas and already going too fast to backshift into second gear. With a sideways glance, Charles saw Dad’s pale face and that he was gripping the steering wheel so hard the veins on his hands and forehead stood out.
"What's the problem?" Charles wondered. "We are doing just fine."
He did notice they were going faster than he had ever gone in any car. Halfway down the hill, his father gently applied the brakes.
This was a major mistake because the trailer, not having brakes, wanted its carnival ride. Adamantly disinterested in slowing down, it plowed to the right, coming close to jack-knifing, and throwing them over the edge. His father corrected by steering to the right, but the trailer then shoved to the left. He had to use both lanes to keep from going off the road. Fortunately, there was no traffic coming from the opposite direction.
As they continued to pick up speed, tires screeching with each swipe of the trailer, the Nash flew back and forth like a dachshund in the jaws of a pit bull. His "brute” father screamed his mother's first name like a pre-teen girl, and she snapped out of her slumber, screaming along with him.
"Whatever possessed you to drive so fast?" she shrieked into his ear, providing just the practical help he needed. The car continued to lash back and forth while his father fought with the steering wheel, having little control over anything.
"Feels like the best carnival ride ever," Charles told himself, in false bravado.
If the trailer swept them off the road, he imagined the propane gas tank would be the only survivor, after they rolled repeatedly to the bottom of the embankment.
With that in mind, he turned to his father and, louder than Mom's hysterics, blurted out, "Step on the gas."
Was it his guardian angel? There was no logical explanation for him to know what to do.
Dad kept wrestling the Nash for a few more seconds, and then took his advice. The caravan straightened out immediately, albeit accelerating.
At the bottom of the hill, pushed harshly into their seats, all three of them gasped in unison. Going uphill, the car and trailer began to slow down.
"This is like a roller coaster," Charles said to himself gleefully.
"Stop as soon as there is a place to do so," Mom commanded from the backseat in her drill sergeant's voice, attempting to convince herself and everyone else that she was unaffected by Mr. Toad's Wildest Ride.
Off the road, while Dad checked the hitch and tires for damage, Mom ordered Charles out of the car and sentenced him to the backseat. There he would remain for eternity, or as long as she was alive, whichever was longer.
"If only I had been sitting in front," she repeated nauseatingly. "This never would have happened."
Berating Charles for letting Dad drive so fast, all logic went out the car window. He was to blame for the dangerous stampede down the hill. It was entirely his fault!
His parents ignored his helpful suggestion, and never acknowledged it later. He was a plague upon the family, or as his mother often repeated, "I have nurtured a viper at my bosom!"
As an adult, Charles laughed at times, saying to himself, "I have nursed at a snake's tits."
Sadly, it was probably a much more accurate description than Mom's laments.
A day after the carnival ride crisis, they stopped for a week in Ocala, Florida, having angled southwest from the state line. There, Charles became friends with an older boy, the first Floridian kid he met. He helped him dig out a large backyard stump. As a reward, he took Charles hunting with his pellet rifle. This was semi-tropical heaven for Charles. It was not Bomba’s jungle, but it was a lot closer than "The Woods."
On their first "safari," a snake raced out of the bushes in front of them. His friend let off a yell and ran away, but Charles sprinted after the snake. He wanted to see it and perhaps be able to identify it. He did not have the rifle, so he could not shoot at it. He kept chasing it, though, but it was fast and disappeared quickly into the underbrush.
When Charles came back, his new friend informed him that he was one "Crazy Yankee," and they burst out laughing. Called a Yankee for the first time, Charles found it hilarious. Later, the circumstances would not be so pleasant. They had some great adventures together, but, sadly, he cannot remember his friend's name. He would have liked to stay in Ocala, but his parents wanted to be on the coast.
Florida is trailer country. There are no downhills to tempt an old Nash to go faster than it had ever gone before, or climbs so steep that downshifting into first—crunch—while still moving was the only way to make it to the top. The Atlantic Ocean, their playground on Long Island, seemed unfamiliar. It was a lighter greenish-blue and had a different fragrance.
Before reaching Miami, they pulled into a trailer park near Hallandale, about a half-mile from the Gulfstream Racetrack. To Charles, it appeared rustic and inviting, almost like a campground. Without asphalt streets or concrete slab patios, it featured hard-packed sand, some grass, and a few stepping stones here and there. He took it for granted they would continue south, but they stayed, his parents probably worn out from all the excitement of pulling a Masonite nightmare for 1200 miles on highways with lots of hills.
The trailer park was a small island, bordered by the highway in front, and vacant land on both sides of it. There were no kids around Charles’ age. Most of the residents worked at the racetrack or owned racehorses. Some gambled away their hard-earned salaries and complained to his parents about their bad luck. If there was a town of Hallandale somewhere, he never saw it. He would bus to school in Hollywood, a mile or so north.
Less than a block behind the park lay a palmetto-studded semi-wilderness extending for what seemed like miles. Crushed coral roads, empty of traffic and blindingly white on sunny days, crisscrossed it every mile or so. Soon after their arrival, Charles began riding his bike or walking farther and farther into his new "Jungle.”
Most of the time, he was in it alone.
––––––––
After what may have been the longest-running whine opera in history, his parents gave in and bought him a Red Ryder lever-action BB gun. He was in hunter's heaven. He does not remember them showing him how to use it or teaching him any gun safety rules. As soon as he got it, he went into the palmettos and started shooting, mostly at birds at first. He did have twinges of guilt, but the hunting instinct, or whatever it was, overcame them.
Now shamefully ridiculous to him, land crabs became his most prevalent game. When he approached, they would scuttle into their canal bank holes and then, foolishly, come back out. He then shot them from the other bank. They never registered any reaction to his shots, other than going back into their holes. For the great white hunter, this was not at all satisfying. He knew he was killing for the sake of killing, which was as sinful as a boy could be. Nevertheless, he kept it up for a while, before accepting that it was not hunting or anything Bomba the Jungle Boy would do.
His first days at school were so painful that he blocked them from his memory. There were a few other "Yankees" in his class, having been there since the beginning of the school year. Everyone else was a Floridian. The Yankees had buddied up among themselves and somewhat tolerated by the locals. Neither group accepted Charles. One of the locals—left back a couple of times—quickly identified the outsider Yankee as scapegoat bait. A foot taller and much more muscular than Charles, he started bullying him in a ridiculing and threatening manner soon after his arrival. Charles was afraid of him but did his best not to show it.
Although the class material was about two years behind the level of his parochial school, its presentation was so foreign to Charles that he ended up with average grades, having earned mostly As in the past. He does not remember his parents saying much about it. They were adapting to Florida while living in an 18-foot trailer.
At first, what seemed like a camping trip or a wilderness adventure, became beyond unpleasant after a month or so. The trailer was claustrophobic, and Charles escaped into the palmettos every chance he had. There were no amenities in the park, and the bathroom and showers required a walk halfway across it. What was new and droll at first became a holiday in the Middle Ages. He and his parents had no private space whatsoever. Luckily, there were so many new challenges, distracted, Mom and Dad calmed down and, even better, his father became non-explosive. This, for Charles, should have been a welcome occurrence, but facing his problems, he only recognized the changes in retrospect. He was on a razor's edge every day at school, and he hated it.
A high point, though, one he distinctly remembers, was swimming in the ocean around New Year's Day. Wow, they all laughed; this is the life. The three of them loved swimming outdoors—-ocean, lake, river, or swimming pool—and to do it in winter seemed miraculous. It did not dawn on them that if you could go ocean swimming on January 1, July 4 might be hotter than the worst New York heatwave.
As the school year progressed, everything got much worse. By Easter, all the other Yankees had left, and school life went dramatically downhill for Charles. The snowbirds had flown to their northern nests, and he was the only outsider left to shun or torment. Besides that, he became besotted with a girl in his class—a tall, statuesque, and somewhat shy young woman. He dreamt of her when asleep or awake. His distraction from those pains was to go deeper and deeper into the palmettos with his carbine and a tube full of BBs.
This led to three memorable hunting trips, each of them chiseled into his memory:
One afternoon, arriving at an abandoned house in the palmettos, Charles was surprised to encounter one of his classmates, also carrying a Red Ryder carbine. He seemed friendly, perhaps because no peers were present to pressure him otherwise, and they started fooling around with their rifles, first with a target competition and then a mock shootout. Hiding at each end of the breezeway, they took turns coming out firing, then ducking back while the other shot. After several repetitions, Charles decided to break the pattern and shoot out of sequence. This produced a stomach-churning howl. Charles stepped back out into the breezeway, and momentarily when he saw the boy hunched over, screaming in agony, his hands over his face, with blood gushing out between his fingers.
Shot in the eye, was Charles' frantic conclusion as he raced over to him. Pulling the boy's hands away from his face, he saw that the BB had struck him square on the bridge of his nose, causing blood to gush from both nostrils. Much to the wounded boy's dismay, Charles laughed in relief. His hellish visions of their parents' reactions, with him going into a gruesome reform school, evaporated. After they both calmed down, the boy washed his face and hands at a nearby faucet and went home. Charles never saw him again during his hunting expeditions and has no recollection of him ever mentioning their “shootout” at school.
On another hunt, this time on his bike, Charles noticed a large snake on an irrigation canal bank. He jumped off the bike and advanced shooting, hitting the snake. It slithered into the water and swam rapidly to the opposite side. As it came up out of the water, he managed a direct hit on the top of its head, and it fell back into the canal. Cycling down the crushed coral road to the next plank bridge, he doubled back to his kill. On the way, he noticed a dilapidated bucket in the water and fished it out. Using a long stick, he retrieved the lifeless snake, thick, and about six feet long. Still fearful of it, he carefully lowered it into the bucket, which he hung on the handlebars. Then, he took off pedaling for the trailer park.
He had a hunting trophy, one that would impress everyone! As he arrived, he saw his parents and another couple—their only friends—standing outside their trailers.
"I shot a snake!" he called out to them.
Their faces registered little surprise, admiration, or approval. They seemed unimpressed, which frustrated Charles, as he slid to a stop. Annoyed, he dumped the snake at their feet. Wriggling on the sand, it appeared to be alive. The male neighbor yelled, "It's a Cottonmouth!" which precipitated a screaming retreat.
Charles almost laughed at them, but controlled himself, content with their reactions.
His mother later revealed that she expected a garter snake or something similarly benign. Although he received little praise for bagging a poisonous snake, he could tell they were indeed impressed. So much so that they ordered him never to bring home a hunting trophy again.
On a later foray, he came out of the palmettos into an open area occupied by five boys all armed with BB guns; one of them had the more powerful pump version. They seemed like farm kids, and he did not recognize them from school. Their welcome was cold and threatening, and he began to back off. One of them said something about him being yellow. At this, Charles whirled around and shot him in the stomach, then ran into the underbrush, BBs perforating the leaves around him.
He took up a fighting position behind a tree and hit a couple more of them before they withdrew to a safer distance and continued firing at him, standing in a skirmish line. They were almost out of the range of his carbine, but if he elevated it high enough, he could hit them in the legs and feet, which were bare, causing them to dance around and curse him. The older kid with the pump took his time entering the fray; when he did, he shot Charles in the shoulder. The BB went through his skin, and Charles had to dig it out with his penknife. It was no longer fun. Besides that, he had run out of BBs.
When he stopped shooting back, they yelled, asking if he was OK. He told them that he was out of ammo and then shuddered at his stupidity. Instead of taking advantage of his plight, they offered to loan him some BBs, so they could keep on fighting! It seemed like a friendly gesture, so he yelled back that he did not want to continue. Again, he was surprised at their response, telling him to come over and hang out with them. Fighting while outnumbered five to one, apparently justified a one-day membership in their gun club.
They walked around shooting at various objects and ended up at the older kid's house. He showed Charles a caged raccoon that his big brother had trapped. The poor animal snarled at them fiercely. Charles saw that the trap had cut through its hind leg’s bones, leaving only a few tendons and skin to keep it from falling off. Caged for so long, the bones' broken ends had dried to a yellowish-brown, nauseating Charles. The boy laughed, saying they planned to eat it.
After the other kids left, Charles noticed how isolated the boy's house was, surrounded by scrub growth and palmettos. He asked if he had any neighbors, and the boy mentioned a name. Charles flinched; it was his dream girl's last name. When he confirmed she lived nearby, Charles saw his chance to get to know her. He was too shy to approach her at school; perhaps he could do it now. Asking if he would show him the way, the boy led Charles down a narrow trail to a small clearing, with a pond and house at the far end.
Barefoot, wearing cutoff shorts, she faced them while balancing on a log at the edge of the pond. To Charles, she looked like a movie star in a backwoods movie, a beguiling Daisy Mae. He blushed, as did she, then her face turned into a grimace, and she turned away, walking briskly into her house without a word or further gesture. Having felt confident after his shootout and acceptance by the other boys, Charles plummeted into his much more familiar sense of being un-liked and rejected. He trudged, depressed, and discouraged, the long way back to the trailer park.
“She could have at least waved,” he told himself.
––––––––
Bored with the great white hunter routine every weekend, Charles decided to go into Hollywood, which he had yet to visit. Then, he realized that he did not know how to get there, having only gone to school, which was on the outskirts of town. His parents did not know how to get there either, never having used local transportation, and shopping in Fort Lauderdale, where his father worked.
Charles went to the park's office and asked the manager. What he learned seemed completely weird to him. There was no bus service on the highway. He would have to walk half a mile into the palmettos to a crushed coral road intersection the manager described to him. He told Charles that there was no sign, and the buses ran about every hour or so, but not regularly.
Showered and dressed in his best casual clothes, he walked to the supposed bus stop. He had biked these crushed coral roads many times, going deeper and deeper into the palmettos. However, he had rarely seen a car and had never encountered a bus. He wondered if the manager was having fun at his expense. It was not excessively warm, but the sun reflecting off the white coral made him squint uncomfortably. He waited for less than thirty minutes, hearing the bus before he saw it. It looked like an old New York school bus, but much more dilapidated and needing a wash or a paint job. When he waved, it crunched to a stop.
The driver, a white man not wearing a uniform, signaled him to get aboard with a head nod, took his twenty-five cents, and then continued driving down the road. It was dark inside the bus, the windows tinted and dirty. Charles could not see much as he made his way down the aisle. He passed the exit door in the middle of the bus and took a seat beyond it. The minute he sat down, the bus scrunched harshly to a stop, making him almost hit his face on the seatback in front of him.
"Boy, you'all get up here in the front of the bus!" the driver yelled.
At first, Charles did not realize he was the “boy.” When he did, he responded curtly, "I'm not doing anything wrong."
In Whitestone, if a kid was loud, annoying, a nuisance, or, worse yet, playing with the emergency exit handle, the driver would order him to the front of the bus, so he could keep an eye on him. Only jerks sat in the front of buses; the cool place was in the back.
"Boy, you hear me? Get up here in the front of the bus!"
"But I didn't do anything," Charles argued.
"Boy, this bus not goin' nowhere until you're up here in the front!" the driver insisted.
By then, Charles was angry. He was nervous about going into town by himself, and now the driver was giving him a lot of crap for doing nothing wrong. Before he could argue further, a woman sitting across the aisle, looking straight ahead, whispered, "Son, please sit in the front, or there will be trouble.” Her tone, the way she made sure the driver could not hear her, and the fear in her voice, grabbed his attention.
Charles did not know what was going on, but he got up and went toward the front, glaring at the driver, who accelerated away abruptly before Charles reached his seat, making him stumble backward in the aisle. His eyes now adjusted to the gloom inside the bus, Charles looked around. There were only a few white people in the front of the bus; behind the exit, it was almost packed, and all the passengers were Negroes. A sign, "Colored Only,” was just past the exit door.
The bus made its way noisily toward town, its tires crackling on the white coral, while Charles tried to make sense of what had happened: the sign, the bus driver's attitude, and, most of all, the fear in the Negro woman's voice.
No Negroes lived in Whitestone. Charles had never questioned that. He did see them when he went to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. His mother purchased a subscription to a series of informative films and presentations at the museum, which he attended once a week, taking a bus to Flushing, and then a subway to Manhattan. This was his weekly adventure, albeit with Mom's multiple warnings about never going with anyone who tried to approach him. On one of his trips, a man did come up and offered to take him to the movies; Charles turned toward a woman nearby and asked, "Mom, can I go to the movies with this nice man?" In a flash, the man disappeared into the crowd.
Once, having an extra ticket, he invited a kid his age to go to the film with him. The boy was a Negro. After the movie, they spent the afternoon going around the museum. Charles mentioned this to his mother after he got home. She did not comment, but her look of disapproval told him what she had not said. Because of previous comments, he knew his father harbored a dislike for Negroes. His mother stated more than once that Negroes won more boxing matches because their skulls were thicker than Whites were, and thus they were harder to knock out. His grandmother, who had many strange ideas, which Charles ignored, also had some offensively ludicrous notions about Blacks. She and his mother emigrated from a British Caribbean colony, and their noxious ideas, Charles would realize later in his life, were a means to justify the exploitation of Africans. Their attitudes, prejudices, and opinions made little to no impact on Charles. He knew what it was like to be mistreated, and he identified with the Negroes, feeling compassion for them.
Getting his first taste of segregation was a powerful shock. By the time he got off the bus, he was outraged that humans could treat other humans in such a demeaning and hurtful manner. He still did not understand it completely and was afraid to ask anyone about it, but when he went into a department store, he noticed there were "Colored" and "White" water fountains. He drank at the Colored one and continued to do so while in Florida.
He never mentioned any of this to his parents, the other residents of the park, or his all-white schoolmates. In his heart, he knew it was wrong. He had felt the black bus passengers' fear, and he noticed how few Negroes were on the Hollywood streets. Those who were there wore work-related uniforms, seemed to be maids, or did some other kind of menial labor. They walked with their faces downcast, avoiding all eye contact. Charles never saw where they lived and wondered what it was like. He imagined shantytowns without the most basic of necessities.
The bus driver's actions and words, the emotions of the Negroes on the bus, and the way they walked in Hollywood would stay with him throughout his life. It was the beginning of a deep-seated disdain for discrimination, in any form, and by anyone.
––––––––
The school year was winding down, and it was getting hotter and hotter. Feeling a superficial acceptance by some classmates, he decided to impress them by “borrowing" another kid's bike and pedaling to the beach with several of them piled on. Halfway back, hitting a pothole, the back wheel collapsed in half. This resulted in a trip to the principal's office, his parents called, and the kid who owned the bike and his parents angrily outraged. Charles' parents had to pay for the repairs after fruitlessly attempting to convince the other parents to chip in.
He wanted to show off that he was strong enough to ride a bike with four of them aboard—a couple of them, girls. Now, he was the laughingstock at school and grounded at home. Not having the escape hatch of the "glades" was excruciating; there was nothing for him to do in the park. His family nickname of Cottonmouth Killer changed to Dumb Bike Thief.
Making matters worse, the cafeteria staff told Charles he had a new dishwashing partner, Big Bully. Charles had been working there since not long after he arrived because it included a free hot lunch. Now, he would have to work with his enemy, who immediately started pushing for a fight. He got his wish by splattering spaghetti over Charles, who, angry, called him a bastard. Fuming, the bully charged him with a furious yell. They slugged it out in front of all the students and faculty. Charles fought as savagely as he could and, by the time teachers stopped the fight, it seemed to be a draw. Hauled off to the office, and having been there the week before because of the bike disaster, the principal gave Charles a few more angry warnings than he did his adversary. One of the bully's eyes was red and soon turned black. Charles' face had bruises in several places. The bully acted as if he had won, but he never attacked Charles again.
Charles' pyrrhic success was short-lived. A little notebook, entitled "The Hate Book," circulated through the class. Each student wrote in it the three things he or she hated the most. By the time it came to Charles, almost everyone had made an entry. Charles leafed through them, before writing anything. Most of the comments were bland; then, he came to "Daisy Mae's," who wrote, "I hate cabbage, boiled fish, and Charles."
He made no entry in the book, just passed it on. What had he done to provoke such disdain? In painful shock, he walked around like a zombie for the rest of the day—his luxurious and passionate fantasies were now excruciating nightmares. The hate book, to him, summarized his year in the seventh grade, which ended soon after.
––––––––
With the summer heat and without a swamp cooler, the trailer turned into a Calcutta outhouse. Having absorbed the day's heat, the Masonite radiated it throughout the night. His parents had come south to escape the Long Island winters, now they planned to flee the Florida summers.
Charles remembered going to the Nash dealer's service center with his father, not long after their arrival, because the transmission would stick and become impossible to shift. The mechanic discovered the springs that absorb the torque in the clutch disk had exploded out of their thick steel covers and sometimes lodged between the clutch and the flywheel, jamming the gears. The mechanic commented that he had never seen anything like it in his career. However, this was the first time he worked on a Nash that had pulled a grossly overloaded Masonite trailer up and down Baltimore's hilly streets, many others like it, and over monster bridges.
His father wanted to purchase a later model, more powerful Nash, but Mom said no. Unimpressed with Dad's arguments about purchasing a newer car, she gave her blessing to buy a new and larger trailer. Six feet longer and made of aluminum, it seemed like the Taj Mahal. Wider, with comfortable beds and a shower, it had picture windows that illuminated their lives, in contrast with the small ones in the Masonite dinosaur that left them in perpetual gloom. Another feature was akin to discovering a Mayan treasure trove—electric trailer brakes, the control lever attached to the Nash's steering column. As they pulled out of the dealer's lot, his father commented that he should probably try them before driving down the street and gently pulled on the lever. The trailer screeched to a halt, throwing the three of them forward with some force.
Yes, it had brakes, but could the Nash pull it over that bridge? What if we get stuck there? What if the clutch gives out? What if there are brute motorists enraged by the ensuing traffic jam? Charles' anxiety level increased every time his parents obsessed about the damn bridge.
They were going back to New York to pick up items they had left in storage and then head west to California. He knew very little about that state, other than they made movies and all the stars lived there. Ironically, their goal was the other Hollywood, the famous one. It could have been a putrid slum, and Charles would have been delighted all the same. All he wanted was to leave the Sunshine State and never come back.
––––––––
During their last week in Florida, Charles and his parents attended a nighttime open-air concert at the beach, probably in Miami. With the fragrance of orange blossoms in the breeze, the temperature balmy, Charles walked along an elevated boardwalk listening to the music. The band was playing "Begin the Beguine," evoking a supremely romantic atmosphere, and he felt all the adolescent hormones his body could produce. He wondered if he had been hasty in his enthusiasm about leaving because this was blissful. Then, he saw her. She was standing with one arm on the boardwalk's railing, gazing down at the band below. Frozen, Charles stood still until she saw him, made a face, and stomped off.
He still cannot decide which was the most painful: at the pond in front of her rural home, reading her comments in the hate book, or her reaction at the band concert. They all left him in a dismal state, one that would continue to plague him every time he thought of her.
It is no surprise that he has no memory of leaving the trailer park. Getting into too much trouble among the palmettos and canals, his parents confiscated his BB gun. Several incidents brought adults banging on their trailer door, screaming in outrage. Mom and Dad, who refrained little from criticizing him, were territorial and brooked no complaints about Charles. They yelled right back with such ferocity that his accusers invariably were soon in full retreat. Backing off, they probably told themselves that if these were the parents, no wonder their son was so destructive. They were right.
––––––––
Ah, the monster bridge. Sweaty panicky talk, repeated to the point of vomit and, as might be expected, the Nash sailed over it in second gear. The aluminum trailer, albeit longer and roomier, was so much lighter than the Masonite tank that the bridge was a minor speed bump on their way north.
Arriving at the Whitestone-Bronx Bridge, Charles, filled with nostalgic longing, could not recognize his hometown. Were they on the right bridge? Then, he experienced a nauseating shock: “The Woods” were gone. Instead, block after block of tract homes extended to the East River. He felt like someone had kicked him in the groin. What he liked most about his hometown was gone.
He was not sad when they departed for California a week or so later.
––––––––
Over the years, Charles has pondered the fate of the infamous Masonite trailer. It seemed like a reinforced concrete pillbox that dynamite could not chip.
What could have happened to it?
Perhaps it became a caretaker's shack in a limestone quarry or a hunting and fishing cabin out in the 'glades. Junked or demolished is unthinkable; it was too strong for that.
To this day, he imagines it deep in the South, forever.
They say that everything happens for a reason. Every high and low moment shapes us into the adults we present to the world. Charles's first introduction to the world was a type of story one would tell generations to come. Charles was born in Jamaica, New York, during the New England Hurricane of 1938. The natural disaster had wind gusts of 125mph and caused 4.7 billion in property losses (2005 US dollars).
Charles survived volatile storms and survived growing up in a home where his dad would explode without provocation, and his mom thought he could do nothing right. Over and over again, we watched his parents take great pleasure in making Charles's life difficult. I was stunned when his father left him alone for hours with no food at the uranium mine in the Mojave Desert. The "carnival ride" through Georgia hills was another point in Charles's young life that left me speechless. I know parents make mistakes, but his parents didn't deserve to be parents. They didn't earn the titles of "mom" and "dad."
Charles's troubles didn't cease when he reached adulthood. His troublesome marriage left him penniless and seeking counsel in Mexico City.
I was again left stunned by what life kept throwing at him and how Charles managed to come out of unfavorable situations stronger than ever. Even his bout of dysentery left him with a plethora of germ-destroying cells. Only a true miracle could explain how he survived dysentery without medical intervention! Charles suspected a guardian angel was watching over him, and I tend to agree with him.
Charles's guardian angel was working overtime when he entered the water in "HURRICANES, SHARKS, EARTHQUAKES, A BAT RAY, AN OCTOPUS, A BAIT BALL, AND THE SUN AND THE MOON; c. 1938 to 1989." He had more than one moment that would shake anyone to their core. His heart pounded when a spearfishing excursion went south fast. He faced and escaped more than one shark encounter. The octopus scene terrified me more than the shark scenes because the octopus had Charles in his clutches.
Charles has lived more and faced more than most people. He's traveled and viewed wonders people only dream about or will be dreaming about now. While it would be amazing to see Paris at night, I was most fascinated by his time in Chalma and Malinalco. I imagine the pyramid would take my breath away. The temple's doorway was a serpent's mouth. Its threshold was a forked tongue. It also had massive jaguar statues bordering the steps. Oh, how I wish an image of the temple accompanied the passage.
Charles's life did have trying times. In each period of his existence, he did find beauty in an ugly situation. For instance, his childhood was difficult, but he remembered the fun his family had swimming in the ocean. They were happy for a time. When his money dwindled in Mexico City, he discovered his appreciation for their culture and architecture. He even returned to get his Psychology degree at Mexico City College (now the University of the Americas).
This story illustrates how a person can persevere in extreme situations. It also reminds readers to refrain from drinking tap water in Mexico!
Areas of the story read clunky. Imagine sitting at a table with a friend who's telling you a recent event, then veers off to tell you something else, and then backtracks to their present story. That's how this story felt. I'm not saying I wasn't entertained, but the story's format sometimes needed more focus.
Uranium Mine and Other Stories covers monumental moments in Charles's life, 1938 to 2022. It has dramatic scenes, humor, and life-and-death moments, demonstrating a man's triumph over many hardships. If you like books with these qualities, I encourage you to read Jed Linde's book.